Veterans’ Group Hopes to Counter MoveOn With Ad Campaign
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/07/05/veterans-group-critical-of-obama-plans-costly-ad-campaign/
A veterans’ group that sharply criticized Barack Obama is planning a multimillion-dollar ad campaign, which it hopes will counter the anti-war message of MoveOn.org in the run-up to the general election.
The group, Vets for Freedom, plans to launch its four-month campaign next week, called “Four Months, for Victory.”
Chairman Pete Hegseth said the group’s first ad buy will not mention either Obama or John McCain. He said the group has not endorsed anybody in the presidential race.
But Vets for Freedom, made up of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, considers McCain a key ally and could provide the Republican presidential candidate with a boost, simply by espousing the kind of stay-the-course strategy he has advocated. The 25,000-member group is a firm proponent of the troop buildup in Iraq.
Hegseth, in an interview with FOXNews.com, said he hopes to outmatch the message coming out of MoveOn.org — which has endorsed Obama and is already running ads accusing McCain of wanting to wage a near-endless war in Iraq.
“We would love to counter their message. I think the American people would rather hear from those who served than those who … call our generals traitors,” Hegseth said. “We need to ensure that we capitalize on the successful efforts (in Iraq) and ultimately do what we can to finish the job and get our troops back with honor.”
He said the first ad buy, which would run for two weeks, will cost about $1.5 million. He noted that that is more than the $500,000 MoveOn.org spent on their most recent ad, which was scheduled to run one week.
That ad was paid for by MoveOn.org and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. It featured an actress who, holding an infant named Alex, addressed McCain and said “when you say you would stay in Iraq for 100 years, were you counting on Alex? Because if you were, you can’t have him.”
The ad was scheduled to air nationally on select cable networks and in the Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin markets.
Hegseth said his group is also targeting such battleground states. He said the first ad will run in Virginia, Ohio, Colorado and Michigan. And he said $1.5 million is just the start.
“We hope to spend exponentially more in the next four months,” he said.
The group is a non-profit 501(c)(4) and Hegseth stressed that it was not running “attack” ads.
In a statement, the group said it would release “pointed ads” as part of an effort to “inform the American public and key lawmakers about the phenomenal success that our troops have achieved as a result of the surge and the importance of ensuring victory in Iraq, Afghanistan and the overall global war on terrorism.”
But Vets for Freedom applied pressure on Obama in May when it released a pair of Web videos criticizing the Illinois senator for not having visited Iraq since January 2006. McCain seemed to echo the group’s talking points on the campaign trail, and Obama since has begun formalizing a trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, which he’s expected to take this summer.
“The surge worked. But Barack Obama wouldn’t know that, because he hasn’t been there in over two years,” one veteran said in one of the videos.
Veterans from both wars also are expected to appear in the new ad, according to the group.
Asked if future ads would criticize Obama, Hegseth said: “There’s a possibility we may be critical of a number of legislators … that’s to be determined.”
A representative from MoveOn.org could not be reached for comment.
McCain, who trails Obama in overall fundraising, so far has not been aided by many outside groups.
The veterans’ group also is planning a ground campaign, tapping veteran members throughout the country to spread “the ground truth” about progress in both wars.
In May, two top McCain surrogates — Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham — stepped down from their positions on the policy board of Vets for Freedom to comply with McCain’s campaign guidelines prohibiting campaign operatives from working with independent political groups.
Foreclosures to Rise Whoever Wins Election
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/404273.aspx
CBNNews.com - WASHINGTON - Home foreclosures will keep rising next year no matter who is elected president in November.
Even the optimism that surrounds a new president taking office cannot resurrect home values overnight, and presidents have no direct ability to reduce rising mortgage rates. Nevertheless, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain both promise help for homeowners facing foreclosure.
Obama supports a broader role for government than does McCain. Both envision the Federal Housing Administration providing new, cheaper mortgages to distressed homeowners who otherwise would have difficulty refinancing into more secure government-insured loans with lower monthly payments.
For the plans to work, lenders would have to be willing to take a substantial loss by reducing the amount owed on the loan. But some would have a powerful incentive to do so. A refinancing deal could allow them to recover far more money than they would get from the costly process of foreclosing on the property and trying to resell it.
Obama supports legislation along these lines by Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., that would help about 400,000 homeowners. People would not have to have good credit to qualify as long as they could show they can afford the new payments.
"If the government can bail out investment banks on Wall Street, we can extend a hand to folks who are struggling on Main Street," Obama said.
McCain's plan would provide relief to 200,000 to 400,000 homeowners. The aid would be available only to people who could show they were creditworthy when they got their original loan. The plan offers "every deserving American family or homeowner the opportunity to trade a burdensome mortgage for a manageable loan that reflects the market value of their home," he said.
The FHA piece of the Dodd plan would cost close to $1 billion. The money would come from diverting dollars in the early years from an affordable housing fund financed by the profits of the mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. McCain's FHA provision is estimated to cost from $3 billion to $10 billion and would mean either cutting federal spending elsewhere or having the government borrow more. The first choice is to trim spending, a McCain aide said.
Experts predict foreclosures will continue to climb well into 2009. Some believe there is a chance for improvement in late 2009, but more think that will not happen until 2010.
A long-term solution is tied to a turnaround in house prices. Slumping home values are blamed for the bulk of the increasing foreclosures. Troubled borrowers are left owing more to the bank than their homes are worth, so they walk away from their homes. Dumping more empty houses on the market adds to the pile of unsold homes, and that drives home prices down further.
"This is uncharted territory," said Susan Wachter, a professor of real estate and finance at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.
Some predict house prices will not climb until the spring selling season of 2010 - at the earliest.
Lawrence Summers, a treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, predicted that more than 2 million foreclosures are coming over the next two years and that as many as 15 million homeowners will owe more than their house is worth.
According to a recent AP-Yahoo News poll, 57 percent of people said housing prices are important to them personally. For many, their home is their biggest asset. As home prices dropped, so did people's net worth - leaving them feeling less financially secure and more gloomy about the direction of the economy.
Which candidate would do a better job of handling housing prices? In the poll, 25 percent said Obama and 17 percent thought McCain. Nearly 30 percent said neither.
Although most voters think the next president will have a "great deal" or "some" influence over housing prices, the reality is there is no quick fix.
"The odds of that are slim to none," said Cal Jillson, political science professor at Southern Methodist University. If the next president can make people more optimistic about the future, "the slow rebuilding of confidence will help to increase home values," he said.
When it comes to handling the broader economy, which is the top concern of voters, the poll found that 32 percent picked Obama and 28 percent went with McCain.
An additional factor is the Federal Reserve, which presidents do not control. If the central bank were to raise interest rates to fend off inflation, the step would increase payments for homeowners whose loan rates are resetting higher. That, in turn, could push up foreclosures. "We are very exposed to interest rate risks and mortgage payment shocks in 2009," Wachter said.
Mortgage rates, including those on 30-year home loans, already are climbing, propelled by inflation worries.
In addition to his FHA proposal, Obama wants to create a $10 billion fund to counsel distressed homeowners before they slide into foreclosure; help people sell homes they bought but could not afford; and team with state governments, community groups and lenders to ensure sure loans can be modified in a timely manner to avoid foreclosure or bankruptcy.
His approach, reflecting the traditional Democratic preference for greater government intervention, would establish a 10 percent mortgage credit for people who do not itemize their taxes. That would provide 10 million homeowners, most of whom earn less than $50,000 a year, with an average of $500 in savings, according to his campaign, and help those struggling to make mortgage payments.
Obama also supports changing bankruptcy laws so homeowners going through that process can renegotiate terms of their mortgages - just as people or investors who own multiple homes or vacation homes can do.
The Illinois senator also wants to combat mortgage fraud and improve mortgage disclosure. Deficiencies in those areas contributed to lax lending that allowed people to take out home loans that their incomes could not support, critics say.
"This kind of transparency won't just make our homeowners more secure, it will make our markets more stable, and keep our economy strong and competitive in the future," Obama said.
McCain prefers a more limited government role in dealing with the housing crisis, a position consistent with traditional GOP leanings. The other component of his plan would have the Justice Department to set up a task force to investigate possible wrongdoing in the mortgage industry. The department has been pursuing cases of fraud and other mortgage-related matters.
"In some cases, lenders and borrowers alike were caught up in the speculative frenzy that has harmed the housing market," the Arizona senator said. "And it is not the responsibility of the American public to spare them from the consequences of their own bad judgment."
Congress is working on legislation that would allow the FHA to help struggling homeowners. Differences have to be worked out between Dodd's plan, still in the Senate, and a similar House-passed proposal by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and with the White House, too. The White House has threatened a veto but is working behind the scenes with congressional leaders to find common ground.
The plans envisioned by Obama and McCain - and Congress - would deliver short-term help but are not a cure-all, housing experts said.
Long-term strategies are needed to prevent a repeat of the foreclosure crisis, experts said, and that must revamp the regulatory structure to improve oversight of players and borrowers in the mortgage finance system. The debate on such a broad overhaul has already started in Washington and will likely spill over to next president and Congress. Both Obama and McCain have indicated they favor tougher regulation.
Everything seemingly is spinning out of control
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080621/ap_on_re_us/out_of_control
Is everything spinning out of control?
Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism.
Horatio Alger, twist in your grave.
The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country's sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance.
The sense of helplessness is even reflected in this year's presidential election. Each contender offers a sense of order — and hope. Republican John McCain promises an experienced hand in a frightening time. Democrat Barack Obama promises bright and shiny change, and his large crowds believe his exhortation, "Yes, we can."
Even so, a battered public seems discouraged by the onslaught of dispiriting things. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll says a barrel-scraping 17 percent of people surveyed believe the country is moving in the right direction. That is the lowest reading since the survey began in 2003.
An ABC News-Washington Post survey put that figure at 14 percent, tying the low in more than three decades of taking soundings on the national mood.
"It is pretty scary," said Charles Truxal, 64, a retired corporate manager in Rochester, Minn. "People are thinking things are going to get better, and they haven't been. And then you go hide in your basement because tornadoes are coming through. If you think about things, you have very little power to make it change."
Recent natural disasters around the world dwarf anything afflicting the U.S. Consider that more than 69,000 people died in the China earthquake, and that 78,000 were killed and 56,000 missing from the Myanmar cyclone.
Americans need do no more than check the weather, look in their wallets or turn on the news for their daily reality check on a world gone haywire.
Floods engulf Midwestern river towns. Is it global warming, the gradual degradation of a planet's weather that man seems powerless to stop or just a freakish late-spring deluge?
It hardly matters to those in the path. Just ask the people of New Orleans who survived Hurricane Katrina. They are living in a city where, 1,000 days after the storm, entire neighborhoods remain abandoned, a national embarrassment that evokes disbelief from visitors.
Food is becoming scarcer and more expensive on a worldwide scale, due to increased consumption in growing countries such as China and India and rising fuel costs. That can-do solution to energy needs — turning corn into fuel — is sapping fields of plenty once devoted to crops that people need to eat. Shortages have sparked riots. In the U.S., rice prices tripled and some stores rationed the staple.
Residents of the nation's capital and its suburbs repeatedly lose power for extended periods as mere thunderstorms rumble through. In California, leaders warn people to use less water in the unrelenting drought.
Want to get away from it all? The weak U.S. dollar makes travel abroad forbiddingly expensive. To add insult to injury, some airlines now charge to check luggage.
Want to escape on the couch? A writers' strike halted favorite TV shows for half a season. The newspaper on the table may soon be a relic of the Internet age. Just as video stores are falling by the wayside as people get their movies online or in the mail.
But there's always sports, right?
The moorings seem to be coming loose here, too.
Baseball stars Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens stand accused of enhancing their heroics with drugs. Basketball referees are suspected of cheating.
Stay tuned for less than pristine tales from the drug-addled Tour de France and who knows what from the Summer Olympics.
It's not the first time Americans have felt a loss of control.
Alger, the dime-novel author whose heroes overcame adversity to gain riches and fame, played to similar anxieties when the U.S. was becoming an industrial society in the late 1800s.
American University historian Allan J. Lichtman notes that the U.S. has endured comparable periods and worse, including the economic stagflation (stagnant growth combined with inflation) and Iran hostage crisis of 1980; the dawn of the Cold War, the Korean War and the hysterical hunts for domestic Communists in the late 1940s and early 1950s; and the Depression of the 1930s.
"All those periods were followed by much more optimistic periods in which the American people had their confidence restored," he said. "Of course, that doesn't mean it will happen again."
Each period also was followed by a change in the party controlling the White House.
This period has seen intense interest in the presidential primaries, especially the Democrats' five-month duel between Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Records were shattered by voters showing up at polling places, yearning for a voice in who will next guide the country as it confronts the uncontrollable.
Never mind that their views of their current leaders are near rock bottom, reflecting a frustration with Washington's inability to solve anything. President Bush barely gets the approval of three in 10 people, and it's even worse for the Democratic-led Congress.
Why the vulnerability? After all, this is the 21st century, not a more primitive past when little in life was assured. Surely people know how to fix problems now.
Maybe. And maybe this is what the 21st century will be about — a great unraveling of some things long taken for granted.
Will Universalism bring about the end of Christian influence in America?
http://www.djournal.com/pages/story.asp?ID=275508&pub=1&div=Opinion
"America remains a nation of believers, but a new survey finds most Americans don't feel their religion is the only way to eternal life - even if their faith tradition teaches otherwise." – Associated Press, Eric Gorski
The above is the first line in a recent article by Associated Press religion writer Eric Gorski.
America is changing - some would argue has changed - in terms of religious composition. When you combine Catholicism with Protestantism, Christianity has always dominated the American religious landscape.
But Americans today are seeing themselves as more "spiritual" than “religious” and therefore are dropping the concept that one must subscribe to a particular set of beliefs in order to be in right standing with God. Whoever God is. A recent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life suggests this. Now atheism remains very unpopular as Americans do believe in God to the tune of 92 percent. It’s just that they don't know exactly what they believe about God, so they are willing to go with the idea that, "Hey, everybody’s in."
This belief that "all roads lead to God" is called universalism. Oprah Winfrey epitomizes universalism. She has no enemies, because she makes no judgments. I am not sure what Sen. John McCain believes as far as his faith goes as I have never heard him speak about it, but it is clear from listening to Sen. Barack Obama that he is also a universalist. This would explain, at least in part, why Winfrey is so enamored with Obama. They are kindred spirits, no pun intended.
There is a popular myth circulating that Obama is a Muslim. That is not true. It is true that when he was a young boy in Indonesia he attended both Muslim and Catholic schools and he gets his unusual name from his father, who was of Nigerian descent.
Obama told author Cathleen Falsani: "I believe there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people."
Again, I am not disparaging Obama personally; he is obviously a very intelligent man, I am just stating a fact that this view of religion, again known as universalism, is in complete contradiction to Christianity. Read the New Testament. It is all about Jesus Christ being the only begotten Son of God and the only way to eternal life. There is nothing in there about other religious paths being an option. Being a Christian has never been subjective. There are certain essential doctrines that one must subscribe to in order to be considered a Christian.
If you reject the Bible that is your right, I am just saying let's not twist and distort what the New Testament explicitly teaches about the exclusivity of Jesus.
Getting theologically consistent answers from "universalism" is like nailing Jell-O to the wall. In Christianity there is a phrase called "systematic theology." That is to say there are intellectual building blocks upon which the faith is put together so that people can understand it. Another term used is "apologetics," which means a logical flow of ideas.
You don't have to go to seminary to have a basic understanding of Christian apologetics. There are books for the common person which help in this regard. Josh McDowell's books such as "More Than a Carpenter" and "Evidence That Demands a Verdict" are excellent resources.
But the Pew Forum survey found that "57 percent of evangelical church attendees said they believe many religions can lead to eternal life, in conflict with traditional evangelical teaching. In all, 70 percent of Americans with a religious affiliation shared that view, and 68 percent said there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their own religion."
"The survey shows religion in America is, indeed, 3,000 miles wide and only 3 inches deep," said D. Michael Lindsay, a Rice University sociologist of religion.
"There's a growing pluralistic impulse toward tolerance and that is having theological consequences," he said.
What is appealing about universalism to modern day Americans is that it is intentionally ambiguous and doesn't require any measurable commitment by the individual. One doesn't have to agree with any creed, you don't have to go to church, you don't have to abide by any particular code of conduct and there is no objective standard for defining right or wrong or good and evil. It is all up to the individual and how he feels. Forget all that old-fashioned stuff about repenting of your sin and giving your life to the Lord.
If this trend of universalism impacting the church continues, there will be no Christian influence of any consequence in America in 25 years.
Greg Laurie: From lost boy to Jesus freak
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/greg.laurie.from.lost.boy.to.jesus.freak/20095.htm
Once a lost boy and now a well-known evangelist, Greg Laurie is letting millions of people into the journey of his personal life, much of which he didnot want to revisit.
But the southern California evangelist, whose events have drawn some four million people worldwide since 1990, wanted to tell his story to give anyone living a less-than-perfect life hope that there is redemption.
"Lost Boy: The Documentary" made its national television debut in the US on Thursday. Since the documentary premiered via webcast last month, the evangelist and megachurch pastor has been on tour to show the film and testify how God intervened in the midst of his dysfunctional childhood.
"My life should have been a complete disaster," Laurie said in a sermon earlier this year at Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California. "I could've ended up in a lot of places but God intervened and changed my life.
"God can take bad things and turn them into good things."
Laurie grew up with five different stepfathers. His mother, a Marilyn Monroe look-alike, went through seven marriages and would stay out most of the time, partying and getting drunk. Laurie was conceived out of wedlock and discovered, in his forties, that he was the product of a one-night stand.
Most of his life, he believed his father was the first man his mother married. With no one to call "dad" and his mother never at home, Laurie questioned his existence.
"When you find out you're illegitimate, that you weren't planned, that's kind of disconcerting," he said. "You ask yourself 'Was I really meant to be? Was I a mistake? Is my life an accident? Or does God have a plan for me despite my rather inauspicious beginnings?'"
Throughout his childhood, Laurie witnessed men abusing his mother. He was sent to military school twice and was "passed around" often between grandparents and other family members as his mother struggled to take care of him.
Soon, as a teen in the 1960s when rock stars and celebrities seemed to have all the answers to the meaning of life, as the documentary states, Laurie found himself in the alcohol and drug scene that he wanted to avoid after years of seeing his mum suffer. He felt life was empty.
Still, he knew there was a man called Jesus and that he performed miracles. But he did not know much else about Jesus or about Christianity and tried hard to avoid the "Jesus freaks" at his high school.
But, initially drawn by a girl, Laurie came to join that crowd after hearing the Gospel.
