Zogby: McCain Leads on Leadership
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/Zogby_McCain_Leadership/2008/03/07/78627.html
As concerns grow that the U.S. may be facing a recession, likely voters view Hillary Clinton (26%) and John McCain (25%) as the presidential candidates who could best handle the economy, just edging out Barack Obama ( 21%), a recent Zogby International telephone poll shows. Among Democrats, nearly half (48%) believe Clinton would best handle the economy, compared with 35% who believe Obama would do a better job.
On the issue of leadership, McCain and Obama receive near equal support - 34% believe McCain would be best at providing meaningful leadership to the country, while 33% said the same of Obama. Just 16% said Clinton would be best at leading the country. Among Democrats, more than half believe Obama would be the best leader (55%), while half as many (27%) said the same of Clinton. Republicans overwhelmingly view McCain as the candidate best positioned to lead the country (63%), while independents give a slight edge to Obama (33%) over McCain (30%) - half as many independents (16%) view Clinton as the best leader.
Obama comes out far ahead when respondents were asked which candidate would be best at unifying the country - 42% chose Obama, while 25% picked McCain and 13% said Clinton would best at bringing the country together. Democrats overwhelmingly chose Obama (61%) over Clinton (23%) as the candidate they identify with unity. While 44% of Republicans said McCain would be best at unifying the county, nearly half as many 19% believe Obama would be best - just 3% of Republicans believe Clinton would be the best candidate to unify the country.
The Zogby International telephone poll of 1,026 likely voters nationwide was conducted Feb. 22-23, 2008, and carries a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points. The survey was conducted before Republican Mike Huckabee exited the race following the March 4 primaries, and included candidate choices of Huckabee, Democrat Mike Gravel and Republican Ron Paul, as well as Clinton, Obama and McCain.
A Zogby International poll in May, 2007 found 82% of likely voters believe American needs a president who is a competent manager. But even as the field of potential candidates has narrowed, likely voters are divided on which of the leading candidates would do the best job competently managing the federal government - McCain was seen as the most competent manager by 30%, while 25% chose Clinton and 22% picked Obama.
Nearly half of Americans - 46% - believe the Iraq war would be best handled under a McCain presidency, while fewer than half as many would prefer Obama's (23%) or Clinton's (18%) leadership when it comes to the war. McCain is an even stronger favorite on the issue of combating terrorism - 49% believe McCain could best combat terrorism, while 21% said the same for Obama and just 14% believe Clinton would do the best job.
John McCain also bests his potential Democratic opponents when it comes to the issue of illegal immigration - nearly one in three Americans (32%) believe McCain would best handle this issue, though 22% favor Obama and 16% Clinton.
McCain Rejects Anti-Catholic Views
http://www.newsmax.com/politics/mccain/2008/03/07/78746.html
NEW ORLEANS -- Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Friday repudiated any views of a prominent televangelist who endorsed him last month "if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics."
McCain has come under fire since televangelist John Hagee endorsed him on Feb. 27, but until Friday his response had been tepid. The Arizona senator merely said he doesn't agree with everyone who endorses him. He said Friday he had been hearing from Catholics who find Hagee's comments offensive.
Hagee, leader of a San Antonio megachurch, has referred to the Roman Catholic Church as "the great whore" and called it a "false cult system" and "the apostate church" _ "apostate" means someone who has forsaken his religion.
On Friday, McCain took a stronger stance on Hagee's views in an interview with The Associated Press.
"We've had a dignified campaign, and I repudiate any comments that are made, including Pastor Hagee's, if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics," McCain said.
"I sent two of my children to Catholic school. I categorically reject and repudiate any statement that was made that was anti-Catholic, both in intent and nature. I categorically reject it, and I repudiate it," McCain said.
"And we can't have that in this campaign," McCain said. "We're trying to unite the country. We're uniting the country, not dividing it."
He was responding to one critic in particular, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, who raised the issue in a Thursday conference call with reporters.
"She made the attack. I am responding by saying that I am against discrimination and anti-Semitism, anti-Catholic, anything racial, and I have proved that on the campaign trail," McCain said.
Hagee's endorsement had been intended to shore up McCain's support among evangelical or born-again Christians, many of whom distrust McCain for some of his more moderate views and his willingness to work with Democrats.
McCain gave the interview backstage as he prepared to address the Council for National Policy, a group of the country's most influential social and Christian conservatives.
The council meets three times a year, with discussions strictly off-the-record to promote frank discussion, according to participants. His appearance was televised in a separate holding room for journalists.
Members asked McCain only a couple of tough questions, including one on illegal immigration. McCain has come under fire from fellow Republicans for supporting an eventual path to citizenship for those here illegally, but now he says securing the border is his top priority.
"We would have to, obviously, secure our border first," McCain said.
Asked about the influence of religion in his life, McCain said, "It is an important factor in my life, obviously, very important."
McCain also invoked his faith at a campaign event Friday morning at the headquarters of Chick-fil-A Inc. in Atlanta. The company's founder, S. Truett Cathy, is a devout Baptist who closes his restaurants on Sunday so his employees can rest and honor God.
"It's harder and harder trying to do the Lord's work in the city of Satan," McCain said of Washington.
He praised former GOP rival Mike Huckabee, who won the Georgia primary, mentioning Huckabee's comment in a debate, "They asked Governor Huckabee, who as you know was a Baptist minister, what would Jesus do. He said, `Jesus would be smart enough not to run for public office.'"
And he said that illegal immigration is a Judeo-Christian issue as well as a national security issue.
Also Friday, McCain said tax cuts and job training are needed to lift an economy that is either in recession or is headed toward one. McCain, who has said economics isn't his strong suit, was responding to a report showing widespread job losses amid the housing and credit crisis.
The Labor Department said employers cut jobs by 63,000 in February, the most in five years.
"I think the fact of the matter is, many American families are hurting very badly, particularly those in states like Ohio, Michigan, parts of Illinois, those states that really relied on manufacturing jobs and saw those jobs leave," McCain said. "And we as a nation have not done enough to help those workers find new employment, new training, new education."
McCain Loses Cool on NYT Reporter Asking About Kerry’s VP Pitch
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/03/07/campaign-wire-rendell-id-love-to-see-a-clintonobama-ticket
John McCain lost his cool Friday with a New York Times reporter who asked him about his 2004 conversation with John Kerry on becoming the Democratic nominee’s running mate.
The Kerry-McCain encounter is an oft-told Washington snapshot, but Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller claimed she had no hard evidence of the conversation. Yet before she even completed her query about whether Kerry had directly contacted McCain in ‘04, McCain interrupted her and attacked the question.
“Everybody knows that I had a private conversation. Everybody knows that. That I had a conversation. There’s no living American in Washington …” McCain said. “And you know it too. You know it. No, you know it. You know it. So I don’t even know why you ask.”
The testy back-and-forth took place on McCain’s campaign plane. The question was spurred by McCain’s comments earlier at an Atlanta town hall meeting where he was asked whether he’d return the favor and consider Kerry as his running mate.
The answer was “no.”
“No, very frankly, John Kerry is a friend of mine and a close associate. We are fellow veterans, but we have very vastly different philosophical fundamental political views ,” McCain said. “I respect those views … I just totally disagree with them.”
“So when … we had that conversation back in 2004, I mean that’s why I never even considered such a thing,” he said.
McCain’s campaign has said it will not freeze out the Times, even after the newspaper ran a story Feb. 21 suggesting he had a romantic relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman. McCain immediately decried the story as false.
But McCain was apparently so irritated by Bumiller’s question, the reporter was compelled to ask McCain, toward the end of their conversation, why he felt like she was giving him the third degree.
“Okay, can I ask you about your … why you’re so angry?” she asked.
McCain: “Pardon me?”
“Nevermind. Nevermind.”
McCain concluded, “I mean it’s well known. Everybody knows. It’s been well chronicled a thousand times. John Kerry asked if I would consider being his running mate … And I categorically said ‘no’.”
The Terror Nobody Knows: Thwarted Attacks on the U.S.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,335498,00.html
In July 2005, the Los Angeles Police Department caught a group of men who had been robbing gas stations in the area. While investigating, police uncovered something far worse: The gas station hits were bankrolling a terrorist plot to attack National Guard facilities, synagogues, the Israeli consulate and Los Angeles International Airport.
Deputy Chief of Police Michael Downing says the group was "closer to going operational at the time than anyone since 9/11."
Thomas P. O'Brien, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, says, "An untold number of lives may have been saved when this terrorist cell was dismantled."
This story is hardly unique: Since Sept. 11, authorities have disrupted more than 20 publicly known plots against domestic U.S. targets, involving dozens of arrests at home and abroad.
Some of these plots are well-known, such as Richard Reid's failed "shoe bombing" in December 2001 and the liquid explosives plot of 2006, when British investigators uncovered a plan to carry bombs on airliners bound for the U.S. Each of those incidents permanently changed airport security protocols.
Then there was the plot to kill U.S. soldiers using assault rifles and grenades at Fort Dix in New Jersey, and the so-called "Lackawanna Six," who pleaded guilty to providing support to Al Qaeda.
But others have passed by with little notice from the general public, as well as critics of government efforts to protect the U.S. from homegrown terror attacks.
Take, for example, Iyman Faris, of Columbus, Ohio, who plotted to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge and was convicted of conspiracy and providing material support for Al Qaeda in 2003.
Later that year 11 men with connections to Al Qaeda were discovered training for jihad in Virginia, using paintball games to simulate battlefield situations. In 2004, James Elshafay and Shahawar Matin Siraj were convicted of planning to bomb New York's Penn Station during the Republican National Convention.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a household name for his role as mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, also is known to have prepared little-known strikes against America's tallest building, the Sears Tower in Chicago, as well as the Empire State Building in New York and the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles.
In contrast, Dhiren Barot may not be a familiar name, although some security experts say he should be. An Indian convert to Islam, the Pakistan-based Barot planned a series of ruinous attacks on the U.S. and U.K, including the New York Stock Exchange and the IMF building in Washington, D.C. Barot was caught by British authorities in 2004 and sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiracy to commit murder.
Andrew McCarthy, director of the Center for Law and Counterterrorism at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, credits much of the success in preventing terrorist attacks at home to the pursuit of enemies overseas.
"There have been days in Iraq and Afghanistan," he says, "where we have killed or captured more terrorists than we did between 1993, when the World Trade Center was attacked, and 2001, when the World Trade Center was destroyed."
"But," McCarthy cautions, "once you get them over here, the rules of the justice system apply."
Successful prosecutions are key to tackling terrorism, but they are not an easy process. Investigators prefer to wait for overwhelming evidence of a terrorist plot, and the timing is difficult.
"It's more dangerous to let things play out because law enforcement is rarely, if ever, in control during these investigations," McCarthy says.
Plots often are disrupted early and as a result, he says, "you don't often have well-developed cases."
But there have been successes, and the courts have been very active since Sept. 11. According to Sean Boyd, a spokesman for the Justice Department, 527 defendants have been charged in terrorism or terrorism-related cases arising from investigations primarily conducted after Sept. 11.
Those cases have resulted in 319 convictions, with an additional 176 cases pending in court.
It's not a perfect record for the Justice Department, but it still is a good one, says McCarthy, who prosecuted and convicted "blind sheikh" Omar Abdel Rahman, ringleader of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.
"The batting average is not as high as it was prior to Sept. 11," when most investigations focused on crimes already committed, "but that again is something that we are going to have to accept," McCarthy says.
Allison Barrie, a security and terrorism consultant and a FOXNews.com contributor, agrees on the difficulties. "The evidence [in these trials] is always at its best at the 11th hour," she says. Waiting until the last moment is dangerous, but "you've got to weigh that against actually getting that prosecution."
So far, that strategy has been decisive in preventing another attack on the scale of Sept. 11. "We've just been plain lucky," Barrie says.
And intelligence work hasn't prevented smaller attacks from being carried out.
On July 4, 2002, Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, a 41-year-old Egyptian national, opened fire at the El Al ticket counter at LAX, killing two people before a security guard killed him.
That same ticket counter later would be targeted by those L.A. gas station robbers, a homegrown terrorist group with roots in a California prison.
Homegrown groups often are difficult to detect, and the California cell was not found through careful intelligence work; the LAPD stumbled on them by accident. They might never have been discovered.
"The cliché is true," Barrie says. "Terrorists only have to be lucky once, but the good guys have to be lucky every time."
List of Thwarted Terror Attacks Since Sept. 11
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,335500,00.html
The following is a list of known terror plots thwarted by the U.S. government since Sept. 11, 2001.
• December 2001, Richard Reid: British citizen attempted to ignite shoe bomb on flight from Paris to Miami.
• May 2002, Jose Padilla: American citizen accused of seeking "dirty bomb," convicted of conspiracy.
• September 2002, Lackawanna Six: American citizens of Yemeni origin convicted of supporting Al Qaeda. Five of six were from Lackawanna, N.Y.
• May 2003, Iyman Faris: American citizen charged with trying to topple the Brooklyn Bridge.
• June 2003, Virginia Jihad Network: Eleven men from Alexandria, Va., trained for jihad against American soldiers, convicted of violating the Neutrality Act, conspiracy.
• August 2004, Dhiren Barot: Indian-born leader of terror cell plotted bombings on financial centers.
• August 2004, James Elshafay and Shahawar Matin Siraj: Sought to plant bomb at New York's Penn Station during the Republican National Convention.
• August 2004, Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain: Plotted to assassinate a Pakistani diplomat on American soil.
• June 2005, Father and son Umer Hayat and Hamid Hayat: Son convicted of attending terrorist training camp in Pakistan; father convicted of customs violation.
• August 2005, Kevin James, Levar Haley Washington, Gregory Vernon Patterson and Hammad Riaz Samana: Los Angeles homegrown terrorists who plotted to attack National Guard, LAX, two synagogues and Israeli consulate.
• December 2005, Michael Reynolds: Plotted to blow up refinery in Wyoming, convicted of providing material support to terrorists.
• February 2006, Mohammad Zaki Amawi, Marwan Othman El-Hindi and Zand Wassim Mazloum: Accused of providing material support to terrorists, making bombs for use in Iraq.
• April 2006, Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee: Cased and videotaped the Capitol and World Bank for a terrorist organization.
• June 2006, Narseal Batiste, Patrick Abraham, Stanley Grant Phanor, Naudimar Herrera, Burson Augustin, Lyglenson Lemorin, and Rotschild Augstine: Accused of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower.
• July 2006, Assem Hammoud: Accused of plotting to hit New York City train tunnels.
• August 2006, Liquid Explosives Plot: Thwarted plot to explode ten airliners over the United States.
• May 2007, Fort Dix Plot: Six men accused of plotting to attack Fort Dix Army base in New Jersey.
• June 2007, JFK Plot: Four men accused of plotting to blow up fuel arteries underneath JFK Airport in New York.
• March 2007, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: Mastermind of Sept. 11 and author of numerous plots confessed in court in March 2007 to planning to destroy skyscrapers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
Libyan Strongman Qaddafi Weighs In on American Presidential Race, Citing Democratic Call for 'Change'
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,335993,00.html
Libyan strongman Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi weighed in on America's presidential campaign, specifically commenting on both Democratic rivals' repeated calls for "change."
"I've seen that in America, a candidate who wants people to vote for him keeps talking about change," Qaddafi said earlier this week in a televised address on Libyan TV, an obvious reference to Barack Obama.
"They all keep saying 'change, change,' " he continued, adding Hillary Clinton to his reference. "They want to change America and its current political system. They want to make a change in their lives. They say their system is a failure, that their government is a failure, and that their elections are a failure."
Qaddafi offered up Libya as a model for "change," predicting that "the whole world will return to the model of the republic of the masses, to communes, to popular security, to popular defense, to popular capitalism, and to popular socialism.
"The whole world will return to the Libyan model," he said.
Obama Minister's Hatred of America
http://www.newsmax.com/kessler/obama_minister_wright/2008/03/06/78440.html
In a sermon delivered at Howard University, Barack Obama’s longtime minister, friend, and adviser blamed America for starting the AIDS virus, training professional killers, importing drugs, and creating a racist society that would never elect a black man as president.
The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., pastor of Obama’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, gave the sermon at the school’s Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel in Washington on Jan. 15, 2006. While snippets from the sermon have appeared in a few magazines, no news outlet has previously run the entire text of Wright’s diatribe. An audio recording of the sermon appears on YouTube.
Raising his voice in rage, Wright began his sermon by saying, “Fact No. 1: We’ve got more black men in prison than there are in college. Racism is alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. No black man will ever be considered for president, no matter how hard you run Jesse [Jackson] and no black woman can ever be considered for anything outside what she can give with her body.”
Omitting fact No. 2, Wright thundered on: “Fact No. 3: America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. We invaded Grenada for no other reason than to get Maurice Bishop [a Grenada revolutionary who seized power in 1979], invaded Panama because Noriega would not dance to our tune any more. We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers. We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Qaddafi.”
