Watchman Rayburn Report: Watchman Report 3/28/08

If Foreigners Could Vote in '08
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120649414499564341.html?mod=blog

For America's presidential candidates, the global electoral map is looking as divided as the domestic one.

When foreigners look at the three contenders, Sen. Barack Obama seems to have the lead among Europeans and Africans. Sen. Hillary Clinton is popular among Mexicans and Chinese. Sen. John McCain just returned from a campaign swing through the Middle East and Europe.

U.S. presidential contests often attract interest from foreign countries.

The world's sole superpower has such an impact on the globe that, as a Belgian newspaper recently suggested, the rest of the world may feel it should be allowed to vote, too.

This time around, all three candidates have made restoring America's stature abroad a key part of their foreign-policy platforms, making overseas opinions of the U.S. of greater interest to American voters.

And the fact that Sen. Obama -- a man with African and Muslim roots and an Arabic middle name, Hussein -- could become U.S. president has created buzz around the world.

In Germany, the title of a recent book, "Obama: the Black Kennedy," echoes frequent newspaper headlines comparing Sen. Obama with Germany's favorite former U.S. president. In Kenya, the homeland of Sen. Obama's father, people order the local beer, Senator, by asking for an "Obama."

As in the U.S., however, some people elsewhere harbor doubts about both Sen. Obama's experience and his policies.

In China and Mexico, two countries with economies that rely on exports to the U.S., people fret over the senator's antitrade rhetoric and largely back Sen. Clinton on the assumption she will follow her husband's free-trade agenda.

There also are concerns about Sen. Obama's mettle in places like Colombia and Israel, where security concerns trump other issues.

In January, the former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Danny Ayalon, wrote an article headlined "Who are you, Barack Obama?" raising concerns about his stand on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Sen. Clinton also gets higher marks outside Europe, especially in Mexico and China, where she benefits from her husband's popular presidency.

In Mexico, listeners calling in to one Mexico City radio station picked Sen. Clinton over Sen. Obama, 65%-34%, mostly because of former President Bill Clinton's legacy in signing the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Deng Jie, owner of a business in Beijing, said, "I don't know who Obama is. But I think I wish Hillary wins because during the eight years that her husband, Mr. Clinton, was in the position, the U.S. economy went well."

Sen. McCain's recent trip through Iraq, Israel, Jordan and Europe was designed to showcase himself as comfortable with world leaders, knowledgeable about world affairs and able to bolster foreign opinion of the U.S.

He ran into embarrassing press coverage when he mistakenly said Iranians were training al Qaeda fighters and sending them back into Iraq.

His visit was welcomed in France "because right now, he's seen as an adversary to [George W.] Bush and thus friendly," says Patrick Jarreau, a political reporter for French newspaper Le Monde.

For many Europeans, Sen. Obama's candidacy "is romantic," says Elmar Brok, a German member of the European Parliament and a member of the Parliament's committee on U.S. relations.

Part of Sen. Obama's appeal globally is that he spent part of his childhood in Indonesia and had a Kenyan father, making him particularly popular in Africa.
[Vote]

The western part of Kenya is the ancestral home of the Luo tribe to which Sen. Obama's father belonged. The senator's grandmother is alive and has grown accustomed to foreign journalists tramping to her village home in the area.

The rise of a favorite son has been a welcome change from Kenya's own presidential election. The vote was marred by irregularities in late December, spiraling into open ethnic warfare that has killed hundreds. Raila Odinga, the opposition presidential candidate who recently made peace with the Kenya government over the vote, is also a Luo and has called Sen. Obama a "cousin" on the campaign trail.

Muslims across the Middle East have also been drawn into the race, partly because of Sen. Obama's Muslim roots. A practicing Christian, the senator has described his father as a nonpracticing Muslim.

"What he has accomplished so far...is in itself an unprecedented U.S. social revolution," wrote leading Egyptian-American democracy activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim in a Cairo newspaper. "If he becomes the president of America, this 'revolution' will become a global one."

A Change of Heart: McCain for President
http://www.lawweekly.org/?module=displaystory&story_id=2035&edition_id=87&format=html

I wrote two weeks ago about why I supported Senator Barack Obama for President. I delved into the issues and produced a number of well thought out reasons why we should make him the most powerful person in the world. I thought they were all pretty convincing … at the time.

Since then, many of my classmates, some of them close friends of mine, have taken issue with my analysis and expressed their sincere dismay that I feel the way I do. I have even received hateful emails from readers outside the Law School. After a few rounds of deep meditation and consultation with my closest compadres, I have come to the conclusion that I was mistaken. I now throw my full support behind Senator John McCain. The future is too uncertain and the stakes are too high to trust the Presidency to anyone else.

To save you the time of actually thinking through your political beliefs and coming to a sensible and reasoned opinion, as I have done, I’ve included all the necessary research on John McCain below. Here is why you should vote for him next fall:

Political speech must be regulated.

John McCain firmly believes that political power in this country is vested in each and every ordinary American. He trusts in our traditions of free speech and expression to maintain vital and productive political debates—and fair outcomes. However, John McCain is no fool. He has the wisdom to realize that those same ordinary Americans can become very dangerous when they band together in great numbers. That’s why he fought hard for nearly a decade to pass bipartisan campaign finance reform legislation that would limit the pernicious effects of mixing free association with political speech. He finally succeeded in 2002, ensuring that groups of likeminded individuals can no longer run advertisements that urge their fellow citizens to vote for a particular candidate in the month before a general election.

The President should be really tough.

John McCain knows about torture and hardship. He has endured unspeakable treatment, inhuman deprivations, and seemingly endless confinement. In addition to his two marriages, he spent nearly six years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. This experience will make for a battle-tested commander-in-chief. John McCain will not buckle under the crushing boredom of innumerable events and briefings. Nor will the hand that holds his veto pen tremble at the sight of smartly dressed Speakers of the House or crotchety Senate Majority Leaders.

We have been in Iraq for only 5% of the necessary time.

John McCain is the only candidate who recognizes that U.S. troops should remain in Iraq for the traditional occupation period: 100 years. Where other candidates cut and run, the Senator from Arizona pastes and walks. Taking the long view, he realizes that history will view the war in Iraq not as a colossal failure, but merely as a learning experience that can be analyzed to make sure future attempts at imposing democracy through the application of outside force will be successful. Forget that the money we’re likely to spend on the war could have instead 1) made Social Security solvent for 50 years or 2) established a permanent colony of dingoes on Mars (much cooler).

Federal judges are out of control.

If elected, John McCain will drive the Straight Talk Express from the White House down to 1st Street NE and park that bad mother right in front of the Supreme Court. He will tell those out-of-control Justices (well, four or five of them maybe) to confine their activities to “faithfully applying the law as written.” Judges should never legislate from the bench. They should leave the legislating to the proper authorities like, for example, the President.

Strongly held ideas are dangerous.

People who are unwilling to sacrifice their principles to political realities are just the type of extremists we can do without. John McCain is a moderate, which means that he doesn’t believe anything so strongly that he can’t abandon it in favor of something else that’s more convenient. In the current political climate, we need someone in the White House who is free to take whatever position will piss off the least people. McCain is the perfect man for the job.

The Terminator supports McCain.

The 21st Century world is a dangerous place. There are sure to be new wars and crises confronting the next President of the United States. I don’t know about you, but when that phone rings at 3 a.m., I want the president to be able to conference in the Terminator. Living tissue over a metal endoskeleton is exactly what we need to take it to the terrorists. Schwarzenegger supports John McCain. That’s good enough for me.

My conversion to McCain supporter was not a painless one. It was tough leaving the Obama movement. It is only my firm belief in the power of the President to improve the lives of all Americans that is getting me through this. Both Obama and McCain know that the federal government should play a central role in our daily lives, but Obama is all talk and no substance. John McCain is the candidate with the experience and the leadership skills to make things better for all of us.

Email: pvh5d@virginia.edu

Obama contends belief in Jesus Christ not necessary for salvation
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Election2008/Default.aspx?id=73553

Senator Barack Obama has told an audience that although he believes Christ died for his sins, those who reject that teaching can also be children of God.

During a campaign stop yesterday in Greensboro, North Carolina, Senator Obama told the audience that he believes he "can have everlasting life" because Jesus Christ died for his sins.

But he then told a questioner that he believes Jews and Muslims who live moral lives are just as much "children of God" as he is.

The Illinois Democrat added that his late mother didn't share his faith but was a kind and generous person, so he's "sure she's in heaven."

In his life and in his politics, Obama said he asks himself, "How can I apply Jesus's teachings in a very concrete way?"

Obama's religious beliefs have been put in the spotlight over recent revelations about his former pastor.

Videotapes of some of Pastor Jeremiah Wright's sermons have been described as being racist and anti-America.

Yesterday, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for president referred to those sermon remarks as being "stupid," but he continues to reject suggestions that he should have left the church because of that kind of preaching from his pastor.

Obama advisor: US Jews hinder peace
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3523709,00.html

General Merrill "Tony" McPeak, Senator Barack Obama's military advisor and co-chair of his presidential campaign is a longtime anti-Israeli critic who has slammed Israel harshly during his career, according to an inquiry by conservative American media outlets.

McPeak, who served as the chief of staff to the US Air Force before retiring in 1994, made headlines over the past week after accusing former President Bill Clinton of McCarthyism. Yet as it turns out, over the years he has criticized Israel for failing to withdraw to the 1967 borders and charged American Jews were preventing American pressure that would lead to a Mideast peace agreement.

The examination of McPeak's career, undertaken by conservative magazine American Spectator, revealed McPeak appears to take great pleasure in slamming Israel and pro-Israel Jews.

In an interview with The Oregonion about five years ago, McPeak argued that the influence exerted by American Jews is responsible for the lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. According to the general the problem was New York and Miami.

"We have a large vote here in favor of Israel. And no politician wants to run against it," he said.

In the same interview, McPeak spoke of his personal experience with Israel.

"I've spent a lot of time in Israel, worked at one time very closely with the Israeli Air Force as a junior officer," he said, "but that's maybe the more cosmopolitan, liberal version of the Israeli population."

McPeak also charged that Jews and Christian Zionists manipulated American foreign policy in Iraq.

"Let's say that one of your abiding concerns is the security of Israel as opposed to a purely American self-interest, then it would make sense to build a dozen or so bases in Iraq," he said.

Following the latest revelations, the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) called on Obama to remove McPeak as his military advisor and national campaign co-chairman.

"By choosing to have a military advisor and national campaign co-chairman like General McPeak, serious questions and doubts are once again being raised about Senator Obama's positions and judgment on Middle East issues," said RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks.

"Rather than putting the blame where it belongs - on the Palestinian leadership and their continued reliance on terror, General McPeak finds it more convenient to blame American Jewry and their perceived influence," said Brooks. "This is the same dangerous and disturbing canard being promoted by the likes of Jimmy Carter and authors Mearsheimer and Walt in their book, The Israel Lobby."

"Senator Obama continues to surround himself with advisors holding troubling and disturbing anti-Israel bias," Brooks said. "We call on Senator Obama to immediately remove General McPeak from his campaign leadership role and as a key advisor."

Dutch Film Criticizes Islam, Quran
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/346825.aspx

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A Dutch lawmaker released a film highly critical of Islam on Thursday, linking verses of the Muslim holy book to a background of violent images from terrorist attacks.

Geert Wilders posted his 15-minute film on a Web site, and Dutch television channels followed quickly with discussions by panels of commentators on the possible impact of the release. They didn't show the movie.

The Dutch government had warned Wilders that a film offensive to Muslims could spark violent protests in Islamic countries, like those two years ago after European newspapers published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Dutch television refused to broadcast the film, and Wilders had difficulty finding an Internet platform willing to host it.

The film cites verses of the Quran interspersed with images of violence from terrorist attacks in the United States and Spain and the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh on an Amsterdam street.

His movie begins and ends with one of those caricatures of Muhammad, accompanied by the sound of a page being torn from a book.

Subtitles assure viewers that the page was not torn from a Quran, but from a telephone book. "It's not up to me, but the Muslims to tear the hate-sowing pages out of the Quran," the subtitles add.

After the release, Wilders told reporters that he made the film because "Islam and the Quran are dangers to the preservation of freedom in the Netherlands in the long term, and I have to warn people of that."

The film is called "Fitna," an Arabic word that can be translated as "ordeal." Wilders suggested European culture is under threat due to immigration by Muslims.

"Fitna" is "not a provocation, but ... it's five minutes before midnight and this is the last warning as far as I'm concerned," he said.

The film was not as jarring as anticipated, said Maurits Berger, professor of Islam in the West at Leiden University.

"It's a series of images and photos, headlines from recent years which we already know," he said.

The film tells more about Wilders than the Quran, Berger said. "It represents his fear of Islam."

The lawmaker put out his film on the evening before a Dutch judge was due to hear a petition bu a Muslim group seeking an independent review of the film to see whether it violates hate speech laws. The Dutch Islamic Federation asked the court to impose a fine of $79,000 for every day the film is available to the public.