"I've heard the Gospel before," Laurie said, recounting the moment he heard one of the 'Jesus freaks' preach to a small group on campus, "but for some reason, it made sense to me then."
"Lost Boy: The Documentary" features footage of Laurie's past and his conversion to Christianity during Southern California's Jesus Movement as well as music from the hippie era. It also shows Chuck Smith, founder of Calvary Chapel, leading thousands of young people, including Laurie, to Jesus Christ at that time.
"I can't change my past," Laurie said. "But I don't have to be controlled by my past either.
"God had a plan for me even though I was illegitimate because there are no illegitimate children in the eyes of God. No child is a mistake. I never had an earthly father, but one day, I discovered I had a Father in heaven."
"Lost Boy: The Documentary," presented by New Revolution Entertainment and Harvest Films, is available on DVD and is also in book form.
Vacation Bible Schools Adapt to Changing Times
http://christianpost.com/article/20080703/vacation-bible-schools-adapt-to-changing-times.htm
It's a wonder vacation Bible school made it out of the 1960s.
Back in the days of black-and-white TV, churches offered kids lemonade, cookies and flannel-board stories about Jesus, all set to a clanging piano. Children sat in short wooden chairs and listened to the tales for what seemed like an eternity.
Things are different in 2008. DVDs and video screens are everywhere, along with professionally recorded music, dancing and slick lesson books. Kids are as likely to jump on inflatable moon bounces or go to water parks as play on a church swingset once Bible time is done.
Vacation Bible school, once a homestyle tradition, has become big business, with families helping to foot the bill through registration fees and donations. A handful of Christian publishers provide the curriculum, thereby setting the summertime agenda for millions of elementary-age kids at thousands of churches nationwide.
"Gone are the days of making bird houses and golden macaroni frames," said Kevin Clark, children's pastor at Life Church in suburban Birmingham for the last eight years. "It costs a lot more compared to what it did when I first came here, but it's really good."
At Mountain Brook Community Church, volunteer John Byrd pulls on a black wig, puts on a long white coat and gyrates at the front of the chapel for his role as a professor in this year's "Power Lab" VBS, a curriculum produced by the Colorado-based Group Publishing Inc.
Jumping around with a keyboard slung around his neck, he lip syncs a song with about the power of Jesus — the most powerful thing there is, the lyrics say.
"What did we learn yesterday?" a leader calls out above the buzz of excited children.
"Jesus gives us the power to be thankful!" they yell back.
Used by hundreds of churches this year, the "Power Lab" theme incorporates music, DVDs, crafts and handouts. Children's pastor Walter Arroyo said the $2,000 investment was well worth it for the non-denominational church.
Small groups of children move between classrooms every few minutes rather than sitting in one place, and all the activities and lessons tie in to a central daily idea. Arroyo acts as the supervisor, patrolling the church campus with a walkie-talkie and clipboard.
"What it has helped us do is organize and keep things moving," said Arroyo. "We're committed to the message of the Gospel, but we also have to engage them in their world."
For children's pastor Chuck McCammon, 38, VBS 2.0 is all about using new tools to reach children who have grown up on TVs and computers.
"The biggest difference between now and when I was a kid is we try to make it more interactive, with things that are more tactile," said McCammon. His church does its best to pull in children from a wide area. This year, Valleydale Baptist advertised VBS with a billboard on Interstate 65.
The roots of vacation Bible school go back at least 130 years, when Christian summer camps began operating. A doctor's wife in New York City is widely credited with having the first true vacation Bible school in 1898 in a rented beer hall.
Baptists began publishing vacation Bible school materials in 1922, and the format was mostly unchanged for decades, according to Mary Katharine Hunt of LifeWay Christian Resources, the Southern Baptist publishing arm.
But in the 1990s, LifeWay, the non-denominational Group Publishing and other companies began turning out expansive packages with everything from Bible-based curriculum to craft supplies and professionally produced music and videos.
Publishers won't release sales figures on their VBS products. But the Southern Baptist Convention said nearly 26,600 churches reported using LifeWay's VBS materials last year with a total enrollment of almost 2.9 million children.
Vacation Bible school is most popular in the Southeast, where it's seen as an important tool for bringing new families into the church, but it's hardly a regional phenomenon.
"We have churches all over the country using our vacation Bible school material," Hunt said. "Obviously it's strongest in the Bible Belt, but we have tons of churches using our material in California. It's happening in New York."
Small churches generally spend no more than a few hundred dollars on VBS, she said, but some spend $2,000, or even more.
Many churches seek donations, charge registration fees or sell T-shirts to make up for the increased cost of materials plus camp-style extras like visits to water parks, said Jody Brolsma, senior vacation Bible school editor at Group Publishing in Loveland, Colo.
"Thirty dollars isn't unheard of for a day camp-style experience, and some charge more," said Brolsma.
To help defray costs, many churches that purchase materials from companies like Group Publishing share as much as they can. Copyright laws prohibit copying most music and videos, but most everything else is fair game.
"The main thing is to help churches, no matter how large they are, pull off a really spectacular event and reach families with the Gospel," said Hunt. "The message hasn't changed, but the method has."
Canadian evangelist's ministry draws kudos and criticism in Florida
http://www.canadianchristianity.com/nationalupdates/080703ministry.html
People say there's a modern-day Pool of Bethesda -- in Lakeland, Florida, of all places.
Canadian evangelist Todd Bentley of Fresh Fire Ministries came to the small town of 90,000 people April 2 for a weeklong revival at the charismatic Ignited Church, and reports of miracles like those from Bethesda in Jesus' day began pouring out of Lakeland.
Broken elbows heal. Hepatitis C disappears. Heart murmurs are no longer recognizable. Crippled people walk. And the dead rise.
These claims come with very little documented proof, but Bentley says he wants to certify every healing he can.
"The Bible is full of visions, encounters, signs, wonders, miracles and manifestations that people have experienced, some of which may be downright hard for many to wrap their minds around, let alone believe it could happen today," Bentley wrote in a letter to the public June 8.
Bentley's nightly meetings, called the Florida Healing Outpouring, are now held under an air-conditioned tent with room for 10,000 visitors at Lakeland Linder Regional Airport and are broadcasted live online at GOD.TV. They're drawing international attention, and hundreds of thousands from all over the world are flocking to Lakeland for healing, revival and "more of God," which Bentley frequently cries out for.
Answered prayers
Pastor Mario Bramnick of New Wine Ministries in Cooper City say the Florida Outpouring is an answer to his church's prayer for revival.
When he visited on more than one occasion, he says, "It really appeared that there was a Sovereign move of God at Lakeland . . . Some believe that healings have stopped with the apostles, which is not scripturally true. Jesus said these signs shall follow those who believe. They shall heal the sick, cast out devils and raise the dead . . .
"It would be difficult to fabricate so many miracles."
But many notable Christians say these miracles are a result of fabrication -- and are merely magic meant to soothe "itching ears" (2 Timothy 4:3-4).
"I have no problem going on record and saying this guy is a false prophet . . . with a capital 'F,'" says Tullian Tchividjian, grandson of Billy and Ruth Graham and pastor of New City Church in Margate, Florida. "And it shouldn't surprise any of us, because the Bible warns us about this from cover to cover. John Piper once said that Satan does not tempt us with poison, but with apple pie."
Bentley's appearance
Bentley's prickly exterior and colourful past make some Christians flag him as a 'questionable.' He is covered in tattoos and piercings, was reportedly imprisoned for sexual molestation prior to becoming a Christian, and practices being 'slain in the Spirit,' which sometimes makes him laugh hysterically or roll on the floor in fits of spiritual fervour.
But Bramnick says God uses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. "Todd is very clear about glorifying the Lord," he says. "Anyone who has accepted Jesus has the same power to pray for the sick in the name of Jesus, and they will recover."
Healing and angels
While Bentley frequently rouses the crowd to cry out for "more of God" in anticipation of healing, Tchividjian, who recently authored the book Do I Know God?, says promising to heal hurting people is dangerous.
"At least from a biblical standpoint, there is no doubt that God can and does heal people . . . Sometimes he chooses to do so, and sometimes he does not," he says. "There are many people, like my grandmother, who God chose not to heal -- and that's okay."
In fact, accounts have surfaced that Larry Reed, pastor of Olympic View Assembly of God in Silverdale, Washington, visited the Florida Outpouring in early May and celebrated being healed from terminal bone cancer -- before passing away May 27.
Tchividjian also notes that Bentley claims to physically abuse people in order to heal them.
In one sermon recording provided by Way of the Master Radio, Bentley said the Holy Spirit told him to bang a crippled woman's legs up and down on the stage, and then finally, "The Holy Spirit came over me . . . and said, 'Kick her in the face'" -- and he did. Only then was she healed, he says.
Angels and accountability
Bentley also says he's been visited by many angels and seen Jesus in the flesh. Bentley says one female angel, named Emma, visited him and sprinkled "gold dust," illustrating financial blessings, on the congregation where he was preaching.
"She floated a couple of inches off the floor. It was almost like Kathryn Khulman in those old videos when she wore a white dress and looked like she was gliding across the platform," Bentley wrote on a page he has since removed from his website due to controversy.
"Within three weeks of that visitation, the church had given me the biggest offering I had ever received to that point in my ministry," he adds. "Thousands of dollars! Thousands!"
When Geraldo Rivera questioned Bentley about his finances, he said he receives no monies from the offerings taken at the Florida Outpouring. His salary provided by Fresh Fire Ministries provides him with a modest living, he says.
In another interview, he also noted that one night's offering at the Florida Outpouring was being sent to help refugees in the Sudan.
Heavenly anecdotes
Bentley also claims to have visited the "third heaven" on more than one occasion.
In one interview with Patricia King of the TV show Extreme Prophetic, he claimed to have ascended into heaven with prophetic minister Bob Jones after simply closing their eyes at a noisy restaurant.
In another instance, he said he visited the cabin where Paul lives in heaven -- and Paul told him that he and Abraham co-wrote the Book of Hebrews.
"We obviously have a problem with these statements and do not believe them to be biblical," stated Dan Hickling, ministry assistant to Pastor Bob Coy of Calvary Chapel Ft. Lauderdale.
"We would hesitate to put the 'revival' tag on what's happening in Lakeland. True Spirit-led revival is always accompanied by the conviction of sin, the confession of sin and the repentance of sin. And if these aren't the dominant evidences in Lakeland, I don't see the scriptural validation for true revival," Hickling said.
Saving the lost
Despite the criticisms of the Florida Outpouring, Todd Bentley maintains that the entire point of the Florida Outpouring is indeed salvation.
"Our mission is to save the lost. Period. Everything that is happening at Lakeland is to that end," he says in a letter to his critics. "God is good. People are being saved."
According to Bentley, his visions, manifestations and encounters with the Lord -- like when he saw Jesus face to face in his kitchen and God in his living room as referenced in his November 13 sermon, available via his website -- are God's response to his faith, and are meant to point him closer to Jesus Christ.
"To apply doctrine to the response of God in our lives is wrong," he wrote. "For someone to assume that something that happens to us isn't of God because it's not in his or her doctrine or knowledge of Jesus is, in my opinion, to grieve the precious Holy Spirit."
He also says that he does not practice the worship of angels, like many people claim.
"Mary, Paul, Peter, Jesus, the shepherds and several disciples . . . had angelic encounters, and some interacted with them in conversation. That doesn't suppose they worshiped these angelic beings or sought them for revelation apart from God." he says. "Let it be said, that I seek only God for revelation -- and should he send me an angel to me to impart revelation, get my attention, or open wells of revival and healing, so be it."
Bentley also writes that he is well aware Jesus said there would be false signs and wonders in the last days done by workers of iniquity.
Bentley writes, "Salvation is knowing Jesus and being known by him; it's much more than spiritual works or a verbal confession. I understand that lofty places in this visible kingdom are no proof of anyone's acceptance with God, and neither are the mighty works, even done in Jesus' name."
However, he also says his miracles and healings are proof that the Florida Outpouring is a move of God and that "we should place no limit on further revelation from God."
Bramnick of New Wine Ministries also believes these miracles validate Bentley's ministry.
"It is just elevating the faith of the church to believe what the Bible says. Beyond the signs and the wonders and the healing, it is bringing a new dimension of hunger and intimacy with our Heavenly Father," he says. "With the fruit of drawing people closer in their relationship to Jesus and people who are bound with cancer, crippling diseases and other infirmities being set free, I have a hard time understanding how other Christians would say that this is not a move of God."
However, Tchividjian reminds Christians to test every word that comes out of Bentley's mouth like the Bereans tested what Paul said in Acts 17:11.
"We increase our scrutiny of people like Hugh Hefner, and we decrease our evaluation of people like Todd Bentley just because he comes in the name of Jesus," Tchividjian says. "Hugh Hefner is not nearly as dangerous to the church as someone like this . . .
"I would pay much more attention to those people who have stood the test of time. I would pay very little attention to anyone who comes and says, 'God told me something that he's never told anyone else, and you can't find it in the Bible.' It's a lie, it's that simple."
America: How Well Do We Know One Another?
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080626/study-evangelicals-lesser-known-than-homosexuals.htm
More Americans are acquainted with a gay or lesbian person than an evangelical, according to a recent study.
The latest research by Phoenix-based Ellison Research found that only 24 percent of all Americans who say they are not evangelical know an evangelical person very well and 40 percent have never known any evangelicals at all, even casually. Meanwhile, 53 percent say they know a homosexual person very well and 20 percent know such a person casually.
"The study raises questions about why members of some groups are largely invisible to so many Americans," Ron Sellers, president of Ellison Research, noted.
Sellers pointed out that homosexuals are estimated to make up less than 10 percent of the U.S. population while 17 percent of Americans call themselves evangelical. Despite the larger evangelical count, Americans are more likely to know a gay or lesbian person than an evangelical.
Also, the study showed that a majority of evangelicals (62 percent), along with 75 percent of Protestant churchgoers and 77 percent of all Catholics, know a gay or lesbian person at least casually.
"Is this because homosexuals are more open than evangelicals about who they are? Because Americans are more open to knowing a homosexual than an evangelical? Because evangelicals themselves are less likely to reach into the broader community to form relationships?" he posed. "These questions are certainly open to debate."
The questions Sellers posed can also be applied to other groups, he noted. "You could just as easily ask these questions about Mormons versus evangelicals, where Americans are just as likely to know a Mormon as an evangelical, even though by any measure the evangelical population in the U.S. is dramatically larger than the Mormon population."
According to the study, 21 percent know a Mormon very well.
Statistics were more positive for born-again Christians, but only to a small extent. Among Americans who do not call themselves born again, 38 percent say they know a born-again Christian very well and 18 percent have never known one.
Among other findings, half of all Americans know a member of the Christian clergy very well, 20 percent know one casually, and 12 percent have never known a clergyperson. More interestingly, the study pointed out that among people who regularly attend worship services, 30 percent say they do not currently know any clergy members very well and 14 percent say they do not even know one, including their own minister or priest, casually.
Younger Americans are less likely to know a Christian clergyperson. Only 39 percent of people under 35 know a Christian clergyperson very well compared to 48 percent of people 35 to 54 years old and 61 percent of those 55 or older.
Even fewer Catholic churchgoers report knowing any clergy with 23 percent saying they do not know one even casually, according to the study.
Although Catholics may not know their own priest, many Americans are acquainted with Catholics. With Catholics representing a large segment of the U.S. population, 76 percent of all non-Catholics say they currently know a Roman Catholic very well. Only 3 percent have never known a Catholic.
In other findings, people who regularly attend worship services are as likely to know people across religious or irreligious lines – atheists, Muslims, Mormons, and Jews – as those who are not active in a church or the unchurched.
The Ellison study also measured Americans' acquaintances with other types of people, including those of another ethnic background and persons in a different political party.
Among non-white Americans, 92 percent currently know a white person very well. Among non-blacks, 68 percent know a black person very well. And among non-Latinos, 72 percent know a Latino individual very well. Only 44 percent know an Asian person very well and the numbers are similar for American Indians and for Jews.
The study additionally showed that many Americans are not acquainted with those on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Less than half (47 percent) of Americans who are not politically conservative say they know someone who is, and 24 percent have never known a conservative. Also, only 42 percent of adults who do not call themselves politically liberal know a liberal person and 25 percent have never known one.
Further looking into the relationships of conservatives and liberals, Sellers found the similarities more striking than the differences.
"Yes, conservatives are more likely to know a born again Christian, but two-thirds of liberals also know one at least casually," he said. "And yes, liberals are more likely to know a gay or lesbian person, but two-thirds of conservatives also know one at least casually. Liberals and conservatives may have very different worldviews, but the relationships they maintain aren’t really all that different, despite the stereotypes.”
Findings from the study, which was conducted on 1,007 adults, can be interpreted either positively or negatively, Sellers commented.
"On the positive side, the study shows the vast majority of Americans know someone of a different racial or ethnic background very well, and many also know people of different religious or political viewpoints," he stated.
"On the negative side, there are plenty of types of people many Americans have really never encountered. Four out of ten have never known – even casually – someone who has experienced homelessness. A third have never known an evangelical or a Mormon. Almost half have never known a Muslim. One out of five has never known an American Indian. One out of every four liberals has never known a conservative, and vice versa. Not knowing a variety of people has implications for how we live our lives and how we think of others."
View from America: Real friends, and real enemies
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1214132686907
Two years ago, American Jewish community relations groups were busy patting themselves on the back for achieving a signal victory in turning back the attempt by anti-Israel radicals to hijack the Presbyterian Church USA.
After the Presbyterians became the first Protestant church to embrace divestment from companies doing business in Israel in 2004, Jewish groups worked hard to overturn the decision. When the church voted to back away from this stand in 2006, it was rightly seen as a triumph not just for friends of Israel, but for the tactic of outreach itself as years of tenacious diplomacy paid off.
The celebrations seem to have been premature.
The release of a document by the church last month titled "Vigilance Against Anti-Jewish Bias in the Pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian Peace" was supposed to help its members guard against anti-Semitic rhetoric when discussing the Middle East.
Instead, it is a compendium of charges aimed at delegitimizing the Jewish State. The church release avoids discussing Arab support for terrorism and, rather than serve as a warning against bias, it serves as a justification for anti-Israel invective since it places the sole blame for the conflict on Israel, rather than on those attempting to destroy it. If anything, it should serve to reinvigorate those who have been pushing for divestment, which is nothing less than a declaration of economic war on Israel and the Jewish people.
In itself, this should justify the outrage and the feelings of betrayal that have been voiced by a wide spectrum of centrist and liberal Jewish denominations and organizations that worked to reverse the previous Presbyterian stand on Israel.