Wright continued: “Fact No. 4: We put [Nelson] Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. Fact No. 5: We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-semitic.”
His voice rising, Wright was on a roll: “Fact No. 6: We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. They’re just finding out about that. We care nothing about human life if the ends justifies the means. Fact No. 7: We do not care if poor black and brown children cannot read and kill each other senselessly. We abandoned the cities back in the '60s when the riots started and it really doesn’t matter what those nations do to each other; we gave up on them and public education of poor people who live in the projects . . .”
Wright went on: “Fact No. 8: We started the AIDS virus, and now that it is out of control, we still put more money in the military than in medicine; more money in hate than in humanitarian concerns. Everybody does not have access to healthcare, I don’t care what the rich white boys in the Senate say. Listen up: If you are poor, black and elderly, forget it.”
Concluding, Wright said: “Fact No. 9: We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty. And fact No. 10: We are selfish, self-centered egotists who are arrogant and ignorant and betray our church and do not try to make the kingdom that Jesus talked about a reality. And — and — and in light of these 10 facts, God has got to be sick of this s***.”
Meeting with Jewish leaders in Cleveland on Feb. 24, Obama described Wright as being like “an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don't agree with.” He rarely mentions the items of disagreement.
Obama went on to explain away Wright’s anti-Zionist statements as being rooted in his anger over the Jewish state’s support for South Africa under its previous policy of apartheid. As with a previous claim that his church gave an award to Louis Farrakhan because of his work with ex-offenders, Obama made that up out of thin air.
Wright’s statements denouncing Israel have not been qualified in any way.
As for Wright’s repeated comments blaming America for the 9/11 attacks, Obama has said it sounds as if the minister was trying to be “provocative.”
Hearing Wright’s venomous and paranoid denunciations of this country, the vast majority of Americans would walk out. Instead, Obama and his wife Michelle have presumably sat through hundreds of similar sermons.
Indeed, Obama has described Wright as his “sounding board” during the two decades he has known him. Obama has said he found religion through Wright in the 1980s and consulted him before deciding to run for president. He prayed privately with Wright before announcing his candidacy last year.
Aside from showing poor judgment, it’s difficult to imagine that Obama could be so close to Wright without agreeing with at least some of his views.
In light of Wright’s perspective, Michelle Obama’s comment that she feels proud of America for the first time makes perfect sense. (In a second iteration, she said she feels “really proud” for the first time.) Wright’s blame-America mentality also fits in neatly with many on the left who support Obama’s weak approach to national security and dealing with foreign dictators.
To date, the Obama-loving media have largely ignored the senator’s close association with Wright. The question is whether the blackout will be lifted before voters decide whether they want to entrust Obama with America’s future.
The world in 2009
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080301/COMMENTARY/259777220
When President Bush leaves office, will America once again be liked by most of the world? Not necessarily, since most current problems are either already getting better or not our fault.
When the next president takes office in January 2009, he or she will confront a world that either understandably appreciates America or for self-interested reasons will challenge it.
On the positive side, the new president will see a Middle East without the Taliban in charge in Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein ruling Iraq. A stabilizing constitutional Iraq should result in a steadily diminishing American presence there.
In Europe, the French under Nicolas Sarkozy and the Germans under Angela Merkel will remain pro-American. But they will also expect continued American leadership. Both may talk grandly of the Atlantic Alliance, but in real terms they do little to help us in Afghanistan or elsewhere.
Most of Africa likewise is already friendly to the United States. And why not? Mr. Bush extended more humanitarian aid to combat African hunger and disease than any president in our history.
But what of our enemies? Won't adversaries back off when the Christian cowboy George Bush rides back to Texas — and we have a kinder, gentler commander in chief who offers hope, or at least change, to the world? Hardly.
There are plenty of problems that both antedated George Bush and are likely to continue well after he has left office.
For starters, the next American president will have to deal with Vladimir Putin's Russia, which is proud and angry for reasons that go well beyond the Bush administration. Russia is flush with petrodollars, still smarting over lost empire and tired of lectures about human rights from impotent European states.
Iran, which repeatedly snubbed the efforts of the Clinton administration to normalize relations, will still want a bomb, will still intimidate neighbors and will still threaten Israel. Indeed, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in Hitlerian fashion, has called the Jewish state "filthy bacteria" and promised to wipe it off the map. He didn't say these things because George Bush is president, and he won't stop when Mr. Bush is gone.
Sen. Barack Obama, who looks more and more likely to be the Democratic presidential nominee, has said he would favor taking out "high-value terrorist targets" inside Pakistan on our own if the Pakistani government won't. But so far we haven't done that because Pakistan is nuclear and friendlier to jihadists than to us. That won't change, either.
Osama bin Laden's attacks on Americans also predated George Bush. The war on terror started only when we finally decided to strike back in 2001. And it will end only when we destroy the jihadists and alter the conditions that created them — or give in and return to the earlier policy of inaction.
Long-term global challenges are bipartisan concerns — neither caused by conservative Republicans nor solved by easy answers from liberal Democrats.
Should we guarantee the new independence of Muslim-dominated Kosovo, if Christian Serbia and its Russian patrons seek to get it back by force? If so, consider the chance of another bloody war inside Europe and no appreciation for our help in Kosovo from the Muslim world.
Should we press China to clean up its trade practices and grant basic human rights to its own citizens? If so, be ready to see hundreds of billions of dollars in Chinese-held U.S. government bonds sold off.
Should we extend formal diplomatic recognition to Iran and begin talks? If so, be prepared that, with even less worry, Tehran will accelerate efforts to get the bomb.
It is a cop-out to say George Bush caused all these problems. They loom large mostly for two reasons:
(1) The United States promotes global democratic capitalism, and our military ensures international free commerce in the air and on the seas. This bothers regional dictators and terrorists eager to carve out their own spheres of influence, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.
(2) Billions of people in India, Russia, China, Asia and Latin America, having copied American business and culture, are now doing better, and demand the same good lives we take for granted.
Our rivals suspect we are played out, short of energy, long on debt, and hogging the world's resources. They see no reason to stop pushing just because of our past strength and reputation. They think the future is theirs, the past ours.
And so all over the globe they will surely challenge the next president, however nice, to prove them wrong.
US warning as China bolsters military
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2008/03/05/noindex/wchina104.xml
China has announced a rise of a fifth in military spending, the day after the Pentagon issued a warning over its growing prowess in missile and cyberwarfare technology.
The rise from 350 billion to 417.8 billion yuan (£30 billion), or 19.4 per cent, was revealed on the eve of the opening of China's parliament, the National People's Congress, which meets for two weeks each year.
A spokesman insisted that the rise still left China's budget trailing that of middle-ranking western powers like Britain and France, let alone America, and that in any case the country's military preparations were solely "defensive" in nature.
But a few hours before he spoke, the Pentagon released its annual report on the current state of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, in which it estimated total military expenditure at double the official level - £49-70 billion.
It claimed China had the most active programme to buy and develop ballistic missiles of any country in the world, and was "developing capabilities" for use in conflicts over resources and disputed territories.
Calculated in terms of China's own currency, the rise in expenditure is the largest for a decade, though Jiang Enzhu, the spokesman, said that in dollar terms it was less than last year's 17.8 per cent increase.
He said the spending figure represented 1.4 per cent of the size of the Chinese economy, a much lower proportion than in either the United States or Britain.
But he did not shy away from issuing Taiwan, the target of much of Beijing's military planning, a warning that it was "fully prepared to repulse any adventurous activities" - namely, any attempt formally to declare independence.
The Pentagon report said there were now about 1,000 missiles stationed on the Chinese coast opposite Taiwan, a number growing by about 100 a year.
Beijing is also rapidly modernising its ballistic missile arsenal in all ranges, it added.
"China has the most active ballistic missile program in the world," the Pentagon report said.
That arsenal will soon include an anti-ship ballistic missile with a range of 1,000 miles capable of hitting aircraft carriers.
The report also referred to repeated claims from both the United States and other western countries, including Britain, of "intrusions" into computer networks which appear to originate from China.
Analysts believe that in some ways the threat of conflict in the Far East has lessened in the last three years, as Beijing has toned down its rhetoric about Taiwan.
This parliamentary session will also see the downgrading of the post of defence minister - always a serving general.
The replacement for the current minister, who is due to retire, will lose the traditional seat in the Politburo.
Nevertheless, as China's power and influence continue to increase, it is touching nerves in other countries which have long-unresolved disputes with Beijing.
These include south-east Asian countries several of which, like Beijing, claim sovereignty over a variety of islands in the South China Sea, and India, which the United States is hoping to draw closer into its military orbit.
The Pentagon's report, which it has been required to produce every year since 2000 by Congress, is a regular source of friction with the Chinese authorities.
They denounced it as a "distortion of the facts" and urged the United States to "drop its Cold War mentality".
South America on brink of war
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080303/FOREIGN/933500764/1001
South America was on the brink of war yesterday as Venezuela and Ecuador amassed troops on the Colombian border in response to the killing of a Marxist rebel leader.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened to join the rebels in a war to overthrow hard-line Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, a key ally of the United States, deploying tanks, fighter jets and thousands of troops along the Colombian border.
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa also ordered troops to the border, expelled Colombia's ambassador and recalled its ambassador to Bogota, but left its embassy open. Venezuela closed its embassy in Colombia and ordered all diplomats home.
A weekend battle sparked the mobilization, in which Colombian forces killed a top leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in a camp in Ecuador.
"The obsessive conduct of those who prize the military option sharpens the armed conflict with grave possible consequences" read a statement from Venezuela's Foreign Ministry after the weekend killing of FARC's second in command, Raul Reyes.
On his weekly Sunday talk show "Hello President," Mr. Chavez accused Colombia of "invading" Ecuador, and compared the action to Israeli attacks against Palestinians.
"The Colombian government has become the Israel of Latin America," Mr. Chavez said. He called Colombia a "terrorist" state and its president, Mr. Uribe, a criminal; "Dracula's fangs are covered in blood."
Mr. Correa said Colombia deliberately carried out the strike beyond its borders. "There is no justification," he said last night, snubbing an earlier announcement from Colombia that it would apologize for the incursion.
Lebanon on the brink? Saudi citizens instructed to depart Lebanon with all possible speed, US warships off the coast
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5070
DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources report that this unprecedented order from the royal court in Riyadh on March 1 portends an unusual military outbreak in Lebanon. Kuwait quickly followed suit. Standing by since Friday off the troubled Mediterranean shores of Lebanon, Israel and Gaza is the USS Cole guided missile destroyer opposite Lebanon. It was joined Monday by the USS Nassau amphibious warship and its strike group of six vessels carrying 2,800 marines, flight crews and sailors. US naval sources report that a third group will join them shortly.
Sarkozy and Mandelson 'strike a deal to get top EU job for Blair'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=523787&in_page_id=1811
Nicolas Sarkozy is backing Tony Blair's campaign to become the first President of Europe in return for the way Peter Mandelson secretly helped him win the French Presidency, it was claimed last night.
The suggestion of a secret EU Presidency deal between the three men will enrage Gordon Brown, who has always blamed Mr Mandelson for the way Mr Blair pipped him to the post of Labour leader in 1994.
A senior member of Mr Sarkozy's inner circle claims the French President regards his support for Mr Blair's bid to become Europe's first fully fledged political leader as a "quid pro quo" for EU Commissioner Mr Mandelson's help in winning last year's election.
"Discussions were arranged between Mandelson and Sarkozy after Sarkozy asked to be put in touch with him," said Mr Sarkozy's confidant.
"Sarkozy wanted to copy what Blair had done in Britain and believed that taking advice from Peter was the best way to do it.
"In return, Sarkozy wants to help Blair become EU President. From Sarkozy's point of view it is part of the deal."
The disclosure comes three weeks before Mr Sarkozy's state visit to Britain with his new wife, Italian model Carla Bruni, and is likely to spark controversy on both sides of the Channel.
Mr Sarkozy's Blairite style brought him to power on a tidal wave of popularity - but since then his ratings have plummeted as a result of his tangled love life.
And his political opponents have stepped up their attacks on him for backing Mr Blair as EU President.
The Sarkozy camp's claim that it is part of a secret deal involving Mr Mandelson caused an angry response from Mr Brown's allies last night.
"Peter Mandelson should learn to stop meddling in British politics," said one.
"Gordon has never forgiven him for switching sides to Blair when John Smith died.
"If some kind of deal has been stitched up between Mandelson, Sarkozy and Blair, the British public has a right to know about it."
Relations between Mr Mandelson and Mr Brown are so bad that Mr Mandelson will not be seeking the usual second term as an EU Commissioner, denying Mr Brown the satisfaction of using his power to dismiss him.
Mr Mandelson's hallmarks were clearly visible in Mr Sarkozy's successful election campaign, including New Labour-style glitzy public relations stunts, pledges on law and order, welfare, community relations and offering jobs to traditional political opponents.
A spokesman at the French President's Elysée Palace would not discuss Mr Sarkozy's dealings with Peter Mandelson, commenting: "We would not comment on such strategic matters, or on private meetings between individuals."
The Mediterranean Union: Dividing the Middle East and North Africa
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6879
The Middle East and North Africa are in the process of being divided into spheres of influence between the European Union and the United States. Essentially the division of the Middle East and North Africa are between Franco-German and Anglo-American interests. There is a unified stance within NATO in regards to this re-division.
While on the surface Iraq falls within the Anglo-American orbit, the Eastern Mediterranean and its gas resources have been set to fall into the Franco-German orbit. In fact the Mediterranean region as a whole, from Morocco and gas-rich Algeria to the Levant is coveted by Franco-German interests, but there is more to this complex picture than meets the eye.
Unknown to the global public, several milestone decisions have been made to end Franco-German and Anglo-American squabbling that will ultimately call for joint management of the spoils of war. Franco-German and Anglo-American interests are converging into one. The reality of the situation is that the area ranging from Mauritania to the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan will be shared by America, Britain, France, Germany, and their allies.
These spheres of influence are really spheres of responsibility in a long campaign to restructure the Middle East and North Africa. The services agreement between Total S.A. and Chevron to jointly develop Iraqi energy reserves, NATO agreements in the Persian Gulf, and the establishment of a permanent French military base in the U.A.E. are all results of these objectives. Militant globalization and force is at work from Iraq and Lebanon to the Maghreb.
Redrawing European Security Borders: The Road to Redrawing the Map of the Middle East
“The politics [foreign policy] of a state are in its geography.”
-Napoleon Bonaparte I, Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, and Mediator of the Helvetic (Swiss) Confederation
Before NATO’s Riga Summit it was agreed upon that the western periphery of the “Arc of Instability” would be manned by NATO and fall under Franco-German responsibility. Signs of the consensus reached between the Anglo-American and Franco-German sides had emerged through Franco-German representatives a month prior to NATO’s conference in Riga, Latvia. While lecturing at Princeton University in October 2006, Joschka Fischer the former German Foreign Affairs Minister, a member of the Green Party of Germany, and a representative of the Franco-German entente gave a profound revelation about the direction of the foreign, security, and defence policy that Germany and France were heading towards.
The direction according to Joschka Fischer was “eastward,” with both the Middle East and its Eastern Mediterranean waters being named as the new borders of Europe. This region would be part of the new security sphere of the E.U. and Europe. The former German minister stated that the terrorist bombings in London, Britain and Madrid, Spain showed that the Middle East “is truly our [Europe’s] backyard, and we in the E.U. must cease our shortsightedness and recognize that.”
Furthermore, Joschka Fischer warned that Europe needed to shift its attention to the Middle East and Turkey — a member of NATO and one of the “gateways” or “entrances” into the Middle East. It is not coincidental that The New York Times also argued for the expansion of NATO into the Middle East just months after the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003. By 2004 and through the joint Anglo-American and Franco-German coordination in Lebanon it was clear that France and Germany had agreed to be America’s bridgeheads in Eurasia. This is what brought about the leadership of Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy in Berlin and Paris.
The statements of Joschka Fischer reflected a broader attitude within the leading circles of France and Germany. They are not coincidental remarks or innovative in nature or isolated statements. They are part of long-standing objectives and policies that have existed for decades. Fischer’s lecture foreshadowed the drive towards the harmonization of foreign policy in the Middle East between France, Germany, Britain, and the United States. What Joschka Fischer said marked the rapprochement of the Franco-German entente and the Anglo-American alliance and foreshadowed the greater role the E.U. and NATO would play in U.S. foreign policy.
The Daily Princetonian, Princeton’s school/university newspaper, quoted the former German official as making the following statements:
.1. “Europe’s security is no longer defined on its [Europe’s] eastern borders, but in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.”
.2. “Turkey should be a security pillar for the European community, and the efforts to derail that relationship are impossibly shortsighted.”