Mohamed Rabbae, chairman of the moderate National Moroccan Council, which appealed for calm in January ahead of the film's release, said he had heard about "Fitna" but not yet seen it.

Wilders "collected some bloody pictures and related them to some verses in the Quran," Rabbae told The Associated Press. "On the one hand, this is less bad than we thought he was going to do. But he also gives the impression the Quran justifies violence, and that is really wrong."

Rabbae said his group and representatives of the Netherlands' Turkish community would analyze the film closely Friday morning before giving a detailed reaction.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende had warned Wilders that his film could harm the country's national interests. Thousands of Dutch demonstrated against the film Saturday in Amsterdam, seeking to show that Wilders does not represent the whole country.

Iran condemns "heinous" Dutch Koran film
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSBLA83556420080328

TEHRAN - Iran said a film by a Dutch lawmaker that accuses the Koran of inciting violence was "heinous" and called on European governments to block any further showing, Iran's official news agency reported on Friday.

The film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders was posted on Thursday on his Freedom Party's Web site (www.pvv.nl), which crashed soon afterwards. But it could still be viewed on a file-sharing Web site in English and Dutch.

Titled "Fitna", a Koranic term sometimes translated as "strife", the film intersperses images of the September 11, 2001 attacks and other bombings with quotations from the Koran.

"This heinous measure by a Dutch lawmaker and a British establishment ... is indicative of the continuation of the evilness and deep vengeance such Western nationals have against Islam and Muslims," the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Mohammad Ali Hosseini, whose comments were carried by the official IRNA news agency, said the film had been broadcast on the Internet with the aid of an organization based in Britain.

Liveleak.com said in a statement on its Web site that it let Wilders post the film because the site supported free speech even if many of those involved in the site found some messages "personally offensive". It did not say where the site was based but gave contact telephone numbers in Britain.

In a bid to defuse Muslim anger, the Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said he rejected Wilders' views.

Hosseini called for the "quick intervention of the Dutch and British governments, as well as the European Union, with the goal of bringing an end to the screening of this blasphemous, anti-Islamic and anti-cultural film."

Dutch broadcasters had refused to show the film and a U.S.-based Web service which Wilders had planned to use deactivated the site at the weekend after receiving complaints.

The film starts and finishes with a cartoon of the Muslim Prophet Mohammad with a bomb under his turban, originally published in Danish newspapers. That image previously sparked violent protests around the world, including in Iran.

The film included images of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who often berates the West in his speeches and praises Iran's Islamic revolutionary ideals. He also insists Iran is not a threat to any nation and respects others.

Dozens protest anti-Quran film
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080328/ap_on_re_eu/netherlands_quran_film;_ylt=AnIgr1xvtZ4DJVQylWFsMLms0NUE

Dozens staged an angry protest in Pakistan on Friday in response to a Dutch lawmaker's anti-Quran film, but Dutch Muslims appealed for calm and said it was less inflammatory than they had feared.

The 15-minute film by Geert Wilders, posted on a Web site late Thursday, sets verses of the Quran against a montage of images from terrorist attacks and rhetoric from Muslim clergymen urging "jihad," or holy war. Shortly afterward Dutch television channels rebroadcast segments of it.

The leader of a group representing members of the Netherlands' large Moroccan immigrant community said the film was "less bad" than expected, and another prominent Muslim dismissed it as an attempt by Wilders to gain votes by trying to make people fearful of Islam.

The film recycled film clips from terrorist attacks in the U.S., Spain and the Netherlands, and began and ended with one of the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published by European newspapers that provoked violent protests in Islamic countries two years ago.

The Danish Union of Journalists said it will sue Wilders for copyright infringement for using the cartoon. It said the cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, did not give Wilders permission to use the image in his film, which it called "political propaganda."

In Pakistan, dozens staged an angry protest outside a mosque in the port city of Karachi, organized by the largest Muslim party, Jamaat-e-Islami. Some demonstrators demanded Pakistan sever diplomatic ties with the Netherlands.

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, condemned the film. Foreign Ministry spokesman Kristiarto Legowo called it "misleading and full of racism."

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini slammed the anti-Quran movie and described it as "anti-Islamic and insulting," the state-run IRNA news agency said. "Such a dirty act .... reveals continued enmity and deep hostility of such Western nationals against Islam and Muslims," he said, according to IRNA.

After the release, Wilders told reporters he made the film because "Islam and the Quran are dangers to the preservation of freedom in the Netherlands in the long term, and I have to warn people of that."

In a televised reaction, Prime Minister Jan Peter said: "We ... regret that Mr. Wilders has released this film. We believe it serves no other purpose than to cause offense."

A court in Rotterdam said it would deliver its decision on April 7 on a petition by the Dutch Islamic Federation seeking to gag Wilders and order him to publicize an apology.

"My clients are not attacking freedom of speech. This is about ending the unjustified insulting of Islam," said lawyer Ejder Kose. Outside the courtroom, police bundled a pro-Wilders demonstrator into a police car shouting far-right slogans.

Wilders' lawyer Serge Vlaar countered that the federation "wants to ban a point of view. This is not what you are here for," he told the judge.

Mohamed Rabbae, chairman of the moderate National Moroccan Council, said the film was "less bad" than expected, but said Wilders was mistaken in asserting the Quran justifies violence.

Rabbae urged Muslims around the world to refrain from targeting Dutch interests in response to the film. "We Muslims living in the Netherlands are best placed to handle Wilders," he said, adding that their response would be to appeal for friendship.

Wilders is head of a reactionary political party that holds nine seats in the 150-member Dutch parliament. His main campaign issues have been halting immigration and preventing the "Islamization" of Dutch culture.

Ahmed Aboutaleb, the social affairs minister, said Friday that Wilders' main aim seemed to be trying to make people afraid of Islam so they will vote for him.

Thousands of Dutch demonstrated Saturday in Amsterdam in a protest intended to show that Wilders does not represent the whole country.

Rocket threat mushrooms
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2394

Arabs to the north and in the south of the Jewish homeland have acquired and are manufacturing rockets whose range endangers Israel more than ever before.

The developments have Israel Defense Forces officials worried, according to reports in the Israeli press Thursday.

Lebanon's Hizb'allah, attacking from the north, have Iranian-supplied rockets that can reach populated areas in most of Israel, and which can even strike Israel's nuclear facility at Dimona in the Negev - hundreds of kilometers to the south of the Lebanese border.

This is according to senior defense officials, who reportedly described as dramatic the upgrading of the terrorist organization's missile arsenal in the months since the Second Lebanon War.

That war, fought in the summer of 2006, saw Hizb'allah launch close to 4,000 rockets at Israel over the period of one month. Their maximum reach then was about 70 kms inside Israel.

Figures released by Israel in early March pegged the current level of Hizb'allah rockets at 10,000 long-range rockets and 20,000 short-range.

Last July Hizb'allah chief Hassan Nasrallah boasted his rockets could strike "every point and every corner" in Israel.

In Gaza, meanwhile, Palestine Islamic Jihad is reportedly manufacturing more accurate Kassam rockets that can carry twice the amount of explosives as those that have been rained down on Sderot to date, and with a range of more than 12.5 miles as opposed to the current six to seven mile range.

Citing security officials, Ynetnews said the new rocket indicates that Gaza's terror groups have increased efforts to develop new weapons. also with help from outside the Strip.

"The fact that they are able to produce their own long-range rockets…is disturbing and worrying," an army official said.

Right-thinking analysts have warned that allowing the "Palestinians" to assume control of Judea and Samaria will see Israel surrounded on all three sides by rocket-armed Muslims who remain committed to driving the Jews into the Mediterranean, which is the only Arab-free border Israel would have left.

Israel: Hezbollah Increased Rocket Range
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/346738.aspx

Israeli defense officials suspect the terrorist organization Hezbollah has new rockets that can hit anywhere in Israel.

The Iranian rockets have a range of 186 miles -- that means they can hit any of Israel's heavily populated centers, including Dimona, the site of Israel's nuclear reactor.

When Israel and Hezbollah fought a month-long war in 2006, Hezbollah fired nearly 4,000 rockets into Israel. The longest-range rockets fired, which Israel said were Iranian-made, hit some 45 miles inside Israel.

Although Israel's air force managed to take out most of the group's long-range rockets, the military failed throughout the war to halt the short-range rocket fire that paralyzed northern Israel and killed 40 Israeli civilians.

After the war, the U.N. dispatched a peacekeeping force to distance Hezbollah from the border and prevent the group from rearming. Since then, Hezbollah hasn't launched any rockets at Israel.

Two incidents of rocket fire were not claimed by the group and were likely the work of smaller militant factions.

But Israel says Hezbollah's Iranian and Syrian patrons have steadily provided the group with large amounts of rockets since then, many of them capable of hitting central Israel.

Hezbollah declined comment Thursday.

Terrorists shoot farmer; fire rockets
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2398

An Israeli farmer was shot and wounded Wednesday by Palestinian Arabs who fired on him from inside the Gaza Strip.

The Arabs, who have turned Gaza into a Mecca for terrorism since driving Israel from the Strip two years ago, have armed themselves to the teeth and are waging the next stage in their war to rid the Middle East of the "hated Jews."

Apart from shooting at civilians, their efforts Wednesday included the firing of at least 15 Kassam rockets into the western Negev.

There were some injuries reported, and some damage, and the barrage added yet another layer to the anxiety and fear Jews living in that part of the country have been suffering from daily for months.

More than 7000 rockets have been fired from Gaza in the last seven years.

'Palestinians' stoke Jew-hatred in Gaza
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2397

Palestinian Arab children in Gaza, already saturated with hatred of the Jewish people and deeply dedicated to the destruction of Israel, now have a new school outing to look forward to that is geared to only brutalize them further as it intensifies their hate.

According to reports in the Israeli press Wednesday, the exhibit these children and their parents can now visit is a model of a crematorium of the type used by the Nazis to burn the bodies of the Jews they had gassed.

Instead of Jews, Palestinian Arab children are seen inside this oven, which is being manned and fed by Israelis.

Erected by the so-called National Committee for Defense of Children from the Holocaust - a "Palestinian" group - the exhibit, according to the Al-Ayam daily in Ramallah, "includes a large oven and inside it small children are being burned. The picture speaks for itself."

In a statement quoted in The Jerusalem Post, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) said "there seems to be no limit to the depravity of Palestinian hate education and incitement."

Said ZOA President Morton Klein: "We have seen over the years every sort of perversity, including educating children to become suicide bombers and honoring mass murderers. Here, the Palestinians, both Hamas and Fatah, depict Israelis as exterminating-Nazis, while teaching nothing about the actual Holocaust in which the wartime Palestinian leadership of Haj Amin el-Husseini was in fact very active. Husseini not only orchestrated campaigns of murder against Jews in the British Mandate, but also became an ally of the Nazis and worked hard to speed up the work of deportation and murder.

"The depiction of Israelis as exterminating-Nazis essentially sends the message that Jews are evil people who should, like the Nazi regime, be destroyed. It is a travesty that many nations, including the US, continue to fund the PA and thereby work to keep this conflict alive while speaking endlessly of working hard to end it. Until and unless the Palestinians are held to their commitments to end terrorism and the incitement to hatred and murder that feeds it, no peace can be expected to become even feasible," Klein added.

Seductive Saudis seek to marry religion with diplomacy
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2395

Saudi Arabia's King Abd'allah surprised the world this week when he announced his intention to convene a summit of Muslims, Christians and Jews.

Abd'allah, who reigns over a kingdom that has traditionally treated Jews and Christians as pariahs - in accordance with the tenets of Islam - and whose state has been accused of practising rigid religious intolerance, told a newspaper he believed it essential for the well-being of the planet that representatives of the "three monotheistic faiths" come together "to defend humanity."

The king said Monday he had decided to convene gatherings after meeting with Pope Benedict XVI a couple of months ago.

"I plan, Allah willing, to hold summits - not just one - so as to hear the opinion of my Muslim brothers all over the world. We will start to meet with our brothers in every faith I have mentioned - the bible and the New Testament," he said.

"The idea is to ask representatives of all monotheistic religions to sit together with their brothers in faith and sincerity to all religions as we all believe in the same God."

[Jews and Christians believe in the God of the Bible who calls Himself YHVH, God of Israel; Muslims believe in Allah - the moon god of ancient Arabia-Ed.]

Catholic and Jewish interfaith promoters leaped to welcome the news, as did the Bush administration.

Special US envoy to the Organisation of Islamic conference Sada Cumber said dialogue "is always encouraging," adding that "we will attend the meeting."

The director of the Catholic New York-based Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute, Rev. James Loughran, said he was "elated" to hear of the proposal.

One of Israel's chief rabbis, Yona Metzger, said in response that the hands of the Jewish people "are extended to any peace initiative, or to any dialogue whose goal is to bring an end to terror and violence. I have said many times that the true way to reach the long-awaited peace is through interfaith dialogue."