But also buried in the document is a strand of thought that is relevant not only to this battle for the soul of a powerful mainline liberal Protestant church, but to the mindset of American Jews themselves.
Amid a laundry list of anti-Israel measures in the Presbyterian statement - including opposition to the security fence that effectively ended the Palestinian suicide bombing campaign - was the assertion that "Christian faithfulness, as well as the policies of our church, demands that we maintain our commitments … to criticize forms of Christian Zionism."
That meant that in the same document in which they urged its members to avoid couching their attacks on Israel in ways that could be labeled anti-Semitic, the Presbyterians specifically attack fellow Christians who have lent their support to the idea that the Jewish people have a right to sovereignty over their historic homeland.
In particular, they singled out Evangelicals such as Pastor John Hagee, who was flogged out of the camp of Republican presidential candidate John McCain for saying the Holocaust was caused by the Jewish sin of failing to make aliya.
To support the contention that Christian Zionists are wrongheaded, the Presbyterian document cited Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the leader of the Union for Reform Judaism, who in a December 2007 speech warned Jews to avoid alliances with the pro-Israel Christian right.
Yoffie, whose Reform movement joined the coalition of Jewish groups that condemned the Presbyterian reversal, is not happy about this. He told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he is "infuriated" about the Presbyterians "embedding" his words in a "doctrine that is so hostile to Israel."
While some of Yoffie's criticisms of Hagee are not completely off-target - particularly his reaction to Hagee's foolish talk about the Holocaust, for which the pastor has since apologized - the Reform leader is right to be embarrassed.
But rather than merely being annoyed by the church's chutzpah, he ought to be rethinking his own bashing of right-wing Christian Zionists.
Indeed, the Presbyterians' renewed flirtation with anti-Zionism should serve as a wake-up call for the vast number of American Jews who have clung to their prejudices about Evangelicals, despite the sea change in the Protestant world that has occurred in the last generation.
In the past, Jews instinctively looked to mainline liberal Protestant churches, like the Presbyterians, the Methodists, Lutherans and Anglicans, who have all been debating divestment measures against Israel in recent years, as allies. At the same time, Jews generally assumed that Evangelicals, who generally lived outside the coastal urban enclaves where Jewish life has thrived in America, were liable to be anti-Semitic.
But in the America of 2008, it is precisely the Evangelicals of the Christian right who are instinctively supportive of Israel, while our traditional allies on the Christian left are flirting with a theology that demonizes Israel and the Jews.
Though the gap between the Christian right and most Jews on domestic issues is still vast, when it comes to the life-and-death questions of Israeli survival and opposition to terror, it is the people who look to the Hagees of the world for leadership, rather than to the Presbyterians, who stand with Israel.
Unfortunately, that isn't good enough for many Jews who never tire of making unsupported and utterly false accusations that the Evangelicals actually hate Jews and want to destroy us. It is little surprise that this has only encouraged the Presbyterians to use this issue to bolster their own attempt to isolate Israel.
The point here is not to claim that the Christian right has become Israel's only American friends, though they are among the most active and effective.
The fact is, most of the rank-and-file members of the mainline churches who are dabbling in anti-Zionist rhetoric and considering divestment don't support the campaign against Israel. Indeed, it is doubtful even after all of the controversy of the past few years, that most are even aware of the fact that their spiritual home is being hijacked by radical left-wing elements.
As frustrated as many Jews are with the Presbyterian betrayal, the outreach campaign carried out by Jewish community relations councils across the country must continue.
Most American Protestants rightly see Israel as sharing common democratic values with the United States and want nothing to do with the sort of anti-Zionism that has won a foothold among mainline church activists. They need to understand that their silence will be taken as complicity with the actions of these radicals. They must understand that their churches cannot pretend to be friends with their Jewish neighbors while supporting an economic war on the Jewish state. And they must be prodded to take action to rescind such measures enacted in their names.
But, at the same time, American Jews must cease living in the past when it comes to understanding the contemporary religious and political landscape of America. At a time when Hamas, Hizbullah and their Iranian sponsors are plotting a new Holocaust for Israel and its six million Jews, treating those Protestants who actually love Israel as hateful pariahs is a strategy devoid of truth or sense.
YouTube privacy fears - what you watched, when and your IP Address
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0329430120080704
A U.S. judge's order to Google Inc to turn over YouTube user data to Viacom Inc sparked an outcry on Thursday from privacy advocates in the midst of a legal showdown over video piracy.
Viacom, owner of movie studio Paramount and MTV Networks, requested the information as part of its $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against the popular online video service and its deep-pocketed parent, Google.
Judge Louis Stanton of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered Google on Tuesday to turn over as evidence a database with usernames of YouTube viewers, what videos they watched when, and users' computer addresses.
Privacy activists from the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a blog post the order "threatens to expose deeply private information" and violated the Video Privacy Protection Act, a 1988 federal law passed after Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's video rental habits were revealed.
Representatives of both companies said they were looking to work out how to comply with the court order to share video data while ensuring personally identifiable information is secure.
Viacom responded in a statement that it needs the data to demonstrate video piracy patterns that are the heart of its case against YouTube. But it sought to diffuse privacy fears, saying it had no interest in identifying individual users.
"Viacom has not asked for and will not be obtaining any personally identifiable information of any user," Viacom said.
"Any information that we or our outside advisors obtain ... will be used exclusively for the purpose of proving our case against YouTube and Google (and) will be handled subject to a court protective order and in a highly confidential manner."
Google senior litigation counsel Catherine Lacavera said her company was looking to resolve the issue quickly in a way that balanced Viacom and other plaintiffs' need for evidence in the case while "carving out some space for user privacy."
Lacavera said her company was pleased the court's decision had put limits on evidence discovery, including refusing to allow Viacom access to YouTube's search technology or to users' private videos on the site.
But the Google attorney called on Viacom to allow YouTube to anonymize user data -- in other words, redact rows of data containing usernames or unique computer Internet addresses.
In closed-door hearings ahead of the ruling, Google attorneys had argued against turning over such data without eliminating personally identifiable information.
"We are disappointed the court granted Viacom's overreaching demand for viewing history," she said. "We will ask Viacom to respect users' privacy and allow us to anonymize the logs before producing them under the court's order."
Stolen OnStar Cars Stop Shut Down Remotely
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/jun/11/me-stolen-onstar-cars-stop-in-the-name-of-the-law/
General Motors says it has developed a technology to put the brakes on car thieves and came to Tampa on Tuesday to prove it.
Representatives from the automaker demonstrated their Stolen Vehicle Slowdown technology before the media, police and fire department officials. The system is designed to let an operator with the company's OnStar service send a signal to a stolen vehicle to restrict the fuel flow and slow the car, truck or SUV to 3 to 5 mph.
Police and fire-rescue personnel took turns behind the wheel of two Chevrolet Tahoes equipped with the technology. When activated, the system sent a message to a screen that said, "Engine power is reduced," then the vehicle coasted to a near standstill.
"Anything that will help us respond better is worth it," said Hillsborough Fire Rescue spokesman Capt. Bruce Delk. "I've seen what can happen" at accidents.
Three hundred people are killed in 30,000 police chases each year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
GM officials said the company came up with the technology after surveying OnStar subscribers and finding most wanted the theft-prevention technology. OnStar already offers GPS navigation to allow police to track stolen vehicles. The company gets about 700 stolen vehicle reports monthly.
"No system is bulletproof ... but this is a huge stride," said George Baker, manager for public policy at OnStar.
The automaker has talked about stolen-vehicle technology since late last year. Now, it's going on the road to 25 U.S. cities to demonstrate to police and fire-rescue personnel how it works.
After receiving a stolen vehicle report, an OnStar operator can communicate with police about the vehicle's location. To help identify the stolen vehicle to police on the street, OnStar can activate the flashers for 30 seconds.
In the case of a fleeing vehicle, when police say it's safe, OnStar sends an electronic command to restrict the fuel flow. The brakes and steering will still work.
"It just seems like the car lost power," OnStar spokeswoman Kameya Shows said.
Video Shows Hostage Rescue
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/404260.aspx
CBNNews.com - BOGOTA, Colombia - New video shows just how well thought out Wednesday's elaborate rescue mission in Colombia was.
Government military agents posing as aid workers and a media crew were able to free 15 hostages long held by Colombian rebels without firing a single shot.
Colombia's defense minister says the operation was closely modeled after two hostage handovers arranged by Venezuela's pro-rebel President Hugo Chavez, right down to a red T-shirt worn by a pretend reporter.
It used the same kind of white helicopter. There was a TV crew like those Chavez sent. And agents posing as humanitarian envoys had taken acting lessons to learn foreign accents.
The guerrillas had been led to believe the hostages were being moved to a new location for negotiations on a prisoner swap.
A videotape shows the handcuffed, grim-faced hostages being escorted to the helicopter. Then it shows tears of joy and lots of hugging after it takes off and they're told they are free.
Top UK Judge: Sharia Law Should Be Used in Britain
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1031611/Sharia-law-SHOULD-used-Britain-says-UKs-judge.html
The most senior judge in England yesterday gave his blessing to the use of sharia law to resolve disputes among Muslims.
Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips said that Islamic legal principles could be employed to deal with family and marital arguments and to regulate finance.
He declared: 'Those entering into a contractual agreement can agree that the agreement shall be governed by a law other than English law.'
In his speech at an East London mosque, Lord Phillips signalled approval of sharia principles as long as punishments - and divorce rulings - complied with the law of the land.
But his remarks, which back the informal sharia courts operated by numerous mosques, provoked a barrage of criticism.
Lawyers warned that family and marital disputes settled by sharia could disadvantage women or the vulnerable.
Tories said that legal equality must be respected and that rulings incompatible with English law should never be enforceable.
Lord Phillips spoke five months after Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams suggested Islamic law could govern marital law, financial transactions and arbitration in disputes.
The Lord Chief Justice said yesterday of the Archbishop's views: 'It was not very radical to advocate embracing sharia law in the context of family disputes'.
He added there is 'widespread misunderstanding as to the nature of sharia law'.
Lord Phillips said: 'Those who are in dispute are free to subject it to mediation or to agree that it shall be resolved by a chosen arbitrator. There is no reason why principles of sharia law or any other religious code should not be the basis for mediation or other forms of dispute resolution.'
Lord Phillips said that any sanctions must be 'drawn from the laws of England and Wales'. Severe physical punishment - he mentioned stoning, flogging or amputating hands - is 'out of the question' in Britain, he added.
Lord Phillips' speech brought protests from lawyers who fear women could be disadvantaged in supposedly voluntary sharia deals.
Barrister and human rights specialist John Cooper said: 'There should be one law by which everyone is held to account.
Spokesman Teresa Richardson said religious law 'must be used to find solutions which are consistent with the basic principles of family law in this country and people must always have redress to the civil courts where they so choose.'
'There is not much doubt that in traditional Islamic communities women do not enjoy the freedoms that they have had for 100 years or more in Britain.
'It is very easy to put pressure on young women in a male-dominated household. The English law stands to protect people from intimidation in such circumstances.'
Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: 'Mediation verdicts which are incompatible with our own legal principles should never be enforceable. One of the key aspects of our free society is equality. This should be understood and respected by all.'
The Ministry of Justice said: 'English law takes precedence over any other legal system. The Government has no intention of changing this position. Alongside this, it is possible to resolve civil law dispute by other systems.'
Schoolboys Get Detention for Refusing to Pray to Allah
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,376746,00.html
Two boys were punished this week for refusing to kneel on prayer mats and worship Allah during a class demonstration on Islam, the Daily Mail reported.
Irate parents said a religious education teacher at the Alsager High School in England told students to wear Muslim headgear during a lesson on Tuesday. "But if Muslims were asked to go to church on Sunday and take Holy Communion, there would be war," the grandfather of one of the students said.
The two boys belong to a class that includes 11- to 12-year-olds, and after their refusal to participate they were given detention, the story says.
Another parent, Karen Williams, told the Mail: "Not only was it forced upon them, my daughter was told off for not doing it right. They'd never done it before and they were supposed to do it in another language."
Deputy Headmaster Keith Plant said the teacher has given her version of the incident but he declined to elaborate.
According to a statement from the Cheshire County Council on behalf of the school: "Educating children in the beliefs of different faith is part of the diversity curriculum on the basis that knowledge is essential to understanding.
"We accept that such teaching is to be conducted with some sense of sensitivity."
UK Report Of The Future Predicts Brain Implants, Revolution
http://www.canadianchristianity.com/nationalupdates/080703ministry.html
A British defense think tank predicts possible “key risks and shocks” for the future in a recently released report. The report predicts microchip brain implants, flash-bombs, Marxist middle-class revolutionaries, extreme globalization and more, all likely within 30 years.
The “source document for the development of UK Defense Policy” was created by the Development, Concepts and Doctrines Centre (DCDC), and will be used to “shape the UK’s future defense requirements” until 2036, according to the report.
The report lumps predictions into four categories: things that will happen (according to the report, more than 95 percent likely, or “near certainty”), things that are likely/probable (more than 60 percent likely), things that may/possibly happen (more than 10 percent likely) and things that are unlikely/improbable (less than 10 percent likely).
Water scarcity will be a major issue, U.S. economic crisis is likely, a pandemic may happen, and the global financial system may fail; these are just a few of the predictions of the report. Several predictions are more futuristic.
“Many commentators anchor themselves in the familiar present and, exploiting the latest fashion and a series of telling anecdotes, merely tell people what is already happening,” Admiral C. J. Parry said. “Much of what we have to say, with regard to both continuities and discontinuities, does not have a conclusion or ending, happy or otherwise, because, self evidently, the future has not happened yet.”
Much of the report sounds like science fiction, but according to the DCDC, science fiction that very possibly may become reality.
A “hot topic” in the report is the “scramble for space.” The report claims that space programs will continue to increase, with many smaller nations entering the fray.
The larger nations including Russia, the U.S. and China are the few that will send manned crafts deeper into space to search for resources. This “will raise jurisdictional, ownership and competitive rights issues.”
Artificial intelligence is referred to several times in the report, and is “likely to be employed to manage knowledge and support decision making across government and commercial sectors.”
Genetic modification, “nanobots” and stem-cell therapies are predicted to create an “increase in human life span” and an improvement in quality of life, though they could also lead to a range of threats including bio-warfare and human rights violations.
Electromagnetic pulse weapons will probably be created before 2035. These weapons might be able to wipe out all electronic devices in a given area without casualties.
Perhaps one of the strangest predictions in the report consists of microchips that could be connected to brains, allowing for “synthetic sensory perception beamed directly to the user’s senses.” This technology could be used to download any amount of information, and could be used for communication, allowing for a sort of computer-aided telepathy.
The dramatic increase in technology gives rise to several “doomsday scenarios,” though the likelihood of any given scenario is not commented on in the report. Genetic modification, disease and artificial intelligence are some of the possible causes of doomsday scenarios other than nuclear weapons. Doomsday scenarios are just a footnote to the many threats outlined in the report.
The increase of Islamic revolutionary groups, along with the rise of other militant groups from the disenfranchised younger generation, are two potentialities referred to several times in the report as high-level threats. The possibility of middle-class Marxist revolutions caused by growing gaps between the middle class and the super rich also could create a threat, as well as the increase of rigid belief systems as a backlash to the moral relativism prevalent in the world.
Population explosion in less developed countries and dramatic urbanization will “exacerbate” social tensions, creating threatening circumstances, especially in poorer regions around the world including Africa and Asia.
All of these threats are in addition to the common prediction that the atmosphere will continue to increase in temperature causing a cacophony of catastrophic problems from melting ice caps to destroyed ecosystems for fish.
With all these strange and possibly dire threats and predictions the report curiously concludes, “The world would be better or, at least, no worse in the future than it is today.”
U.K. to Begin Microchipping Prisoners
http://www.naturalnews.com/023481.html
The British government is developing a plan to track current and former prisoners by means of microchips implanted under the skin, drawing intense criticism from probation officers and civil rights groups.
As a way to reduce prison crowding, many British prisoners are currently released under electronic monitoring, carried out by means of an ankle bracelet that transmits signals like those used by mobile phones.
Now the Ministry of Justice is exploring the possibility of injecting prisoners in the back of the arm with a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip that contains information about their name, address and criminal record. Such chips, which contain a built-in antenna, could be scanned by special readers. The implantation of RFID chips in luggage, pets and livestock has become increasingly popular in recent years.
In addition to monitoring incarcerated prisoners, the ministry hopes to use the chips on those who are on probation or other conditional release. By including a satellite uplink system in the chip, police would be able to use global positioning system (GPS) technology to track subjects' exact locations at all times. According to advocates of such a measure, this could help keep sex offenders away from "forbidden" zones like schools.
Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, blasted the measure as degrading to the people chipped and of no benefit to probation officers.
"Knowing where offenders like pedophiles are does not mean you know what they are doing," Fletcher said. "Treating people like pieces of meat does not seem to represent an improvement in the system to me."
Shami Chakrabarti of the civil rights group Liberty had even stronger words:
"If the Home Office doesn't understand why implanting a chip in someone is worse than an ankle bracelet, they don't need a human-rights lawyer; they need a common-sense bypass."
Hot Future Shock: Heat-Wave Temperatures Forecast to Soar
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,375661,00.html
During the European heat wave of 2003 that killed tens of thousands, the temperature in parts of France hit 104 degrees. Nearly 15,000 people died in that country alone.
During the Chicago heat wave of 1995, the mercury spiked at 106 and about 600 people died.
In a few decades, people will look back at those heat waves "and we will laugh," said Andreas Sterl, author of a new study. "We will find those temperatures lovely and cool."
Sterl's computer model shows that by the end of the century, high temperatures for once-in-a-generation heat waves will rise twice as fast as everyday average temperatures.
Chicago, for example, would reach 115 degrees in such an event by 2100. Paris heat waves could near 109 with Lyon coming closer to 114.
Sterl, who is with the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, projects temperatures for rare heat waves around the world in a study soon to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
His numbers are blistering because of the drying-out effect of a warming world. Most global warming research focuses on average daily temperatures instead of these extremes, which cause greater damage.
His study projects a peak of 117 for Los Angeles and 110 for Atlanta by 2100; that's 5 degrees higher than the current records for those cities.
Kansas City faces the prospect of a 116-degree heat wave, with its current all-time high at 109, according to the National Climactic Data Center.
A few cities, such as Phoenix, which once hit 122 degrees and is projected to have heat waves of 120, have already reached these extreme temperatures once or twice. But they would be hitting those numbers a little more often as the world heats up over time.
For New York, it would only be a slight jump from the all-time record of 104 at John F. Kennedy Airport to the projected 106.