Joschka Fischer’s statements also foreshadow Nicolas Sarkozy’s public campaign in the Mediterranean region. Franco-German policy is also exposed in regards to Turkey; before Nicolas Sarkozy was elected in France, Chancellor Angela Merkel intensified her calls for the inclusion of Turkey within the framework of the E.U. through a “special relationship,” but not as part of the actual European bloc. This also foreshadowed what Nicolas Sarkozy would later propose to the Turks.
This could mean one of two things: Franco-German policy is part of a continuum regardless of leadership and party politics or that the outcome of the 2007 French presidential elections were known in Berlin or decided beforehand. Whatever the case, the German statements expose a calculated agenda in Paris, Berlin, and other European circles for expansion linked to the Anglo-American march to war.
Paris and Berlin act in tandem regardless as to whosoever is leading their respective govemments. It is Franco-German policy at its core depends on powerful economic interests. The latter call the shots and override the elected politicians. These economic interests determine in both France and Germany, as well as at the level of the E.U., the nature of government policy.
The Mediterranean Union: Expanding the E.U. into the Middle East and North Africa
The whole Mediterranean is slated to eventually fall within the European Union’s sphere of influence. This initiative is being spearheaded by France and was officially kicked off by Nicolas Sarkozy on a tour of the Mediterranean that started in Algeria.
The idea of a “Mediterranean Union” was presented to Europeans with the election of Nicolas Sarkozy, but this idea is not as new as the mainstream media presents it. Zbigniew Brzezinski acknowledged in 1997 that “France not only seeks a central political role in a unified Europe but also sees itself as the nucleus of a Mediterranean-North African cluster of states that share common concerns.” An extension of the E.U. sphere of influence will also result in an extension of Anglo-American influence and the economic diktats of the Washington Consensus. In this case the question is how much Anglo-American influence will there be within the Mediterranean Union?
The E.U. is a shared body which support both Anglo-American and Franco-German interests. It is through America’s “special relationship” with Britain and NATO that America has a foothold in the European Union. However, the E.U. is still predominately managed by Paris and Berlin. Thus, the Mediterranean littoral will be brought largely under Franco-German influence when the E.U. model is fused onto the Mediterranean.
The mechanism and structure established by the extension of the E.U. in the Mediterranean will determine the level of Anglo-American influence within the Mediterranean littoral. If the E.U. creates an overlapping mechanism in the Mediterranean where the nations of the Mediterranean littoral are linked only directly with E.U. members bordering the Mediterranean and indirectly with other E.U. members, then Anglo-American influence will be much weaker than it would be in the case of full integration between the E.U. and Mediterranean. This type of relationship would greatly empower Paris and Berlin within the Mediterranean.
Hypothetically, this arrangement could exclude Britain, as well as America. The Mediterranean could strictly fall into the Franco-German orbit, but this seems to be an unlikely scenario. Anglo-American control and influence will be maximized if the Mediterranean is wholly amalgamated into the European Union. However, this could damage the E.U. and hurt Anglo-American and Franco-German interests for different reasons, including demographics, if it is not done at a proper pace. If amalgamation is not achieved gradually, the E.U. could face internal instability. In reality, it is in the interests of the Anglo-American and Franco-German sides to share the Mediterranean.
This is another case where cooperation with the Franco-German entente, is in the interest of both and Britain and America. To insure a strong Anglo-American role, NATO has been involved, and Israel has been integrated into the framework for a Mediterranean Union.
Israel’s role in this process also hinges upon its bilateral relationship with Turkey.
The role of Turkey as a Mediterranean country is considered pivotal in the creation of a “union in the Mediterranean region,” as one of its backbones. What has been created is an extensive network of relationships and links that will make the whole structure of a Mediterranean Union easy and quick to formalize. The far-reaching economic and military ties between Turkey and Israel will ensure that Israel is well integrated into the proposed Mediterranean entity.
Dual membership for Turkey within the E.U. and the Mediterranean Union, but without full E.U. benefits, would also benefit Anglo-American interests. This may explain why Britain and America publicly support the direct entry of Turkey into the European Union. The roles of Turkey and Israel in the Mediterranean are also topics that must be touched upon to themselves.
Establishing a Mediterranean Free Trade Zone and Sharing the Spoils of Libya’s Oil Wealth
Both the Franco-German and Anglo-American sides are sharing the spoils in Libya, one of the targets of threats of war through the “Global War on Terror.” After the fall of Baghdad in 2003, Libya surrendered peacefully to demands from the “Western Powers.” The Washington Consensus made its breakthrough into Libya.
Tripoli was on a blacklist of nations, which included Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. It was also in 2003 that construction of the Greenstream Pipeline was made to supply the E.U. with Libyan natural gas via a route running through the Mediterranean Sea to the Italian island of Sicily.
It seems just like yesterday when Libya was categorized as a “rogue state” and vilified as a supporter of international terrorism. Its status changed almost overnight with the opening up of its markets. A country’s economic policy is what determines its status in the eyes of Washington and London.
There have been no political or ideological changes in Libya nor has there been any change in leadership, but Libya is no longer seen as a rogue state. The only thing that has changes is that Libya has flung its doors open to U.S. and E.U. economic interests.
The economic, energy, and weapons deals signed with Libya in 2007 reveal the ultimate economic intent of the “Global War on Terror.” Moreover, Libya has committed itself to a program of “national reform.” The media has picked up on this, but fails to talk about the real shape of reform in Libya.
The reforms are being presented as merely “democratic reform.” In practice, Libya has also accepted to undertake a “free market” program of economic restructuring in accordance with the demands of the U.S., Britain, France, and Germany. Additionally, Colonel Qaddafi the ruler and Libya’s authority can not be challenged, which exposes the true cosmetic face of these so-called democratic reforms.
Moreover, the Barcelona Declaration of 1995 that calls for a Euro-Mediterranean Partnership stands in the backdrop of the neo-liberal economic reforms, which will open up the Libyan economy to foreign investors.
The Barcelona Declaration was intended to establish a European dominated free trade zone in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean region by 2010. Everything is on track, in regards to the objectives of the Barcelona Declaration. The U.S. Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA) is also a parallel to this. The E.U.’s Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), an aggressive free trade agreement being imposed under economic threats on former European colonies, also has similar templates in regards to the ACP States in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific.
Justifying ties to Libya: The Bulgarian Nurses and a Shameless E.U. Public Relations Campaign
It is no accident that a group of Bulgarian nurses were freed by Libya in connection with the visit of President Sarkozy while he was on a Mediterranean tour to talk about the establishment of the Mediterranean Union. The whole event was an E.U. public relations stunt. Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Libya on July 25, 2007 to sign five major deals with Libya just one day after his former wife, Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz, shuttled out of Tripoli on board a French presidential jet with the five Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor that France and the E.U. had negotiated for.
The Bulgarian nurse ordeal has been used as a justification for improving economic ties with Libya, a nation otherwise demonized as an international rogue, despite the E.U. claims of commercial relationships being tied to human rights. The whole affair was stage managed and was an attempt to hide the underlying economic interests that dictate foreign policy in the E.U. and America. At the time, it was also reported that Libya blackmailed the E.U. for economic benefits in regards to the freedom of the Bulgarian nurses. However, in reality it is the E.U. that benefiting from the economic arrangements with Libya and not the other way around.
The mainstream press in the E.U. attempted to make it look like President Sarkozy was acting on his own in regards to Libya and started calling him a maverick, but nothing could be further from the truth. The French government claimed that their business deals with Libya were part of an effort to bring Libya into the light of “respectability” and that human right issues were also discussed between the French President and Colonel Qaddafi. However, Colonel Qaddafi stated at UNESCO Headquarters, in Paris, that human rights were never even talked about between the French President and himself. This was during a highly reported five-day state visit made by Colonel Qaddafi to France where the Libyan leader was welcomed by President Sarkozy on December 10, 2007.
The freedom of the Bulgarian nurses also came after major Anglo-American arms and energy deals were announced with Libya. Both Anglo-American and Franco-German economic interests were being served in Libya. In May of 2007, in a state of irony, the British prime minister at the time, Tony Blair, announced a major Anglo-American arms and energy deal while visiting Libya and Colonel Qaddafi. The French, with the knowledge and support of their German partners, also announced an arms deal between the European Aeronautics and Defence Space Company (EADS) and Libya. France also announced a major nuclear deal with Libya. France, like Britain and the U.S., has coddled Libya in pursuit of economic interests and this should dispel for once and for all the mirage that the U.S. and the E.U. are defenders of democracy and human rights.
In a related event Colonel Qaddafi has also told African leaders that if plans for an African Union were delayed that Libya would divert billions of dollars worth of investments from the African continent to the Mediterranean region and become its most influential player. Pertaining to the Mediterranean Union Qaddafi also stated that the fates of Libya and North Africa are tied to Europe.
Exposing Paris and Berlin at their game: Germany’s role in the Mediterranean Union
It has been reported in the mainstream media that the weapons and nuclear agreements between France and Libya have upset Berlin, but German officials have denied this as untrue. Chancellor Angela Merkel has also claimed that France’s idea of a Mediterranean Union threatens the E.U. and its institutions. German leaders are playing a game of on-and-off-again opposition to Paris in regards to Libya and the Mediterranean Union. Berlin makes critical statements of French actions, but then denies them to create a shroud of confusion.
Media reports and Berlin’s statements are utterly false and intended to deliberately mislead the public. Germany had to approve the French deals with Libya, because EADS is a Franco-German company that has both private and governmental interests and representation from both Paris and Berlin. The contracts with Libya could never have been formalized without the okay of the German government.
Germany is fully involved in the creation of the Mediterranean Union, as are America and Britain. The hypocrisy of the whole act that is being played out in Paris, Berlin, and E.U. capital cities is part of a tactic to mislead the public opinion. In Britain, The Financial Times called attention to the fact that Angela Merkel really wants Germany and the E.U. to be fully involved in the creation of the Mediterranean Union: “Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, pointedly told France’s ruling UMP [Union pour un Mouvement Populaire/Union for a Popular Movement] party yesterday that the future stability of the Mediterranean region affected the whole European Union and that all 27 [E.U.] member states should be involved in the engagement process.”
The context of the German Chancellor’s speech was for the creation of something going beyond the Barcelona Process of 1995, which she called too “bureaucratic,” that would fully include all E.U. members. Frau Merkel emphasized that the Mediterranean was vital for Germany and northern E.U. members and not just France and Mediterranean E.U. members like Spain and Italy: “‘Germany wants to assume its responsibilities in the Mediterranean and we want to offer to all [E.U.] member countries the possibility to participate,’ she said. ‘We should have a reinforced co-operation [between the E.U. and Mediterranean]. I am convinced that all European countries are interested in this.’”
In her speech, Frau Merkel stated that she was convinced that all E.U. members would be interested in having roles in the creation of the Mediterranean Union, but this is an untruthful statement — Frau Merkel knows that the entire E.U. was slated from the start to be a part of the process. The issue is not about interest, but about a calculated long-term arrangement.
Nicolas Sarkozy has moved forward with the staged act of presenting a compromise by saying that Germany and any other non-Mediterranean E.U. members (e.g. Britain) that want to participate in the creation of the Mediterranean Union are welcome. This is all a complete act. This is part of the commencement of publicly making the Mediterranean Union into what it already was, which is an E.U. initiative.
It should also be noted that German representatives were also in West Africa in connection to the French initiatives in the Mediterranean region. The Germans are also preparing for the road ahead when the Mediterranean Union would economically link Africa to Europe and set the stage for further expansionism.
E.U. Declarations of support for the Mediterranean Union
The Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero, has also announced Spain’s support for the creation of a Mediterranean Union and for new migration laws during a meeting with Nicolas Sarkozy. Although it is not being tied to the creation of the Mediterranean Union, the rationale for a drive to establish new migration laws is precisely because of the Mediterranean Union and the influx of migrants that could arrive into the E.U. from the poorer countries of the Mediterranean. Italy has also signalled its support for the Mediterranean Union and new migration laws in the E.U. during the same meetings between Prime Minister Zapatero and President Sarkozy, which involved Prime Minister Prodi.
All the Mediterranean members of the E.U., also called the “Olive Group,” have also declared their support for the creation of a Mediterranean Union at a two-day conference (January 17-18, 2008) held in Paphos, Cyprus.The Cypriot Foreign Minister, Eros Kazakou-Marcoullis told the international press that the Mediterranean members of the E.U. fully back the creation of a Mediterranean Union: “We reaffirmed our support to all efforts which have as an objective the strengthening of the cooperation between European and Mediterranean countries and reiterated the importance of the Mediterranean region for the security, stability and prosperity of the European Union.”
The Annapolis Conference and the Arab-Israeli Conflict were also discussed in Paphos because of their deep relevance to the integration of the Arab World and Israel with the European Union. A forced agreement on the Arabs would pave the way for the political and economical restructuring of the Arab World. Without mentioning it directly, the Mediterranean Union has also been inferred to as a solution to the issue of unifying Greek and Turkish Cypriots by Gerhard Schröder (Schroeder), the former federal chancellor of Germany.
Homeschoolers Beware! Judge orders children into government education
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=58053
A ruling from an appeals court in California that a homeschooling family must enroll their children in a public school or "legally qualified" private school is alarming because of the way the court opted to order those results, according to a team of legislative analysts who have worked on homeschooling issues in California for decades.
The ruling, when it was released several days ago, sent ripples of shock through the homeschooling community.
WND has reported on the order handed down to Phillip and Mary Long over the education being provided to two of their eight children.
The decision from the 2nd Appellate Court in Los Angeles granted a special petition brought by lawyers appointed to represent the two youngest children after the family's homeschooling was brought to the attention of child advocates. The lawyers appointed by the state were unhappy with a lower court's ruling that allowed the family to continue homeschooling, and specifically challenged that on appeal.
Roy Hanson, chief of the Private and Home Educators of California, said the circumstances of the Long family left the court with the option of handling such a ruling for their particular circumstances in a juvenile court setting.
"Normally in a dependency court action, they simply make a ruling that will affect that family. It accomplishes the same thing, meaning they would force [the family] to place their minor children into school," he said.
Such rulings on a variety of issues always are "done in the best interests of the child" and are not unusual, he said.
But in this case, the court said went much further, essentially concluding that the state provided no circumstance that allowed parents to school their own children at home. "We find no reason to strike down the Legislature's evaluation of what constitutes an adequate education scheme sufficient to promote the 'general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence.' We agree … 'the educational program of the State of California was designed to promote the general welfare of all the people and was not designed to accommodate the personal ideas of any individual in the field of education,'" the ruling said.
Specifically, the appeals court said, the trial court had found that "keeping the children at home deprived them of situations where (1) they could interact with people outside the family, (2) there are people who could provide help if something is amiss in the children's lives, and (3) they could develop emotionally in a broader world than the parents' 'cloistered' setting."
Further, the appeals ruling said, California law requires "persons between the ages of six and 18" to be in school, "the public full-time day school," with exemptions allowed only for those in a "private full-time day school" or those "instructed by a tutor who holds a valid state teaching credential for the grade being taught."
Such a holding, if unchanged, could ultimately be used against the tens of thousands who currently are homeschooling in California by fulfilling the state's requirements to establish a private school in a home, and enrolling the family's children in that school, observers said.
For homeschoolers in California, Hanson said, "there may be everywhere from concern to panic, just based on not knowing what the ultimate results will be."
He said his group has worked to defeat similar arguments in the past, and because of those previous results, he wondered whether the court or the children's lawyers were pursuing some sort of "agenda" with the case.
"They either were trying to put on an agenda, or they were so frustrated they felt this was their only option," he said. But in either case, the decision is "not very sound."
The Home School Legal Defense Association, the world's premiere international advocacy organization for homeschoolers, emphasized that the ruling made no changes in California law regarding homeschooling at this time.
While the decision from the appeals court "has caused much concern among California homeschoolers," the HSLDA said, there are no immediate changes any homeschoolers need to address.
The group said it is looking at the background of the case to determine its "implications," and will be releasing its analysis soon.
The Longs earlier told WND they were considering an appeal to the state Supreme Court because of the impact of the order for their family, as well as the precedent that could be construed.
They have disputed with local officials over homeschooling and other issues for years, they said. In at least two previous decisions, courts affirmed their right to homeschool, they said.
The current case was brought by two attorneys who had been appointed by the state to represent the family's minor children in a dependency case stemming from accusations of abuse that resulted from the parents' decision to impose discipline on their children with spankings. The case actually had been closed out by the court as resolved when the lawyers filed their special appeal.
According to unpublished court documents, there also are in the past a series of other allegations that a family acquaintance molested one of the children as well as claims regarding physical punishment relating to one child's decision to disobey household rules about being out at night. Many of the allegations contained in the unpublished documents are, according to the court itself, disputed by different people involved.