Also reportedly delighted was the head of inter-religious relations at the American Jewish Committee, Rabbi David Rosen.

"Religion is all too often the problem, so it has to also be the solution, or at least part of the solution, and I think that the tragedy of the political initiatives to bring peace has been the failure to include the religious dimension," he said, according to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz.

But this writer suspects the monarch is working to introduce a religious track into the land-for-peace process that will ally pro-Palestinian Christian denominations and liberal Jewish groups behind the 2002 Saudi-sponsored peace plan upon which the US-pushed Road Map towards a two-state solution is based.

Earlier this year a senior advisor to Abd'allah and former Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Turki al-Faisal, dangled before Israelis the chance of "joining the Arab world" if the Jewish state signed a peace treaty and withdrawing from "all occupied Arab territories."

"Exchange visits by people of both Israel and the rest of the Arab countries would take place," Turki said, adding that "we will start thinking of Israelis as Arab Jews rather than simply as Israelis," al-Faisal said.

Report: Saudi King plans interfaith summit for Jews, Muslims, Christians
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/968247.html

In a rare departure from government practice, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah is planning to convene an interfaith conference for Muslims, Christians and Jews, according to the Saudi-owned Al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper.

The call for religious dialog to include Jews is the first by the monarch, whose country's regulations prohibit the importation of non-Muslim religious objects including crucifixes and stars of David.

The Saudi King said representatives of the three major monotheistic faiths need to work together "to defend humanity" from harm, speaking in an address he delivered in Riyadh on Monday.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat, which is published in London, quoted King Abdullah as saying he had discussed idea of a summit to promote religious dialog a number of months ago with the Pope.

"I proposed to him to address God by means of the commandments he commanded the monotheistic faiths in the bible, the New Testament, and the Koran," the king said.

The monarch said he is disturbed by the breakdown of the family unit across the world, as well as the damaged to the principle of "loyalty to humanity."

"I plan, god willing, to hold summits - not just one - so as to hear the opinion of my Muslim brothers all over the world. We will start to meet with our brothers in every faith I have mentioned - the bible and the New Testament," he said.

King Abdullah said the kingdom's top clerics had given him the green light to pursue the idea.

In response to the Saudi initiative, Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger said, "our hands are extended to any peace initiative, or to any dialogue whose goal is to bring an end to terror and violence. I have said many times that the true way to reach the long-awaited peace is through interfaith dialogue."

Rabbi David Rosen, head of inter-religious relations at the American Jewish Committee, said he was delighted by the Saudi announcement.

"Religion is all too often the problem, so it has to also be the solution, or at least part of the solution, and I think that the tragedy of the political initiatives to bring peace has been the failure to include the religious dimension," he said.

Algeria Shuts Down 13 Protestant Churches, bans any media critical of Islam
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080325/31674_Algeria_Shuts_Down_13_Protestant_Churches.htm

Algeria, a close to fully Sunni Muslim country in northern Africa, has ordered 13 Protestant churches to shut down since November, the head of Algeria’s Protestant church group said Monday.

Churches were told to close their doors until they are issued a permit that allows non-Muslim groups to hold organized worship.

Algeria passed a law in February 2006 that required non-Muslim congregations to obtain a permit from their regional prefecture to hold worship gatherings. It also banned the production of media intended to “shake the faith of a Muslim,” according to Compass Direct News.

After the law’s passage, however, there had not been any enforcement and no Christian churches have been closed until recently.

"Thirteen chapels, including 11 in Tizi Ouzou, one in Bejaia and one in Bouira have been closed on the orders of local officials," said Pastor Mustapha Krim, who is president of the Protestant Church of Algeria (EPA), according to South Africa’s News24.

No official reason has been given for the government order, but the decision might be linked to recent tension over allegations that Christians were trying to convert Muslims.

“It would be better that authorities give us the possibility to be in conformity with the law and not order us to close the churches,” Krim wrote in a March 9 appeal, according to Compass.

Krim said he has made a formal request to the Algerian state’s representative in the Tizi Ouzou region for explanation on the decision.

Tension recently flared when Muslim leaders accused Protestant evangelists of trying to convert Muslims to Christianity.

Earlier this month, the former chairman of the Protestant group, American pastor Hugh Johnson, was expelled from the country over links to evangelization campaigns, according to some religious freedom groups.

Johnson is said to have imported and distributed religious books without the Algerian government’s permission. Sources also say Johnson is active in non-accredited local Protestant associations in the country, according to Kenya Today.

The Algerian government, however, has denied that reason for his expulsion was religious. They claim it was simply due to administrative reasons – his resident visa had expired – according to Kenya Today.

In addition to Johnson’s expulsion, three Algerian Christians were convicted of “insulting Islam” on Feb. 5 and unofficially told they would be sentenced to three years in prison and fined.

Among the churches ordered to close is the 1,200-member Full Gospel Church, according to Compass.

Algeria’s Protestant Church claims to have 50,000 followers, with 10,000 of them active churchgoers, according to News24. But the ministry of religious affairs, says there are only 11,000 Christians in Algeria, most of them Catholic, compared to the Muslim population of 33 million.

About 99 percent of the country ascribe to Sunni Islam – the official state religion. Christians and Jews make up only one percent of the country, according to the CIA World Factbook.

The untold story of Muslims worldwide converting to evangelical Christianity
http://joelrosenberg.blogspot.com/

"I will build my church," Jesus said, "and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18)

The lead story on Drudge this past weekend was the Pope baptizing a prominent Egyptian author who converted from Islam to Catholicism. It's a huge story in Italy and the Muslim world, especially coming as it did the week that Osama bin Laden accused the Pope of waging a "crusade" against Islam. But this particular baptism is just the tip of the iceberg.

Despite unprecedented press coverage of Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Middle East since September 11, 2001, one big story is generally not being told by the mainstream media. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims are converting to evangelical Christianity and will be celebrating their first Easter this year, even amidst widespread persecution and the very real threat of death.

I first began reporting this story in 2005 after interviewing some three dozen Arab and Iranian pastors and evangelical Christian leaders in the U.S. and the Middle East. Over the last three years, however, I have had the privilege of traveling to Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, the West Bank, Turkey, and Morocco. What's more, I have had the honor of meeting with and interviewing more than 200 Arab, Iranian, Kurdish, Sudanese and other pastors and Christian leaders. With more data, the trend lines are becoming even more clear and the story is even more exciting.

The God of the Bible is moving powerfully in the Middle East to draw men, women and children to His heart and adopt them into His family in record numbers. More Muslims have come to faith in Jesus Christ over the last thirty years -- and specifically over the last seven to ten years -- than at any other time in human history. There is a revival going on among the ancient Catholic, Coptic, and Chaldean churches. Today, the Church is being truly resurrected in the lands of its birth.

Consider the latest evidence:

* AFGHANISTAN -- In Afghanistan, for example, there were only 17 known evangelical Christians in the country before al-Qaeda attacked the United States. Today, there are well over 10,000 Afghan followers of Christ and the number is growing steadily. Church leaders say Afghan Muslims are open to hearing the gospel message like never before. Dozens of baptisms occur every week. People are snatching up Bibles and other Christian books as fast as they can be printed or brought into the country. The Jesus film, a two hour docudrama on the life of Christ based on the Gospel of Luke, was even shown on television in one city before police shut down the entire TV station."God is moving so fast in Afghanistan, we're just trying to keep up," one Afghan Christian worker told me, requesting anonymity. "The greatest need now is leadership development. We need to train pastors to care for all these new believers."

* UZBEKISTAN -- There were no known Muslim converts to Christ there in 1990. Now there are more than 30,000.

* IRAQ -- As I shared on Fox & Friends on Easter morning, in Iraq, there were only a handful of Muslim converts to Christianity back in 1979 when Saddam Hussein took full control of that country. Yet today, there are more than 70,000 Iraqi Muslim background believers in Jesus (MBBs), approximately 50,000 who came to Christ as refugees in Jordan after the first Gulf War in 1990-91, and another 20,000 who have come to Christ since the fall of Saddam Hussein. John Moser, the executive director of The Joshua Fund, and I just returned from nine days traveling through five provinces in Iraq. We met with 19 Iraqi evangelical Christian leaders. I had the privilege of preaching in a church of more than 100 MBBs from Baghdad -- a church that didn't even exist in 2002 before liberation. We also had the privilege of meeting and interviewing numerous former Islamic jihadist terrorist who have come to Christ and are now pastors and church planters.

* KAZAKHSTAN -- In Kazakhstan, there were only three known evangelical Christian believers before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Today there are more than 15,000 Kazakh Christians, and more than 100,000 Christians of all ethnicities.

* EGYPT -- More than 1 million Egyptians have trusted Christ over the past decade or so, report Egyptian church leaders. The Egyptian Bible Society told me they used to sell about 3,000 copies of the Jesus film a year in the early 1990s. But in 2005 they sold 600,000 copies, plus 750,000 copies of the Bible on tape (in Arabic) and about a half million copies of the Arabic New Testament. "Egyptians are increasingly hungry for God's Word," an Egyptian Christian leader told me. Last Christmas, I had the privilege of visiting the largest Christian congregation in the Middle East, which meets in an enormous cave on the outskirts of Cairo. Some 10,000 believers worship there every weekend. A prayer conference the church held in May 2005 drew some 20,000 believers.

* IRAN -- In 1979 when the Ayatollah Khomeini led the Islamic Revolution, there were only about 500 known Muslim converts to Christianity. Today, interviews with two dozen Iranian pastors and church leaders reveals that there are well over 1 million Shia Muslim converts to Christianity.

* SUDAN -- Despite a ferocious civil war, genocide and widespread religious persecution, particularly in the Darfur region -- or perhaps because of such tragedies -- church leaders there tell me that more than 1 million Sudanese have made decisions to follow Jesus Christ just since 2001. Since the early 1990s, more than 5 million Sudanese have become followers of Jesus. Seminary classes to train desperately-needed new pastors are held mountain caves. Hundreds of churches have been planted, and thousands of small group Bible studies are being held in secret throughout the country.

In December 2001, Sheikh Ahmad al Qataani, a leading Saudi cleric, appeared on a live interview on Aljazeera satellite television to confirm that, sure enough, Muslims were turning to Jesus in alarming numbers. "In every hour, 667 Muslims convert to Christianity," Al Qataani warned. "Every day, 16,000 Muslims convert to Christianity. Every year, 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity." Stunned, the interviewer interrupted the cleric. "Hold on! Let me clarify. Do we have six million converting from Islam to Christianity?" Al Qataani repeated his assertion. "Every year," the cleric confirmed, adding, "a tragedy has happened."

One of the most dramatic developments is that many Muslims throughout the Middle East and even in the United States are seeing dreams and visions of Jesus. They are coming into churches explaining that they have already converted and now need a Bible and guidance on how to follow Jesus. This is in fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. The Hebrew Prophet Joel told us that "in the last days, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days....And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved." (Joel 2:28-32)

In Epicenter: Why The Current Rumblings In the Middle East Will Change Your Future, I devoted an entire chapter to these dramatic trend lines and why Muslims are converting in record numbers. I am currently working on a new non-fiction book and documentary film called Inside The Revolution, to be release during Easter 2009, with much more detail on this subject, including first person accounts of former Muslim terrorists who have become the new Apostle Pauls of our time -- murderous religious zealots who had visions of Jesus Christ and are now pastors, evangelists, church planters and powerful Christian leaders. Other books I would highly recommend on this subject are Light Force: A Stirring Account of the Church Caught in the Middle East Crossfire by Brother Andrew and Al Janssen; and Secret Believers: What Happens When Muslims Believe In Christ.

Is life easy for these Muslim converts? By no means. They face ostracism from their families. They face persecution from their communities. They face being fired by their employers. They face imprisonment by their governments. They face torture and even death at the hands of Muslim extremists. But they are coming to Christ anyway. They are becoming convinced that Jesus is, in fact, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that no one comes to the Father in heaven except through faith in Jesus' death on the cross and powerful resurrection from the dead.

One of the reasons my wife and I began The Joshua Fund was to educate the Church around the world at what God of the Bible is doing in the epicenter. We want to mobilize a global movement of Christians praying for these dear brothers and sisters. We want to find ways to encourage and strengthen them. We want to provide them with Bibles and Christian literature, and with humanitarian relief supplies so they can love their neighbors and their enemies, as Jesus tells us to do. Their stories are typically being told by the mainstream media, but they are important stories nonetheless. Theirs are testimonies of the greatness of our great God.

Islam’s ‘Public Enemy #1’
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTUwY2QyNjA0NjcwMjExMzI2ZmJiZTEzN2U1YjYyZjE=&w=MA==

Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest Zakaria Botros — named Islam’s “Public Enemy #1” by the Arabic newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid — has been making waves in the Islamic world. Along with fellow missionaries — mostly Muslim converts — he appears frequently on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., “Life TV”).

There, he addresses controversial topics of theological significance — free from the censorship imposed by Islamic authorities or self-imposed through fear of the zealous mobs who fulminated against the infamous cartoons of Mohammed. Botros’s excurses on little-known but embarrassing aspects of Islamic law and tradition have become a thorn in the side of Islamic leaders throughout the Middle East.