It could be worse. Delhi, India is expected to hit 120 degrees; Belem, Brazil, 121, and Baghdad, 122.
Those figures make sense, Ken Kunkel, a top Midwestern climate scientist and interim director of the Illinois Water Survey.
These are temperatures that are dangerous, said University of Wisconsin environmental health professor Dr. Jonathan Patz.
"Extreme temperature puts a huge demand on the body, especially anyone with heart problems," Patz said. "The elderly are the most vulnerable because they don't sense temperature as well."
And it's not just at the end of the century. By 2050, heat waves will be 3 to 5 degrees hotter than now "and probably be longer-lasting," Sterl said.
By mid-century, southern France's extreme heat waves should be around 111 degrees and then near 118 by the end of the century, Sterl's climate models predict.
In the 1990s, that region's extreme heat wave peaked at 104 degrees; in the 1950s, the worst heat wave peaked around 91 degrees, according to Sterl.
Churches of 40 countries give witness for Mideast peace
http://www.wfn.org/2008/07/msg00067.html
In Australia a broad spectrum of church leaders came together to address national public opinion makers on the Israel-Palestine conflict and launch a parish awareness kit. In Scotland a cross-party group in Parliament met with Christian, Jewish and Muslim representatives. In Budapest, Hungary's second largest church sent letters about peace for Israelis and Palestinians to the national and foreign governments. In Norway the foreign minister and a Palestinian bishop addressed a multi-religious peace service. In these and some 40 countries last week, there were peace vigils, seminars,
concerts, festivals and public gatherings.
The activities were part of a joint advocacy initiative, "International Church Action for Peace in Palestine and Israel, 4-10 June 2008", convened by the World Council of Churches. Many used a special prayer for the week from church leaders and a common message saying "It's time for Palestinians and Israelis to share a just peace". At a Canberra press conference, a statement signed by 57 leaders of churches and specialized ministries called on the Australian government to give a much higher priority to working for peace in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. A Member of Parliament then put the church recommendations on record.
At parliament in Edinburgh, 70 politicians and religious leaders addressed the international silence over the blockade of Gaza and the international complicity in not implementing United Nations resolutions on the conflict. The head of the Scottish Episcopal Church urged people in Scotland who are "free to denounce injustice" to support Palestinians and Israelis who persist in working for peace with justice.
North American and European leaders of Pax Christi International held a peace vigil in Antwerp, Belgium. World Vision International sent the Jerusalem prayer to 30,000 staff members worldwide. In the Philippines participants found ways to connect local struggles with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and every member church of the National Council of Churches received the action week message and prayer.
In Sri Lanka, the Church of Ceylon's reconciliation office took on the task of educating parishes about Israel and Palestine. National church organizations in the US held an ecumenical service in New York City using the Jerusalem prayer and an accompanying liturgy.
Who runs the world? G8, UN, A new alignment of nations on the horizon...
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11664289
The post-war global institutions have largely worked well. But rising countries and growing threats are challenging their pre-eminence
The powerful, like the victorious, do not just write history. They grab the seats at the top tables, from the United Nations Security Council to the boards of the big international economic and financial institutions. They collude behind closed doors. They decide who can join their cosy clubs and expect the rest of the world to obey the instructions they hand down.
That is how many outsiders, not just in the poor world, will see the summit that takes place from July 7th to 9th of the G8, the closest the world has to an informal (ie, self-appointed) steering group. Leaders of seven of the world’s richest democracies, plus oil-and gas-fired Russia, gather this year in Toyako, on Hokkaido in northern Japan, to ruminate on climate change, rising food and energy prices, and the best way to combat global scourges from disease to nuclear proliferation.
But in an age when people, money and goods move around as never before, this little group no longer commands the heights of the global economy and the world’s financial system as the core G7 used to do when their small, purposeful gatherings of the democratic world’s consenting capitalists first got going in the 1970s. Nowadays summits produce mostly lengthy communiqués and photo-opportunities. And Russia’s slide from democracy into state-directed capitalism has lowered the club’s political tone.
In an effort to show that the G8 is still up with the times, Japan, like Germany last year, has invited along for a brief chat leaders from five “outreach” countries: Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa. Yet this handshake between those who did best out of the 20th century and some potential shapers of the 21st leaves hanging the question of how the old world order should be adapting to the new.
Might the world be better managed by such a G13? Or a G15 or G16, to include a couple of weighty Islamic states too? Or, to preserve the group’s original globe-steering purpose, by a G12 of the world’s biggest economies? Meanwhile, the global institutions set up after the second world war are also having to look hard at their own futures. Unlike the G7/8, which takes on a bit of everything, these institutions basically divide into two sorts: economic and financial, and political.
At the pinnacle of world political management, but looking increasingly anachronistic, is the UN Security Council. Of its 15 members, ten rotate at the whim of the various UN regional groupings. The other five, which wield vetoes and are permanent, are America, Russia, China, Britain and France, roughly speaking the victors of the last long-ago world war. Alongside them is a secretary-general (currently Ban Ki-Moon from South Korea; this job, too, tends to go by regional turn), a vast bureaucracy at UN headquarters in New York, and hundreds of specialised agencies and offshoots.
The world had to be saved not just from another war, but from a repeat of the Great Depression of the 1930s. That job went to a clutch of institutions: the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), jointly known as the Bretton Woods institutions after the place of their creation; the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a rich-country think-tank set up in 1961; the much older central bankers’ Bank for International Settlements; and the World Trade Organisation (WTO, formerly the GATT).
They have been buttressed too by conventions, conferences, courts, declarations, dispute-mechanisms, special mandates and treaties governing everything from human rights to anti-dumping complaints. The whole elaborate architecture has had extra underpinning from strong regional organisations, such as the European Union, and less elaborate ones like the African Union and the various talking-shops of Latin America, the Arab world and Asia, as well as from steadying alliances, such as NATO. As a result, there has been no return to the disastrous global conflicts of the first half of the 20th century.
Yet that very success has become one of three powerful pressures to adjust the way the world is run, as new economic winners (and some new losers) demand a say. Pressure also stems from intensifying resentment and frustration. After ringing declarations on human rights and even the adoption by a UN world summit in 2005 of a “responsibility to protect” against genocide and crimes against humanity, the UN Security Council still finds itself unable to agree to do much to protect the people of Darfur, Zimbabwe, Myanmar and others from the murderous contempt of their rulers—just as in the 1990s the UN failed the genocide victims in Rwanda.
If the Security Council, with a charter of high principles at its back, shows such feebleness towards tyrants, doesn’t it deserve to be bypassed? John McCain, the Republican candidate for president of the United States, supports the creation of a new League of Democracies which, its boosters argue, would have not only the moral legitimacy but also the will to right the world’s wrongs effectively.
The third impetus to rejig the way the world organises itself is a dawning realisation on the part of governments, rich and poor, that the biggest challenges shaping their future—climate change, the flaws and the forces of globalisation, the scramble for resources, state failure, mass terrorism, the spread of weapons of mass destruction—often need global, not just national or regional, solutions. The shift in 21st-century economic power alone is justification for rebalancing influence in the top clubs. Much harder to figure out is which bits of the global architecture need mere tweaking, which need retooling or replacing—and who should have the right to decide.
After decades of dividing the world into the rich and powerful West and the developing (or emerging) “rest”, China’s rapid growth and the economic dynamism of East Asia had led to talk of a new “Pacific” century well before the old “Atlantic” one had ended. On present trends, somewhere between 2025 and 2030 three of the world’s four largest economies will be from Asia. China will just pip America to top the global league, with India and Japan, both determined but so far unsuccessful campaigners for permanent seats on the UN Security Council, following on (though Chinese and Indians will still be, on average, much poorer than Americans or Japanese).
Not unipolar but what?
Yet talk of an Asian century sounds quaint. Despite America’s brief “unipolar moment” as its rival pole, the Soviet Union, collapsed, Russia has recovered to join a rising China, America, Europe and Japan in a new constellation of big powers that is based on far more than the old boot-and-rocket counts of the cold war. Bring India into the snapshot, and you capture 54% of the world’s population and 70% of GDP. Whether the leaders of this multipolar world will rub along or bash elbows remains to be seen.
Globalisation’s increasingly unfettered flow of information, technology, capital, goods, services and people has helped spread opportunity and influence far and wide. To re-emergent China and Russia, add not just India but Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Australia, to name just some of the new winners as money changes pockets and the world turns faster.
A modern map of power and influence should also include transformational tools such as the internet; manipulators from lobbying NGOs to terrorist groups; profit-takers such as global corporations and sovereign wealth funds; and unpredictable forces such as global financial flows. The principal characteristic of this world, argues Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations in a recent Foreign Affairs article, is not multipolarity but “nonpolarity”. Dozens of actors, exercising different kinds of power, vastly complicate the effort to find a better balance of influence and responsibility. But the excuse of complexity is no answer to the demand for equity.
Some clubs have proved more responsive than others. China got a new economic start simply by ditching Marx, Lenin and Mao. But its reformers were able to tap the liberal rules-based system codified in the rules of the IMF and the World Bank (and later the WTO) for ideas as well as cash. China rejoined the bank in 1980 (the Nationalist government on Taiwan had been a founder member) just as its reforms got under way. Ironically, Communist-run China has since been one of the system’s biggest beneficiaries. But it is by no means the only one. Despite the latest stockmarket dips and credit squeezes, world income per head has increased by more over the past five years than during any other similar period on record.
The IMF and the World Bank, pragmatic institutions from the outset, have adapted already, in fits and starts. In April the IMF reformed the peculiar formula by which it allocates votes and financial contributions according to economic size, reserves and other measures (see chart). China’s share of votes will increase to 3.81%, still far short of its weight in the world economy. Meanwhile, old power patterns still determine who holds the two top jobs: the bank is run by an American, the fund by a European. But a bigger problem for both organisations is relevance.
Until the late 1990s the IMF, monitor of exchange rates and lender of last resort to struggling governments, had plenty of work. But emerging economies, once its chief clients and source of earnings in repaid interest and loans, are these days often awash with their own cash. Earlier this year the IMF board voted to cut staff and sell off about an eighth of its gold reserves (some 400 tonnes) to meet expected future funding shortfalls. With no obvious role in coping with the aftermath of the recent banking and stockmarket turbulence, its future role may be more as an expert economic adviser.
Some worry that the world may still need a lender of last resort. Critics think the fund’s days should be numbered and its reserves put to better use for development. Still others muse that what is needed is a World Investment Organisation, to set basic rules and better track the huge and complex flows of cash that now wash around in hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, banks and financial markets.
The World Bank has a more certain future, but still needs to retool. Competition has stiffened from private capital markets. Many governments that once needed the bank’s help for dams, roads and other big projects are earning plenty from the sale of raw materials. Even in Africa, the readiness of China and India to spend liberally without strings in pursuit of oil and minerals means that the Sudans and the Congos can take the bank’s cash and ignore the conditions attached.
Yet the bank still has a role lending to unfashionable causes, or countries which donors neglect. It could also provide global public goods: funding energy-infrastructure and climate-change projects are two examples, agriculture another.
A bit too equal
While the bank and the fund are steered by their biggest shareholders, the WTO, though relying on a representative caucus of states to hammer out deals, belongs to all its members: India and Brazil, for example, are at the heart of the Doha round of trade talks. But egalitarianism can be a weakness as well as a strength.
Much admired, at least by government lawyers, are the 60,000 pages of jurisprudence that govern the workings of the WTO dispute mechanism, which has helped resolve many a trade spat. The WTO ensures that members do not discriminate among each other—the best deal they offer to anyone must be extended to everyone. This has helped level the playing field and expand world trade. Russia’s is the only large economy still outside the WTO, and that is its choice.
Yet those wanting to join must strike deals with each of the existing members—now a daunting 152. Operating by consensus means that the Doha “development” round has bogged down in disputes between developed and developing countries over complex, reciprocal cuts in farm subsidies and tariff barriers. The prospects for moving on to services look dim. Slow progress has helped push many to forge bilateral or regional deals instead. And if the Doha round fails completely, the recriminations could run far and wide—threatening any attempt, for example, to get agreement between the developed and developing world on new mechanisms to deal with climate change.
Economic and financial power is to some extent up for bids by governments with a stake in the game, and trade rules are (arduously) negotiable. Yet the distribution of political power has proved stubbornly—debilitatingly—resistant to change.
Most bitterly contested is membership of the UN Security Council, which has the right (whether exclusively or not is hotly debated) to decide what constitutes a threat to world peace and security, and what to do about it. In the UN’s other big decision-making institution, the General Assembly, all the world can have its say, and does. But here outsiders take their revenge: a caucus of mostly developing countries called the G77 (but these days comprising 130 members including China) tends to dominate and filibuster.
Might it assuage resentment and improve the council’s authority and the UN’s effectiveness if America, Britain, France Russia and China invited other permanent members to join them—and considered giving up their veto? When the P5, as they are called, first grabbed the most powerful slots, the UN had 51 members; decades of decolonisation and splintering self-determination later, it has 192. The obstacles to reform grow no smaller either.
Most recently a concerted effort by Brazil, Germany, India and Japan (a self-styled G4) to join the council’s permanent movers and shakers was thwarted by a combination of foot-dragging, jealousy and stiff-arming. African countries failed to agree on which of their several aspirants should join the bid. Regional rivals—Argentina and Mexico, Italy, Indonesia, Pakistan and others—lobbied to block the front-runners. China made it clear it would veto Japan; America, in supporting only Japan, helped destroy its friend’s chances.
New permanent members would broaden the regional balance. That could add authority and legitimacy to council decisions. Bringing in not only nuclear-armed India, but soft-powered Japan and the rest, would undercut the notion, perpetuated by the P5, that to be a winner you need first to crash the nuclear club.
But might the price of a larger, permanently more diverse council be more potential spanner-tossers and thus greater deadlock? The hope would be that once difficult outsiders got their feet permanently under the table, sharing the responsibility for managing the world would stop them protecting bad elements, as South Africa (currently a rotating member) has been doing with Zimbabwe, in part to defy the permanent five.
Prising the P5 from their vetoes might, however, have adverse effects. It was dependable veto power, ensuring their vital interests were never overridden, that kept America and Russia talking at the UN—and Nikita Khrushchev shoe-banging—through the darkest episodes of the cold war. Russia will not forget the mistake of the brief Soviet boycott of the council that led to force being authorised to repel North Korea at the start of the Korean war in 1950. China shows no sign of veto self-effacement, either.
But staying at the table does not guarantee agreement. The UN is deliberately an organisation of states, and states differ for reasons good and bad. George Bush went to war in Iraq without explicit backing from the Security Council (just as NATO went to war to end ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, despite Russia’s certain veto had the issue come to a council vote). But the council’s divisions on the most contentious issues have not prevented responsible stewardship elsewhere. A Security Council summit in 1992 agreed that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction was a “threat to peace and security” to be dealt with forcibly if need be. After the attacks of September 11th 2001, new resolutions were passed to curb terrorists’ finance and keep nuclear, chemical and biological weapons out of their hands.
There has been a huge increase over the past 15 years in the numbers of blue helmets, with 100,000 soldiers and police currently deployed. This is credited with helping to reduce the number of conflicts between states, as well as calming civil wars from Bosnia to Haiti, from Cambodia to Sudan, from Congo to Lebanon. Acceptance, at least politically, of a “responsibility to protect” takes the council towards territory which, earlier this decade, it would not have approached: an International Criminal Court, for example, separate from the UN but able to take its referrals, and ready to prosecute the worst crimes.
Yet divisions among the P5 have often slowed deployment of peacekeepers where they are most needed, such as in Sudan’s war-torn province of Darfur. Pessimists doubt that China and Russia, both arch-defenders of the Westphalian principle that state sovereignty trumps all, will ever seriously contemplate authorising forceful intervention even to end a genocide. A new UN Human Rights Council has yet to prove it is any better than its discredited predecessor at bringing brutal governments to book.
Meanwhile it took years, and North Korea’s 2006 bomb test, for China to condemn Kim Jong Il’s nuclear cheating and let the Security Council pass judgment on it. The P5 plus Germany have worked together over the past three years, slapping a series of UN resolutions and sanctions on the regime in Iran for defiance over its suspect nuclear work, yet Russia and China have doggedly watered down each text, line by line.
Doing it for themselves
There is much the UN Security Council will never be able to do, no matter who occupies its plushest seats. And there are lots of other ways to get useful things done these days. The internet helps campaigners on human rights, as on other issues, to get their message round the world rather effectively. Stung by constant exposure and criticism of its policy in Sudan and Darfur, China appointed a special envoy (who soon found he had a lot of explaining to do) and shifted ground on the need for a UN force, even though deployment is agonisingly slow.
In some cases, regional organisations are better equipped to take the strain. Enlargement of the EU and NATO has helped stabilise Europe’s borderlands, with mostly European troops and police these days in the Balkans. Russia may protest, but its western frontier has never been more peaceful.
On a similar principle of African solutions to African problems, the African Union has provided troops in Sudan and elsewhere. But devolving security jobs to the neighbours can be a disaster: the AU delegated the problem of what to do about Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe to a southern African grouping, SADC, which left it to South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki, who did nothing. The hard-pressed people of Zimbabwe are still waiting for relief.
East Asia, the other big potential battlefront in the cold war, used to look very different from Europe, which has long had more than its share of shock-absorbing regional clubs and institutions. Now, alongside the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), a still limited talking-shop, other regional conversations are starting up. The ASEAN Regional Forum draws in not only China, Japan and Korea, but Americans, Russians and Europeans; ASEAN-plus-three summits are clubbier, involving only regional rivals China, Japan and Korea. A new East Asian Summit excludes America but brings in India and Australia, among others; Americans naturally prefer to boost the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum (APEC). Meanwhile Russia, China and their Central Asian neighbours have founded the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, in part to counter Western influence in the region as NATO battles on in Afghanistan, but in part so that Russia and China can keep an eye on each other. Annual joint military exercises are a new feature.
Problem-solving groups come in all shapes and sizes, from quartets (for promoting Middle East peace or trying to settle the future of Kosovo) to entire posses. Some 80 countries in the Proliferation Security Initiative (an “activity not an organisation”) exchange information and train together to sharpen skills for blocking illicit shipments of nuclear or other weapons materials. Like the P5 plus 1 talks on Iran (sometimes called the E3 plus 3 by Europeans), there are six-party talks hosted by China on North Korea (and including America, South Korea, Japan and Russia), which could yet evolve into a formal north-east Asian security dialogue.