But the results of the situation, until this point, always had been court rulings that affirmed the parents' right to homeschool their children.
Phillip Long told WND one of the early disputes arose some 15 years ago because his family was homeschooling with no "umbrella" organization. That's why the youngest children most recently had been working under an independent study program with Sunland Christian Academy, he said.
The court ruling, however, revealed a judicial dislike of that school, since the judges specifically ordered the children would not be allowed to participate in its programs.
Phillip Long also told WND his children had written to the court objecting to the attorneys' actions, without effect.
The appeals court words held echoes of similar ideas expressed by officials from Germany, where homeschooling has been outlawed since 1938 under a law adopted when Adolf Hitler decided he wanted the state, and no one else, to control the minds of the nation's youth.
Wolfgang Drautz, consul general for the Federal Republic of Germany, has said "school teaches not only knowledge but also social conduct, encourages dialogue among people of different beliefs and cultures, and helps students to become responsible citizens."
Phillip Long earlier told WND that he would be working on an appeal. He has re-confirmed that is one of his goals.
The appeals decision also rejected religious concerns.
The family's "sincerely held religious beliefs" are "not the quality of evidence that permits us to say that application of California's compulsory public school education law to them violates their First Amendment rights."
The father said he objects to the pro-homosexual, pro-bisexual, pro-transgender agenda of California's public schools, on which WND previously has reported.
"We just don't want them teaching our children," he told WND. "They teach things that are totally contrary to what we believe. They put questions in our children's minds we don't feel they're ready for.
"When they are much more mature, they can deal with these issues, alternative lifestyles, and such, or whether they came from primordial slop. At the present time it's my job to teach them the correct way of thinking," he said.
A number of groups already have assembled in California under the Rescue Your Child slogan to encourage parents to withdraw their children from the state's public school system.
It's because the California Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger worked together to establish Senate Bill 777 and Assembly Bill 394 as law, plans that institutionalize the promotion of homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism and other alternative lifestyle choices.
"First, [California] law allowed public schools to voluntarily promote homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexuality. Then, the law required public schools to accept homosexual, bisexual and transsexual teachers as role models for impressionable children. Now, the law has been changed to effectively require the positive portrayal of homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexuality to 6 million children in California government-controlled schools," said Thomasson.
Even insiders joined in the call for an abandonment of California's public districts. Veteran public school teacher Nadine Williams of Torrance said the sexual indoctrination laws have motivated her to keep her grandchildren out of the very public schools she used to support.
The Discover Christian Schools website reports getting thousands of hits daily from parents and others seeking information about alternatives to California's public schools.
WND reported leaders of the campaign called California Exodus say they hope to encourage parents of 600,000 children to withdraw them from the public districts this year.
The new law itself technically bans in any school texts, events, class or activities any discriminatory bias against those who have chosen alternative sexual lifestyles, said Meredith Turney, legislative liaison for Capitol Resource Institute.
There are no similar protections for students with traditional or conservative lifestyles and beliefs, however. Offenders will face the wrath of the state Department of Education, up to and including lawsuits.
"SB 777 will result in reverse discrimination against students with religious and traditional family values. These students have lost their voice as the direct result of Gov. Schwarzenegger's unbelievable decision. The terms 'mom and dad' or 'husband and wife' could promote discrimination against homosexuals if a same-sex couple is not also featured," she said.
Karen England, chief of CRI, told WND that the law is not a list of banned words, including "mom" and "dad." But she said the requirement is that the law bans discriminatory bias and the effect will be to ban such terminology.
"Having 'mom' and 'dad' promotes a discriminatory bias. You have to either get rid of 'mom' and 'dad' or include everything when talking about [parental issues]," she said. "They [promoters of sexual alternative lifestyles] do consider that discriminatory."
The California plan still is facing a court challenge on its constitutionality and a possible vote of the people of California if an initiative effort succeeds.
Report: Anti-War Judge Rejects Foster Teen's Bid to Join Marines
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,336008,00.html
A California judge rejected a foster teen's request for early enlistment with the Marine Corps — and a $10,000 signing bonus — reportedly on the grounds that the judge didn't approve of the Iraq war.
Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Marilyn Mackel denied 17-year-old Shawn Sage's request to join the military last October, according to a report in the Los Angeles Daily News.
"The judge said she didn't support the Iraq war for any reason we're over there," Marine recruiter Sgt. Guillermo Medrano of the Simi Valley U.S. Marine Corps recruiting office told the paper.
"She just said all recruiters were the same — that they 'all tap dance and tell me what I want to hear.' She said she didn't want him to fight in it."
Sage, a Simi Valley, Calif., resident, begged the anti-war judge for permission to join, according to the Daily News.
"Foster children shouldn't be denied [an] ability to enlist in the service just because they're foster kids," Sage told the paper. "Foster kids shouldn't have to go to court to gain approval to serve one's country."
Sage plans to join the Marines when he turns 18 in June and his case has prompted a Republican lawmaker to introduce a bill that would allow foster teens to enlist in the military without the express permission of a judge.
War game scenario - how one rocket could start the next Middle East War
http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_8420518
It begins with a single Qassam rocket, one of the thousands of homemade projectiles fired in recent years by the Islamic radicals of Hamas from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel. The rockets have made life nightmarish for many Israelis but have largely missed their targets. But this one gets "lucky": It smashes into an elementary school, wounding 40 children and killing 15.
The Israeli government, which had heretofore responded to the Qassams with airstrikes and small ground raids, cannot resist the nationwide demand for action. Within hours, tens of thousands of Israeli troops and hundreds of tanks are rushing into Gaza, battling house-to-house in teeming refugee camps. Just as swiftly, Palestinian officials accuse Israel of perpetrating a massacre and invite the foreign press to photograph the corpse-strewn rubble. The images flash around the Middle East on al-Jazeera TV and trigger violent demonstrations in Arab capitals.
Hezbollah, the radical Lebanese Shiite militia, then gets into the act, raining Katyusha rockets on northern Israel. But when Israeli warplanes bomb the Katyusha batteries, Syria leaps in, sending its commandos to retaliate by capturing key Israeli bunkers atop the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israel's counterattack succeeds only in precipitating a hailstorm of Syrian Scud-D missiles, some armed with chemical warheads, into Israeli cities. Then, just as Israeli planes are incinerating the main electricalplant in Damascus, the first of hundreds of Shehab-3 rockets, pre-targeted at Tel Aviv, lift off from Tehran.
Sound fantastical or too horrific to ponder? Not to Israeli intelligence analysts it doesn't. The Israeli military recently conducted a round of large-scale war games based precisely on this scenario. In some rounds, Israel managed to humble Hamas and Hezbollah while shooting down most of the Iranian and Syrian rockets with its own Arrow and Patriot antimissile systems. But other forecasts went far less well: Israel survives but barely, with its cities devastated and countless civilians killed.
This is the mess that will soon land in the lap of President Clinton, President Obama or President McCain. Despite the shadows of 9/11 and Iraq, the U.S. primary season thus far has been dominated by the economy. But it's a mistake to assume that the next presidency will be. Instead of a honeymoon, the new president could inherit a brush fire raging out of control in a volatile region where U.S. involvement has never been deeper. Would he or she merely convene the U.N. Security Council, or rush to Israel's defense? And how, in the event of a general Middle East war, would the president safeguard the woefully exposed U.S. forces in Iraq?
The Middle East will continue to be the source the gravest threats to U.S. security, whether in the long-term form of a nuclear-armed Iran or the short-term one of an unforeseen multistate war. So the candidates must be pressed about how they would handle a chain reaction in which events in Gaza suddenly engulf the entire region. To borrow an old slogan: It's the Middle East, stupid.
The possibility that a border scrap between Israelis and Palestinians could ignite a regional conflagration should not be too surprising. A very similar concatenation of events led to the most volcanic eruption in the region's modern history, irreparably convulsing the Middle East and carving many of the furrows that still destabilize it.
That conflict, too, began with Palestinian attacks into Israel, a series of Israeli reprisals and a mass clamoring for revenge. The countdown began just over 44 years ago, on New Year's Eve, 1964, when Palestinian guerrillas belonging to the Fatah faction crossed the Lebanese border to attack Israel. Though the infiltrators were intercepted, Fatah's leader, Yasser Arafat, declared the raid a heroic victory and dared Arab rulers to match his audacity.
Few could. The Arab world at the time was split between two warring camps: the socialist, pro-Soviet dictators in Egypt, Syria and Iraq and the conservative, pro-Western monarchs in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and elsewhere. Egypt's fiery leader, Gamal Abdul Nasser, gleefully branded King Hussein of Jordan a Zionist "whore," ratcheting up the tension by hinting that the kings were American lackeys. Despite the rhetoric, Arab rulers did not really want war with Israel. But Arafat's challenge left them little choice.
Nasser responded by ordering the Palestine Liberation Organization, originally established as an Egyptian propaganda tool, to launch its own cross-border attacks. The Israelis lashed back, blowing up Fatah's West Bank headquarters. Jordan accused Nasser of "hiding behind the skirts" of the U.N. peacekeepers deployed in the Sinai to separate Egypt and Israel. Mortified, Nasser ousted the U.N. forces on May 15, 1967, and closed a strategic Red Sea shipping route to Israeli vessels. Suddenly, Nasser was the champion of the Arab "street," hailed by huge demonstrations that demanded Israel's destruction. The Arab world closed ranks behind him. Shorn of international allies, Israelis were convinced they faced annihilation.
But then Israel struck first. On the morning of June 5, Israeli warplanes obliterated almost the entire Egyptian air force, and Israeli tanks rumbled through Gaza and Sinai. At the end of six days of fighting, Israel had nearly quadrupled the territories under its control, among them the West Bank, the Golan Heights and Gaza. A new era - and new sources of Middle East bloodshed - had emerged.
Much has since changed in the Middle East. The Cold War is largely forgotten, as is the 1960s enmity among most Arab regimes. Israel remains a powerhouse, with more high-tech companies than Western Europe, an ironclad alliance with the United States and (it's widely assumed) a nuclear arsenal. Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, now rules the West Bank as the head of a Palestinian Authority publicly committed to coexistence with the Jewish state.
But for all these transformations, the Middle East remains the same explosive context of conflict it was in the 1960s. The region is still bitterly divided - not between Arab nationalism and conservatism but between religious moderation and the surge of Islamist extremism spurred, in part, by the Six-Day War. Backed by Syria and Iran, a phalanx of terrorist groups threatens Israeli and Arab societies alike. Israel has peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan and is engaged again in peace talks with the Palestinians, but it is still an object of abomination for the overwhelming majority of Middle Easterners. And violence in Gaza - now run by a democratically elected Hamas government - can still spark turbulent demonstrations throughout the region's streets.
If anything, the Middle East is even more flammable today than in the 1960s because of the countless thousands of short- and long-range missiles in its armies' arsenals. These weapons vastly amplify the potential destruction of any military confrontation while slashing the amount of decision-making time that might be needed to avert all-out war. And modern weapons, including unconventional ones, make everything scarier. A conflict between Israel and Iran might not last six days but six hours, unleashing shock waves even more seismic than those of 1967.
Contemporary Middle Eastern leaders cannot afford to ignore these lessons. Neither can decision-makers - and would-be ones - in the United States. Though the waning Bush administration is focused on trying to reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty, shore up Iraq and flex its muscles at Iran, it should not downplay the danger that a seemingly limited border skirmish could rapidly escalate into a regional catastrophe.
Nor should Bush's heir. The next commander in chief may have to proceed directly from the inauguration to the Situation Room to try to defuse a Middle Eastern crisis of monumental dimensions. That moment could be a single Qassam away.
Hezbollah significantly rebuilding its military presence, includes 30,000 rockets
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080304/ap_on_re_mi_ea/un_lebanon_israel
Israel has said Hezbollah is rearming and has an arsenal that includes 10,000 long-range rockets and 20,000 short-range rockets in southern Lebanon, according to a report from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Ban's report to the Security Council, obtained by The Associated Press on Monday, did not confirm Israel's claim. But the U.N. chief reiterated his concern about Hezbollah's public statements and persistent reports pointing to breaches of a U.N. arms embargo, which bans weapons transfers to the militant Islamic group.
Ban also expressed concern at "the threats of open war against Israel" by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Nasrallah has accused Israel of trying to start a new war by assassinating a top Hezbollah commander and warned it would be a battle the Jewish state would lose. Israel has denied involvement in the Feb. 12 car bombing in Syria that killed Imad Mughniyeh.
The secretary-general's report focused on implementation of the U.N. cease-fire resolution that ended the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in August 2006. The resolution reiterates a call for the disarming of all militias and bans arms transfers to them.
"Reports of Hezbollah rearming are a cause of great concern, posing serious challenges to the sovereignty, stability and independence of Lebanon," Ban said.
He told the council he continues to believe that the disarmament of Hezbollah and other militias must be part of a Lebanese-led political process that would fully restore the government's authority throughout the country.
He expressed regret "that the persistent deterioration of the political climate and the prolonged deadlock" over the election of a new Lebanese president have made it impossible to deal with the disarmament issue.
In his last report to the council in late October, Ban alleged that Hezbollah had rearmed with new long-range rockets capable of hitting Tel Aviv and tripled its arsenal of C-802 land-to-sea missiles since the 2006 war.
He also drew attention to alleged breaches of the arms embargo and the transfer of sophisticated weapons from Iran and Syria — both strong backers of Hezbollah — across the Lebanon-Syria border.
Syria disputed the claim countering that the allegations of weapons smuggling are motivated by political rather than security considerations, Ban said, but Hezbollah's leaders have acknowledged on several occasions that their military capacity had been replenished since the war with Israel.
"I, therefore, remain concerned that this border remains vulnerable to such breaches, which would represent serious violations of the resolution and constitute a significant threat to the stability and security of Lebanon," he said.
After the 2006 war, a beefed-up U.N. force was stationed in south Lebanon, partially to keep Hezbollah from smuggling weapons into the area.
In Monday's report, Ban said, Israel maintains that Hezbollah "is significantly rebuilding its military presence" inside the U.N.'s area of operations. But he said U.N. and Lebanese forces have found no evidence so far of new infrastructure.
"In addition to information provided in previous reports, the government of Israel states that Hezbollah's arsenal includes some 10,000 long-range rockets, in addition to some 20,000 short-range rockets," the secretary-general said.
He said Hezbollah denies transferring weapons to the area where the U.N. force is deployed — a move that would violate the 2006 resolution.
Before the war, Israel estimates that Hezbollah had 13,000 rockets deployed. During the war, Hezbollah bombarded Israel with nearly 4,000 rockets. The rockets struck as far south as Hadera, 30 miles north of Tel Aviv.
Since the war, Nasrallah has boasted his group possesses an arsenal of rockets that can reach all of Israel, including the main metropolis of Tel Aviv. Shortly after the war, he said the guerrillas had 33,000 rockets.
Incompetence in Gaza
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0308/glick030408.php3
The Olmert-Livni-Barak government's latest exercise in saber-rattling has ended with customary haste.
On Sunday, Palestinian terror forces maintained their rocket and missile offensive against Israel, shooting 40 rockets, including upgraded Katyusha missiles at Sderot, Ashkelon, Netivot and surrounding areas. Whereas in 2005, 25,000 Israelis lived within Palestinian rocket and missile range from Gaza, the past week has shown that the number has expanded at least tenfold since then. Monday morning, the limited IDF ground component that was deployed in Gaza on Saturday abruptly suspended operations and pulled out. The pullout came just hours after senior IDF officials announced that the forces in Gaza were about to be augmented by additional forces and Defense Minister Ehud Barak told senior military commanders, "The time has come for action. Hamas is responsible and will pay a price."
It is obvious that in suspending Operation "Hot Winter" in Gaza, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government essentially crumpled in the face of pressure from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President George W. Bush. Sunday night the White House issued a press release demanding that Israel end its operations in Gaza and return to the negotiating table with Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas.
For their part, Abbas and his Fatah underlings have been outspoken in their support for Hamas's missile and rocket offensive against Israel. Sunday they organized joint Fatah-Hamas rallies in Hebron and Ramallah where rioters called for Israel's destruction, burned Israeli and American flags and then attacked IDF patrols and the security fence.
Truth be told, the US may have done Israel a favor preventing the escalation of operations. This is not because an offensive against Hamas's Iranian built war machine in Gaza is not vital. This is so because Operation "Hot Winter" was bereft of operational logic. Its strategic ends were unclear and, to the extent they were enunciated at all by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Barak, they bore no connection to the operations on the ground which were so limited in scope that they were incapable of achieving any long-term objective.