Botros is an unusual figure onscreen: robed, with a huge cross around his neck, he sits with both the Koran and the Bible in easy reach. Egypt’s Copts — members of one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East — have in many respects come to personify the demeaning Islamic institution of “dhimmitude” (which demands submissiveness from non-Muslims, in accordance with Koran 9:29).

But the fiery Botros does not submit, and minces no words. He has famously made of Islam “ten demands,” whose radical nature he uses to highlight Islam’s own radical demands on non-Muslims.

The result? Mass conversions to Christianity — if clandestine ones. The very public conversion of high-profile Italian journalist Magdi Allam — who was baptized by Pope Benedict in Rome on Saturday — is only the tip of the iceberg.

Indeed, Islamic cleric Ahmad al-Qatani stated on al-Jazeera TV a while back that some six million Muslims convert to Christianity annually, many of them persuaded by Botros’s public ministry. More recently, al-Jazeera noted Life TV’s “unprecedented evangelical raid” on the Muslim world. Several factors account for the Botros phenomenon.

First, the new media — particularly satellite TV and the Internet (the main conduits for Life TV) — have made it possible for questions about Islam to be made public without fear of reprisal. It is unprecedented to hear Muslims from around the Islamic world — even from Saudi Arabia, where imported Bibles are confiscated and burned — call into the show to argue with Botros and his colleagues, and sometimes, to accept Christ.

Secondly, Botros’s broadcasts are in Arabic — the language of some 200 million people, most of them Muslim. While several Western writers have published persuasive critiques of Islam, their arguments go largely unnoticed in the Islamic world. Botros’s mastery of classical Arabic not only allows him to reach a broader audience, it enables him to delve deeply into the voluminous Arabic literature — much of it untapped by Western writers who rely on translations — and so report to the average Muslim on the discrepancies and affronts to moral common sense found within this vast corpus.

A third reason for Botros’s success is that his polemical technique has proven irrefutable.

Each of his episodes has a theme — from the pressing to the esoteric — often expressed as a question (e.g., “Is jihad an obligation for all Muslims?”; “Are women inferior to men in Islam?”; “Did Mohammed say that adulterous female monkeys should be stoned?” “Is drinking the urine of prophets salutary according to sharia?”).

To answer the question, Botros meticulously quotes — always careful to give sources and reference numbers — from authoritative Islamic texts on the subject, starting from the Koran; then from the canonical sayings of the prophet — the Hadith; and finally from the words of prominent Muslim theologians past and present — the illustrious ulema.

Typically, Botros’s presentation of the Islamic material is sufficiently detailed that the controversial topic is shown to be an airtight aspect of Islam. Yet, however convincing his proofs, Botros does not flatly conclude that, say, universal jihad or female inferiority are basic tenets of Islam. He treats the question as still open — and humbly invites the ulema, the revered articulators of sharia law, to respond and show the error in his methodology.

He does demand, however, that their response be based on “al-dalil we al-burhan,” — “evidence and proof,” one of his frequent refrains — not shout-downs or sophistry.

More often than not, the response from the ulema is deafening silence — which has only made Botros and Life TV more enticing to Muslim viewers.

The ulema who have publicly addressed Botros’s conclusions often find themselves forced to agree with him — which has led to some amusing (and embarrassing) moments on live Arabic TV.

Botros spent three years bringing to broad public attention a scandalous — and authentic — hadith stating that women should “breastfeed” strange men with whom they must spend any amount of time.

A leading hadith scholar, Abd al-Muhdi, was confronted with this issue on the live talk show of popular Arabic host Hala Sirhan. Opting to be truthful, al-Muhdi confirmed that going through the motions of breastfeeding adult males is, according to sharia, a legitimate way of making married women “forbidden” to the men with whom they are forced into contact — the logic being that, by being “breastfed,” the men become like “sons” to the women and therefore can no longer have sexual designs on them.

To make matters worse, Ezzat Atiyya, head of the Hadith department at al-Azhar University — Sunni Islam’s most authoritative institution — went so far as to issue a fatwa legitimatizing “Rida’ al-Kibir” (sharia’s term for “breastfeeding the adult”), which prompted such outrage in the Islamic world that it was subsequently recanted.

Abbas: We're all pressing for 2008 state
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2396

The PLO/PA is working with Israel in an effort to achieve the creation of an Arab state called Palestine on historic Jewish lands before the end of the year.

PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas said Wednesday, as reported in Ha'aretz, that his negotiators are discussing all the so-called core issues, "without exception: Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, borders, and security" with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

"We are all pressing to reach a settlement by the target date" which is 2008, Abbas said.

A senior spokesman for the veteran terror chief said Abbas planned to head to Washington next month to try and persuade US President George W. Bush to squeeze Israel into moving at a pace better suited to the Arab side.

Before then, Abbas will meet in Amman with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who will then visit with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem in an effort to pressure more concessions and movement out of Israel.

Recent weeks have seen Israel outflanked and out-maneuvered by the united efforts of western leaders who, while swearing friendship and security to the Jewish state, have relentlessely pushed Israel into bowing to their land-for-peace diktat.

As of this date, not a single nation on earth stands with Israel against this brazen and injust international attempt to rob her of her land.

Your Tax Dollars at Work in Gaza
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0308/tobin032408.php3

On the evening of March 6 in Jerusalem, a heavily armed Palestinian terrorist from nearby East Jerusalem entered the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva and opened fire on the unarmed teenaged students studying there. Eight died, and 11 were badly wounded before another student and an off-duty soldier shot the terrorist. The atrocity ignited wild celebrations in Gaza.

If you thought the celebrations were anomalous, you might want to know about recent findings just published by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, an independent polling organization based on the West Bank. According to its polls, 84 percent of Palestinians approved of this attack. Moreover, 64 percent approve of Hamas randomly firing rockets and mortars from Gaza into Israeli communities and 75 percent favor ending negotiations between their leaders and the Israeli government. In September 2005, Israel in an irenic gesture withdrew its military from Gaza, but since then it has endured some 2,500 rocket attacks from Gaza and almost an equal number of mortar attacks. I wonder if 64 percent of the Palestinians would approve if Israel began reciprocal random attacks on Gaza. What is the old line, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?"

Instead of lobbing artillery randomly, the Israel Defense Forces have attempted to counter Hamas' attacks with surgical strikes against their leaders and their rocket factories. However, Hamas' leaders nestle their headquarters and rocket factories in civilian neighborhoods, and civilians suffer collateral damage. That appears to have made Palestinians angry, and not at Hamas for its bellicosity but at Israel for responding to these cruel attacks. According to Khalil Shikaki, the Palestinian pollster who headed the aforementioned poll, never in the 15 years that the poll has been conducted has a majority of Palestinians favored rocket assaults on Israel or an end to negotiations. For handing over Gaza to the Palestinians, this is the thanks Israel has received. Now Palestinians want further Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank. One does not have to be a student of the late Niccolo Machiavelli to advise against further withdrawals. Mr. Shikaki's poll demonstrates such withdrawals only make the Palestinians angrier.

When the Israel Defense Forces withdrew from Gaza (taking with them civilian settlers), the Palestinians had an opportunity to set up a peaceful community that might encourage further accommodations from Israel. As Victor Davis Hanson observed in a recent column: "Gaza has plenty of natural advantages. It enjoys a picturesque coastline on the Mediterranean with sandy beaches and a rich classical history. There is a border with Egypt, the Arab world's largest country and spiritual home of pan-Arabic solidarity." Mr. Hanson mused imaginatively that Gaza could become another Singapore or Hong Kong.

Instead the Palestinians immediately began a civil war among themselves and after that began lobbing rockets and mortars into Israel. Somehow I doubt these people want peace. In fact, I suspect, peace would be a disappointment to many of them.

A recent book, "The Global War on Terrorism: An Assessment," by Robert C. Martinage of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, illuminates the problem Israel faces with Hamas and that the West faces with Islamic terror in general. Says Mr. Martinage, "Since the death of Muhammad in 632, Islamic history has been punctuated by many periods in which various heterodox sects have emerged and clashed violently with mainstream Muslims, as well as with the West." We are living through one of those periods. Whether Israel existed or not, these Islamic terrorists would still be with us.

All Israel and the West can do is resist the terrorists. The best way is to go on the offensive. Withdrawing from Gaza certainly has not weakened the terrorists. It has made them and their Palestinian sympathizers more eager for violence. There is one sentiment, however, in this poll that I for one agree on. Negotiations have been of no benefit, at least not to those who want peace.

U.S. road map monitors: PA failing in fight against terror
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/968416.html

The American officers responsible for monitoring Israeli and Palestinian compliance with the road map peace plan recently criticized the Palestinian Authority's counterterrorism efforts.

Specifically, the Americans are concerned that the PA does not engage in the full spectrum of counterterrorism activities, including arrests, interrogation and trial, as it would if it were trying to eradicate the armed wings of Islamic terrorist organizations. Instead, it makes do with trying to "contain" terror - to prevent specific attacks, and to keep Hamas from growing strong enough to threaten Fatah's rule in the West Bank.

The PA security services do occasionally arrest members of Islamic organizations, but they do not then follow up with the other steps in the "chain of prevention": interrogations, arrests of additional operatives, indictments and trials. Trials generally take place only if the PA is under external pressure, as in the case of the Palestinians who killed two off-duty soldiers out on a hike near Hebron three months ago. And when they do take place, they are generally hasty affairs.

Israel has been complaining about the lack of a "chain of prevention" for years, ever since the second intifada broke out in 2000. Now, it seems that the American monitoring team, headed by General William Fraser, has adopted Jerusalem's position on this issue.

Security coordination between Israel and the PA has deteriorated since the terror attack on Jerusalem's Mercaz Harav Yeshiva three weeks ago. Palestinian security officials are angry over what they view as Israel's lack of faith in them, as reflected in its recent decision to go after four wanted terrorists in Bethlehem itself, rather than informing the Palestinians and letting them try to arrest the men. And while the PA has recently arrested several members of Islamic organizations in the northern West Bank, the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet security service question the significance of these arrests.

Barak, who will meet on Wednesday with PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, announced on Tuesday that he has approved the entry of 600 Palestinian policemen into Jenin, where they will engage in routine law enforcement. The policemen are currently undergoing training in Jordan.

Meanwhile, another senior American envoy, retired general James Jones, has begun a dialogue with Israel on its security demands of the Palestinians under a final-status agreement.

Report: Iranian, Syrian missiles to pound Israel in next war
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3522937,00.html

Hundreds of dead, thousands of injured, missile barrages on central Israel, full paralysis at Ben-Gurion Airport, constantly bombed roads, nationwide power outages that last for long hours, and whole regions' water supply being cut off – this is what the next war could look like.

A secret report recently distributed among government ministries and local municipalities details various wartime scenarios. The report deals with very harsh possibilities, including some that are downright horrifying, formulated as part of the lessons drawn in the wake of the Second Lebanon War.

Notably, the document does not aim to predict future developments with certainty, but rather, only aims to serve as a guideline for civilian war preparations. The above assessment is characterized as a "severe reasonable scenario" – that is, it is not the gravest scenario, but also not the most favorable.

According to this scenario, the war will last for about a month and will include the participation of Syria (military operations on the Golan Heights front and the firing of many Scud missiles at the home front,) Lebanon (the firing of thousands of Hizbullah rockets at the Galilee and Haifa as well long-range missiles at central Israel,) and the Palestinian Authority (relatively limited conflict that would include short-range rockets fired from Gaza and the West Bank as well as terror attacks such as suicide bombings within Israel.)

According to this scenario, Iran will also get involved in the war, but will only fire a limited number of missiles rather than non-conventional weapons. In addition to missile barrages, the scenario includes aerial strikes on military and strategic targets, attacks on infrastructure facilities, and attempted abductions of civilians and soldiers.

Such hypothetical war, according to the assessment, will leave 100-230 civilians dead, and 1,900-3,200 Israelis wounded. However, should Israel be attacked with chemical weapons, the number of killed and wounded Israelis would skyrocket to 16,000.

Under such circumstances, as a result of missile damage, chemical contamination, and the razing of homes the State would have to evacuate as many as 227,000 Israelis from their homes. According to the assessment, about 100,000 people would seek to leave the country should such scenario materialize.

Iran helps Hezbollah dramatically increase rocket range, Dimona now in sights
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Election2008/Default.aspx?id=73553

With Iranian backing, Hezbollah guerrillas have dramatically increased their rocket range and can now threaten most of Israel, senior Israeli defense officials said.

The Lebanese group has acquired new Iranian rockets with a range of about 185 miles, the officials said Wednesday. That means the guerrillas can hit anywhere in Israel's heavily populated center and reach as far south as Dimona, where Israel's nuclear reactor is located.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge the confidential intelligence assessment to the media.