More countries are taking the initiative. China, Japan and South Korea, East Asia’s rival powers, will meet this year for a first 3-minus-ASEAN summit. China, India and Russia meet from time to time to re-swear allegiance to multipolarity. They may have little more in common than an ambition to put Europe and America in the shade, but earlier this year the foreign ministers of the four BRIC countries got together for the first time; their economic and finance ministers will soon meet too. And with a wary eye to China’s growing economic and military weight, America, Australia and Japan have formed something of a security threesome, though Japan’s plan to include India too was deemed a bit provocative.
Quirky but familiar globe-spanning organisations include the Commonwealth, which knits together Britain’s former colonies plus other volunteers and does good works in all sorts of out-of-the-way places, and the Non-Aligned Movement, a cold-war hold-over with 116 members and communiqués that leave no prejudice unrecorded. But what of Mr McCain’s endorsement of a League of Democracies?
The notion isn’t new. An American sponsored Community of Democracies got going with fanfare in 2000. There is nothing wrong with mobilising freedom-loving governments to speak up for democracy. But there are difficulties.
Last time, America found it hard to say no to friends, and not all its friends are democrats. The new League (or Concert) of Democracies would have clearer rules for ins and outs. Supporters see it as potentially an alternative source of legitimacy, should the Security Council be hopelessly divided: a two-thirds majority of the roughly 60 countries that might qualify could even authorise the use of force to deal with threats to peace or to uphold the principle of a “responsibility to protect”.
But would a group of countries that spans all continents from Botswana to Chile, and Israel to the Philippines, ever manage to agree on much? A supposed democracy caucus at the UN has achieved little. Dividing the world ideologically again seems a step backwards to some. Nor could such a club solve pressing global problems. Coping with climate change needs China as well as India; energy security needs Saudi Arabia and Russia, as well as oil-dependent Japan or the Europeans.
The good news, given the rise of lots of new powers and players, is that this is not the 19th century. Then governments had few means other than gunboats to settle their differences. There are plenty of guns about these days, but also many other ways to settle the world’s disputes.
Poland tells France won't be obstacle to EU treaty
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/07/04/europe/OUKWD-UK-EU-POLAND-FRANCE.php
PARIS: Polish President Lech Kaczynski has told French President Nicolas Sarkozy his country will not block ratification of a European Union reform treaty, the French presidential office said on Friday.
"The Polish President affirmed that Poland would not be an obstacle to the ratification of the treaty," Sarkozy's office said in a statement following a telephone conversation between the two leaders.
Kaczynski said earlier this week it would be "pointless" to sign the Lisbon treaty after it was rejected by Irish voters in a referendum on June 12 and that Warsaw would not ratify it unless Ireland managed to overcome its voters' opposition to it.
The treaty, which needs the backing of all 27 member states to come into force, aims to give the EU a stronger leadership, a more effective foreign policy and a fairer decision-making system. It would create a powerful new foreign policy chief and a president of the European Council, its highest political body.
Ireland's rejection has forced the issue to the top of the agenda for France's six-month European Union presidency and Sarkozy is scheduled to travel to Ireland on July 21 to discuss possible solutions.
His office said his phone conversation with Kaczynski had focused primarily on the Lisbon treaty and added: "The president recalled that the treaty was negotiated by President Kaczynski himself and that Poland had committed itself to ratifying it."
A French presidential source said earlier this week that Sarkozy's priority was to keep all 27 EU countries together rather than creating a two-speed or multi-speed Europe as some fervent integrationists wanted.
Livni's European success
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1214726207076
'You get what you see, and what you get and what you see are both definitely positive," a very good friend of mine who is high up on the ladder of power in the European Union remarked irreverently to me of our foreign minister recently. "She speaks her mind clearly and forcefully, doesn't beat about the bush. It is very refreshing," he added.
I had asked for his opinion after hearing the wolves howling for her blood as the Kadima primary begins to warm up.
Foreign ministers have to be judged first and foremost on the mark they leave on the foreign policy objectives of their country. We have had foreign ministers in the past who did virtually nothing but tend to their own image and their own ranking within their parties. We have had others - Yitzhak Shamir comes to mind - who worked tirelessly to advance subjects of great importance for the country. Tzipi Livni belongs in this second category.
The need to maintain good relations with the US is, of course, of primary importance for Israel. After the US, Europe comes a close second. For years our love affair with Europe has been lukewarm at best. We have viewed the Europeans as favoring the Palestinians and the Arab world at our expense, heaping criticism on us without attempting to understand the problems we face. And the Europeans have, indeed, been harsh in their criticism of us. We have seen countries in Europe that have kept their relations with Israel to a minimum, that have been scathing in their accusations against us and open in their dislike for us.
Livni and the Foreign Ministry have for many months been working assiduously to change this situation. Time and again Livni and the ministry's top officials made their way to Brussels - and to other European capitals - for yet more dreary talks. These visits are no picnic. Now, at last, their efforts have been capped with success.
In the midst of one of the worst crises the European Union has had to face - in the wake of the negation of the all-important Lisbon Treaty by the Irish and the threat of the Poles to follow suit - the foreign ministers of Europe voted unanimously to upgrade relations with Israel, despite the hesitations of some countries, notably Sweden, Ireland, and, to a lesser extent, Belgium. A solid bloc of the most important countries - Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands plus virtually all the countries from the East, the newer additions to the Union - voiced their full support for Israel's improved relationship with the European Union. There were no conditions, no ifs and buts.
Were there big headlines in Israel's media to herald this triumph? No, of course not. We prefer the bad to the good; we trumpet the failures and gloss over the successes. And success it has been, in a big way.
THERE ARE three aspects to this upgrading of relations. The first is political. It will ease the way for Israel to make a stronger mark on Europe. To give just one example: No Israeli prime minister has ever been invited for an official visit to the EU headquarters in Brussels; compare that to the number of official visits Israeli prime ministers have made to Washington.
The second aspect is that Israel will for the first time have access to the dozens of agencies and programs which form the backbone of the Union and which deal with every possible subject - education, youth, environment, transport, media, police, insurance etc. The fact that Israel will be able to integrate its activities with the EU in these manifold subjects will have an enormous impact on our economy and on our relationship with Europe.
The third aspect is connected to what the Europeans call a Single Market. Here, too, the implications are manifold.
How was this success achieved? It would have been considered impossible not so long ago. Full marks must be given to the hard work and the perseverance of our foreign minister and the ministry's officials dealing with Europe.
"Our minister is very popular with her European counterparts," a Foreign Ministry official told me. "They all call her by her first name, and like her very much."
A possible indication of that is the spate of visits from Europe. During the month of July - generally considered to be a quiet month for visits - we shall be seeing in Israel the foreign ministers of Cyprus, Italy and Ireland, as well as the prime minister of a prominent European nation.
THAT BRINGS us back to the wolves who would figuratively tear her to pieces to prevent Livni from winning the Kadima primary and becoming a contender for the post of prime minister in the next election.
Her only realistic rival in the Kadima primary is Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz. The kindest remark about him made by his critics is that when intelligence was distributed to all and sundry he was nowhere to be seen. His detractors consider him to have been chiefly responsible for the lackluster performance of the army in the Second Lebanon War; as former minister of defense and former chief of the General Staff, it was under his watch that the lack of preparation occurred. Mofaz was, understandably, the most knowledgeable minister in military matters, yet he failed to warn the cabinet that the army was not ready at the crucial meeting of the government prior to the war.
The critics point to the dismal showing of the Transportation Ministry under Mofaz: Public transport is at an all-time low, as was dramatically indicated in the popular Politica TV show this week. A "disaster waiting to happen," was how Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Lapidot, the former head of the air force who chaired the investigation committee into the problems of our air transport described the situation, before resigning in disgust from the committee. He accused the ministry under Mofaz of criminal negligence.
So who would be more suited to lead Kadima into the next election, Shaul Mofaz or Tzipi Livni? Mofaz certainly has more experience in military matters than Livni, but we have seen the poor results of that experience. Moreover, we have had civilians with no military background who made excellent premiers or ministers of defense; Moshe Arens, for example, was one of the best defense ministers we have had.
Livni has proved herself in the Foreign Ministry. She made correct assessments during the Lebanon War and provided the government with a way out after it became clear that the war must end.
In Europe she showed us what she can do. If the next US administration is headed by Barack Obama, she will be the most suitable leader we can have to find a common language with the new president.
Livni is not perfect. None of the candidates to lead the country after the next election is perfect. But given the alternatives, I certainly would not rule her out.
Thousands Worldwide Prepare for the Apocalypse, Expected in 2012
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=5301284&page=1
Note From Kade - While there is no biblical evidence to support anything happening in 2012 - people's expectations for something to happen in the year 2012 is something that should be watched. The subject of 2012 is a great opportunity to explore and share with people about what the Bible says about the future. Only time will tell if 2012 plays a significant role in God's plan for the last days.
Two years ago, Patrick Geryl, then 51, quit his job as a laboratory worker for a French oil company. He'd saved up just enough money to last him until December 2012. After that, he thought, he wouldn't need it anyway.
Instead, Geryl, a soft-spoken man who had studied chemistry in his younger years, started preparing for the apocalypse. He founded a "survival group" for likeminded men and women, aimed at living through the catastrophe he knew was coming.
He started gathering materials necessary to survive — water purifiers, wheelbarrows (with spare tires), dust masks and vegetable seeds. His list of survival goods runs 11 pages long.
"You have to understand, there will be nothing, nothing left," Geryl told ABC News from his home in Antwerp, Belgium. "We will have to start an entire civilization from scratch."
That's because Geryl believes the world as we know it will end in 2012. He points to the ancient Mayan cyclical calendars, the longest of which last renewed itself approximately 5,125 years ago and is set to end again, supposedly with catastrophic consequences, in 2012. He speaks of the ancient Egyptians, who, he claims, saw 2012 as a year of great change too. And he points to science: NASA predicts a sharp increase in the number of sunspots and sun flares for 2012, he said, sure to cause electrical failures and satellite disruptions.
All this adds up, Geryl said, to unprecedented catastrophe. First, a polar reversal will cause the north to become the south and the sun to rise in the west. Shattering earthquakes, massive tidal waves and simultaneous volcanic eruptions will follow. Nuclear reactors will melt, buildings will crumble, and a cloud of volcanic dust will block out the sun for 40 years. Only the prepared will survive, Geryl said, and not even all of them.
These may sound like the ravings of a madman, or perhaps the head of a small apocalyptic sect. But Geryl is not the only one who believes in the apocalypse. Thousands of people worldwide seem to be preparing, in one way or another, for the end of days in 2012. Survival groups exist in Europe, Canada and the United States. A simple Google search for "2012" and "the end of the world" brings up nearly 300,000 hits. And the video-sharing Web site YouTube hosts more than 65,000 clips informing and warning viewers about their fate in 2012.
"It's bigger than Y2K," said Mark van Stone, a specialist of Mayan hieroglyphic writings and author of a forthcoming book on 2012. "The year is like a pop song or a popular movie. You type in 2012, and you get hundreds of thousands of hits."
Dennis McClung, 28, a project manager for Home Depot from Phoenix, Ariz., runs one of the Web sites dedicated to 2012, an online survival supply store, which sells gas masks, knife kits, bullet-proof vests and more.
"I'm not a firm believer in one specific prophecy," said McClung, who runs his site with his wife, Danielle. "But I think we ought to be prepared for anything."
Even with December 2012 still 4½ years away, McClung said business is booming. His Web site, which features an "official 2012 countdown" clock and exhorts customers to "be smart, be ready," averages several thousand visitors a week. McClung's best-sellers, he said, are emergency medical supplies and water purifiers.
"I get a lot of hits from India. I get a lot of hits from the Netherlands," McClung said. "But my No. 1 customer is the U.S."
One of those customers is Thomas Lehmann, a 25-year-old factory worker from Cape Girardeau, Mo. Lehmann said he started researching 2012 when he was 12 years old, and still spends about two hours a day reading about the topic both online and in books. He said he is saving money for survival gear.
"Whatever happens, I'm just trying to be prepared for it," Lehmann said. "I'm just learning to be independent of the system. I mean electricity, vehicles, alternate sources of energy. I'm learning to live without gas, basically be self-reliant."
"If this stuff does happen," Lehmann said, adding, "I have a way to eat. I can hunt, I can fish and I can purify water. I think it's people in the big cities that need to be worried. People that can't provide for themselves."
But for all the hype, there is little evidence the ancient Maya ever intended for the end of their calendar to be read as a portent for disaster.
"These prophecies of doom really don't have any basis in what we know about the Maya," said Stephen Houston, a professor of anthropology at Brown University and a specialist of Maya hieroglyphic writing. "The Maya descriptions barely talk about this event."
Instead, Houston said, the Maya saw their "long count" — the longest of their cyclical calendars — coming to an end in 2012 but also beginning anew on that date, without disastrous consequences.
"Really, it's a conversion of people's anxieties about our times, and finding some remote mythological precedent or prediction of it," Houston said about the origins of the current 2012 myths. "People like to believe that ancient wisdom is somehow predicting this time of upheaval."
John Hall, a professor of sociology at the University of California Davis who is writing a book on the history of apocalyptic ideas, agreed. He said movements predicting the end of the world often reflect a much larger nervousness about the state of our society.
"Terrorism, 9/11, ecological disasters, floods and earthquakes," Hall said. "[There is] a sense that modern civilization has had its run. Those kinds of anxieties are much more widely shared than simply among people who believe in the exact date."
To Lehmann, though, those very events are warnings of what's to come.
"We had Hurricane Katrina, the recent cyclone in Myanmar," Lehmann said. "We've got major flooding in Iowa. We're always going to have natural disasters. But they are picking up quite frequently now."
Lehmann said he eventually hoped to move away from Cape Girardeau, built on the banks of the Mississippi River, to the higher plains of southwest Missouri to keep safe from the floods sure to follow the earthquakes of 2012.
Geryl and his Belgian and Dutch followers have similar intentions, though their plan will take them much farther from home. They are looking to buy a plot of land high up in African mountains, where they'll be able to withstand the monstrous tidal waves and wait out the cloud of volcanic dust that they said would block out the sun.
Geryl said the group has recently zeroed in on a location, but won't reveal his find for fear of tipping off rival survival groups in the United States and Canada. On that land, Geryl's group, whose core membership consists of 16 people but whose wait list supposedly lists hundreds, will build concrete dwellings or outfit caves for survival.
After the cloud clears, Geryl said, they will attempt to create a new, better civilization.
"A guiding principle will be to keep the world population as small as possible so as not to get into the same problems we face now," Geryl said, adding that the group is currently looking for sponsors and hopes to move to Africa in 2011. "There is too little oil, too little grain in the world now. Those are the kinds of problems we want to avoid."
One of the group's members, Jan, a 57-year-old carpenter from Amsterdam whose name has been changed because he doesn't want to be identified in the press, recently drove five hours to attend one of Geryl's meetings in Antwerp.
"I thought, if there's a chance that we can start a new civilization, I want to contribute," Jan told ABC News. "Because whether I make it or not, and there's only a small chance I will, this is important."
Jan, who has never been married and has no children, said he has lost friends over 2012.
"All the people I've ever told about this have declared me crazy," he said. "It makes people feel uncomfortable. Now I just keep it to myself."
Geryl said he found comfort in sharing his knowledge with others. Since "discovering" what the future holds, he has written three books on 2012 and maintains a Web site on the subject.
When asked what would happen if December 2012 were to come and go without the earthquakes and tsunamis of his predictions, Geryl fell silent.
"I don't really contemplate that possibility," he said. "My predictions are so spectacular, they can't possibly be wrong."
Javier Solana: What Kind of Palestine?
http://www.metimes.com/Opinion/2008/07/04/javier_solana_what_kind_of_palestine/5626/
BERLIN -- Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have now been talking to each other for more than six months, since the peace process was re-launched at Annapolis in November 2007, with the stated aim of reaching agreement on a Palestinian state before this year is out. The final status issues of borders, Jerusalem and refugees are back on the agenda, and the outlines of a two-state solution are visible. There have recently been some encouraging signals: Egypt has mediated a truce between Hamas and Israel in Gaza; there are signs of inter-Palestinian dialogue; and there appears to be movement on the Israeli-Syrian track. We have to grasp the opportunity for peace.
Comprehensive peace in the Middle East is the strategic goal of the European Union, and resolving the Israeli-Arab conflict on the basis of a two-state solution is the key to achieving this. Europe wants, and needs, to see the creation of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel. For this, the foundations and the structures of a Palestinian state have to be created, which is where the European Union is playing a distinctive role. It is leading international efforts to assist the Palestinians with their state-building efforts under a major strategy adopted by the EU last year. An important part of this strategy is devoted to developing security and the rule of law, which are the cornerstones of the fledgling Palestinian state and the theme of a large international conference of foreign ministers hosted in Berlin on June 24.
The EU is making a tangible difference on the ground. It is helping the Palestinians strengthen their civilian security capabilities not just with words or money but also with people. Our police mission, EUPOL COPPS, has been active in the Palestinian territories since November 2005, advising and mentoring the Palestinian Authority in its efforts to build up a civil police force and establish law and order. Canada, Norway and Switzerland are supporting the mission and we are working in close coordination with our U.S. partners. We are now about to increase the mission in size and expand its scope to the broader rule of law sector, embracing in particular the penal and judiciary systems. A democratic Palestinian state needs a properly equipped, trained and disciplined civil police and it needs functioning law courts and prisons.
The EUPOL COPPS is not the only EU security mission in the Middle East. Our border assistance mission, EUBAM Rafah, established at the Rafah crossing point between Egypt and Gaza in 2005, is currently on standby and ready to deploy as soon as circumstances permit and EU member states form the backbone of the United Nations force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
Our efforts are bearing fruit and are helping to make a real difference on the ground. In the past year alone, the EU mission has trained 800 civil police officers in public order, refurbished police stations and contributed to the communications network of the civil police. The Palestinian Authority has begun to deploy forces in major urban areas such as Nablus and is gradually taking over responsibility for security in the West Bank. Palestinian and Israeli security forces are cooperating and this cooperation must continue and increase.
These measures in the area of security and rule of law are part of a wider effort to improve conditions for the Palestinian people and revive the economy. For democracy to take root, the people must see that their lives are improving. Roadblocks must come down, trucks must be able to transport goods freely, people must be able to travel to work, to school and to hospitals unhindered, farmers must be able to grow and sell produce, investors must be encouraged to come with foreign capital, and businesses must be set up. And, of course, it is not only the Palestinians who gain from this. Israel's security interests can only stand to gain from a peaceful, democratic, and ultimately prosperous Palestinian state. In truth, the entire region will be stabilized if the Israelis and Palestinians resolve their 60-year-old conflict. The EU is doing everything it can to help with this.
Javier Solana is the EU's foreign policy chief. He wrote this article on the eve of a conference in support of Palestinian civil security and rule of law in Berlin. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews), and it was first published in Al-Ahram on June 26.