In one form or another, Olmert, Livni and Barak all said that the goal of Operation Hot Winter was to end the Palestinians' missile and rocket campaign against the Western Negev generally and against Ashkelon in particular. They intimated as well that the strategic objective of the campaign was to overthrow the Hamas regime in Gaza, and reinstall a Fatah government. Beyond that they said that they sought to kill or capture Hamas's leadership.
But the Olmert-Livni-Barak government gave the IDF insufficient tools to achieve these grandiose plans. They only allowed the IDF to deploy one infantry brigade and two partial tank battalions. They refused to expand the operation to a divisional sized force, which would still have been too small to achieve any significant or long-lasting results. The limited geographical scope of the IDF operation - in a 2-3 kilometer zone in northern Gaza - had no impact of Hamas's ability to continue to shoot off rockets and missiles whose ranges run from 5-25 kilometers. In short, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government enunciated operational and strategic objectives that it clearly had no intention of achieving.
Today the Gaza Strip is a terror state run by an Iranian proxy. Since Israel withdrew from Gaza in September 2005, Hamas and its terror partners in Fatah and Islamic Jihad have built terror armies along the model of Hizbullah. Hamas forces have received training in Iran, Syria and Lebanon. They have built up formidable arsenals of Katyusha and Kassam rockets as well as anti-tank missiles. And, according to Fatah and other sources, they have been augmented not only by Iranian, Syrian and Hizbullah operatives. Al-Qaida has also built up a presence in the area.
This combined force successfully overwhelmed Egyptian forces along Gaza's border with Egypt in January. Its current capacity has rendered extensive portions of southern Israel exposed to missile and mortar attacks. And unless it is routed militarily, its capabilities will only grow.
Israel has limited options to contend with the present and growing threat. For the Olmert-Livni-Barak government, the easiest solution would be to have someone else fight Hamas and its allies for Israel. But no such proxy force exists. Both the Americans and the Olmert-Livni-Barak government operate under the assumption that Fatah is a reasonable proxy. But experience has shown that this is not the case. From September 2005 when Israel withdrew its forces until June 2007 when Hamas ousted Fatah from power, Abbas and his US-trained forces did nothing to curb Hamas's growing power or limit Iran's growing control over Hamas. Confronted by Hamas forces last June, Fatah forces cut and ran rather than fight and those who remained were largely integrated into Hamas's burgeoning army. Since June, Fatah has shown no willingness to confront Hamas. And over the past week of Hamas's escalated missile offensive, Fatah stood foursquare with Hamas against Israel.
Then too, the notion that an international force could be deployed in Gaza to protect Israel from the growing terror army at its doorstep similarly lacks credibility. At no time has any international force - whatever its composition - ever been interested or capable of defending Israel against Arab terror or military offensives - whether from Gaza, from Lebanon or indeed from Egypt or Syria. And there is no reason to believe that this historic state of affairs will change significantly in the future.
In the absence of proxies, Israel has two options going forward. First, it can incapacitate Hamas and second it can try to deter Hamas. To incapacitate Hamas, Israel must launch an operation aimed at cutting off Hamas's logisitical supply lines through the border with Egypt. It must fight Hamas forces on the ground with the aim of defeating them, and it must kill or capture Hamas's senior and mid-level leadership. Given that like Hizbullah, Hamas and its state-sponsors will seek to regenerate any diminished capacities by rearming and promoting new leaders, these operations must be continuous. Consequently, to incapacitate Hamas, and so secure southern Israel, Israel requires a continuous military presence in the Gaza Strip.
The Olmert-Livni-Barak government has repeatedly rejected the redeployment of IDF forces to Gaza for any significant length of time. But they have never been called on to explain why the current state of affairs, in which an Iranian-proxy army with al-Qaida components is permitted to grow in close proximity to its civilian centers is preferable to such a long-term military presence in Gaza.
As to deterrence, it is unclear that it is possible to embrace deterrence as a strategy without first establishing a continuous military presence in Gaza. To succeed, deterrence must be based upon a credible threat to exact a cost for aggression that Hamas is unwilling to pay. In sending its leadership to ground while encouraging Gazans to confront IDF forces and "martyr" themselves, Hamas made clear that it views the sacrifice of its leadership as an unacceptable cost for its aggression. And yet, without forces on the ground in Gaza, the IDF lacks the intelligence necessary to conduct a wide-scale and successful assault on Hamas's leaders. So today, Israel lacks the capacity to base its operations in Gaza on a deterrence model.
There is an additional option which the government seems interested in adopting which is to conduct a new offensive every so often, when attacks foment a public outcry for action. It is far from clear though that this option is less costly either militarily or politically than maintaining a continuous presence in Gaza. Given Hamas's continuously expanding capabilities, each such operation will exact a large cost in the lives of IDF soldiers who will be required to repeatedly fight their way into Gaza. Moreover, each time Israel returns to Gaza it faces renewed international condemnation for taking action. A continuous presence in Gaza would not incur such costs. Both Rice and the Olmert-Livni-Barak government argue that a renewed military presence in Gaza is a poor option because it would render negotiations towards the establishment of a Palestinian state in Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem non-viable. But then, if those negotiations were successful, they would lead to the imposition of a Fatah-Hamas terror state which would not only not protect southern Israel from missile and rocket attack, it would expose central Israel to similar aggression.
It is unclear then, why the strategic aim they seek to achieve would leave Israel better off than an operation aimed at incapacitating Palestinian-Iranian terror forces and safeguarding Israeli territory from attack.
Other voices argue that a continuous Israeli presence along the Gaza-Egypt border would make it impossible for Israel to completely disengage from Gaza by enabling the Palestinians to link up with Egypt instead of Israel for electricity and other supplies. Israel, they claim, would still be perceived as responsible for Gaza and for the welfare of its Hamas-supporting population. These voices fail to ask a simple question: In whose eyes would Israel be considered responsible for Gaza's population?
The issue of Israel's responsibility under international law for the welfare of Gazans is an open one. Israel is not obligated to advance the aims of the Palestinians by accepting such responsibility. Beyond that, whether foreign governments perceive Israel as responsible for Gaza is not something that Israel can determine. The most it can do is seek to divest others of such a perception by explaining why it is not responsible for the welfare of Gaza's population.
By sending insufficient forces willy-nilly into Gaza over the weekend while conducting aerial bombings of empty buildings, Olmert, Livni and Barak showed that they have learned none of the lessons of the Second Lebanon War. Indeed, Barak showed that he has learned nothing from his experience as prime minister at the start of the Palestinian terror war in September 2000, when he responded to the lynching of Israeli reservists in Ramallah by bombing empty buildings and making empty threats to Yasser Arafat while begging him to take the Temple Mount.
How long will this unacceptable state of affairs be allowed to continue?
Israeli Warplanes Fly Over Beirut
http://www.newsmax.com/international/lebanon_israel/2008/03/07/78677.html
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Israeli warplanes flew over Beirut on Friday, the Lebanese army said, a day after a Palestinian gunman killed eight Jewish seminary students in Jerusalem.
"Two enemy Israeli warplanes" flew over the southern city of Tyre, Beirut and the port town of Jounieh, north of the capital, before heading back to the "occupied territories," the army said in a statement. The Israeli army said it knew of no activity in Beirut.
Hezbollah's Al-Manar satellite TV station said a previously unknown group called the Martyrs of Imad Mughniyeh and Gaza was responsible for the attack on the Jewish seminary _ a claim that could not be verified.
Mughniyeh, a senior Hezbollah commander, was killed in a car bomb in Syria last month. The militant Shiite group has blamed Israel for the assassination and vowed retaliation.
Israeli warplanes frequently fly over south Lebanon in what Israel says are reconnaissance missions. The overflights have drawn ground fire from Lebanese troops on at least two occasions since an Aug. 14, 2006, cease-fire ended a monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas.
They have occasionally flown over Beirut.
Three Israeli reconnaissance planes violated Lebanese airspace in southern Lebanon Thursday, the Lebanese army said in an earlier statement.
Terrorist massacres 8 Jerusalem Bible-students
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2361
Eight people were killed and 35 were wounded Thursday evening when a Palestinian Arab from Jerusalem opened fire in a seminary (yeshiva) in the capital.
Ambulances from around the capital were heard at about 8:45 PM racing to the Mercaz Harav Seminary in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood not far from the Knesset.
Police and soldiers also descended on the scene, from where reports came that two terrorists had been shot dead. Eyewtinesses said one of the killers was wearing an explosive ("suicide") belt but did not detonate it.
According to reports from the scene, an Arab wielding an AK 47 and a pistol gunmen burst into the seminary library where about 80 people were studying, and opened fire.
Terrified students fled the scene, some seeking cover in bomb shelters as the shooting continued.
One student told Sky News he had seen an armed man crouched on a roof near the seminary. The next minute a man walked into the building and began "spraying" the students with automatic fire.
The student said he shot the terrorist twice in the head at point blank range.
It was the first terrorist attack in Jerusalem in over a year.
Thousands Mourn Massacre at Jerusalem Seminary; Hamas Backtracks on Responsibility Claim
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,335730,00.html
Thousands gathered to mourn eight yeshiva students killed after a Palestinian gunman went on a shooting rampage at a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem, as Hamas backtracked on its claim of responsibility for the massacre.
Masses of mourners marched in funeral processions after a rabbi recited Hebrew psalms line by line, the crowd repeating them after him in memory of the dead. Israeli officials said the victims were between ages 15 and 19 except one, who was 26. They identified one of the slain as 16-year-old Avraham David Moses, an American citizen whose parents moved to Israel in the 1990s.
Shortly after Hamas Radio went on the air with the claim of responsibility, sources told FOX News that a few officials within the militant organization were backing away from the boast.
Ibrahim Daher, head of Hamas' al-Aqsa radio, said his station put out an earlier claim of responsibility prematurely.
Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas' military wing, confirmed the group was not taking responsibility for the attack — at least yet.
"There may be a later announcement. ... But we don't claim this honor yet," he said.
It was not immediately clear whether a militant group had orchestrated the shooting.
A Hamas radio presenter earlier had said the group's military wing had "promised a jolting response" to the Israeli offensive, and called on believers to "celebrate this victory against the brutal enemy."
Israel slapped a closure on the West Bank and beefed up security and emergency forces around Jerusalem and other areas in the wake of the shooting, the first major attack in Jerusalem in four years and the deadliest in Israel since a homicide bomber killed 11 people in Tel Aviv on April 17, 2006.
The attack came on the heels of an Israeli offensive on Gaza that Palestinian officials say killed more than 120. The campaign targeted militants who have been barraging southern Israel with rockets. Four Israelis have also been killed in fighting since last week.
Some Israeli lawmakers called on their government to break off peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' moderate, West Bank-based government, but an Israeli official said the negotiations would continue.
Israel will push ahead with talks "so as not to punish moderate Palestinians for actions by people who are not just our enemies but theirs as well," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the government had yet to make an official announcement.
Israeli police on Thursday night took three remaining brothers and their father into custody for questioning. The 25-year-old gunman, who was shot and killed during the attack, was identified as Alaa Abu Dheim of east Jerusalem; his fiance was detained by Israeli police on Friday morning.
The family of Abu Dheim said he had carried out the attack on the seminary, a prestigious center of Jewish studies identified with the leadership of the Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank. They described him as intensely religious but said he was not a member of a militant group and had planned to get married in the summer.
Sources told FOX News he called his sisters on Thursday night just to see how they were doing.
Abu Dheim had been transfixed in recent days by the news of bloodshed in Gaza, said his sister, Iman Abu Dheim.
"He told me he wasn't able to sleep because of the grief," she said.
Initial reports had said Abu Dheim had been in prison, but FOX News learned this is not accurate.
Abu Dheim reportedly drove a shuttle bus for Arab students, not students from the Jewish religious school that was attacked.
His cousin, who was not identified, said there is "no one to help us but God. ... We don't know what got into his mind. He never spoke about Gaza."
Abu Dheim's family set up a mourning tent outside their home and hung green Hamas flags along with one yellow flag of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
Israeli defense officials said the gunman came from Jabel Mukaber in east Jerusalem, where Palestinian residents hold ID cards giving them freedom of movement in Israel, unlike Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Israeli Public Security Minister Avi Dichter told mourners that Arabs in east Jerusalem who have been involved in militant activity should be expelled to the West Bank.
Mark Regev, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman, said that the shooting almost certainly had been organized in the West Bank. He would not confirm that Israel had reached a decision to continue peace talks, but did not deny the other official's statement that negotiations would go on.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the attacker walked through the Mercaz Harav yeshiva seminary's main gate and entered the library, where witnesses said some 80 students were gathered. He carried an assault rifle and pistol, and opened fire with both weapons.
Students scrambled to flee, jumping out of windows as the gunman fired. Holy books drenched in blood littered the floor. Rosenfeld said at least six empty bullet clips were found on the floor.
David Simchon, head of the seminary, said the students had been preparing a celebration for the new month of the Jewish calendar, which includes the holiday of Purim.
"We were planning to have a Purim party here tonight and instead we had a massacre," he told Channel 2 TV.
A seminary graduate who is an army officer and lives nearby rushed into the seminary with his weapon and killed the gunman, Simchon told Israel Radio.
"He saw the terrorist shooting, and with amazing resourcefulness he went into one of the rooms and managed to kill him," he said.
The seminary serves some 400 high school students and young Israeli soldiers, and many of them carry arms.
Jewish seminarians gathered outside the library and screamed for revenge, shouting, "Death to Arabs," while in Hamas-controlled Gaza thousands of Palestinians celebrated in the streets.
Abu Dheim's family set up a mourning tent outside their home and hung green Hamas flags along with one yellow flag of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Family members said several relatives had already been taken for questioning by Israeli police.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who called the attack an "act of terror and depravity," told Abbas in a phone call Friday that she would do everything in her power to restore calm as soon as possible, said Abbas aide Nabil Abu Rdeneh, an aide to Abbas.
Abbas, who condemned the seminary attack, suspended negotiations this week because of the spike in violence in the Gaza Strip, but later backed down under pressure from U.S. Rice, who was in the region to push the talks forward.
Sderot Shaken by Persistent Rocket Fire
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/335101.aspx
Since 2001, Islamic terrorists have fired thousands of rockets into the Israeli town of Sderot. CBN News visited the town to find out what life is like on the front lines of Israel's battle with radical Islam.
In Hebrew, Israelis call it "seva adom." In English it's called "code red." It's the alarm that sounds when an incoming rocket is on its way from the Gaza Strip. After the alarm sounds, the people of Sderot have fifteen seconds to find shelter before the rocket hits.
For more than seven years, life for the people in Sderot has been like playing Russian roulette. They don't know when the next rocket may fall or where it will land. The human toll has been enormous.
CBN News spoke with Havar Gad, a wife and mother of three. While her 9-year-old son prepared tea and coffee, his mother told us what life is like in Sderot.
"The children here are in stress. Children here sleep with their parents; not only in the same bed but between the parents. It's destroyed the private life. It's destroyed everything in your life," she said.
In fact, just as we stepped inside her home - the code red alarm sounded.
"Come inside please!" she shouted.
We rushed into the safest part of the house, turned on our camera and waited.
Rockets through the Soul
After the rocket landed, Havar took some valium. She's been on tranquilizers for months. On Feb. 13, a kassam rocket hit Havar's home and blew a hole in her ceiling.
"It hurt you financially. It hurt you mentally. You saw how many tablets I take," she said. "What happens to make me shake. I'm not shaking because the tablets start to work. I'm going to psychologist once a week."
Hagar Aloni serves as a social worker in Sderot. She helps comfort a town suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.
"It's like an earthquake. You can't control it. You can't know whenever it comes. It's very hard to describe it to people who didn't live in a war zone," Aloni said. "Families are falling apart. Because for so long the families are holding themselves. The parents are trying not to show their children that they're having problems as well. But now a days they can't hold it any more."
Increased divorces, sicknesses, even miscarriages are some of the effects from the stress endured by the people of Sderot.
"It was like a big boom. I know, don't think, I know for the first seconds I was unconscious," Aloni said.
On January 15, a kassam rocket hit Guet Aragon's house with her and her two children inside. When shrapnel from the blast pierced her head, her son took a look at his mother.
"He's like Mommy, Mommy, blood, blood, blood! He was so afraid to see me like this," Aragon said.
What he saw was his mother's face covered in blood. An AP photographer snapped a picture of Guet just after the bomb hit. Her face seemed to capture the seven years of Sderot's suffering.
"It's my soul being hurt, like the kassam would hit me in my heart, me and my children," she said.
Guet and Sderot will never be the same.
"From that day everything was stopped. I can't work now and the children are frightened more, and everything you say to those children, 'it's okay, it will be okay,' they don't believe," she said. "They're just afraid, they don't sleep and all over Sderot, all the children are like that. The older people are crying all the time. It's not normal to live like this."
Living in the Shadow of Death
Our host, Havar Gad, agrees.
"Children here talk about death a lot. Death. Death. He told me, 'I'm too young to die. I don't want to die,'" she said.