When Israel and Hezbollah fought a monthlong war in 2006, Hezbollah fired nearly 4,000 rockets into Israel. The longest-range rockets fired, which Israel said were Iranian-made, hit some 45 miles inside Israel.

Although Israel's air force managed to take out most of the group's long-range rockets, the military failed throughout the war to halt the short-range rocket fire that paralyzed northern Israel and killed 40 Israeli civilians.

After the war, the U.N. dispatched a peacekeeping force to distance Hezbollah from the border and prevent the group from rearming. But Israel says Hezbollah's Iranian and Syrian patrons have steadily provided the group with large amounts of rockets since then, many of them capable of hitting central Israel. However, it has not revealed the evidence for its claims.

Hezbollah and U.N. peacekeeping officials were not immediately available for comment.

The defense officials did not say how many of the new rockets Hezbollah has obtained. However, Israelis have said previously that overall, Hezbollah now has many more rockets in its arsenal than the 14,000 it had before the conflict - likely more than double that number.

In early March, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reported Israeli claims that Hezbollah's arsenal includes 10,000 long-range rockets and 20,000 short-range rockets in southern Lebanon.

Israel also faces near-daily rocket barrages in the south from Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, ruled by the Islamic group Hamas. The rockets from Gaza, mainly crude short-range projectiles, have killed 13 Israelis since 2001. Like Hezbollah, Hamas has strong ties to Iran.

Study projects 10m Israelis by 2030
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1206446100926&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

Israel's population is expected to grow from around 7 million today to between 9.6 and 10.6 million by 2030, according to estimates released by the Central Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday.

The exhibited projection, based on 2005 population statistics, was also derived from three possible options - high, middle and low - differentiated by various assessments of differing components of population growth.

According to the middle option, the average annual growth rate between 2006 and 2030 will be 1.4 percent. and the proportion of Jews is expected to rise by 1.2%.

Ninety-three percent of the projected growth is estimated to be derived from natural growth, while the remaining 7% is expected to be the result of immigration.

The number of Jews in 2030 is expected to stand at 7.2 million (72% of the population), up from 5.3 million at the end of 2005 (76%).

Correspondingly, the number of Arabs is expected to be 2.4 million by 2030 (24% of the population), up from 1.4 million in 2005 (20%).

Finally, the number of those who are neither Jews nor Arabs is expected to be 418,000 by 2030 (4.2% of the population), up from 300,000 in 2005 (4.3%)

The number of residents aged 65 years and up is expected to grow from 693,000, in 2005, to 1.4 million at the end of 2030.

The proportion of the population in this age category is set rise from 10% to 14%.

According to the statistics, the number of children under age 14 will grow from 2 million to 2.5 million, with their proportion of the population decreasing from 28% to 25%.

Palestinian poll reveals why land for peace is flawed
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080321/COMMENTARY/281728786

Reshaping the New World Order - UN looks to expand security council by September
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3522047,00.html

An interim proposal to tackle the divisive issue of Security Council reform would expand the UN's most powerful body from 15 to 22 members but leave it up to the 192 UN member states to decide what countries should fill them.

The proposal, obtained Friday by The Associated Press, also leaves it up to UN members to decide how long the new seats should be held - with suggestions of two years, five years and permanent seats as possible options.

It leaves the contentious issue of veto power to future negotiations.

There is strong support for enlarging the Security Council to reflect the world today rather than the global power structure after World War II when the United Nations was created.

But all previous attempts, starting in 1979, have failed because national and regional rivalries blocked agreement on the size and composition of an expanded council.

The deep divisions forced the General Assembly to shelve three rival resolutions to expand the council in 2005.

The so-called Group of Four - Germany, Japan, Brazil and India - aspire to permanent seats without veto rights on a 25-member council.

A group of middle-ranking countries, including Italy and Pakistan, who call themselves Uniting for Consensus, want a 25-member council with 10 new non-permanent seats.

The African Union, whose 53 members argue that their continent is the only one without a permanent seat on the council, wants to add 11 new seats - six permanent seats including two for Africa with veto power, and five non-permanent seats.

The new proposal says these groups maintain their positions, but the impossibility of achieving them now "has pointed to an apparent willingness to negotiate on the basis of achieving intermediate reform, through the identification of the highest common denominator at this stage."

More than 50 ambassadors representing all the major groups with a stake in reforming the council attended a meeting Tuesday hosted by Germany's UN Ambassador Thomas Matussek to discuss the new proposal.

He told reporters afterwards that all the groups were represented, many had ideas on how to improve the proposal, and "for the first time the Africans engaged in meaningful discussion."

The proposal was submitted to General Assembly President Srgjan Kerim on Thursday, Germany's UN mission said. He is expected to study it and have members of his task force on council reform consult groups with differing views. Kerim also received separate letters from Italy and the African Group.

"My ambition would be - and I don't know how realistic that is - that we, by the end of this General Assembly session, will have a text that can be voted on," Matussek said. The current session ends in September.

Of the seven new council seats in the proposal, two would be allocated to African countries, two to Asian countries, one to Latin America and the Caribbean, one to Western Europe and one to Eastern Europe.

The proposals also calls for a mandatory review of the reforms after a fixed period and sets out new working methods for the council, many to promote better communications and openness on its operations.

One proposal appeals to the five veto-wielding council members - the US, Russia, China, Britain and France - to ensure that a veto would not be used to continue the commission of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

The proposal was drafted by the ambassadors from the Netherlands, Romania, Malaysia, Britain, Cyprus and Germany, with support from the Bahamas and strong input from Italy, Matussek said.

In 2005, he said, the different groups were competing to try to win support from two-thirds of the UN member states "and that didn't work." What is different about the new proposal is that "it came out of the membership and it started from scratch to bring everybody on board," Matussek said.

The idea, he said, is to bring as many countries together "at the base, and then in the negotiations the real tough talking and the dealing will go on. ... We expect the negotiations will be pretty tough.

The various groups will try to get as much as they can, but it's already clear now, nobody will get 100 percent."

Matussek stressed that the proposal did not reflect the views of any group or government. "I hope that it will reflect the future position of my government, and that was the position for everybody concerned," Matussek said.

After examining the new proposal, he said, it was evident that "the pain was spread because everybody was equally unhappy with the paper, or to turn it the other way around, everybody found a little bit."

Canada's lone voice against UN discriminatinon of Israel
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=4e95dac7-f6a9-479e-a213-abd77a8b8899&k=7099

The lead human rights body of the United Nations Wednesday picked a Jewish academic to monitor Israeli treatment of Palestinians - but Canada said he was the wrong man for the job.

An emeritus professor at Princeton University, Richard Falk has compared Israeli actions affecting Palestinians to the Nazi persecution of Europe's Jews.

Canada used its seat on the 47-member UN Human Rights Council to question his commitment to "impartiality and objectivity" as the next Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories.

Arab and Islamic states had been keen to see him named to the post, which carries a mandate to investigate "Israel's violations of the principles and bases of international law."

"Canada has serious concerns about whether the high standards established by the council will be able to be met by this individual," said Marius Grinius, the Canadian delegate, as the council endorsed Falk among a series of other monitoring appointments.

"It is with disappointment, therefore, that Canada dissociates itself from any council decision to approve the full slate."

The 192-member General Assembly launched the council in 2006 to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission, which countries with poor human rights records had come to dominate in order to deflect criticism.

But the new body has faced criticism for issuing successive condemnations of Israel while saying little about human rights violations elsewhere in the world.

Indeed, cheers erupted Wednesday following the appointment of a second official who, among myriad anti-Israel and anti-Western statements, has also compared Israeli practices to those of the Nazis.

Some 40 Council members elected Jean Ziegler, a former Swiss politician, to the council's new 18-member advisory committee. In 2005, he likened Israeli soldiers to concentration camp guards.

"Even within the benighted UN Human Rights Council, today was a dark day for human rights," said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based human rights monitoring agency. "The very credibility of the UN human rights system is now at stake."

Irwin Cotler, the Liberal critic on human rights, had appealed Tuesday to the Swiss government to withdraw its nomination of Ziegler for the UN post, writing a letter also signed by three other international human rights activists.

They said Ziegler had shown support for serial human rights abusers such as Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and Cuba's Fidel Castro, and also praised the work of Roger Garaudy, a French Stalinist whose book The Founding Myths of Modern Israel denies the Holocaust.

Canada revokes Charitable Status of Christian Ministry for teaching about the cults
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=59600

The Canadian government has ordered a Christian ministry that teaches doctrine and the differences between Christians and cults shut down because its reference materials were "critical" of the beliefs of those who are not Christian, WND has learned.

So what used to be called MacGregor Ministries with offerings in how to recognize and eliminate "faulty fads" in Christian churches has been re-created in the United States, and now operates under the name MM Outreach Media Ministries.

Lorri MacGregor, who has dedicated her life to explaining the straight and narrow of Christian beliefs since she found her way out of the Jehovah's Witness system years ago, told WND Canada's version of a "hate crimes" law prevented their work from continuing as it had for nearly 30 years.

"Canada is no longer a Christian nation," she said. "And watch out America!"

The issue of the ministry's charities license in Canada, allowing it to operate as a ministry, came up during a routine audit of the ministry's finances, which was uneventful

"The auditor that originally looked at our books told us her supervisor had said she wanted us shut down," Mrs. MacGregor told WND. "Canada has very strong hate laws."

She said the ministry points out the differences between Christianity and various cult beliefs, but also with respect, and never as a proponent. She said the work always is in response to a question or issue.

"When a group such as Jehovah's Witnesses said of our doctrine we're worshipping a freakish three-headed God (the Trinity), we should be able to respond," she said. "We say, 'Here's the doctrine of the Trinity and here is where it is in the Scripture.'"

That, however, violates Canada's hate crimes laws, and the ministry was ordered to either make wholesale changes in its presentations, or shut down.

"There was nothing we could do that would please them," she said. "They wanted us every time we criticized something to say, 'So Christianity is equal to Buddhism, Islam, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses… Just decide for yourself.'"

"We cannot do that," she said of the work she and her husband, Keith, have spent their lives assembling.

"She gave us an ultimatum that we needed to say that all religions are equal, Lorri MacGregor was to stop writing our magazine on the cults, we were to remove our websites and stop selling any products to help [teach about] the cults, and any future DVDs that we do on the Bible must not be persuasive," the couple alerted friends in an e-mail. "We could not live under those restrictions."

"We chose to shut down the ministry and we are in Washington to sign papers to start up a U.S. corporation and also start the long process of applyign for 501(c)3 status in the U.S. We have been told that within five to 10 years, the U.S. government will be in the same position as the Canadian government and t hey will also go after Christian apologetics groups," the alert continued.

"It was a no-win situation. We didn't want to see our charity money eaten up by lawyers," Mrs. MacGregor told WND. "It was heart-wrenching."

"We wrote on Feb. 7 and voluntarily revoked our license ourselves," she said. "We said this auditor requires us to compromise our Christian faith, which we cannot do."

The ministry entered into the expense of relocating its corporate structure into the United States, and is in the process of applying for that nation's tax-exempt status offered mission organizations.

"You're not allowed in Canada to speak in a persuasive way about your own faith," she said.

The effort cost considerable funds, although Mrs. MacGregor didn't want to provide dollar figures on their loss through the changeover. "We had been saving up to build a studio, because we don't believe in debt," she said. "At the moment we are ready to start construction, the government moved in to shut us down."

"They said if we were just preaching our own Gospel, and weren't criticizing anybody else, we could continue," she said. "If you're going to defend the Gospel, you've got to criticize sometimes."

For example, the ministry addresses the issue of "fads," including a "creeping Eastern mysticism" appearing in some churches, "turning meaningful prayer meetings into mind-emptying rituals called contemplative prayer promising experiences of a spiritual nature."

"Feelings have often replaced the solid word of God," the website warns.

"Numerous churches have become 'seeker' churches, disposing of the parts of the Gospel message that might offend anyone's lifestyle. Crowds come to hear contemporary music, followed by a feel-good message, and perhaps even a 'conversion' experience, to an all-accepting Jesus. No change required! They now consider themselves Christians, but are they?"

They also note the misguided teachings of others.

"Neale Donald Walsch who wrote the bestseller Conversations with God says, 'Hitler went to heaven' (Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 2, Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc., 1997; p. 35) And the reason according to Walsh 'There is no hell, so there is no place else for him to go.'"

"The Bible states that the only way to heaven is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Universalism teaches that there is not just one way of salvation but many different ways. The Christian inclusivists state salvation is by grace through faith in Christ alone, but they change the meaning to be that His grace extends out to those who do not believe (not needing faith) because he died for them too," the website teaches.

WND previously has reported how proposals are being made in Canada to raise taxes and fees on churches dramatically, as well as ban them from meeting in some locations.

WND also has reported on how many Biblical standards of behavior are under attack by the "bastardized courts" of Canada, where activists who claim they have "hurt feelings" are demanding – and getting – penalties imposed against those who oppose the homosexual lifestyle.

It also has reported on the times that "hate crimes" legislation for the United States has been considered in Congress.