"Club Med" to include 44 nations
http://www.ejpress.org/article/news/western_europe/27250
The European Commission has unveiled its proposals to give renewed vitality and visibility to the EU’s relations with its partners in the Mediterranean region.
The new plan is to complete the so-called "Barcelona process" launched in 1995 in order to strengthen the EU’s relations with its southern neighbours but which critics say has so far failed to deliver, mainly because of the lack of Israeli-Palestinian peace but also because of the Mediterranean governments' poor record in using the EU funds on offer.
The downsizing of the original plan came after EU countries with no borders on the Mediterranean, in particular Germany, expressed skepticism at the proposal, with member states from Eastern Europe particularly concerned that it would divert precious EU funds away from their region.
The news proposals focus on raising the profile of relations with 13 Mediterranean rim countries with a regular summit and ministerial meetings, and would see a new forum to be launched at an inaugural summit in Paris on July 13-14 with a raft of projects.
This new forum, called "Barcelona Process: Union for the Mediterranean," will unite 44 countries.
They include the 27 EU states and 13 partners: Albania, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority, Tunisia, Syria and Turkey -- plus Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro and Monaco.
The forum would be managed by a co-presidency involving one European and one partner nation, but all 27 EU countries will be eligible under the commission's plans, not just those around the Mediterranean as France had hoped.
"This is an initiative to reinforce, to reinvigorate our relationship," External Relations European Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said.
"The more we can develop the region in the South, the less illegal migration there will be…The more prosperity we can give, the less terrorism, the less criminality will be there," she said.
But the association described by the EU falls short of what France -- and in particular French President Nicolas Sarkozy who initiated the ambitious plan of a Mediterreanean Union nicknamed "Club Med"-- had envisioned.
Sarkozy had touted his vision as a potential avenue for peace between Israel and the Palestinians and had hinted it might be offered to Turkey as an alternative to EU membership.
The downsizing of the original plan came after EU countries with no borders on the Mediterranean, in particular Germany, expressed skepticism at the proposal, with member states from Eastern Europe particularly concerned that it would divert precious EU funds away from their region.
Turkey only agreed to participate to the new structure if offered assurances that the Union was not being put forward as an alternative to joining the EU, something the EU Commission explicitly stated. "This project is not directed against Turkey," Ferrero-Waldner said.
"It will take stronger political will, in both sides of the Mediterranean, to seize this opportunity to enhance understanding, peace and prosperity among all our nations, cultures and religions, for the benefit of our citizens," European Commission President, José Manuel Barroso, said.
The Mystery of the Copper Scroll & The Ark of the Covenant
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/347306.aspx
In 1947, a Bedouin shepherd wandered the hills of Qumran in search of a missing sheep.
He threw a stone into a cave, hoping to drive the lost animal outside. Instead, the sound of shattered pottery drew the shepherd inside the cave.
There he stumbled on the greatest archaeological find of the 20th century: the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Copper Scroll
In the years that followed, archaeologists found eleven caves and more than 900 documents here at Qumran. But one scroll was different from all the rest.
Instead of leather or parchment, it was made entirely of copper, and it could be the greatest treasure map in history.
The Copper Scroll describes a hidden cache of gold and silver buried in more than 60 locations throughout Israel.
The monetary value is close to $3 billion, but the historical value - is priceless.
The only place in ancient Israel with that much wealth was the Jewish Temple.
Stephen Pfann is one of the editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
"This is a tremendous witness to history. To actually have a list of treasures from the temple itself from the first century is just amazing. We have nothing better than the Copper Scroll now for telling us what was really there," Pfann, one of the editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls said.
Pfann took CBN News' Chris Mitchell up to cave number 3 at Qumra, where the Copper Scroll was hidden for nearly 2,000 years.
"You can actually see the place where the Copper Scroll was found," Pfann said.
The Purpose of the Scroll
"Well, the copper scroll had to be written just immediately before the destruction of the temple," Pfann explained.
"It actually fits the glove perfectly for these people known as the Zealots, who were the priestly group, who were holding down the temple, who were keeping it from the Romans in the best way possible. Before they were massacred, they left things behind in caves here in Qumran," he said
Some of their hiding places are easy to find on a modern map like Jericho, the Valley of Achor, and Mount Gerizim.
Others are more cryptic like "Solomon's Canal," which contains a stash of silver coins, a well in Milham where garments for the high priest were hidden, or Matia's Courtyard, where more than 600 gold and silver temple vessels were buried.
"The instruction on the scroll is like a kids' treasure map in a way; They're talking about caves, they're talking about tombs, they're talking about aqueducts and pools that were known to them at the time - probably with aliases of names applied to these places so that only those people who are part of the inner circle would know where to go, how many steps to go away and where to find the temple treasure that was buried in that spot." Pfann said.
The scroll's language is a mystery in itself.
Some passages use a style of Hebrew that's 800 years older than the scroll itself. Adding to the puzzle is a series of random Greek letters.
Pfann said, "It kind of freezes in time the language to around 70 AD to what the Hebrew language looked like among the common people of that time.
The Fate of the Lost Treasure
Pfann says anyone looking for it today is about 2,000 years too late.
"In my mind, most if not all of these were actually found by the Romans under the point of the sword … And we do know that Titus used the booty to build the Colosseum in Rome. It says so on the Colosseum. You can actually see the impression of the letters, 'this was built with the booty,'" Pfann said.
"If there's any treasure left, there would have been small parts that might not have been found that still lie out there ready for people to find today. We don't know," he said.
The scroll's last line hints at an even greater treasure, "In a dry well at Kohlit… a copy of this document with its explanation…and an inventory of each and every thing."
"What's interesting is that there were actually two treasure maps that were made," Pfann said.
"Line 64 of the copper scroll is the most fascinating of all - hard to decode but quite compelling," said author Joel Rosenberg.
The Discovery of all Discoveries
Rosenberg hit the New York Times bestseller list with his novel on the Copper Scroll.
He believes the second scroll is still out there and it could be the key to the greatest archaeological prize in history.
"What if finding the treasures of the Copper Scroll did in fact lead to the Ark of the Covenant being found?" he asked.
Rosenberg may be on to something.
Ancient Jewish writings say the ark and other first temple treasures were hidden by priests before the invasion of the Babylonians.
Their locations were inscribed on a tablet of copper.
Rosenberg said, "The Key Scroll has never been found, nobody has any idea where it is."
"What would be most dramatic is if in fact the treasures that are described by the Copper Scroll -and perhaps revealed more fully in the Key Scroll - are in fact from the second temple. Finding them would in fact be the most dramatic archeological discovery of all time."
Third Temple preparations underway with priestly garments
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1214726180915&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Wearing a turban and a light blue tunic threaded with silver, a man stands in a workshop in Jerusalem's Old City beside spools of white thread affixed to sewing machines. A painting of high priests performing an animal sacrifice beside the First Temple illustrates the function of the room.
On Monday, the Temple Institute started preparing to build a Third Temple on Jerusalem's Mount Moriah, the site of the Dome of the Rock and the Aksa mosque, by inaugurating a workshop that manufactures priestly garments.
After Efrat Chief Rabbi Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, a Kohen himself, gets measured for his own set of Kohanim garments, Aviad Jeruffi, the clothing's designer, strums "To Ascend to the Temple Mount" on his guitar in celebration.
Priestly garments have not been worn since the destruction of the Second Temple by Rome in 70 CE and cannot be functional until a Third Temple is constructed.
Kohanim, priests directly descended from Moses's brother Aaron, are recognized by the Institute as such if their paternal grandfather observed the tradition. Today, they have special religious responsibilities; in days of yore they performed the most significant duties within the Temple.
Approximately one-third of the commandments in the Torah cannot be accomplished without a temple, including the obligations of the Kohanim.
But a Third Temple seems a flighty dream with nightmarish political implications to many, as both a shrine, the Dome of the Rock, and the Aksa mosque, Islam's third holiest structure, currently stand on the Temple Mount.
Rabbi Yehuda Glick, director of the Temple Institute, says he assumes Muslims will be supportive when the Temple is ready to be built:
"We already have some Muslims who are secretly in touch with us," he says.
When the Temple is rebuilt, Kohanim must wear the proper outfit to perform their obligations, Glick continues.
Each set has a turban, tunic pants and belt and is individually tailored at a cost of NIS 2,500.
"If it were a bathrobe for watching SNL [Saturday Night Live], it would not be worth it. But we're talking about people who have a very strong yearning for working in the Beit Hamikdash [Temple]," says Glick.
Years of diligent research was needed to create the garments in conformance with Jewish law.
Special flaxen thread was imported from India and overseas travel was necessary to obtain the correct colors for the clothes, including to Istanbul, to purchase mountain worms from which the correct shade of crimson is derived.
The secret of the correct shade of blue has been lost since the destruction of the Second Temple, as the identity of chilazon, the snail from which it was extracted, was uncertain until the Ptil Tekhelet nonprofit organization identified it as the murex trunculus, aka hexaplex trunculus, the banded dye-murex found near the Mediterranean Sea.
"The Temple is not a message just for the Jewish people. It reunites the world all around one central prayer house. All the prophets say that at the End Times all the nations will be coming to Jerusalem and take part of building the Temple," Glick says.
Muslim countries vying for influence over temple mount
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=68026
A number of Arab states quietly have sent intelligence agents to infiltrate the Temple Mount to determine how they can obtain more influence over Judaism's holiest site, informed security sources told WND.
"It's possible in the coming two years a deal will be made that transfers the Temple Mount out from Israeli hands," said a security source. "The Arab countries are vying for influence, since they think controlling the site means big prestige in the Muslim world."
The security sources said the Arab agents mostly are attempting to infiltrate the Waqf, the Muslim custodians of the Temple Mount, securing all sorts of positions from Waqf garden workers through religious clerics inside the Mount's many mosques.
The Waqf is largely controlled by Jordan, which took over top positions from the Palestinian Authority in recent years.
The sources said the agents' primary job is to collect information on how to gain more influence on the site. The agents also are to report on which Waqf officials are paid by Jordan, through which clerics can be suspected of having good relations with Israel.
"The Arab countries want to work their way in so Jordan doesn't get the most control once Israel gives up the Mount," said a security source.
Saudi Arabia sent the most agents to the Mount, but other countries, including Egypt, also sent agents, security sources said.
"Don't be surprised if in the near future even Somalia sends some people over to study how to have influence on the Mount," said a security source.
In line with Israeli-Palestinian negotiations started at last November's U.S.-backed Annapolis conference, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is working to create a Palestinian state before the end of the year.
Olmert is widely expected to announce Israeli evacuations from most of the West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem. The Temple Mount is located in eastern Jerusalem, although Israel is not expected to immediately give up the holy site during the initial attempted creation of a Palestinian state.
The Arab countries are "near certain" Israel will eventually evacuate the Temple Mount and likely hand it over to the PA together with a coalition of Muslim states, said an informed security source.
Temple Mount '100 percent Islamic'
Mainstream Palestinian leaders claim the Temple Mount is Muslim in spite of overwhelming archaeological evidence documenting the first and second Jewish temples.
Earlier this month, Rafiq Al Husseini, the chief of staff for PA President Mahmoud Abbas, declared Jerusalem and the Temple Mount belong to the Muslims and said any Israeli action that "offends" the Mount will be answered by 1.5 billion Muslims.
"Jerusalem is Muslim. The blessed Al Aqsa mosque and Harem Al Sharif (Temple Mount) is 100 percent Muslim. The Israelis are playing with fire when they threaten Al Aqsa with digging that is taking place," Husseini said.
In a WND exclusive interview last year, Taysir Tamimi, chief Palestinian Justice and one of the most influential Muslim leaders in Israel, argued the Jewish Temples never existed, the Western Wall really was a tying post for Muhammad's horse, the Al Aqsa Mosque was built by angels, and Abraham, Moses and Jesus were prophets for Islam.
Tamimi is considered the second most important Palestinian cleric after Muhammad Hussein, the grand mufti of Jerusalem.
"Israel started since 1967 making archeological digs to show Jewish signs to prove the relationship between Judaism and the city, and they found nothing. There is no Jewish connection to Israel before the Jews invaded in the 1880s," said Tamimi.
"About these so-called two Temples, they never existed, certainly not at the [Temple Mount]," Tamimi said during a sit-down interview in his eastern Jerusalem office.
The Palestinian cleric denied the validity of dozens of digs verified by experts worldwide revealing Jewish artifacts from the First and Second Temples throughout Jerusalem, including on the Temple Mount itself; excavations revealing Jewish homes and a synagogue in a site in Jerusalem called the City of David; or even the recent discovery of a Second Temple Jewish city in the vicinity of Jerusalem.
Tamimi said descriptions of the Jewish Temples in the Hebrew Tanach, in the Talmud and in Byzantine and Roman writings from the Temple periods were forged. He contended the Torah was falsified to claim biblical patriarchs and matriarchs were Jewish when they actually were prophets for Islam.
"All this is not real. We don't believe in all your versions. Your Torah was falsified. The text as given to the Muslim prophet Moses never mentions Jerusalem. Maybe Jerusalem was mentioned in the rest of the Torah, which was falsified by the Jews," said Tamimi.
He said Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Jesus were "prophets for the Israelites sent by Allah as to usher in Islam."
Asked about the Western Wall, Tamimi said the structure was a tying post for Muhammad's horse and that it is part of the Al Aqsa Mosque, even though the Wall predates the mosque by more than 1,000 years.
"The Western wall is the western wall of the Al Aqsa Mosque. It's where prophet Muhammad tied his animal which took him from Mecca to Jerusalem to receive the revelations of Allah."
The Kotel, or Western Wall, is an outer retaining wall of the Temple Mount that survived the destruction of the Second Temple and still stands today in Jerusalem.
Tamimi went on to claim to WND the Al Aqsa Mosque , which has sprung leaks and has had to be repainted several times, was built by angels.
"Al Aqsa was built by the angels 40 years after the building of Al-Haram in Mecca. This we have no doubt is true," he said.
The First Temple was built by King Solomon in the 10th century B.C. It was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. The Second Temple was rebuilt in 515 B.C. after Jerusalem was freed from Babylonian captivity. That temple was destroyed by the Roman Empire in A.D. 70. Each temple stood for a period of about four centuries.
The Temple was the center of religious worship for ancient Israelites. It housed the Holy of Holies, which contained the Ark of the Covenant and was said to be the area upon which God's presence dwelt. All biblical holidays centered on worship at the Temple. The Temples served as the primary location for the offering of sacrifices and was the main gathering place for Israelites.
According to the Talmud, the world was created from the foundation stone of the Temple Mount. It's believed to be the biblical Mount Moriah, the location where Abraham fulfilled God's test to see if he would be willing to sacrifice his son Isaac.
The Temple Mount has remained a focal point for Jewish services for thousands of years. Prayers for a return to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the Temple have been uttered by Jews since the Second Temple was destroyed, according to Jewish tradition.
The Al Aqsa Mosque was constructed in about A.D. 709 to serve as a shrine near another shrine, the Dome of the Rock, which was built by an Islamic caliph. Al Aqsa was meant to mark what Muslims came to believe was the place at which Muhammad, the founder of Islam, ascended to heaven to receive revelations from Allah.
Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Quran. It is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible 656 times. Muslims worldwide pray with their backs away from the Temple Mount and toward Mecca.
Islamic tradition states Muhammad took a journey in a single night on a horse from "a sacred mosque" – believed to be in Mecca in southern Saudi Arabia – to "the farthest mosque" and from a rock there ascended to heaven. The farthest mosque became associated with Jerusalem about 120 years ago.
According to research by Israeli Author Shmuel Berkovits, Islam historically disregarded Jerusalem. Berkovits points out in his new book, "How dreadful is this place!" that Muhammad was said to loathe Jerusalem and what it stood for. He wrote Muhammad made a point of eliminating pagan sites of worship and sanctifying only one place – the Kaaba in Mecca – to signify the unity of God.
As late as the 14th century, Islamic scholar Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyya, whose writings influenced the Wahhabi movement in Arabia, ruled that sacred Islamic sites are to be found only in the Arabian Peninsula, and that "in Jerusalem, there is not a place one calls sacred, and the same holds true for the tombs of Hebron."
It wasn't until the late 19th century – when Jews started immigrating to Palestine – that some Muslim scholars began claiming Muhammad tied his horse to the Western Wall and associated Muhammad's purported night journey with the Temple Mount.
US top soldier requests demonstration of Israel’s Heron UAV
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5409
DEBKAfile’s military sources reveal that, during his two-day visit to Israel, Adm. Mike Mullen Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, showed interest in the Israel Aviations Industries’ long-range Heron unmanned aerial vehicles, which support IDF’s counter-terror and counter-missile operations in the Gaza Strip.
The demonstration took place on June 29 at the forward Israeli UAV base near its main operating arena in the South.
Our military sources describe the Heron as capable, in addition to intelligence-gathering and communications support, of delivering missiles (which Israel has never admitted). It is rated one the best unmanned aerial vehicles in the world for strategic and theater reconnaissance and electronic counter-measures.
Powered by a 115 hp Rotax 914 engine, the Heron can stay aloft for more than 40 hours at an altitude of 30,000 feet, while carrying multiple payloads of 250 kilos.
It is also equipped for a role in maritime surveillance and anti-surface warfare.
The US admiral heard from American intelligence officers cooperating with Ankara’s campaign against Kurdish rebel bases in northern Iraq how the Heron on loan to Turkey radically turned the tide of their operation.
The Israeli UAVs were described as smoothly functioning and easy to use compared with other drones of their kind. Mullen wanted to see the Heron in operational performance to judge its suitability for the US special forces fighting terrorist targets, who are looking for a UAV which handles more easily than the strategic, unmanned US Predator and Reaper.
The US Marines have also shown interest.
Hamas suspected of pressuring Arab employees of Israel security forces
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2008/me_hamas0297_07_03.asp
Israel has become concerned that its large Palestinian work force is being infiltrated by Hamas.
Officials said authorities have determined that Hamas and Islamic Jihad were identifying and contacting Palestinians and Israeli Arabs who work for the Israeli government or security forces. They said the Palestinian insurgency groups were trying to pressure these workers to exploit their access to facilitate plans for mass-casualty strikes.
"Hamas has a very large presence in Jerusalem as well as in several Israeli cities and they conduct intelligence operations regarding where Arabs work and their potential for damage," an official said.
On Wednesday, at least three Israelis were killed and 40 others were injured when a Palestinian contractor for the state's light rail project commandeered a huge bulldozer and plowed into cars and buses in downtown Jerusalem. The Palestinian, a 30-year-old from Jerusalem with a criminal record, was killed by an off-duty Israeli soldier.