"He tells me, if one of the rockets kills you, I have to sit in your Sheva. It's for the Jewish, if someone dies, you sit in Sheva," she said. "You don't know how to answer. What to tell him. What to promise him. That I won't die from the rocket?"
But it wasn't supposed to be this way.
In August of 2005, Israel completely pulled out of the Gaza Strip. Both the Israeli government and Palestinian Authority promised the so-called "disengagement" would bring peace and quiet.
It did not. Now, one third of the population of Sderot has left. But Guet and Havar plan to stay.
"I'm still here and I'm going to stay. It's not that I'm not afraid, I'm terrified," Guet said. "But you know, I'm born and raised here. My husband also, and my children, too. I love this place. It's hard, It's very hard. But it's harder to think that's what they want us to do. And I don't know, to let them to win. It feels bad to think that they will beat us."
Havar said, "Last week I talk with my little sister and she told me, 'Rent a house in Ashkelon.' I said the rocket comes to Ashkelon. So, where do I go? To Ashdod? Rockets fall in Ashdod, too. All the time, they are saying they won't relax until they destroy all Israel," she said.
"So where back? To the ghetto?" she added.
Without a major Israeli incursion to take over the Gaza Strip, it's unlikely the rockets will stop. Until then, the people of Sderot will watch and wait for the next siren and the next rocket.
Suffering without end
http://www.stangoodenough.com/?p=113
Yet again, on Thursday night, a knife was thrust deep into the heart of the Jewish people, robbing eight young men of their lives, and hundreds of their loved ones of their joy.
I was putting my children safely to bed when Jerusalem began to sound with siren screams as tens of ambulances converged from around the city.
It has been more than a year since the last major terrorist attack in the capital. I looked at my wife, she looked at me, and we knew.
Late into the night we stayed up, jumping from Israeli to international television stations to follow the story that was shaking the land.
The lifeblood on the seminary library floor had not even congealed before the media had sliced and diced the murderous event, filing it away as an unsurprising and even justifiable response to Israel’s self-defense actions against the “Palestinian” terrorist attacks from the Gaza Strip.
Particularly galling were the comments of Israeli leftwing journalist Danny Rubinstein who, in an interview on Sky News, blamed the massacre, not on the Arabs who incited, inflicted and applauded it, but on the Jews who were “occupying” Arab [sic] lands and “indiscriminately” and “criminally” killing “innocent” Arabs.
Self-hatred is a disease that infects the minds of especially left-wing/liberal Jews, making them some of the worst antisemites around.
Misinformation and rumors flew thick and fast around the city. First there were no fatalities, and then there were many. First the attack occurred in a dining room where students were eating, and then it occurred in a library where students were studying. There were two terrorists, but then there was one. A second Arab wearing a “suicide” bombing belt was on the loose - but that turned out to be false.
Other people stayed awake late into the night. People? Human beings? It was hard to see them in that light as they prostrated themselves in Gaza’s mosques, then leaped to their feet in joyous praises, thanking Allah for the “heroic” deed carried out by the killer of Bible-studying kids.
This morning, waves of grief and anger washed over Jerusalem as the eight, shrouded bodies - seven teenagers and one 26-year-old - were laid out on benches in the sun. Thousands gathered outside the seminary, children peering in disbelief at the bullet-peppered windows, as rabbis and officials eulogized the dead.
Their words were heart-rending and, I pray, heaven-rending too.
Rabbi Yaakov Shapira, the head of the yeshiva, fought tears as he spoke:
“This massacre is the continuation of the 1929 massacre [in Hebron] and the blood of the prophet is still boiling. … The murderers are the Amalek of our day, coming to remind us that Amalek has not disappeared, just changed its appearance.
“We are all in need of mercy, the entire country. The time has come for all of us to understand that an external struggle is raging, and an internal struggle, and everyone believes the hour has come for us to have a good leadership, a stronger leadership, a more believing leadership,” he said.
“Pray for all of us and give good counsel to the families, to the anguished friends.”
Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar was weeping too:
“We have paid with our best boys, who were sitting by their talmuds … torah was their entire world, they are the roses that have been picked … and God will have mercy on us for their merit.
“You should know, dear families,” he said, addressing those who were so freshly bereaved, “that this is a mourning of the entire house of Israel, as one person and one heart crying as one for the dreadful calamity that has befallen us.”
Addressing the crowd and the Almighty, Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski cried:
“Lord, nations have invaded your land, desecrated your holy hall, eight of our sweet loved ones, may God avenge their blood, who only yesterday were living amongst us, are no longer with us. Their lives were severed by lowly murderers … but the murderer did not wish to target them alone, but rather each and every one of us, each and every resident of the holy city of Jerusalem.
“For many years our enemies have been trying to ruin our lives, to harm us as much as they can. Jerusalem has paid heavily in blood, and the long long list was joined last night by our eight sons.”
Another rabbi and school headmaster, Yerachmiel Weiss, spoke in a voice described as breaking with emotion and tears:
“God is just, and His ways are just… We have questions; but the questions are so difficult, so difficult… How is it possible to eulogize one Torah scholar on Rosh Chodesh Adar? But two and three, and four, and five…?? Your ways are so hidden, Master of the Universe! … In Adar, we increase joy - look how much joy You gathered to Heaven! They were in the midst of studying Torah, such joy, such purity… We have been left with such a hole… I just want to tell You, Master of the Universe, what great people You took: Yehonadav - he gave [nadav, in Hebrew] so much; what purity and simplicity… You took Yochai from us - he lives [chai] in God, what Torah study he did; even while they were setting up for the Purim party, he came to learn Torah… You took Segev Pniel of the Avichayil family - what a family, and what valour [chayil] in Torah! … You took Yehonatan [meaning “G-d gave”] - what prayer, what Torah, what beauty… You took our dear Avraham David - just two days ago I had a long talk with him in his room - what knowledge he had, what integrity, what music he gave us with his Torah reading… and the youngest, Neriah - the candle of G-d, his light will be missing from us…”
As the bodies were taken away to be buried in their hometowns across Israel, analysts were warning that Israel could be on the verge of another “intifada” or violent Arab uprising, like the one that began in 2000, and took the lives of over a thousand Israelis.
As I write this, the Hamas organization that controls Gaza took credit for the massacre. The question on everyone’s mind now is how will Israel respond?
May it do so in a manner respectful of the spilled blood of these young men, and in a way that will deal a devastating blow to those who would murder more Jews.
It will take a little time, but may the Spirit of God comfort all who mourn in Zion today, console them, give them beauty for the ashes they have been left with, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness that weighs them down tonight.
“For I will turn their mourning to joy,
Will comfort them,
And make them rejoice rather than sorrow.”
(Jeremiah 31:13)
Israel, I am SO proud of you
http://www.stangoodenough.com/?p=112
It will draw criticism from anti-Israel and pro-Israel readers, but I need to say this: Israel, I am SO proud of you. Please don’t take offense, but as a follower of the One who teaches love of enemies and the extension of mercy to those who hate and spitefully misuse us, I am left dumbstruck and even ashamed at the way you outshine my so-called Christian world.
Of course, I can (and I’m afraid I too often have to) strongly criticize your leadership because it appears to be falling over backwards to cater to world opinion and to pacify Israel’s enemies, almost always at the expense of their own people.
Sometimes the blindness of those you elect is staggering to me, and but for my faith in your God I would be tempted to give in to despair and at times even resign myself to your national demise. In the words of Bob Dylan: “When you gonna wake up?!”
But I am writing this to praise your leaders, not to castigate them.
This morning I read three official statements by Israeli officials in response to the outpouring of antisemitism and hypocrisy that greeted Israel’s fully justified and incomparably careful response to the genocidal efforts of the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza.
Hardly anyone will get to read these; even fewer will report them, so I am reproducing them here in full.
First: The response of Israel’s Foreign Ministry to reports by so-called human rights organizations slamming Israel for the difficult humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip:
The government of Israel respects the activities of a wide range of international NGOs in the Palestinian Authority and in the Gaza Strip. The government maintains a constant dialogue with the majority of these organizations, including most of those signed on this statement.
Unfortunately, and not for the first time, these organizations fail to face the reality and sequence of events leading to the deteriorating situation in the southern regions of Israel, as well as in the Gaza Strip. If only the Palestinians chose to cease their pointless and indiscriminate firing of rockets and missiles against hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians, the entire region would return to a normal routine in which Palestinians and Israelis could once again enjoy their daily lives.
As stated to these organizations time and time again by the Israeli government, they should point their criticism towards the Hamas terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip, and not against the State of Israel.
Second: The response by the Coordinator of Government Activities in Samaria and Judea to the report by so-called human rights organizations damning Israel for the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza:
Hamas responsibility
The Gaza Strip was taken over violently and illegally by the Hamas terror organization. All possible existing humanitarian allocations are utilized by Hamas. Hamas takes advantage of the humanitarian crossings, using them to send terrorists to attack Israeli civilians, while at the same time targeting the very crossings that enable the entrance of humanitarian aid for the Palestinian population in Gaza.
Despite this, Israel remains committed to the humanitarian effort in the Gaza Strip, and acts accordingly.
Primary responsibility for all occurrences inside the Gaza Strip since the Israeli withdrawal and dismantling of all settlements there is the Hamas terror organization, which should answer to criticism.
Shortage of medications
At the request of the international community, 84 donations were authorized since the beginning of the year. Hamas takes control of these donations and instead of transferring them to hospitals as intended, transfers them to its institutions for its own purposes.
To date, no medicines or medical equipment have been refused entry to the Gaza Strip. On the contrary, all medical supplies are given priority. The State of Israel is not responsible for the funding of medical supplies in the Gaza Strip.
Electricity
The supply of electricity to the Gaza Strip was not reduced. The breakdown of supply of electric current shows the opposite to be true:
From Egypt: 17 MW
Gaza power plant: 60 MW
From Israel: 214 MW
Israel assisted with the transfer of transformers for the power plant into Gaza, and with the entrance of foreign technicians for maintenance work on other transformers.
Only two weeks ago, the power grid in Gaza was repaired. Everything connected to it, such as pumping stations and sewage pumps, were in working order. The repairs were carried out under Hamas sniper fire, which necessitated use of protected vehicles and working at night.
Fuel
The fuel issue is also the responsibility of the Hamas. It is unclear why the Hamas does not divert the fuel entering the Strip for use by ambulances, water pumps and other humanitarian requirements. The amount of fuel entering the Strip is sufficient for all humanitarian needs, and has the full support of the Supreme Court. Current data clearly shows that that the quantity transferred exceeds basic needs by a factor of 3:1.
The transfer of fuel is also done under fire. Only three days ago (Monday, 3 March 2008), a fuel truck coming from Nahal Oz to the Strip was targeted by snipers.
The only logical conclusion to this is that the Hamas is diverting the fuel entering the Gaza Strip for its own use and for terrorism.
Sewage
Israel invests a great deal of effort in transferring cement and pipes for rehabilitation and development of the sewage system in the Gaza Strip. The Hamas, on the other hand, takes these materials and uses them to manufacture Kassam rockets.
Health
Israel continues to allow the entrance of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip into Israel to undergo treatment at Israeli hospitals. During 2007, 14,000 Palestinian patients and their escorts entered Israel for medical treatment. This amount constitutes 90% of all requests for medical treatment, each of which is checked in its own right.
This issue is also exploited by Hamas members, who attempt to gain entrance to Israel, ostensibly to receive medical treatment but actually to carry out a terror attack against Israeli civilians.
Summary
There is no other country in the world whose border crossings, used by diplomats, NGO employees and for the transfer of medical supplies and equipment, food and other goods for the civilian population, are constantly under fire. Despite this, Israel continues to allow the flow and transfer of aid.
The international community should point the accusing finger at the party responsible for the shooting at the crossings, the Hamas terror organization. It is unfortunate that they continue to target the crossing, whose only purpose is to channel the humanitarian aid to the population in the Gaza Strip.
And third: The March 6 response of Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Itzhak Levanon, to a resolution passed by the so-called Human Rights Council condemning Israel for the misery in Gaza:
Mr. President, I cannot compete with the exaggerations, distortions and inaccuracies I have heard here today. I must admit that I don’t have such a fertile imagination, and am unable to point a rhetorical picture which doesn’t reflect reality. What, yes, I can do is to tell you and the council the truth, the simple truth.
The truth is, that the Hamas terrorists took over the Gaza Strip by force, and established an irredentist entity. That, they have smuggled lethal weapons into this territory with the sole purpose to kill Israelis. That, since the beginning of this year, in only two months, they have fired 671 missiles at civilians, women and children. That, they received these missiles from countries in the Middle East, such as the Iranian-made 122mm Grad missile. That, Hamas is committing war crimes and collectively punishing a population of a quarter of a million citizens living in Ashkelon, Sderot, the Negev and Netivot. That, they call for the physical destruction of my country and translate these words with deeds. That, they brought Al-Qaeda to the Gaza Strip, a fact confirmed by the President of the Palestinian Authority. Mahmoud Abbas, in the London El Hayat newspaper on 27 February 2008.
The truth is that 50% of the population of Sderot suffers from anxiety and stress. That, more than half of the juvenile population endures sleeping disorders. That, the children of southern Israel are screaming “I want to live.” That, Israel has left no stone unturned in our attempts to alert the international community that the situation is untenable. That, we have knocked on the door of every embassy and every chancellery. And the world remained silent.
The truth is, that in the 12 resolutions regarding the Palestinian-Israeli situation that have been passed by this Council, not one has made even passing mention of the relentless aggression against Israel. Not only of them has called explicitly to halt the deluge of Kassam rockets and Grad missiles. Not one of them attempted to recognize that Palestinians do not have a monopoly on suffering; not one of them acknowledged that the children of Israel have the same right to safety as Palestinian children. Not one of them attempted to empathize with the cries of an Israeli mother protecting her children, or the fear and trauma experienced while running to a bomb shelter, know that only 30 seconds separates you from death.
Mr. President, Israel will not be intimated by critical words of one-sided resolutions. We have the fundamental right to live and the essential right to self-defense. It is our obligation to protect our citizens and we will do so. The passage of yet another resolution will not waive the problem, and will not bring stability to the region. The solution, Mr. President, is deceptively simple: Hamas aggression must stop immediately. The firing of missiles must terminate completely. When the Palestinian permanent observer takes the floor, I wonder on behalf of whom is he acting? Is it on behalf of his President Abbas, who seeks peace and stability with Israel? Or does he defend the Hamas terrorists who spread suffering and desolation?
Mr. President, Another routine resolution does not show temerity. A country making patronizing statements at the High Level Segment does not demonstrate strong moral fiber. A true show of courage would be displayed if the members of this Council would look with objective eyes, would think in a non-selective way, and would decide impartially. Yet, because of the self-serving members of the OIC and Arab Group who hold a majority can block any courageous steps, that is unlikely to happen here. For those who constantly ask why we do not engage with the Council more often, it is precisely because of circumstances such as this.
Were it up to me to respond to the outrageous and glaringly antisemitic resolutions and reports of these fraudulent “rights” groups I’d be tempted to limit myself to two, unprintable words. Instead I will direct three to where they rightly belong: Kol Hakavod Israel.
Tough Times for Terrorists and the Despots Who Back Them
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,335970,00.html
Washington, D.C. — On January 28, Abu Laith al-Libi, No. 3 in Al Qaeda, was killed by a missile strike in Pakistan. Two weeks later, Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror-chieftain, Imad Mugniyah, met his demise in Damascus when his car exploded. Then, on March 1, Raul Reyes, second-ranking commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), was killed in Ecuador. Three days later, Ali Saleh Nabhan, the al Qaeda “mastermind” of the 1998 attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania was killed by a missile strike in Somalia.
Despite ideological disparities and geographic separation, all these terrorists were wanted for murdering and kidnapping American citizens. They had all benefited from the patronage and protection of dictators and warlords. All were tracked down through patient, persistent intelligence work. Their deaths demonstrate contemporary relevance of Ronald Reagan’s maxim following the capture of the terrorists who hijacked the Achille Lauro: “You can run, but you can’t hide.”
Given the dramatic demise of these terror-leaders, it should also be apparent that those who provide refuge and support for terrorists will eventually be found out. That’s a lesson that Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez ought to heed. He has long provided refuge and safe-passage for the FARC and he’s now threatening Colombia for exercising its inherent right of self-defense against an international terror organization that has killed thousands of Colombians and currently holds more than 700 hostages — including three Americans.
Last Saturday, just hours after Mr. Chavez talked by telephone with Mr. Reyes, the Colombian Armed Forces and National Police raided a FARC sanctuary two miles across the Ecuadorian border. During the operation, Colombian commandos killed Reyes and nearly two-dozen other FARC operatives. The Colombians also seized a treasure-trove of intelligence on the terror organization’s internal and international connections and contacts. The computers, records and documents seized in the raid reveal extraordinary complicity by the Chavez regime in sustaining and supporting the FARC.