Russia set on Mideast parley, whether Israel likes it or not
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1206446104941&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

Russia is determined to go ahead with an international Middle East conference in Moscow in June whether Israel likes it or not, government sources told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday, summing up Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's visit here last week.

The sources characterized Lavrov's one-day visit last Thursday as "nasty," saying the Russian minister was agitated throughout his meetings with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and President Shimon Peres.

He was, the sources said, in a slightly better mood during his talks with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

According to the sources, Russia's determination to go ahead with the conference - despite a decidedly cool, though officially noncommittal, reception to the idea from both Israel and the US - stemmed from Moscow's assessment that it desperately needed to increase its involvement in the Middle East and "make its mark" in the region.

The reason the Kremlin wanted to get more involved right now, according to the officials in Jerusalem, was not because of a fear they were being outmaneuvered in the region by the US, but rather because Moscow felt it was losing ground to Iran.

According to the government sources, Moscow viewed Hamas's takeover of Gaza as benefiting Iran, Hizbullah's strong position in Lebanon as strengthening Iran, and the situation in Iraq as playing into Iran's hands.

As a result, Moscow wants to dramatically increase its role and influence in the region.

"They are afraid of Iran's strides here," one official said.

According to the source, a nuclear cooperation deal Russia signed with Egypt during Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's visit to Russia on Tuesday was also aimed at gaining influence in the region.

Moscow, according to Israeli officials, saw arms sales and nuclear technology as a way to once again assert its presence and gain leverage in the Middle East, as it had during the period of the Soviet Union.

Israel was noncommittal to the conference idea throughout Lavrov's visit, with Olmert refraining from publicly coming out either for or against the proposal.

The sense in Jerusalem is that if what is planned is an international conference along the lines of the Annapolis Conference, where other Arab countries would reaffirm support for a Palestinian-Israeli agreement, then that is something Israel could go along with, although not with great enthusiasm.

If, however, the idea was to hold Israeli-Palestinian bilateral negotiations in Moscow, that is something Jerusalem was not keen on. In general, Israel believes that an international conference is unnecessary at a time when bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are taking place.

Nevertheless, while Israel has adopted a decidedly unenthusiastic tone toward Russia's increasing assertiveness in the region, Russia's interest in blocking Iran's march in the Middle East is very compatible with Israel's overall interests.

For this reason, there may be an inclination in Jerusalem to go ahead with the international conference, even though it is wary of the idea.

"For the Russians, we are just a small pawn in the greater game," one government source said. "They are going to go ahead with the conference no matter what we say, knowing we will have no choice in the end but to go along."

Lavrov, speaking to the press last Thursday night after meeting with Livni, said the agenda of the Moscow conference "will be very simple. There were the accords adopted in Annapolis; everybody supported them.

Let us reaffirm that support and stimulate the parties toward their effective realization."

Regarding reports that Lavrov told Syrian President Bashar Assad that the Golan Heights would be an issue at the proposed Moscow meeting, officials in Jerusalem said the Russians knew Israel was opposed to a "photo-opportunity" with the Syrians, and that if the Syrians were indeed interested in negotiations, they knew what they had to do.

Israel has made clear that Syria would have to stop supporting Hizbullah and Hamas, kick the terrorist organizations out of Damascus, and pull away from its cozy embrace with Iran for there to be a possible peace deal.

"The Russians understand our position on this," one government official said.

The official said Lavrov's "testiness" while here may have had something to do with his own uncertainty over whether he would continue on as Russia's foreign minister when Dmitry Medvedev takes over from President Vladimir Putin in May.

U.S.-Russia Deal Possible On Missile Defense Plan
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,342592,00.html

WASHINGTON — U.S. negotiators said Thursday they had made progress in drafting a document with Russian counterparts that could include a deal on the divisive U.S. missile defense plan.

The U.S. officials said they hope to complete the document laying out areas of agreement before a meeting between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin scheduled for April 6 in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi. The two days of talks with the Russian delegation began Wednesday.

However, the officials who led the U.S. negotiating team — Daniel Fried, acting undersecretary of state for political affairs, and John Rood, undersecretary for arms control and international security — said it was unclear whether disagreements over missile defense and other issues would be resolved in time.

"We still have some more work to be done, but I think we have settled the bulk of the issues," Rood told reporters on a conference call.

The talks with the Russian delegation, led by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak, were intended to build on a visit to Moscow earlier this month by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The two officials made proposals that would allow Russia to closely monitor prospective missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The U.S. missile defense plan has been vociferously opposed by Russia and has become a chief source of tension between the two countries.

Gates and Rice also presented a draft of the document the negotiators are hoping to sign with Russia.

The document would outline a formal framework to numerous issues from economics to foreign affairs to nonproliferation where the United States and Russia have common or overlapping interests and lay out areas of agreement reached under Putin and Bush. Officials say it is intended to have an eye to the coming political transitions in both nations.

Putin steps down as president in May, and Bush leaves office in January.

The document would also list the trouble spots, among them the independence of Kosovo, which the U.S. supports over strong Russian objection.

Fried and Rood said that the two sides will continue exchanging ideas on the document in coming days.

"There are significant issues that still need to be resolved. Missile defense would be one of them," Rood said.

On Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made clear that Russia is maintaining a tough negotiation position on the U.S. plans to install a radar in the Czech Republic and interceptors in Poland.

"We are convinced that the best way to assuage Russia's concerns ... will be to abandon such plans and turn to a truly collective project," Lavrov told reporters in Moscow.

Lavrov has said the proposals made by Gates and Rice to allow Russian monitoring of the two sites reflected the U.S. recognition of Russia's concerns, but he added that Moscow needs to study them in details before replying.

Putin has rejected U.S. arguments that the missile shield is needed to counter a prospective missile threat from Iran. He argues that the U.S. plan would erode Russia's nuclear deterrent.

Last summer, Putin proposed that the United States jointly use an early warning radar in Azerbaijan instead. The United States has promised to consider that Russian offer, but it said it couldn't replace its planned facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Police close off Lhasa's Muslim quarter
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080328/ap_on_re_as/china_tibet;_ylt=Al8y_cEkHWYYPA1y7ABM7IOs0NUE

Police closed off Lhasa's Muslim quarter on Friday, two weeks after Tibetan rioters burned down the city's mosque during the largest anti-Chinese protests in nearly two decades.

Officers blockaded streets into the area, allowing in only area residents and worshippers observing the Muslim day of prayer. A heavy security presence continued in other parts of Lhasa's old city as cleanup crews waded through the destruction inflicted when days of initially peaceful protests turned deadly on March 14.

It was not clear why the area was cordoned off, although rioters had targeted businesses belonging to Chinese Muslim migrants known as Hui, who control much of Lhasa's commerce.

The protests were the most-sustained challenge to China's rule in the Himalayan region since 1989. The ensuing crackdown by Chinese authorities has focused international attention on China's human rights record in the run-up to the Beijing Olympic Games.

China has faced growing calls from the United States and other nations to open a dialogue with the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, along with suggestions from some leaders that they were considering boycotting the Olympics' opening ceremony to protest Beijing's handling of the Tibetan situation.

Apparently because of the pressure, the Foreign Ministry is allowing a group of foreign diplomats to visit Lhasa on Friday and Saturday.

A U.S. diplomat will join the trip, U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Susan Stevenson said. She had no other details.

A small group of foreign journalists, including an Associated Press reporter, was taken to Lhasa earlier in the week on a three-day government-organized trip that ended Friday.

The otherwise tightly scripted visit was disrupted when 30 red-robed monks pushed into a briefing being given by officials at the Jokhang Temple on Thursday, complaining of a lack of religious freedom and denouncing official claims that the Dalai Lama orchestrated the March 14 violence.

"What the government is saying is not true," one monk shouted out.

"They killed many people," another monk said, referring to Chinese security forces.

The outburst by the monks lasted for about 15 minutes before government officials ended it and told the journalists it was "time to go."

China has strenuously argued that the widespread arson and looting were criminal acts orchestrated by separatists, while refusing to discuss the root causes of the anger and alienation blamed for sparking the violence.

A vice governor of Tibet, Baima Chilin, later told reporters the monks would not be punished.

However, Tibet activists voiced concern Friday over possible Chinese government retaliation against the Buddhist monks.

"There are serious fears for the welfare and whereabouts" of the monks, the International Campaign for Tibet said in a statement.

"The monks' peaceful protest shattered the authorities' plans to convey an image that the situation in Lhasa was under control after recent demonstrations and rioting," it said.

Other than the incident at the Jokhang Temple, one of Tibetan Buddhism's holiest shrines, most of the second day of the tour went according to plan, with officials sticking to the government line that the protests were plotted by supporters of the Dalai Lama to sabotage the upcoming Olympics.

On Friday, the Dalai Lama again denied China's accusations, saying he has repeatedly supported Beijing's hosting of the Summer Games. In a statement released from his headquarters in northern India, he also said that he has "no desire to seek Tibet's separation. Nor do I have any wish to drive a wedge between the Tibetan and Chinese peoples."

But he raised concerns that China's portrayal of the protests in Lhasa, focusing on attacks by Tibetans against Han Chinese, was fanning the flames of ethnic conflict.

"The state media's portrayal of the recent events in Tibet, using deceit and distorted images, could sow the seeds of racial tension with unpredictable long-term consequences. This is of grave concern to me," he said.

The protests had started out peacefully among monks in Lhasa on March 10, the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. But four days later, they spiraled into violence. Tibetans torched hundreds of buildings and attacked members of China's dominant Han ethnic group and Hui Muslims.

A staffer at the China Tibet Information Center said there are an estimated 1,500 Muslims in Lhasa. Officials with the Lhasa government and Religious Affairs Bureau said they did not know how many Muslims were in the city.

The government says at least 22 people have died in Lhasa; Tibetan rights groups say nearly 140 Tibetans were killed, including 19 in Gansu province.

One of the monks protesting Thursday said the death toll was far higher than the government was saying, but did not give the source of his information.

"The cadres and the army killed more than 100 Tibetans. They arrested more than a thousand," he said.

After the 1989 uprising in Lhasa, Tibetans claimed many more Tibetans died than the official toll of 16 because families feared punishment if participants went to hospitals.

Fu Jun, head of the News Affairs Office of the Propaganda Department of the Tibet Communist Party, said Friday that the monks were spreading rumors.

"We are keeping an open mind about their complaints. The rumor is misleading the media without a shred of evidence. ... We will clear up facts in a few days' time when appropriate," Fu said.

State TV, which has widely covered the foreign journalists' tour, showed the Jokhang visit on its evening newscast, but not the monks' outburst.

Journalists were taken Friday morning to interview members of the Communist Party-run Buddhist Association, who reiterated the Chinese accusations against the Dalai Lama.

"This was premeditated," said Drubkang, a member of Beijing's top government advisory body, who like many Tibetans uses just one name.

Drubkang also criticized the many young monks who have taken part in protests in Lhasa and neighboring Chinese provinces.

"They've been violating the country's laws and Buddhist canon, and they want to politicize religious practice," he said.

Bush Apologizes to Egypt's Mubarak for Fatal Shooting of Boater in Suez
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,342511,00.html

WASHINGTON — President Bush telephoned Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Thursday to apologize for the fatal shooting of an Egyptian by a sentry aboard a ship under contract to the U.S. Navy.

Bush promised that the incident, which occurred Monday, will be fully investigated, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

The shooting occurred after the Global Patriot, a civilian ship under a short-term Navy contract, had entered the Suez Canal on Monday to make its transit from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean.

Small motor boats approached to sell their wares to those aboard. A Navy security team shouted verbal warnings to stay away, then fired shots. A man in one of the boats, Mohammed Fouad, was killed.

In Thursday's phone call, "President Bush expressed his deep regret and sympathies for the incident in the Suez Canal and said the United States would fully investigate this," Johndroe said.

He spoke to reporters on Air Force One en route to Dayton, Ohio where Bush gave a speech at the U.S. Air Force Museum.

The Navy already expressed regret for the shooting and promised to take care of Fouad's family.

Anchor Dave Marash Quits Al-Jazeera English, Cites Anti-American Tone
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,342528,00.html

Former "Nightline" reporter Dave Marash has quit Al-Jazeera English, saying Thursday his exit was due in part to an anti-American bias at a network that is little seen in this country.

Marash said he felt that attitude more from British administrators than Arabs at the Qatar-based network.

Marash was the highest-profile American TV personality hired when the English language affiliate to Al-Jazeera was started two years ago in an attempt to compete with CNN and the BBC. He said there was a "reflexive adversarial editorial stance" against Americans at Al-Jazeera English.

"Given the global feelings about the Bush administration, it's not surprising," Marash said.

But he found it "became so stereotypical, so reflexive" that he got angry.

Marash, who's being replaced by former CNN International host Shihab Rattansi, said he was the last American-accented anchor at the network, which broadcasts from Washington, London, Kuala Lumpur and Doha, Qatar. He said there are more Canadians than Americans working at the Washington office.