"To our regret the attackers do not cease coming up with new ways to strike at the heart of the Jewish people here in Jerusalem," Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski said.
Officials said they were uncertain whether the Palestinian, a convicted rapist and drug dealer, was recruited by Hamas to conduct the attack. Hamas did not claim responsibility, but praised the killing of Israeli civilians.
"We consider it as a natural reaction to the daily aggression and crimes committed against our people in the West Bank and all over the occupied lands," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.
The Fatah militia, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, was among three Palestinian groups that claimed responsibility. Al Aqsa has been formally under the leadership of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
"It looks as if it was a spontaneous act," Israeli police chief Dudi Cohen said.
But officials said the Palestinian bulldozer driver, who appeared to have been headed for the crowded Mahane Yehuda market, carefully planned his attack. They said the driver was probably under pressure from Hamas regarding debts or accusations that he had collaborated with Israel.
"The way these things start is that Arab employees of the government, particularly if they are Palestinians, come under pressure to prove that they are not working for the Israeli security services," the official said. "This can sometimes lead to a terrorist act."
Hamas worries about it's own Islamic extremists
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/997280.html
A good many people in Gaza have already had a knock on the door, opening it to two or three men dressed in strange clothing reminding them of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The men ask to speak to the head of the family. "We want 10 minutes of your time to talk about Islam," they say.
Usually they talk about the importance of religion and becoming religious, about the faith's noble principles and the need to maintain them. They often stress that "Islam is the correct religion" and that "a good Muslim must attend the mosque and pray five times a day."
They always wear galabiyahs over trousers and sandals, and have long beards. These believers, known to Gazans as salafis, will not discuss politics or matters such as the tahadiyeh or the "Zionist enemy."
They are not a political group, yet some Hamas members see them as a threat, especially in the public arena. They are a kind of sect of Sunni Islam that has operated throughout the world since the dawn of Islam, calling on believers to imitate the ways of the prophet Mohammed and the group of his companions known as the sahabah.
They have always been in Gaza. Hamas' concerns stem from a rise in support for the sect throughout the Strip. In the past year they have increased their ranks by several times; their number now stands at between 40,000 to 50,000 Gazans.
The number of those praying in the mosque the sect operates, A-Sahabah, in the Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City has skyrocketed since Hamas' takeover of Gaza a year ago.
The sect even operates a religious school for grades 1 through 12, whose classes are bursting at the seams.
The salafis do not watch television at home. Their wives have to cover themselves from head to foot. They may not hang large pictures or display statues in their homes, and they pray frequently. Hamas knows they represent an alternative to its monopoly over religion in the Gaza Strip, which has led to great tension between the salafis and Hamas over control of the mosques.
Violent brawls have broken out over attempts by Hamas to throw salafis out of the mosques where they have managed to take control. Another problem for Hamas is the salafis' avoidance of politics, which makes Hamas look like a gang of power-hungry politicians, especially in light of its mistakes over the past year: the violent takeover, torture and corruption.
But a more tangible threat for the rulers of Gaza is from other groups loosely linked to the sect, which are known collectively as A-salafiyeh al-Jihadiyeh. These extreme groups identify with salafi religious principles but dispute the principle of remaining aloof from political, military and diplomatic involvement.
The best-known of these groups are the Army of Islam and the Army of the Nation. Their ideology recalls the teachings of Al-Qaida, and they flaunt their connections with the latter. While the Army of Islam is clan-based and mainly connected to the Durmush family, the Army of the Nation is gathering numbers largely from people cast out by Hamas and Islamic Jihad because of their extremism.
In an interview with a Palestinian journalist, one of the leaders of the Army of the Nation explained that as far as his followers were concerned, there is no difference between the "military wing" and the "political wing." "They are all soldiers," he explains. These organizations see the need to return to Islam's roots; for example, stoning adulterers, cutting off thieves' hands and whipping people who drink alcohol.
In their view, anyone who is not a believing Muslim should be hounded, even beyond the borders of Palestine and including, of course, Jews and Christians. These are the people assumed to be behind the wave of strikes on Western institutions, from Internet cafes to libraries.
They are also believed to have been behind the grenade attack during a festival organized by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Rafah a year and a half ago, where 12-year-old boys and girls appeared together in a traditional dance. The militants consider this "un-Muslim." They reject any kind of agreement with Israel or the West, which explains the statement to the Palestinian reporter by the Army of the Nation leader that "the leaders of Hamas do not believe in Allah."
For its part, Hamas has not remained indifferent to the rise of this ultra-radical group, and is harassing them. The Army of the Nation currently has only a few dozen members, but like the salafis, the ranks are swelling amid the rising poverty, extremism and hatred for Israel and the West.
Israel reassures West: No Iran attack in 2008
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2008/me_israel0292_07_02.asp
Israel has signaled the U.S. and other allies that air operations to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities are not imminent.
Israeli leaders have sent messages to several Western countries that ruled out an attack on Teheran in 2008. Israel told the governments of Britain, France and the United States that the Jewish state would allow for yet another diplomatic effort to halt Iran's uranium enrichment program.
"There has been alarm in some capitals that Israel will attack Iran over the next few months or even weeks," an Israeli official said.
The official said the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert plans to wait until France assumes the presidency of the European Union in July. France, he said, was expected to lead a European drive to expand sanctions on Teheran.
Over the last few weeks, the United States has raised the prospect of an Israeli air strike on Iran in 2008. Bush administration officials, particularly those from the Defense Department, said an Israel Air Force exercise in the Aegean Sea in June was meant to practice a massive air strike on Iran. The exercise, conducted with Greece, was said to have included more than 100 Israeli aircraft, including F-15s, F-16s and KC-130 air refueling tankers.
"The international community must not allow Iran to go nuclear," Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said.
The U.S. intelligence community was said to have assessed that the Israeli air exercise concluded basic preparations for an attack on Iran. The intelligence community determined that the exercise demonstrated the feasibility of a massive Israeli air strike at a range of about 1,600 kilometers.
But the Israeli official said the air force exercise did not reflect plans to attack Iran. He said most of the exercise focused on search-and-rescue as well as mid-air refueling.
"There will not be any operation in 2008," the official said. "An operation such as this must be coordinated — at least with the United States."
Britain and France have become concerned over the prospect of an Israeli or U.S. strike on Iran. Britain has issued an alert to its embassy in Bahrain of an imminent U.S. confrontation with Teheran.
On June 30, U.S. Fifth Fleet commander Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff warned that Iran would not be allowed to block Gulf shipping. Cosgriff, responding to Iranian threats to halt traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, said this would constitute an "act of war."
"I cannot imagine, given the critical nature of that body of water, that the international community would not be outraged should Iran or any entity move to restrict the freedom of navigation," Cosgriff told a news conference at Fifth Fleet headquarters in Manama. "They are not going to be allowed to do so. It would be an act of war. In a tight oil market, the international community would respond vigorously to that."
On Tuesday, the U.S. television network, ABC News, reported that Israel could strike Iran's nuclear facilities in late 2008. ABC quoted a senior Pentagon official as reporting an "increasing likelihood" that Israel would attack Iran once it produced enough highly-enriched uranium to assemble a nuclear weapon.
"The Israelis are interested in such publications," Israel Television military analyst Yoav Limor said. "It tells the international community: 'Stop me.'"
A senior Israeli security source said the military was not ready to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons facilities. The source told the Israeli daily Maariv that the military, weakened by an inadequate budget, was incapable of a sustained strike.
"Years of neglect, and cancellation of projects and budgets, have left us without strategic ability for effective attack," the Israeli source was quoted as saying on Wednesday.
ABC quoted the Pentagon official as saying that Israel also wants to stage the operation before Iran acquires the SA-20, or S-400 air and missile defense system from Russia. The U.S. intelligence community has assessed that Iran could acquire the S-400 Triumf over the next few months.
"The red line is not when they get to that point, but before they get to that point," the official was quoted as saying. "We are in the window of vulnerability."
How many missiles will be fired from Iran, Syria, Lebanon in the next war?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/998447.html
How many missiles will be fired from Iran, Syria and Lebanon against Israel in the next war? This question, as well as the various future war scenarios, was the subject of an enlightening lecture early in the week by the commander of the Israel Air Force from 1996 to 2000, Major General (res.) Eitan Ben Eliahu.
His lecture surveyed the changes in Israel's national security doctrine amid the changing nature of wars, technology and the threats posed by the country's enemies. The lecture was initiated by an organization established after the Second Lebanon War, when the Israeli home front was hit by thousands of Hezbollah rockets. The Israel Missile Defense Association was founded by Avi Schnurr, a senior engineer who worked for many years in the United States military industries, immigrated to Israel and served as "the voice of missile defense in Israel."
A number of senior former defense officials - experts on missiles and advanced weapons systems - are active in the association, such as Uzi Eilam, the former director general of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission; David Ivry, the former commander of the Israel Air Force and a former director general of the Defense Ministry; and Uzi Rubin, who was involved in the development of the Arrow missile.
Their presence gives the association prestige and credibility, but because its members are linked to the defense establishment and some are even dependent on it financially, their freedom to express their views is limited, as is their willingness to criticize the system.
Eitan Ben Eliahu began his speech by defining the national security doctrine and the changes it has undergone. Since it was formulated in the early 1950s, the concept on exercising military force has advocated the following:
* An initiated war (a preventive strike). But if that is impossible then at least:
* A preemptive strike to disrupt the enemy's war preparations. But if war does break out, the Israel Defense Forces must conduct: b A holding operation after which it will go over to: Aerial superiority.
* A breakthrough in order to achieve:
* Final lines and a defeat of the enemy.
This doctrine outlined a scenario in which Israel would find itself at war on two or three familiar fronts (Egypt, Syria and Jordan). For that purpose, up until the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the military force was built up with a budget of $30 billion to $35 billion for buying planes, armored vehicles and a few ships, emphasizing that these weapons systems would be varied and allow for flexibility.
Two major lessons
According to the security doctrine, the process of defeating the enemy was based on weapons systems that would enable surprise, movement and initiative on the ground. In the air it was based on weapons that would make it possible to attack and destroy airfields and win aerial battles, and on the development of precise weaponry that would destroy ground-to-air missiles.
The War of Attrition (1968-1970) and the Yom Kippur War disrupted these basic assumptions. The Arabs drew two major lessons from their failure in the Six-Day War. They concealed their planes in underground hangars and purchased anti-aircraft missiles. As a result, the IAF suffered a severe blow (about 100 of its planes were downed or damaged - nearly 1.5 percent of its overall sorties), and at the time there was talk of "the missile that bends the wing of the plane." The IAF thus decided to operate against batteries of ground-to-air missiles and to induce enemy planes to leave their hiding places and take off, and then to bring them down.
According to the data presented by Ben Eliahu, during the War of Attrition, 104 enemy planes were downed. In the Yom Kippur War, 277 were downed, and in the first Lebanon war the IAF brought down 99 (Syrian) planes and hit 17 Syrian missile batteries, using electro-optical air-to-ground missiles.
The new needs have led to a 15 to 20 percent increase in the defense budget to between $35 billion and $40 billion.
But from the end of the 1980s, and particularly after the 1991 Gulf War, during which Iraq launched 40 Scud missiles, Israel found itself facing new and additional threats:
* strikes against the home front
* a short warning time (for beginning a war and adding a front)
* a prolonging- of the fighting
* non-conventional weapons (chemical and nuclear)
Some of these threats became even more acute during the Second Lebanon War and in the Gaza Strip.
As a result, Israel was forced to increase the security budget sharply, to $50 billion, and to update its national defense doctrine to prepare for scenarios of wars against Iran, Syria, Lebanon (and additional countries?) and terror with a strategic dimension.
To assess the intensity of these scenarios, Ben Eliahu presented figures from the Second Lebanon War. Hezbollah's missile inventory included about 14,000 missiles. About 4,200 missiles were launched, including about 200 medium-range missiles. The IAF carried out 11,870 sorties during the war's 34 days (an average of 340 sorties a day).
During these sorties the IAF destroyed 93 missile launchers - 50 of them in sorties based on precise intelligence on the first day of the war. The IAF also destroyed 33 "pipes" (simple launchers) using the "hunting method" (planes remained in the air to search for and find the launchers).
In his estimation, Israel must prepare for the next war according to the following script:
* One to three fronts
* Crush the enemy on one front
* Containing the Palestinian front
* Long-range punishment or response (Iran)
What should Israel's aim be in the next war?
On the basis of the precedent of the Gulf War, Ben Eliahu estimates that in the next war, Syria and Iran might launch between 250 and 300 long-range missiles at Israel (Shihab and Scud missiles) and another 5,000 short-range missiles (mainly from Lebanon).
To intercept a single long-range missile, one needs an average of two intercepting missiles and between 500 and 700 missiles in all.
In addition, Israel must keep another 200 intercepting missiles in reserve. To destroy the short-range missiles, Israel will need mainly ground forces.
Israel must prepare for a war that will last up to 20 days. Vis-a-vis Syria it must attain aerial superiority and embark on a ground attack for a strategic purpose, attack the missile and launcher sites and attack strategic targets.
Zooming in on an aerial attack
Vis-a-vis Lebanon, Israel has aerial superiority and will therefore have to focus only on an aerial attack against medium-range missiles and carry out a ground attack against short-range missiles.
On the Gaza front, the threat of Qassam rockets and mortar shells is, according to this analysis, "limited, exhausting and indirect," and the response must consist mainly of providing shelters for the civilians, developing more efficient warning and alarm systems - which will be able to identify launched missiles - and launching a ground offensive against the Palestinian guerrillas.
And above all Israel must grant high priority to development methods for confronting the chemical and nuclear threat.
Iran: Any attack on our nuclear facility will be beginning of war
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/999009.html
Tehran will consider any military action against its nuclear facilities as the beginning of a war, Iran's official news agency IRNA reported Friday.
The commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, was quoted as saying that any country that attacks Iran would regret doing so.
According to the report, Jafari has warned that such a step would be the beginning of war.
However, the general was also quoted as saying that he considers it unlikely Iran's adversaries would attempt an attack.
In a newspaper interview last week, Jafari warned that if attacked, Iran would barrage Israel with missiles and choke off the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a narrow outlet for oil tankers leaving the Persian Gulf.
Israel carried out a large military exercise last month, seen throughout the media as a rehearsal for an attack on Iran.
U.S. admiral: Iran likely to attack Israel
Meanwhile, a U.S. admiral warned earlier this week that Iran is likely to launch ballistic missiles against Israel and the United States and the NATO alliance should prepare for it.
In recent years, the missile boats of the Sixth Fleet practiced intercepting Shahab-3 missiles from Iran aimed at Israel, along with the Arrow batteries of the air force and U.S. and Israeli batteries of Patriot missiles.
In an article entitled "Maritime Strategy in an Age of Blood and Belief" in the U.S. Naval Institute's monthly Proceedings, fleet commander Admiral James Winnefeld describes the possibility of an offensive barrage of ballistic missiles fired from Iran against Israel as being "by far the most likely employment of ballistic missiles in the world today, and it demands our immediate attention in the event of a need for a U.S. or NATO response."
He says Iran is an "unpredictable adversary," which could be provoked into action "by an isolated, and perhaps seemingly unimportant, event."
Winnefeld's commander, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, Admiral Michael Mullen, mentioned earlier this week during his visit in Israel the presence of missile defense vessels of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean and their role in intercepting Iranian missiles.
One of Mullen's hosts noted at the end of the visit that even though Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and the other senior officers did not discuss operational coordination, it was mentioned during discussions that both sides would like to avoid mistaken confrontations, of the sort that led to the IDF attack against the U.S. Navy ship, Liberty, in June 1967.
At a briefing to reporters in the Pentagon Wednesday, Mullen discussed his good relations with Ashkenazi and his impressions of the visits with the IDF on the northern border and near the Gaza Strip. "Israel remains a vital and trusted military ally in the Middle East," he said, which faces "very real security threats" and "the tyranny of what I call 'close-quarters geography,'" Mullen said.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs added that "Iran is still working to develop nuclear weapons" and that the Israeli timetable in relation to Iran's nuclear program is shorter than the U.S's. However, the admiral stressed he is opposed to an Israeli or U.S. strike against Iran.
Such a strike could destabilize the region and open a third front for the U.S. armed forces, while it is preoccupied in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.
Iran unbending on uranium enrichment in answer to six-power incentives offer
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5408
DEBKAfile’s political sources report that Tehran has given no ground on international concerns in its reply to the six-power proposals for ending the long nuclear standoff. Iran offers nothing but more negotiations, its standard gambit for spinning out time to achieve progress on its nuclear bomb program.
The New York Times of July 5 quotes Tehran as stating: “The time for negotiations from the condescending position of inequality has come to an end,” in its response to the incentives package offered by the five UN Security Council members plus Germany. The letter makes no reference to the six powers’ proposal of preliminary talks to start with a mutual six-week “freeze” - both on a fourth round of UN Security Council sanctions and on the expansion of Iran’s uranium enrichment program.
Further hardening its position, Tehran’s reply to the proposals presented last month by Europeam Union foreign executive Javier Solana denounces such sanctions as “illegal.”
By failing to address the “freeze-for-freeze” approach, in which high hopes of a more accommodating Iranian approach had been pinned, Tehran has put an end to the optimistic intimations disseminated by Washington, Europe and Israeli officials in the last two weeks. Some American sources were even certain that a closed Iranian parliamentary conference Monday, June 30, had endorsed the mutual freeze offer.
DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources add: The Iranian reply to Solana demonstrates that Tehran was not intimidated by the implied threats of an imminent US and/or Israel attack on its nuclear facilities published in the last two weeks; neither is Iran deterred from continuing to enrich uranium by the prospect of more sanctions.
Even in accepting the offer of negotiations, the Islamic Republic stiffly denied any world power the right to strike a “condescending position.” Its tough-minded chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili was named to lead the delegation in comprehensive negotiations.
Iran's chief of staff expands threat of Strait of Hormuz closure
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5411
Chief of staff Maj. Gen. Hasan Firuzabadi said Saturday, July, 5, Iran’s strategy is to keep the Strait of Hormuz in “southern Iran” open, but “if the country’s interests are jeopardized in the region, we will not let any ship pass through.”
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that this statement, quoted by the official IRNA agency, enlarges on earlier threats by the IRGC commander Ali Jafari that the waterway would be closed if Iran was attacked. Iran’s “strategic interests in the region” cited now by Firuzabadi could extend to attacks on its allies and terrorist arms, Syria, Hizballah or Hamas.