In the aftermath of the raid, Ecuador’s socialist president Rafael Correa ordered 3,200 soldiers to the Ecuador-Colombia border, recalled Ecuador’s ambassador to Bogota and expelled the Colombian ambassador from Quito. Mr. Chavez, as he does every Sunday, took to the airwaves in Caracas, promising, “Ecuador can count on Venezuela for whatever it needs, in any situation.” He then announced and that he was ordering “ten additional battalions, tanks, and war planes” to the Venezuelan frontier and baldly stated, “This could be the start of a war in South America.”
That’s just nonsense. Neither the pitifully outfitted Ecuadorian or Venezuelan militaries are capable of conducting operations against the well trained, equipped and combat experienced Colombian armed forces. A former intelligence officer told me in the aftermath of the Chavez bluster: “The Venezuelan military can’t go on a camp out without a caterer.”
Another old friend — a former military officer with long and current contacts in the region — put it this way: “Chavez is trying to distract the Venezuelan people from their disastrous economic straits — despite record prices for petroleum — and divert the international community from focusing on what’s in the captured FARC computer records.” As for the troop deployments, “any Venezuelan soldiers ordered to the border region will be there to make sure that FARC founder Manuel Marulanda Velez — ‘Tirofijo’ — doesn’t get ‘taken out’ by the Colombians like Reyes was last week.”
U.S. DEA agents have long suspected that Tirofijo — now 77 and believed to be ill, is being protected in Venezuela. Though Mr. Chavez rejects charges that he is providing refuge to the much-wanted terrorist, e-mail exchanges in the captured computers cast serious doubt on his regime’s denials.
Having now seen some of these files, there is much to substantiate serious concern in Venezuela — and elsewhere — about what Mr. Chavez and his friends in the FARC have been up to. The captured computers provide details of long-term financial connections between Mr. Chavez and the FARC leadership; records of drug transactions connections; and conversations with American emissaries who assure that “Obama will be the next U.S. president.” There is even a reference to FARC obtaining 50 kilograms of radioactive material.
The record also shows that while Mr. Chavez was portraying himself as an “honest broker” in negotiating the release of hostages, the real goal was to obtain “belligerent status” for the terrorist organization. Diplomats at the UN and the Organization of American States who have criticized the Uribe government in Bogota for last week’s raid into Ecuador ought to carefully weigh the evidence before granting moral equivalence to a raid against a terror group and the overthrow of a democratically elected government.
Commander Claims Al Qaeda Working Harder to Attack U.S.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,335908,00.html
Al Qaeda terrorists may be plotting more urgently to attack the United States to maintain their credibility and ability to recruit followers, the U.S. military commander in charge of domestic defense said Thursday.
Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, chief of the U.S. Northern Command, also told reporters he has not seen any direct threats tied to the U.S. presidential elections. But he said it would be rash to think that such threats are not there.
"We need only to look at Spain and see that they're certainly willing to try to do something that is significant that could affect an election process," Renuart said. "I think it would be imprudent of us to let down our guard believing that if there's no credible threat that you know of today, there won't be something tomorrow."
While he said that U.S. authorities have thwarted attacks on a number of occasions, he said terrorist cells may be working harder than ever to plot high-impact events. He did not point to any specific intelligence that authorities have received but said the "chatter" they are hearing "gives me no reason to believe they're going to slow down" in their efforts to target the U.S.
"If an organization like that is to maintain credibility and continue to grow more of its extremists, it has to show tangible results," Renuart said. "So I think there may be a certain sense of urgency among that organization to have an effect. So it would tell me that they're trying harder."
Of the more than a dozen daily events that Northern Command responds to — ranging from natural disasters to threats — two or three may have the potential to be terrorist incidents, he said.
The chatter, which included public audio and video tapes released on the Internet by Al Qaeda leaders, suggests that they are looking for a way to have a big impact again, he said. Pressed for details, he said the chatter was more common but "whether that's louder or more ominous, I'm not sure I'm ready to draw that conclusion."
He did, however, repeat his assertion — which he first made last July — that he believes there are al Qaeda cells or sympathizers within the United States.
President Bush, in a speech, also said the United States remained under threat from terrorists. Marking the fifth anniversary of the creation of the Homeland Security Department, Bush said that in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks "it was hard to imagine that we would reach this milestone without another attack on our homeland."
Yet he said, "On this anniversary, we must also remember that the danger to our country has not passed. Since the attacks of 9/11, the terrorists have tried to strike our homeland again and again. We've disrupted numerous planned attacks — including a plot to fly an airplane into the tallest building on the West Coast and another to blow up passenger jets headed for America across the Atlantic Ocean."
Bush said the lesson is clear: "The enemy remains active, deadly in its intent — and in the face of this danger, the United States must never let down its guard."
Asked about the terror threat, Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said, "There continues to be no credible information telling us about an imminent threat to homeland at this time."
Last July, U.S. intelligence analysts, in a threat assessment, concluded that al Qaeda has rebuilt its operating capability to a level not seen since just before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The report said the terror network has regrouped along the Afghan-Pakistan border, but it also noted that officials knew of no specific credible threat of an attack on U.S. soil.
About the same time, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff raised eyebrows when he said he had a "gut feeling" that the United States faced a heightened risk of attack.
APOSTACY--Vatican, Muslims, to establish permanent dialogue
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/vatican.muslims.to.establish.permanent.dialogue/17209.htm
The Vatican and Muslim leaders agreed on Wednesday to establish a permanent official dialogue to improve often difficult relations and heal wounds still open from a controversial papal speech in 2006.
A joint statement said the first meeting of "The Catholic-Muslim Forum" will take place on November 4-6 in Rome with 24 religious leaders and scholars from each side.
Pope Benedict will address the group, the statement said.
The announcement came after a two-day meeting at the Vatican with five representatives of Muslims who had signed an unprecedented appeal to the Pope to begin a dialogue.
"We emerged with a permanent structure that will ensure that the Catholic-Muslim engagement and dialogue continues into the future," said Professor Aref Ali Nayed, director of the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Amman, Jordan.
He told a news conference the forum would be able "to work out issues and an exchange of opinions about important matters".
Catholic-Muslim relations nosedived in 2006 after Pope Benedict delivered a lecture in Regensburg, Germany, that was taken by Muslims to imply that Islam was violent and irrational.
Muslims around the world protested and the Pope sought to make amends when he visited Turkey's Blue Mosque and prayed towards Mecca with its Imam.
"For some Muslims the wounds of the (Pope's) German lecture are not completely healed and there are some Muslims who are boycotting the Vatican ... and still feel offended by that quite deeply," Nayed said in answer to a question.
PAPAL SPEECH STILL HURTS
"Just because we are part of this initiative does not mean that we are not hurt by this, however we must not only dwell on the negative but also dwell on the positive. There have been some recent positive moves by the Vatican," he said.
After the fallout from the Regensburg speech, 138 Muslim scholars and leaders wrote to the German-born Pope and other Christian leaders last year, saying "the very survival of the world itself" may depend on dialogue between the two faiths.
"Muslims and Christians make up about 55 per cent of the world and there will be no peace in the world unless there is peace between these two communities," Ibrahim Kalin of the Seta Foundation in Turkey told the news conference.
The signatories of the Muslim appeal for dialogue, called the "Common Word", has grown to nearly 240 since.
"This whole initiative is about healing, it is about healing the wounds of a very pained and in many ways destroyed world. We have cruelty all over the place, we have wars, we have famines we have massacres, we have terrorist acts, we have torture, we have people who are kidnapped," Nayed said.
Although Pope Benedict repeatedly expressed regret for the reaction to his speech in Regensburg, he stopped short of a clear apology sought by Muslims.
The Muslim delegation said the forum would meet every two years and alternate between Rome and a Muslim country but would establish structures for regular contacts and links to deal with one member called "an emergency situation".
Dutch movie about Islam threatens nation
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2008/03/02/2003403669
Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has warned a maverick lawmaker of the risks to Dutch national interests if he presses ahead with a film criticizing the Koran.
Balkenende's appeal to Geert Wilders on Friday stopped short of demanding that he not release the film, which Wilders said was in the final stages of editing.
"Already we are having to take account of serious threats to Dutch people," Balkenende said in a televised news conference.
"When you see how the reactions have been at home and abroad, what the risks could be of this film, then there's one person who must answer for it, and that is Mr Wilders himself," he said.
Wilders said his short film would portray the Koran as a "fascist book." He does not yet have a broadcaster for it, but says he will release it on the Internet if he fails to find one.
In a statement after Balkenende's news conference, Wilders accused the Cabinet of "bowing to fear of terror and fear of Islam" and rejected calls to scrap the movie.
"Let me make one thing clear: The film will be released," he said.
Last week, the Pakistani government ordered Internet providers to restrict access to YouTube, allegedly to prevent Pakistanis from accessing a clip of Wilders in which he makes derogatory remarks about Islam. The move inadvertently caused a worldwide outage of the video sharing site.
The Dutch development minister called off a visit to Somalia on Friday after he was warned his life would be in danger on the trip.
"This is about the safety of Dutch citizens and businesses abroad, the Dutch military which is on a mission [in Afghanistan], about the broader interest of the Netherlands, the values for which we stand, our reputation internationally," Balkenende said.
In an earlier last week, Wilders said negative reactions to his film "only served to prove the point" that Islam should be criticized.
Wilders said the film would demonstrate how the Koran incites violence and intolerance of women and homosexuals.
Muslim groups in the Netherlands say they will file hate-speech charges against Wilders for previous statements, such as his description of Islam as a "retarded" religion. The Grand Mufti of Syria has warned of "bloodshed" if the film is released.
The Dutch national antiterrorism coordinator has told Wilders he may have to go into hiding abroad once his film is released. He already lives under constant police protection.
Dutch embassies have warned staff to brace for similar violence if the film is broadcast.
UMC leaders accused of harboring 'longstanding bias' against Israel
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Church/Default.aspx?id=68793
An official with the Institute on Religion and Democracy says it's not surprising that top officials in the United Methodist Church are calling for a denominational boycott of firms who do business with Israel.
Recently, officials from the United Methodist Church's (UMC) Washington lobby office asked leading General Conference delegates to support church divestment from Caterpillar, Inc. -- because they sold products to Israel.
Mark Tooley with The Institute on Religion and Democracy says many liberal church leaders have a compromised view of the authority of scripture. "It perhaps is not a coincidence that they tend to be very critical and biased against Israel," Tooley says of the UMC officials.
"Because in many ways, spiritually, I think the continued existence of Israel is -- for those who are theologically liberal -- a very unpleasant reminder of God's continued activity in the world today."
Tooley claims there has been a longstanding bias against Israel among UMC leaders, as well as among mainline Protestantism for the past 30-to-35 years as well.
The UMC General Conference takes place in April in Fort Worth, Texas. Delegates meet every four years to draft policy for the denomination.
Poll Confirms Parents' Influence on Teens' Religious Activities
http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion06949.shtml
NEW YORK -- When it comes to attending church, praying and reading the Bible, the apple does not fall far from the tree. A recent poll of teens and their parents overwhelmingly confirms that parents have the most influence on their children's religious activity.
A survey -- the first to examine teens' and their parents' views of the Bible -- commissioned by the American Bible Society and conducted by Weekly Reader Research, found that almost 80 percent of America's 30.2 million 12-18 year olds think the Bible is important and 87 percent of parents think the Bible is important. However, the results show that parents still have work to do. Of the 47 percent of teens who think the Bible is very important, only 11 percent read the Bible daily.
Ten percent of America's 12-18 year-olds participate in daily Bible reading, a higher level then reported in a June 2006 survey done by the Bible Society. In that measurement, six percent of teens said they read the Bible daily. A third of teens attend weekly worship services and more than 80 percent believe their prayers are answered some or all the time.
Children mirror their parents' behavior. Parents who attend church weekly tend to have teens that worship weekly, while 78 percent of parents who never attend worship services have teens who never attend. The same correlation applies to Bible reading and prayer habits. Parents who responded positively to the question of whether it is important to raise children with religious or spiritual values had children who were significantly involved with faith.
This survey corroborates one of the findings of June 2006 The Bible Society/Weekly Reader Research poll of teens about their heroes. That poll revealed that 67.7% of 12-18-year-olds believe parents are the most important role models in today's society.
This survey mirrored the U.S. population with reference to geography, age and race. The survey of 3095 participants has a margin of error of +/- 2.2 percent.
The complete details of the poll are available by writing to rlloyd@americanbible.org or calling (212) 408-8731.
Founded in 1816 and headquartered in New York City, the mission of the American Bible Society is to make the Bible available to every person in a language and format each can understand and afford, so that all people may experience its life-changing message. The American Bible Society Web site is www.Bibles.com.
Christians Released from Prison in Eritrea
http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion06946.shtml
Eritrean security police authorities released 35 evangelical Christians in the Red Sea port city of Massawa on February 16 after holding them in custody for six weeks at a local police station.
All the jailed Christians were members of the government-banned Faith Church of Christ. The 35 men and women were worshipping in a private home on January 6 when security officials raided the house and arrested them. The group was denied visitation rights while in police custody and official charges were never filed against them.
In another incident, 10 members of the Full Gospel Church who had been incarcerated for five years in Assab's notorious military prison were released on bail approximately two weeks ago. The seven men and three women had been transferred from Assab to the Adi-Abeyto prison, on the outskirts of Asmara, six months ago.
Praise God for the relea se of these Christians from prison. Ask God to strengthen the Christians in Eritrea as they continue to serve Him under constant pressure and persecution (Ephesians 6:18-20).
For more information on the persecution of Christians in Eritrea, go to www.persecution.net/country/eritrea.htm.
Court Skeptical of Marriage Definition Change
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/334316.aspx
Some of California's supreme court justices are showing skepticism over legalizing same-sex marriage.
The issue hit the national scene four years ago, after San Francisco's mayor single-handedly gave the ok for same-sex marriages.
Watch the CBN News report and Pat Robertson's comments about the definition of marriage.
The state supreme court halted the practice.
Now the court will decide whether to change the state's definition of marriage.
But the Los Angeles Times reports three of California's seven justices are leaning toward preserving traditional marriage.
"It says we're here banging down the doors of justice for ourselves," said Belinda Ryan, a gay marriage advocate. "We want justice to be done, hopefully this is going to be another historic moment."
"Well, we need to be prominent everywhere with our opinions to tell everyone the truth about homosexual marriage," said Don Grundmann, a gay marriage opponent. "What a tragedy it is for the children, the families of our state and the nation if it's allowed here".
The court has 90 days to make its ruling.
Pro-Life Law Firm Works to Shut the Doors on Illegal Abortion Center in Ohio
http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion06950.shtml
DAYTON, Ohio -- On Friday, February 29, Chicago Pro-Life law firm the Thomas More Society, revealed in a press conference that the Ohio Department of Health has revoked the license of the Women's Medical Center in Dayton, Ohio on February 14, 2008. This abortion facility, the last in Dayton, is owned and operated by Dr. Martin Haskell, nationally known for his pioneering and promotion of the partial birth abortion method. Despite having its license revoked, the facility is still in operation illegally. The Thomas More Society is preparing a Citizens Action Lawsuit to ask the courts to close the center if it continues to operate in violation of state laws. The press conference will be held at 10 a.m. Friday morning in a meeting room at 1375 East Stroop Road in Kettering, Ohio. Statements will be made by the Thomas More Society, Ohio Right to Life and local public officials, including Ohio State Representatives.
Haskell's abortion facility performs approximately 2,600 abortions annually and has not been able to comply with Ohio's requirement that clinics not within a hospital must have a hospital transfer agreement to properly care for patients who are injured during abortions. This legal requirement applies to all free- standing surgical facilities in Ohio, not just abortion facilities. Dr. Haskell tried unsuccessfully to obtain an agreement; however because he is not an OB-GYN and does not have admitting privileges at any Dayton- area hospitals he was denied.
"Haskell's abortion center must be closed," states Denise Mackura, Executive Director and Legal Counsel for the Thomas More Society. "He performs late-term abortions and has had several cases of complications and injuries reported over the last few years. It is the health of our sisters, mothers and daughters that is at risk if Haskell is allowed to keep his abortion facility in operation."
Haskell has been fighting state officials since 1999, when it was first discovered by a routine records search that he was operating without a license. Dr. Haskell brought his case before state and federal trial and appeals courts as well as state agencies and has repeatedly lost his bid to evade licensing and compliance with Ohio law.
"We have to wonder why this abortion business has been allowed to operate in violation of state law for so long and has not been held to the same standards as other medical facilities," says Mackura. "If the state of Ohio does not act, we will!"