Will Stebbins, Washington bureau chief for Al-Jazeera English, denied any bias against Americans.

"We certainly evaluate U.S. policy rigorously," he said. "But we do our best to give everyone a fair shout."

Al-Jazeera English has been largely unsuccessful in getting U.S. cable or satellite systems to pick it up, except for the municipal cable system in Burlington, Vt., and a small system visible in Toledo and Sandusky, Ohio. But its programming is available on the network's YouTube site.

Marash said there were other reasons for his exit. He said the network has quickened the pace of its broadcast instead of having the slower, more reflective tone that he had expected. But he praised the network for its coverage of issues south of the equator.

He said he plans to write a book and hopes to teach. His exit was first reported in the British publication The Guardian; Marash's last day was March 21.

Stebbins said Marash was recently told that he would no longer be an anchor at the network. Al-Jazeera thought Marash was better utilized as a reporter, and singled out a recent series he did on American suburbia as worthy of praise.

"We were sorry to see Dave go," he said.

U.S. Steps Up Missile Strikes in Pakistan: Report
http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/US_Missiles_pakistan/2008/03/27/83429.html

The United States has escalated air strikes against al-Qaeda fighters operating in Pakistan's tribal areas fearing that support from Islamabad may slip away, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.

U.S. officials, who were not identified, said Washington wants to inflict as much damage as it can to al Qaeda's network now because Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf may not be able to offer much help in the months ahead.

Musharraf, a vital U.S. ally in the campaign against terrorism who has generally supported such strikes, has seen his power wane dramatically over the past year.

Over the past two months, U.S.-controlled Predator aircraft have struck at least three sites used by al-Qaeda operatives, the Post reported.

About 45 Arab, Afghan and other foreign fighters have been killed in the attacks, all near the Afghan border, U.S. and Pakistani officials were cited as saying.

Neither U.S. nor Pakistani authorities officially confirm U.S. missile attacks on Pakistani territory, which would be an infringement of Pakistani sovereignty.

Many al Qaeda members, including Uzbeks and Arabs, and Taliban militants took refuge in North and South Waziristan, as well as in other areas on the Pakistani side of the border after U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.

According to the Post, the goal was partly to try to get information on senior al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, by forcing them to move in ways that U.S. intelligence analysts can detect.

Citing an administration official, the report said the campaign was not specifically designed to capture bin Laden before U.S. President George W. Bush leaves office in January.

"It's not a blitz to close this chapter," a senior official who spoke on the condition of anonymity told the newspaper. "If we find the leadership, then we'll go after it. But nothing can be done to put al-Qaeda away in the next nine or 10 months. In the long haul, it's an issue that extends beyond this administration."

Angry N. Korea Tests Short-Range Missiles
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/347165.aspx

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea underscored its anger over South Korea's tough new stance toward the communist country with the test-firing of short-range missiles.

North Korea Issues U.S. a Warning

The launches Thursday night also came as the North issued a stern rebuke to Washington over an impasse at nuclear disarmament talks, warning the Americans' attitude could "seriously" affect the continuing disablement of Pyongyang's atomic facilities.

The missile tests were part of routine training, South Korean presidential spokesman Lee Dong-kwan said, declining to give further details on the type of rockets fired. He told reporters Seoul was "closely monitoring the situation."

"I believe North Korea would also not want a strain in inter-Korean relations," Lee said.

No More Mr. Nice Guy

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, a conservative who took office last month, has said he would take a harder policy line on the North - a change from a decade of liberal Seoul governments who avoided confrontation to maintain a "sunshine policy" of engagement.

The South's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the North's "short-range guided missile" firing was believed to be aimed at testing and improving the missile's performance. It did not give specifics, including exactly how many missiles were fired, saying such information belongs to military intelligence.

But South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported that North Korea launched three ship-to-ship missiles at around 9:30 p.m. EDT on Thursday, citing unidentified government officials. News cable channel YTN, public broadcaster KBS and other media carried similar reports.

The launches came a day after Seoul withdrew officials from a joint industrial zone with North Korea at Pyongyang's request.

That move was prompted by the North's anger over South Korean statements that any expansion of the project in the border city of Kaesong would only happen if the North resolved the international standoff over its nuclear weapons.

Also on Thursday, South Korea voted in favor of a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Council that condemned human rights abuses in North Korea. The North rejects such allegations and argues they are part of U.S.-led efforts to overthrow the regime.

The North showed signs earlier this week it was preparing to test short-range missiles as part of routine training, Yonhap reported. The country declared a no-sailing zone off the coastal city of Nampo and placed a military boat equipped with anti-ship missiles on standby, according to the news agency.

The North regularly test fires missiles, and its long-range models are believed able to possibly reach as far as the western coast of the United States. The country conducted its first-and-only nuclear bomb test in October 2006, but it is not known to have a weapon design able to fit inside a missile warhead.

North Korea shut down its sole operating nuclear reactor and has taken steps to disable its main atomic facilities under a landmark disarmament-for-aid deal reached last year with the United States and other regional powers.

However, negotiations on further disarmament have hit an impasse over the North's pledge to give a full declaration of its nuclear programs.

North Korea has claimed it gave the U.S. a nuclear list in November, but Washington said the North never produced a "complete and correct" declaration that would address all its past atomic activity.

North Points Finger at U.S. over Deadlock

On Friday, the North blamed Washington for the deadlocked talks and warned it would slow ongoing disablement of its atomic facilities.

The North's Foreign Ministry said the country has done its best to clear U.S. suspicions that it pursued a uranium-based atomic bomb program and also transferred nuclear technology to Syria, but Washington has been sticking to its "wrong" claims.

Pyongyang has "never dreamed" of doing either, the ministry said in a statement carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency, and "such things will not happen in the future too."

"The U.S. side is playing a poor trick to brand as a criminal at any cost in order to save its face," the North said. "Should the U.S. delay the settlement of the nuclear issue, persistently trying to cook up fictions, it will seriously affect the disabling of nuclear facilities."

South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said at a news conference with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice earlier this week in Washington that "time and patience is running out" at the nuclear talks.

Child Happiness Linked to Spirituality
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/346824.aspx

New research shows spirituality is a major factor in children's overall happiness.

A study conducted by the University of British Columbia measured how a child's spirituality, and factors like temperament, affect the child's sense of well being.

"Our goal was to see whether there's a relation between spirituality and happiness," said Mark Holder, an associate professor of psychology and the study's co-author. "We knew going in that there was such a relation in adults, so we took multiple measures of spirituality and happiness in children."

Spirituality accounted for about five percent of happiness in adults, but a surprising 16.5 percent of happiness among children.

"From our perspective, it's a whopping big effect," Holder said. "I expected it to be much less. I thought their spirituality would be too immature to account for their well-being."

The study tested 315 children ages 9 to 12.

Next, researchers hope to survey children in a country where Christianity is not prominent and compare the results.

APOSTACY!--Pastor promotes a Christianity without Christ
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080322.CHURCH22/TPStory/National

That triumphal barnburner of an Easter hymn, Jesus Christ Has Risen Today - Hallelujah, this morning will rock the walls of Toronto's West Hill United Church as it will in most Christian churches across the country.

But at West Hill on the faith's holiest day, it will be done with a huge difference. The words "Jesus Christ" will be excised from what the congregation sings and replaced with "Glorious hope."

Thus, it will be hope that is declared to be resurrected - an expression of renewal of optimism and the human spirit - but not Jesus, contrary to Christianity's central tenet about the return to life on Easter morning of the crucified divine son of God.

Generally speaking, no divine anybody makes an appearance in West Hill's Sunday service liturgy.

There is no authoritative Big-Godism, as Rev. Gretta Vosper, West Hill's minister for the past 10 years, puts it. No petitionary prayers ("Dear God, step into the world and do good things about global warming and the poor"). No miracles-performing magic Jesus given birth by a virgin and coming back to life. No references to salvation, Christianity's teaching of the final victory over death through belief in Jesus's death as an atonement for sin and the omnipotent love of God. For that matter, no omnipotent God, or god.

Ms. Vosper has written a book, published this week - With or Without God: Why the Way We Live is More Important than What We Believe - in which she argues that the Christian church, in the form in which it exists today, has outlived its viability and either it sheds its no-longer credible myths, doctrines and dogmas, or it's toast.

She is considered one of the bright, if unconventional, minds within the United Church, Canada's largest Protestant Christian denomination. She holds a master of divinity degree from Queen's University and was ordained in 1992. She founded and chairs the Toronto-based Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity.

Other Christian clergy and theologians have talked about the need to dramatically reform the doctrines of a faith that, with the exception of its vibrancy in the United States, has lost huge numbers of adherents throughout the Western world it once dominated as Christendom. In Canada, where 75 per cent of the population self-identifies as Christian, only about 16 per cent attend weekly services.

Addressing those statistics, what Ms. Vosper proposes is not so much reform as a scorched-earth approach.

A number of leading theologians in Britain - where the decline in adherents is more dramatic than in Canada - are on the same path, people like Richard Holloway, former bishop of Edinburgh and primate of the Scottish Episcopal (Anglican) Church, who has likened the Christian church to a self-service cafeteria stacked with messy trays of leftover food urgently in need of being thrown out.

Like Bishop Holloway, Ms. Vosper does not want to dress up the theological detritus - her words - of the past two millennia with new language in the hope of making it more palatable. She wants to get rid of it, and build on its ashes a new spiritual movement that will have relevance in a tight-knit global world under threat of human destruction.

She says there's been virtually a consensus among scholars for the past 30 years that the Bible is not some divine emanation - or in Ms. Vosper acronym, TAWOGFAT, The Authoritative Word of God For All Time - but a human project filled with contradictions and the conflicting worldviews and political perspectives of its authors.

And yet, she says, the liberal Christian churches, including her own, won't acknowledge that it is a human project, that it's wrong in parts and that, in the 21st century, it's no more useful as a spiritual and religious guide than a number of other books.

She says now that the work of biblical scholars has become publicly accessible, the churches and their clergy are caught living a lie that few people will buy much longer. "I just don't think we can placate those in the pews long enough to transition into a kind of new community that doesn't keep people away."

She wants salvation redefined to mean new life through removing the causes of suffering in the world. She wants the church to define resurrection as "starting over," "new chances." She wants an end to the image of God as an intervening all-powerful authority who must be appeased to avoid divine wrath; rather she would have congregations work together as communities to define God - or god - according to their own worked-out definitions of what is holy and sacred. She wants the eucharist - the symbolic eating and drinking of Jesus's body and blood to make the congregation part of Jesus's body - to be instead a symbolic experience of community love.

Theologians asked to comment on her book said they wouldn't until they've read it.

But one of her colleagues who knows her well, Rev. Rob Oliphant, the progressive pastor of Toronto's Eglinton St. George's United Church, said, "While I'm somewhat sympathetic to the aims of it all - getting rid of the nonsense and keeping the core faith - I think that there is something lacking in it all. Gone is metaphor, poetry, symbol, image, beauty, paradox."

Ms. Vosper said she and her congregation have tried hard not to lose those elements in their search for the sacred and the transcendent in life.

She met with members of her congregation last Sunday to discuss what the impact might be of her book.

She said it would take only a single vote of a presbytery - a local governing body of the church - to bring her before the church courts if a complaint against her is made, and the courts could be interested in examining what it means to be in "essential agreement" with the church's statement of faith.

"I can find myself in there [the statements of faith] but there's whole parts of it where I go, 'Oh my goodness, this is terrible.' If someone says to me, 'Do you believe in God?' I can come up with an answer that would satisfy the courts of the United Church. But would it reflect what's stated in their statement of faith? I don't think so. But it wouldn't be very far from what my colleague down the street, and what his colleague down the street from him, would say. That's the problem."

Spy-in-the-sky drone sets sights on Miami
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1929797920080326

Miami police could soon be the first in the United States to use cutting-edge, spy-in-the-sky technology to beef up their fight against crime.

A small pilotless drone manufactured by Honeywell International, capable of hovering and "staring" using electro-optic or infrared sensors, is expected to make its debut soon in the skies over the Florida Everglades.

If use of the drone wins Federal Aviation Administration approval after tests, the Miami-Dade Police Department will start flying the 14-pound (6.3 kg) drone over urban areas with an eye toward full-fledged employment in crime fighting.

"Our intentions are to use it only in tactical situations as an extra set of eyes," said police department spokesman Juan Villalba.

"We intend to use this to benefit us in carrying out our mission," he added, saying the wingless Honeywell aircraft, which fits into a backpack and is capable of vertical takeoff and landing, seems ideally suited for use by SWAT teams in hostage situations or dealing with "barricaded subjects."

Miami-Dade police are not alone, however.

Taking their lead from the U.S. military, which has used drones in Iraq and Afghanistan for years, law enforcement agencies across the country have voiced a growing interest in using drones for domestic crime-fighting missions.

Known in the aerospace industry as UAVs, for unmanned aerial vehicles, drones have been under development for decades in the United States.

The CIA acknowledges that it developed a dragonfly-sized UAV known as the "Insectohopter" for laser-guided spy operations as long ago as the 1970s.

And other advanced work on robotic flyers has clearly been under way for quite some time.

"The FBI is experimenting with a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles," said Marcus Thomas, an assistant director of the bureau's Operational Technology Division.

"At this point they have been used mainly for search and rescue missions," he added. "It certainly is an up-and-coming technology and the FBI is researching additional uses for UAVs."

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been flying drones over the Arizona desert and southwest border with Mexico since 2006 and will soon deploy one in North Dakota to patrol the Canadian border as well.

This month, Customs and Border Protection spokesman Juan Munoz Torres said the agency would also begin test flights of a modified version of its large Predator B drones, built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, over the Gulf of Mexico.

Citing numerous safety concerns, the FAA -- the government agency responsible for regulating civil aviation -- has been slow in developing procedures for the use of UAVs by police departments.

"You don't want one of these coming down on grandma's windshield when she's on her way to the grocery store," said Doug Davis, the FAA's program manager for unmanned aerial systems.

He acknowledged strong interest from law enforcement agencies in getting UAVs up and running, however, and said the smaller aircraft particularly were likely to have a "huge economic impact" over the next 10 years.

Getting clearance for police and other civilian agencies to fly can't come soon enough for Billy Robinson, chief executive of Cyber Defense Systems Inc, a small start-up company in St. Petersburg, Florida.

His company makes an 8-pound (3.6 kg) kite-sized UAV that was flown for a time by police in Palm Bay, Florida, and in other towns, before the FAA stepped in.

"We've had interest from dozens of law enforcement agencies," said Robinson. "They (the FAA) are preventing a bunch of small companies such as ours from becoming profitable," he said.

Some privacy advocates, however, say rules and ordinances need to be drafted to protect civil liberties during surveillance operations.

"There's been controversies all around about putting up surveillance cameras in public areas," said Howard Simon, Florida director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"Technological developments can be used by law enforcement in a way that enhances public safety," he said. "But every enhanced technology also contains a threat of further erosion of privacy."

Space Tourism - The Next Frontier
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080326/D8VL3GQ01.html

A California aerospace company plans to enter the space tourism industry with a two-seat rocket ship capable of suborbital flights to altitudes more than 37 miles above the Earth.

The Lynx, about the size of a small private plane, is expected to begin flying in 2010, according to developer Xcor Aerospace, which planned to release details of the design at a news conference Wednesday.

The company also said that, pending the outcome of negotiations, the Air Force Research Laboratory has awarded it a research contract to develop and test features of the Lynx.

Xcor's announcement comes two months after aerospace designer Burt Rutan and billionaire Richard Branson unveiled a model of SpaceShipTwo, which is being built for Branson's Virgin Galactic space tourism company and may begin test flights this year.

Xcor intends to be a spaceship builder, with another company operating the Lynx and setting prices.

The Lynx is designed to take off from a runway like a normal plane, reach a top speed of Mach 2 and an altitude of 200,000 feet, then descend in a circling glide to a runway landing.

Shaped something like a bulked-up version of the Rutan-designed Long-EZ homebuilt aircraft, its wings will be located toward the rear of the fuselage, with vertical winglets at the tips.

Powered by clean-burning, fully reuseable, liquid-fuel engines, the Lynx is expected to be capable of making several flights a day, Xcor said.

"We have designed this vehicle to operate much like a commercial aircraft," Xcor Chief Executive Officer Jeff Greason said in a statement.

Greason said the Lynx will provide affordable access to space for individuals and researchers, and future versions will offer improved capabilities for research and commercial uses.

Xcor has spent nine years developing rocket engines in a facility down the flightline from Rutan's Scaled Composites LLC at the Mojave Airport north of Los Angeles. It has built and flown two rocket-powered aircraft.

SpaceShipTwo is being developed on the success of SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 became the first privately funded, manned rocket to reach space, making three flights to altitudes between 62 miles and 69 miles and winning the $10 million Ansari X Prize.

Powered by a hybrid engine - the gas nitrous oxide combined with rubber as a solid fuel - SpaceShipTwo will be flown by two pilots and carry up to six passengers who will pay about $200,000 apiece for the ride.

Like its predecessor, SpaceShipTwo will be taken aloft by a carrier airplane and then released before firing its rocket engine. Virgin Galactic says passengers will experience about 4 1/2 minutes of weightlessness and will be able to unbuckle themselves to float in the cabin before returning to Earth as an unpowered glider.

Xcor's Lynx also is intended to return as a glider but with the capability of restarting its engine if needed.

Your 'digital shadow' now exceeds data you create
http://www.bangkokpost.com/Database/26Mar2008_data001.php

For the first time, the amount of digital information generated by others about the average person on a daily basis has surpassed the volume of information that individuals actively create themselves.

A white paper entitled "The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe," based on a survey by International Data Corporation which was sponsored by EMC Corporation, examines how society and the digital universe interact with one another. It finds that your "digital shadow," including web "footprints", surveillance video and records in databases now exceeds the volume of personal digital information people keep.

The IDC report addresses how individuals actively participate in contributing to the digital universe - leaving a digital footprint as Internet and social network users, email use, through the use of mobile phones, digital cameras and credit cards.

It refers to the information created about individuals as their "digital shadow" - highlighting the fast-growing passive contributions that individuals make to the digital universe - but discovered that only about half of a person's digital footprint was related to their individual actions such as taking pictures, sending emails, or digital voice calls.

According to John Gantz, IDC's chief research officer and senior vice-president "the other half is what we call the 'digital shadow' - information about you - names in financial records, names on mailing lists, web surfing histories or images taken of you by security cameras in airports or urban centres.

"For the first time your digital shadow is larger than the digital information you actively create about yourself."

Enterprise IT organisations that gather the information comprising our digital shadows have a tremendous responsibility - in many cases mandated by law - for the security, privacy protection, reliability and legal compliance of this information, the IDC report said.

"Society is already feeling the early effects of the world's digital information explosion. Organisations need to plan for the limitless opportunities to use information in new ways and for the challenges of information governance," said Joe Tucci, EMC chairman, president and CEO. "As people's digital footprints continue growing, so too will the responsibility of organisations for the privacy, protection, availability and reliability of that information. The burden is on IT departments within organisations to address the risks and compliance rules around information misuse, data leakage and safeguarding against security breaches."

Due to its vast size and rapid expansion, both consumers and businesses experience the impact of the digital universe in many profound ways.

IDC reports the information explosion creates new complexity for IT organisations charged with managing digital information that is rapidly growing in size and becoming more diverse. Consumers will also struggle with the growth of their own digital information as they attempt to figure out what to do with all the data they're creating, the white paper predicts.

The research also shows that the "digital universe" is bigger and is growing more rapidly than originally estimated as a result of accelerated growth in worldwide shipments of digital cameras, digital surveillance cameras and digital televisions as well as from a better understanding of information replication trends.

The digital universe in 2007 was equal to almost 45GB of digital information for every person on earth. Other fast-growing corners of the digital universe include those related to Internet access in emerging countries, sensor-based applications, data centres supporting "cloud computing" and social networks comprised of digital content created by many millions of online users.

Among the highlights in the new findings, published earlier this month, were:

- At 281 billion gigabytes (281 exabytes), the digital universe in 2007 was 10 per cent bigger than originally estimated.

- With a compound annual growth rate of almost 60 per cent, the digital universe is growing faster and is projected to be nearly 1.8 zettabytes (1,800 exabytes) in 2011, a 10-fold increase over the next five years.

Other key findings were:

- The "Visual" Universe - the information explosion - at least in raw gigabytes - is predominantly visual: Images, camcorder clips, digital TV signals and surveillance streams.

- Enterprise Responsibility - The picture related to the source and governance of digital information remains intact: Approximately 70 per cent of the digital universe is created by individuals, yet enterprises are responsible for the security, privacy, reliability, and compliance of 85 per cent.

- Digital Diversity - Because of the growth of VoIP, sensors, and RFID, the number of electronic information "containers" - files, images, packets, tag contents - is growing 50 per cent faster than the number of gigabytes. The information created in 2011 will be contained in more than 20 quadrillion - 20 million billion - of such containers, a tremendous management challenge for both businesses and consumers.

- Information Governance - To deal with this explosion of the digital universe in size and complexity, organisations will need to spearhead the development of organisation-wide policies for information governance: Information security, information retention, data access and compliance.

- Digital Cameras - In 2007, the number of digital cameras and camera phones in the world surpassed one billion, and fewer than 10 per cent of all still images were captured on film.

- Digital Surveillance - Shipments of networked digital surveillance cameras are doubling every year.

- Share by Industry - The enterprise share of the digital universe is widely skewed by industry, having little relationship to GDP or IT spending. The finance industry accounts for almost 20 per cent of worldwide IT spending but only six per cent of the digital universe. Meanwhile, media, entertainment and communications industries will account for 10 times their share of the digital universe in 2011 in terms of global GDP.

- "eWaste" an Environmental Concern - Electronic waste is accumulating at more than one billion units a year - mostly mobile phones, but also personal electronics and PCs. The switch to digital TV will place a lot more analogue TV sets and obsolete set-top boxes on the waste pile, which will double by 2011.

- Energy Use Increases - Power consumption that was 1 kilowatt (kW) per server rack in 2000 is now closer to 10kW. Enterprises building new data centres are planning for 20kW per rack.

Fingerprint Scans Replace Clocking In
http://www6.comcast.net/news/articles/national/2008/03/26/Fingerprint.Timecards/

Some workers are doing it at Dunkin' Donuts, at Hilton hotels, even at Marine Corps bases.

Employees at a growing number of businesses are starting and ending their days by pressing a hand or finger to a scanner that logs the precise time of their arrival and departure — information that is automatically reflected in payroll records.

Manufacturers say these biometric devices improve efficiency and streamline payroll operations. Employers big and small buy them with the dual goals of keeping workers honest and automating outdated record-keeping systems that rely on paper time sheets.

The new systems have raised complaints, however, from some workers who see the efforts to track their movements as excessive or creepy.

"They don't even have to hire someone to harass you anymore. The machine can do it for them," said Ed Ott, executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council of the AFL-CIO. "The palm print thing really grabs people as a step too far."

The International Biometric Group, a consulting firm, estimated that $635 million worth of these high-tech devices were sold last year, and projects that the industry will be worth more than $1 billion by 2011.

Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies, a leading manufacturer of hand scanners based in Campbell, Calif., said it has sold at least 150,000 of the devices to Dunkin' Donuts and McDonald's franchises, Hilton hotels and to Marine Corps bases, who use them to track civilian hours.

Protests over using palm scanners to log employee time have been especially loud in New York City, where officials are spending $410 million to install an automated attendance tracking system that may eventually be used by 160,000 city workers.

Scores of civil servants who are members of Local 375 of the Civil Service Technical Guild rallied Tuesday against a plan to add the city medical examiner's office to the list of 17 city agencies which already have the scanners in place.

The scanners have rankled draftsmen, planners and architects in the city's Parks Department, which began using them last year.

"Psychologically, I think it has had a huge impact on the work force here because it is demeaning and because it's a system based on mistrust," said Ricardo Hinkle, a landscape architect who designs city parks.

He called the timekeeping system a bureaucratic intrusion on professionals who never used to think twice about putting in extra time on a project they cared about, and could rely on human managers to exercise a little flexibility on matters regarding work hours.

"The creative process isn't one that punches in and punches out," he said.

A spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Matthew Kelly, said the system isn't meant to be intrusive and has clear benefits over old-style punch clocks or paper time sheets.

The city expects to save $60 million per year by modernizing a complicated record keeping system that now requires one full-time timekeeper for every 100 to 250 employees.

The new system, dubbed CityTime, would free up thousands of city employees to do less paper-pushing.

Another benefit of the system is curtailing fraud. Several times each year, New York City's Department of Investigation charges city employees with taking unauthorized time off and falsifying timecards to make it looked as though they worked.

Other cities have embraced similar technology.

Cities as big as Chicago and as small as Tahlequah, Okla., have turned to fingerprint-driven ID systems to record employee work hours in recent few years. And the systems have been introduced into plenty of other workplaces without much grumbling by employees, especially those already used to punching a clock.

But the New York workers aren't the first to fight it.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees complained vigorously two years ago after the city of Pittsburgh proposed installing fingerprint readers.

"We had a lot of questions, a lot of concerns, and so far they haven't put it in," said AFCME Council 84 Director Richard Caponi.

Jon Mooney, Ingersoll Rand's general manger of biometrics, said the privacy concerns are unfounded. The hand scanners don't keep large databases of people's fingerprints — only a record of their hand shape, he said.

Still, union officials in New York said they are concerned that the machines could eventually be used not just to crack down on employees skipping work, but to nitpick honest workers or invade their privacy.

"The bottom line is that these palm scanners are designed to exercise more control over the workforce," said Claude Fort, president of Local 375. "They aren't there for security purposes. It has nothing to do with productivity. ... It is about control, and that is what makes us nervous."

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