The Thomas More Society is a public interest law firm which provides legal counsel and defense for those who work to protect innocent human life.
Today's Battle - an Evil Worse Than Slavery
http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion06948.shtml
WASHINGTON -- Black History Month is a time when African Americans especially--remember the trials and struggles of being born black in this country. We as a people endured much in our journey for equality. A journey which began many years ago on slave ships--through Jim Crowe years, through times of lynching and marches.
Throughout this month we also celebrate the many accomplishments and triumphs that we have achieved. We have come a long way. And along the way we became brilliant black investors, inventors, scientists, doctors and educators..., musicians, sportsmen and powerful speakers. We have risen up from slavery to a point where we can hope and dream about holding the highest office in this land! Against all odds, some may say we have arrived!
But have we...really? Or are we closing our eyes to the fact that more than 15 million black children have been slaughtered since 1973?
While we look the other way--smiling, slapping each other on the back--PROUD of our accomplishments, abortion facilities are purposefully placed in inner city and minority neighborhoods, crushing the bodies of innocent black children.
Abortion is the number one killer of African Americans- -killing more black people than all other deaths combined, yet, there are black men and women who stand in support of the vicious killing of our smallest children--all in order to win popularity contests, or for the coveted prize of becoming the 1st black President of the United States.
So, have we forgotten what the dream was all about? Some of us have.
In this political season will we must drive home the fact that it really doesn't matter when it comes down to it what party you belong to.
There are children dying! Innocent children are being ripped apart; torn limb from limb--killed by abortion.
We don't have to kill our children to ensure that we have better lives. Therefore, we must make sure that political figures know this fact... IF YOU ARE FOR ABORTION...THEN WE ARE NOT FOR YOU--no matter what color your skin is!
Eliminating abortion may seem to some --a rather daunting task...to some it may seem impossible. But I believe in God and with HIM I know that nothing is impossible.
Make no mistake...abortion is a civil rights issue. We must strive to make abortion a terrible thing...of our historical past.
Day Gardner is the president of the National Black Pro- Life Union
'Ridiculous' Agreement Lets Judge Censor Planned Parenthood Abortion Records
http://news.christiansunite.com/Religion_News/religion06947.shtml
OLATHE, Kansas -- Over the objections of the District Attorney's office, Planned Parenthood has reached an agreement with a grand jury that will release censored information from subpoenaed abortion records, but not the records themselves.
Judge Kevin Moriarty has agreed to take custody of the 16 abortion records, in which all patient identifying information has already been redacted, and compile information from them into a "spreadsheet" that the grand jury will be allowed to inspect, in order to protect what has been proved to be non-existent "patient privacy" concerns.
The agreement was called "ridiculous" by Assistant District Attorney John Christopher Pryor who expressed concerns that the Judge will also have to testify as a witness before the grand jury. It is improper for a judge to testify in a proceeding he is overseeing.
"This suspicious arrangement has made Judge Moriarty an ad hoc member of the Planned Parenthood defense team. He is taking on the role of censor and is preventing the grand jury from gaining access to critical evidence," said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. "Moriarty is allowing Planned Parenthood to run the investigation and only provide the evidence they want the grand jury to see without the benefit of the full context of the documents. It's like trying to get an idea of the full scope of the Grand Canyon when only being allowed to view it through a peep hole."
"We cannot trust the outcome of this investigation because the secret investigative process has been violated, subpoenas have not been honored, improper communications have taken place between special prosecutors and Planned Parenthood attorneys, and because of the appearance of impropriety concerning censored evidence. This process has become corrupted beyond redemption."
"It is a sign of serious ethical problems within the system when the public confidence in the court is so completely shattered," said Newman.
About Operation Rescue
Operation Rescue is one of the leading pro-life Christian activist organizations in the nation. Operation Rescue recently made headlines when it bought and closed an abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas and has become the voice of the pro-life activist movement in America. Its activities are on the cutting edge of the abortion issue, taking direct action to restore legal personhood to the pre-born and stop abortion in obedience to biblical mandates.
Demons 'possess' Ugandan kids
http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_2264912,00.html
Kampala - More than 100 students in a western Ugandan school become possessed by demonic spirits, Uganda's state-run newspaper reported on Tuesday.
The New Vision said that authorities at Sir Tito Winyi Primary School in the western district Hoima described the "hysterical" students as suffering from a demonic attack.
"The situation is bad. About 100 pupils are totally mad. They are chasing everybody including teachers and fellow pupils, throwing stones, banging doors and windows," the paper quoted headmaster Vincent Kitende as saying.
Kitende said that a similar incident took place at the school late last year, affecting more than 200 students that time, according to the paper.
He said: "We do not know what to do. On Sunday, we held special prayers before the pupils reported and assured parents to send their children, knowing there was no cause for alarm. But here we are in a bad situation again."
Hundreds of parents came to collect their children from the school. Last year, four Hoima residents were arrested for casting a spell on the school, the paper reported.
Belief in witchcraft was common in some parts of Uganda, particularly in deeply religious areas.
World Markets Tumble Amid U.S. Worries
http://www.newsmax.com/money/World_Markets_Tumble_/2008/03/07/78584.html
SEOUL, South Korea -- Asian and European markets fell Friday after another overnight drop on Wall Street that was spurred by news about rising foreclosures on U.S. mortgages, intensifying concerns about the world's largest economy.
Japan's Nikkei 225 index fell 3.3 percent to close at 12,782.80 as investors sold exporters' shares amid the dollar's drop to a three-year low against the yen during Asian trading.
Hong Hong's Hang Seng index closed down 3.6 percent, bringing its decline since the start of the year to 19 percent.
Australia's benchmark index sank 3.2 percent while in Seoul the Korea Stock Price Index declined 2 percent. India's benchmark Sensex was down 4 percent in afternoon trading, paring earlier losses of over 5 percent.
In early European trading, the U.K.'s benchmark FTSE 100 sank 1.3 percent, while Germany's DAX fell 1.5 percent. France's CAC 40 declined 1.3 percent.
Concerns about further fallout from the U.S. credit crisis grew Thursday after the Mortgage Bankers Association said the proportion of all mortgages nationwide that fell into foreclosure jumped to a record 0.83 percent in the final quarter of 2007.
Separately, the Federal Reserve reported that Americans' home debt exceeded their equity for the first time since the central bank began tracking the figures in 1945. Homeowners' percentage of equity fell to 47.9 percent in the fourth quarter.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 1.75 percent Thursday to 12,040.39.
"We are worried about the U.S. market," said Shim Jae-youb, a strategist at Meritz Securities Co. in Seoul.
Investors were bracing for a key U.S. jobs report later Friday. Economists on average were predicting a modest gain in February payrolls, though some expect a decline. Shim said investors were "pessimistic" about the report.
U.S. stock index futures were down, signaling further declines on Wall Street when trading opens Friday. Dow futures were down 40 points, or 0.3 percent, to 12,030.
In Tokyo, investors sold exporters' shares like Sony Corp. and TDK Corp. after the dollar fell against the yen. In early European hours, the U.S. currency extended declines, trading at 102.05 yen.
A strong yen makes goods produced in Japan more expensive overseas and reduces the value of repatriated earnings.
Shim of Meritz also said that signs of potential credit defaults in the United States were weighing on sentiment.
He said news that Thornburg Mortgage Inc. this week failed to make a margin call, a payment to guarantee a much larger debt or investment, was a cause for concern.
Turmoil has engulfed global equities since last summer as rising default rates among U.S. mortgage holders with poor credit histories - the so-called subprime problem - raised concerns of a spillover effect that could lead to recession in the world's largest economy.
U.S. consumer confidence dropped to a new low amid worries about growth prospects, the housing and credit markets and high energy prices.
Traders said that more bearishness could be expected.
"We still have some downside left in the market, which is sad to say, but that's the way it is looking trend-wise, it is still looking heavy," CMC Markets senior dealer Dominic Vaughan said of Australia's market.
Elsewhere, the Philippine Stock Exchange Index plunged 2.8 percent to a six-week low, while in mainland China the Shanghai Composite Index fell a more moderate 1.4 percent.
Junk Science: Breath Is Toxic Waste?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,335748,00.html
The federal government soon may declare your very breath to be toxic regardless of its minty freshness.
Consistent with last spring’s Supreme Court ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency may regulate carbon dioxide as a hazardous air pollutant, the agency is evaluating how CO2 could be regulated as a hazardous substance under its notorious Superfund program, according to Carbon Control News from March 4.
So at the risk of exhaling and being held retroactively liable (more on that later), let’s take a deep breath and consider the potential impact of likening CO2 to the substances of concern at Love Canal, Times Beach and the thousands of other former and current Superfund waste sites and dumps across the nation.
The Superfund law was enacted by a lame-duck Democrat Congress and signed into law by a lame-duck President Carter in December 1980. The impetus for the law was the fiasco at Love Canal, N.Y., which was caused by local officials who recklessly built a school on top of a known chemical dump.
Municipal contractors punctured the dump’s clay lining multiple times. Chemical waste seeped into the ground, contaminated the groundwater and made a gooey mess of the area. The situation went from bad to full panic when, in 1978, the president of the local homeowners association claimed the situation was sickening local children.
Though no health effects ever were linked with the leaking waste, Love Canal became synonymous with "disaster," prompting the Superfund law, a national program to identify and clean up hazardous wastes sites across the country.
Hundreds of locations across the country were designated as "hazardous waste sites" — not because anyone’s health or the environment necessarily was at risk, but so that every state could share in the federal dollars porked out for clean-ups. Political science, rather than conventional science, often steered the Superfund program.
Superfund itself soon became a disaster, in large part because of its imposition of "retroactive liability" — the punishment of past, but at the time, entirely legal, conduct.
If a site was deemed by the EPA to pose a risk to human health — say, by divining as little as a 0.01 percent increase in the risk of cancer to a hypothetical person who, however implausibly, might one day subsist on a site’s most contaminated soil and groundwater — then the owners and users of the site could be held liable for the typically exorbitant, EPA-determined clean-up costs. This was regardless of whether the wastes were disposed of properly according to the law at the time of disposal.
By the mid-1990s, retroactive liability fueled an explosion of costly and time-consuming Superfund litigation. Only the lawyers cleaned up. Little progress was made on actual site remediation.
Despite that heritage, the EPA apparently is now figuring out how to throw CO2 (and its emitters) under the Superfund train.
This most likely will be a problem for coal-fired power plants — generators of about half of America’s electricity — and other large industrial facilities (to the extent that any still exist in the U.S.) that may be forced by future greenhouse gas regulation to capture and sequester emissions.
Carbon capture and storage advocates imagine that CO2 emissions will be transported from facilities by pipeline to underground geological formations where they hope the gas will be permanently stored.
But as recently reported in this column, a report from the Congressional Research Service spotlighted the many problems with underground CO2 sequestration, including leaking, which could harm groundwater by acidifying it. Groundwater clean-up can be extremely difficult and often was a key driver of expensive Superfund cleanups.
Federal regulation of CO2 as a "hazardous substance," whether under Superfund or some other law, may bring a host of other problems. Once a substance is labeled or regulated by one federal program, it automatically or inadvertently can become eligible for additional regulation under other government programs without further affirmative government action.
As an example, the 1986 explosion at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, prompted Congress to pass, and President Reagan to sign, the Emergency Planning and Community-Right-to-Know Act, establishing a program known as the Toxic Release Inventory, or TRI.
Under the TRI, makers, transporters and users of certain hazardous chemicals are responsible for reporting what chemicals they store at their facilities so local communities may be prepared in the event of disaster.
The list of chemicals initially subject to TRI reporting was literally just thrown together from other lists of industrial chemicals already regulated in some way, shape or form. All of the listed chemicals were wrongly assumed to be Bhopal-dangerous.
Phosphoric acid, for example, which is used in colas and baked goods, was caught in the TRI snare and added to the list of "toxic" chemicals subject to reporting. Even though phosphoric acid is classified as "generally recognized as safe" by the Food and Drug Administration and there was no evidence that phosphoric acid had ever harmed anyone or the environment, it took a decade and a court order for phosphoric acid users to compel an ever-reluctant EPA to de-list the substance from the TRI.
You may then understand, perhaps, how the federal government’s designation of CO2 as a "hazardous substance" easily could turn into an unfortunate unintended consequence, say, for the soft drink industry, which puts CO2 in its products.
It’s enough to make you wonder why a company like PepsiCo belongs to the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an industry/environmental activist coalition leading the charge on Capitol Hill to have CO2 branded as an environmental hazard.
Just don’t hold your breath to see how all this turns out — you just might become a Superfund site yourself.
Radio frequency ID tags in garments worry privacy experts
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/29/business/RFID.php
Thousands of garments in the sprawling men's department at the Galeria Kaufhof are equipped with tiny wireless chips that can forestall fashion disaster by relaying information from the garment to a dressing-room screen.
The garments in the department store, in Essen, Germany, contain radio frequency identification chips, small circuits that communicate by radio waves through portable readers and more than 200 antennas that can not only recommend a brown belt for those tweed slacks but also track garments from the racks, shelves and dressing rooms on the store's third floor.
This pioneering pilot project of the Metro Group, a retail chain in Germany, heralds a shopping experience of the future in which dress shirts can wirelessly offer accessorizing tips to shoppers. But the rapid development of RFID technology is also being regarded cautiously by the authorities in the European Union, who are moving quickly to establish privacy guidelines because the chips - and the information being collected - are not always visible.
Their goal is to raise awareness among consumers that the data-gathering chips are becoming embedded in their lives - in items like credit cards, public transportation passes, work access badges, borrowed library books and supermarket loyalty cards.
There are also policy concerns regarding whether retailers could link a customer's credit card data to an RFID tag in a product, allowing clients to be identified when they return to a store.
In late February, the European Commission issued privacy protection proposals to establish a code of conduct for companies using RFID technology, fueling a debate among privacy advocates who seek more openness and trade groups of manufacturers and retailers who want practical guidelines that will allow the developing technology to flourish.
The guidelines will be open to public comment and debate through late April. They will stop short of becoming part of actual legislation, instead offering direction to members of the European Union for developing privacy protections.
The chips, whose use dates back to radar experiments during World War II by the Germans and the British - are gaining wider acceptance among manufacturers, the transport industry and the retail trade, according to Chad Eschinger, a research director at Gartner, an information technology research company based in Stamford, Connecticut. He forecast $1.28 billion in global revenues for RFID technology in 2008, a 31 percent increase from the year before, and revenue of $3.5 billion in 2012.
Against that backdrop, regulators in Brussels are proposing a new standard that would require stores to deactivate chips at the check-out counter unless customers specifically chose to keep the tags functioning.
Privacy advocates have hailed what is known as the opt-in principle as a pioneering step by European regulators to establish clear privacy protections in connection with the technology. In February, lawmakers in the U.S. state of Washington also sought to carve out a privacy bill of rights, passing legislation in the state's House of Representatives to make it a felony for businesses to keep personal information gathered from RFID chips without consent from customers.
"For us, consumers have to be protected," said Emilie Berrau, a legal officer for the BEUC, the European Consumers Organization in Brussels. "They haven't asked for the technology, so why should they have the burden of protecting themselves?"
But some trade groups, and Metro, say they are concerned that strict guidelines will prevent retailers from adopting the technology.
EPCglobal, an international trade group formed in 2003 to pursue a common set of RFID standards, supports privacy protections, said Marisa Jimenez, public policy director for the group, based in Brussels. But the group opposes the approach being recommended.
"How can you make an assumption that consumers will want their tags deactivated at the point of sales?" she said. "How can we justify that? So far we haven't heard from consumers with day-to-day concerns. There is a distance there. This technology is developing very quickly. And if there is an opt-in approach, that will probably deter many retailers from adopting the technology."
Retailers have tended to use the chips for logistical purposes like tracking deliveries, but companies are starting to get more inventive. A British uniform supplier, Trutex, said it was developing clothing with chips to track schoolchildren, in part because of surveys that showed parents were favorable to the idea.
McDonald's has been testing an RFID ordering system in Seoul on special tables equipped with touch-pad menus and fitted with readers that allow customers to link their mobile phones and order hamburgers. The tab goes on the mobile.
When the Metro Group opened its state-of-the-chip menswear department in September, it adopted the favored industry approach - leaving it to customers to request to deactivate the tags on their purchases. The chips are now contained in a larger hanging paper tag that can easily be cut off by cashiers or customers. But in the future the chips could be housed within the garment, making it less visible.
Metro, headquartered in Düsseldorf, has placed posters and brochures in the store and each tag hanging on a garment contains a notice about the chips.
"If we have to deactivate at the check-out, then the technology is going to stay within the logistics process - to say where is a box or where is the pallet in the distribution center," said Antonia Voerste, a spokeswoman. "It won't come on consumer items. They're going to kill the technology with that."
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