It is in keeping with Iran’s refusal to give up uranium enrichment in its reply to the six-power proposals for ending the nuclear standoff.
Iran offered nothing more than negotiations, its standard gambit for spinning out time to achieve progress on its nuclear bomb program.
The latest drumbeat from Tehran also posed a fresh challenge to Washington after Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned on July 2 that the US would not let Iran block the strategic waterway through which 40 percent of the world’s oil supplies are transported.
The New York Times Saturday quoted Tehran as stating: “The time for negotiations from the condescending position of inequality has come to an end,”
in its response to the incentives package offered by the five UN Security Council members plus Germany. The letter made no reference to the proposal of preliminary talks to start with a mutual six-week “freeze” both on a fourth round of UN Security Council sanctions and on the expansion of Iran’s uranium enrichment program.
Further hardening its position, Tehran’s reply to the proposals presented last month by Europeam Union foreign executive Javier Solana denounces such sanctions as “illegal.” Chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili was named to lead the delegation in comprehensive negotiations.
By failing to address the “freeze-for-freeze” approach, in which high hopes of a more accommodating Iranian approach had been pinned, Tehran has put an end to the optimistic intimations emanating from Washington, Europe and Israeli officials in the last two weeks. Some American sources were certain that a closed Iranian parliamentary conference Monday, June 30, had endorsed the mutual freeze offer.
DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources add: The Iranian reply to Solana demonstrates that Tehran was not intimidated by the implied threats of an imminent US and/or Israel attack on its nuclear facilities published in the last two weeks; neither is Iran deterred from continuing to enrich uranium by the prospect of more sanctions. Even in accepting the offer of negotiations, the Islamic Republic stiffly denies any world power the right to strike a “condescending position.”
U.S. Removes Uranium From Iraq
http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/iraq_yellowcake_mission/2008/07/05/110184.html
The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program -- a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium -- reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.
The removal of 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" -- the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment _ was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam's nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.
What's now left is the final and complicated push to clean up the remaining radioactive debris at the former Tuwaitha nuclear complex about 12 miles south of Baghdad _ using teams that include Iraqi experts recently trained in the Chernobyl fallout zone in Ukraine.
"Everyone is very happy to have this safely out of Iraq," said a senior U.S. official who outlined the nearly three-month operation to The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
While yellowcake alone is not considered potent enough for a so-called "dirty bomb" _ a conventional explosive that disperses radioactive material _ it could stir widespread panic if incorporated in a blast. Yellowcake also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment.
The Iraqi government sold the yellowcake to a Canadian uranium producer, Cameco Corp., in a transaction the official described as worth "tens of millions of dollars." A Cameco spokesman, Lyle Krahn, declined to discuss the price, but said the yellowcake will be processed at facilities in Ontario for use in energy-producing reactors.
"We are pleased ... that we have taken (the yellowcake) from a volatile region into a stable area to produce clean electricity," he said.
The deal culminated more than a year of intense diplomatic and military initiatives _ kept hushed in fear of ambushes or attacks once the convoys were under way: first carrying 3,500 barrels by road to Baghdad, then on 37 military flights to the Indian Ocean atoll of Diego Garcia and finally aboard a U.S.-flagged ship for a 8,500-mile trip to Montreal.
And, in a symbolic way, the mission linked the current attempts to stabilize Iraq with some of the high-profile claims about Saddam's weapons capabilities in the buildup to the 2003 invasion.
Accusations that Saddam had tried to purchase more yellowcake from the African nation of Niger _ and an article by a former U.S. ambassador refuting the claims _ led to a wide-ranging probe into Washington leaks that reached high into the Bush administration.
Tuwaitha and an adjacent research facility were well known for decades as the centerpiece of Saddam's nuclear efforts.
Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have guarded the 23,000-acre site _ surrounded by huge sand berms _ following a wave of looting after Saddam's fall that included villagers toting away yellowcake storage barrels for use as drinking water cisterns.
Yellowcake is obtained by using various solutions to leach out uranium from raw ore and can have a corn meal-like color and consistency. It poses no severe risk if stored and sealed properly. But exposure carries well-documented health concerns associated with heavy metals such as damage to internal organs, experts say.
"The big problem comes with any inhalation of any of the yellowcake dust," said Doug Brugge, a professor of public health issues at the Tufts University School of Medicine.
Moving the yellowcake faced numerous hurdles.
Diplomats and military leaders first weighed the idea of shipping the yellowcake overland to Kuwait's port on the Persian Gulf. Such a route, however, would pass through Iraq's Shiite heartland and within easy range of extremist factions, including some that Washington claims are aided by Iran. The ship also would need to clear the narrow Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf, where U.S. and Iranian ships often come in close contact.
Kuwaiti authorities, too, were reluctant to open their borders to the shipment despite top-level lobbying from Washington.
An alternative plan took shape: shipping out the yellowcake on cargo planes.
But the yellowcake still needed a final destination. Iraqi government officials sought buyers on the commercial market, where uranium prices spiked at about $120 per pound last year. It's currently selling for about half that. The Cameco deal was reached earlier this year, the official said.
At that point, U.S.-led crews began removing the yellowcake from the Saddam-era containers _ some leaking or weakened by corrosion _ and reloading the material into about 3,500 secure barrels.
In April, truck convoys started moving the yellowcake from Tuwaitha to Baghdad's international airport, the official said. Then, for two weeks in May, it was ferried in 37 flights to Diego Garcia, a speck of British territory in the Indian Ocean where the U.S. military maintains a base.
On June 3, an American ship left the island for Montreal, said the official, who declined to give further details about the operation.
The yellowcake wasn't the only dangerous item removed from Tuwaitha.
Earlier this year, the military withdrew four devices for controlled radiation exposure from the former nuclear complex. The lead-enclosed irradiation units, used to decontaminate food and other items, contain elements of high radioactivity that could potentially be used in a weapon, according to the official. Their Ottawa-based manufacturer, MDS Nordion, took them back for free, the official said.
The yellowcake was the last major stockpile from Saddam's nuclear efforts, but years of final cleanup is ahead for Tuwaitha and other smaller sites.
The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency plans to offer technical expertise.
Last month, a team of Iraqi nuclear experts completed training in the Ukrainian ghost town of Pripyat, which once housed the Chernobyl workers before the deadly meltdown in 1986, said an IAEA official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decontamination plan has not yet been publicly announced.
But the job ahead is enormous, complicated by digging out radioactive "hot zones" entombed in concrete during Saddam's rule, said the IAEA official. Last year, an IAEA safety expert, Dennis Reisenweaver, predicted the cleanup could take "many years."
The yellowcake issue also is one of the many troubling footnotes of the war for Washington.
A CIA officer, Valerie Plame, claimed her identity was leaked to journalists to retaliate against her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who wrote that he had found no evidence to support assertions that Iraq tried to buy additional yellowcake from Niger.
A federal investigation led to the conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
Rioting prisoners seize control of big Syrian jail – report
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5410
An anti-government human rights group reported that Syrian security forces firing live bullets failed to subdue the rioters, mostly Islamist and political prisoners, in the Saydanaya military jail north of Damascus Saturday, July 5. Some officers were taken hostage. By the evening, the source, a London based group opposed to the Assad regime, reported more than 100 dead in clashes at the facility, which houses more than 5,000 inmates. The violence was sparked by claims of brutal beatings and desecration of the Koran.
Jordan's Legal Jihad Against European Citizens - A Dangerous Precedent
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=85172F94-8FB5-40D2-84BF-4933F4633B52
In a brazen attempt to stifle free speech in the West, a Jordanian court recently summoned twelve European citizens to answer criminal charges of blasphemy and inciting hatred.
Among those sought by the court is Geert Wilders, the Dutch liberal politician who made the anti-Islamist film, Fitna. Released last March, the Dutch MP’s production caused an uproar in Islamic countries, since it equated Islam with violence. Now a Middle Eastern court would like to prosecute Wilders for the “crime.” (Ironically, a Dutch court dropped charges against him for inciting hatred against Muslims with his film the day before the Jordanian court issued its subpoena.)
The Jordanian court’s move is only the most ambitious attempt to silence debate about Islam. Until now, the preferred strategy has been to file civil lawsuits in western courts to intimidate critics. The latest version of what may be called the legal jihad is even more disturbing.
In one subpoena, issued in early June, the Jordanian court ordered ten Danish newspaper editors to travel to Jordan for the “crime” of having republished the “Mohammad cartoons” last February. The cartoons, first published in 2005, were also greeted with disturbances in Muslim lands. Seventeen Danish newspapers republished the controversial cartoons as a response to the discovery of an Islamist plot to murder Kurt Westergaard. Westergaard, a caricaturist, drew the most famous of those cartoons in the form of Mohammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban, for which he is also included in the summons.
This new campaign of intimidation against the West is being mounted by a Jordanian organization calling itself “Messenger of Allah Unite Us”, which is made up of “… media outlets, professional associations, parliamentarians and thousands of volunteers.” This organization, according to one account, arose as a “civilized response” to the Mohammad cartoons’ republication in 17 Danish papers last winter, after which it took the matter to a Jordanian court and successfully had charges pressed against the Danes, and later against Wilders.
The subpoenas will be sent to the twelve Europeans through their embassies in Jordan. If they do not appear within 15 days, the Messenger of Allah group says it will seek international arrest warrants through Interpol.
But while Denmark and Holland will not forcibly send innocent citizens to Jordan, this new, “legal jihad” tactic of criminalizing those believed to have insulted Islam constitutes a threat on an unprecedented level against freedom.
Citizens of western countries who criticize Islam, and are even willing to face lawsuits in civil courts their own countries for doing so, may now exercise restraint if they risk facing criminal charges in a Muslim country. Especially if the charge is blasphemy and it is being tried by a sharia court, which can impose a death sentence (The Danes and Wilders, a Jordanian lawyer said, are facing a maximum of three years in jail).
As well, critics of Islam who have outstanding warrants against them from courts in Muslim countries will have their freedom of movement restricted, since travel abroad will now be problematic. Wilders expressed this sentiment, saying he will be careful when he travels now. Such targeted individuals, like Wilders, will obviously have reservations travelling to a third country where Jordan could file an extradition application or may already have an extradition treaty in place.
But what is most disturbing is that an Islamic country would dare subpoena citizens of another state for an action not committed within its borders but in a land where no laws were broken. Besides being meant as a weapon of intimidation, this tactic also represents a frightening extension of Islamic law into the heart of western countries.
But perhaps most ominously, this incredibly brazen measure shows that even a small Islamic country like Jordan has no fear of Europe. And, indeed, no retaliatory response met the Jordanian court’s action against European citizens.
Europe’s appeasement is also evident in the second part of Messenger For Allah group’s anti-blasphemy campaign. This part calls for a commercial boycott of all Danish and Dutch products in Jordan and of anything associated with the two countries, such as airlines and shipping companies. The boycott campaign actually began late last February but was suspended due to the losses Jordanian importers were incurring that had large stocks of unsold Danish and Dutch products.
The boycott, however, was resumed June 10. One million posters containing the logos of banned Dutch and Danish products will eventually hang in Jordanian businesses under the title “Living Without It.” The boycott will also be spread by television and radio ads, t-shirts, and bumper stickers.
Dutch and Danish companies were instructed they could get their products off the boycott list if they, essentially, betrayed their nations’ values and their countrymen. The affected companies, according to The Jordan Times, were told to denounce the Dutch film and the Danish cartoons in the media both in Jordan and in at least one publication in their own country, support the Jordanian legal action taken against Wilders and the Danish newspaper people as well as the creation of an international anti-blasphemy law.
Several companies have already complied. When informed of the stipulation that requires a denunciation be published in a Dutch newspaper, a spokesman for a Dutch food company that exports to Jordan said his company “…would print it if needed.”
But such groveling will only buy these companies a little time, as another Dutch company discovered. It had immediately distanced itself from Wilders and Fitna after the film’s release last March but still had products placed on the boycott posters.
The Dutch government did not fare much better in its appeasement efforts. One Dutch embassy official in Jordan said he was surprised his country was included in the boycott in the first place since his government had already printed statements in the Jordanian press distancing itself from Wilders’ film.
And, naturally, the Jordanian blackmailers’ demands have not stopped. Only last week, Dutch and Danish companies were told to put the boycott posters up in their own countries if they did not want their products blacklisted.
Perhaps to further intimidate Holland’s and Denmark’s populations, the Jordanians are also claiming their boycott campaign is causing these countries huge financial losses of over four billion Euros in four months. A Danish official, however, says that is ridiculous since his country only exported about $50 million worth of goods to Jordan in 2007.
The overall goal of the Messenger of Allah group’s legal and commercial campaign against the two European states, it says, is the enactment of “a universal law that prohibits the defamation of any prophet or religion”, especially of the Prophet Mohammad. Islamic countries are already pushing for such a law at the United Nations.
“The boycott is a means but not an end,” said Zakaria Sheikh, a spokesperson for Messenger of Allah Unite Us. “We are not aiming at collective punishment, but when the Danish and Dutch people put pressure on their governments to support the creation of an international law, we are achieving our goal.”
Well, there you have it. The Muslim organization wants Denmark and Holland not just to muzzle themselves but to help it muzzle the rest of the world as well.
But just the opposite should occur. All western countries should help put a muzzle on Jordan’s ridiculous campaign to squelch free speech, meddle in the internal affairs of two sovereign, western states and intimidate their citizens. In terms of financial measures, Denmark, showing its usual mettle, has already led the way when it told the Sudan it would have to repay a $500 million debt the Scandinavian country was considering cancelling, if it joined the boycott.
It should also be pointed out in the West that Jordan, which is demanding respect for its religion, does not respect other religions equally. While the practice of other faiths is not forbidden in the Middle Eastern country, none are allowed to proselytize, and converts from Islam to other religions are prosecuted by Jordanian sharia courts.
Moreover, the Jordanians should be told that if they want to extradite inciters of hatred to their courts, then citizens of their country, and of other Islamic countries for that matter, who have advocated killing Jews and other the infidels will be extradited to face western courts. In the end, if legal jihad is not recognized as the danger to the West that it is, and vigorously opposed, it will wind up punishing more than just two small European countries.
Thousands Follow Ex-Traffic Cop Who Says He's Jesus
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1214132686907
"Two white robed men were standing there among them and said, 'Men of Galilee, why are you standing here staring the sky? Jesus has gone away to heaven. And some day, just as He went, He will return!'" — Acts 1:10-11
Deep in the heart of Siberia's birch forests lies one of the largest and most remote religious communes of the planet. More than 5,000 people have left their families and their homes to move here and join the Church of the Last Testament, which has more than 10,000 followers worldwide. The church centers on one man. He is known simply as Vissarion, meaning "he who gives new life," or simply as the teacher, and he claims that he is Jesus Christ.
I had heard about a self-proclaimed messiah in Siberia and I decided to try to find him myself. Getting to Vissarion's commune is not easy. From Moscow, the Russian capital, it is more than 2,000 miles and four time zones away. One begins by flying to Abakan, a bleak city near the Mongolian border, dotted with crumbling tsarist buildings and Soviet-style blocks. Driving through, I decided to ask residents whether they had heard of Vissarion and what they thought of him. Most people knew who he was, but they didn't seem to like him much.
"It's a sect … He presents himself as a demi-God and it's all lies in my opinion," Sergei told me. Lena was equally skeptical: "I heard they don't eat properly there. They grow vegetables and that's all they eat."
Once you drive out of the city, the drab concrete of Abakan gives way to rich rolling plains, sparkling rivers and tiny hamlets. After a few hours on the road, we finally reached Petropavlovka, where more than 80 percent of the residents are members of the Church of the Last Testament.
Life here is very basic. Vissarion's followers are strict vegetarians and they don't smoke or drink. The houses and churches are built from wood by hand and most of the energy comes from windmills and solar panels. At the followers' school, little boys are taught how to build model ships and young girls learn crochet and singing. With all the beautiful nature, it seemed an idyllic setting for a child to grow up in. But the portraits of Vissarion that adorned every wall were difficult to ignore.
The Church of the Last Testament has abolished Christmas and replaced it with a new celebration on Vissarion's birthday. The biggest holiday of the year is Aug. 18, the anniversary of the teacher's first sermon. And a new calendar has been introduced which dates from the year of his birth, making this year 48.
Vissarion was born Sergei Torop in 1961 and worked as a traffic cop up until his revelation. He started the Church of the Last Testament in 1991, the same year as the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was a desperate and chaotic time for people. And after decades of religious oppression, suddenly thousands of new religions and sects burst onto the scene, all claiming to have the answers that people were so hungrily craving.
'My Body Was Shivering Nonstop'
The next day we continued driving, bumping along rutted roads thick with butterflies. Stopping at a river for a break, we met Siegfried Werner, who left his home in Germany to move here. Many of Vissarion's followers are educated people from different European countries. Some of them used to work as doctors, teachers and engineers. One was even the former Belorussian deputy railway minister.
Werner explained to me, "It's all about Vissarion. I had an experience when I went from Italy, he embraced me very warmly. He took my hands and then my heart spoke and that was the time when I never doubted again that he was the Christ."
After three hours in the car the road ended and the journey on foot began. The four-mile trek through Siberian forest, or taiga as it is known, was brutal. Mosquitoes swarmed menacingly overhead and ticks were everywhere. Unsurprisingly, almost two-thirds of Vissarion's followers have been infected with Lyme disease. The group eschews modern medicine, relying instead on holistic remedies. One of Vissarion's 60 commandments declares, "in most cases, illness is punishment for an inability to keep one's flesh in harmony with nature." During the 1990s there were reports that some of his followers had died after refusing medical attention.
After hours of walking, we finally reach "Abode of Dawn," a small settlement where 250 of Vissarion's most devout followers live. It's four miles to the nearest road and just a couple of miles below the teacher himself. At this point we were assigned minders who monitored our movements until we left.
The villagers in the Abode of Dawn follow an almost entirely vegan diet, largely based on what they can grow themselves. When they move here, they give the church their pensions and whatever possessions they may have. In return they receive basics such as sugar, buckwheat and flour. No money is used within the community but they are given an allowance of 300 rubles, about $12, a month.
The followers here were even more zealous when talking about their teacher. I sat down with a group of women and asked about their first time meeting Vissarion.
"When I saw him the first time my soul recognized him. I could not cope with my emotions and my soul cried, 'It's him, it's him. He is on earth!"' Galina told me.
"It was as if a flood came down from the sky and my body was shivering nonstop!" Tatyana added.
Every day the women pore over his 10 volumes of teachings and five times a day a bell rings whereupon the followers turn to pray towards the mountaintop where Vissarion lives.
Life here seemed visibly more cut off from society. The children are homeschooled. Every year a representative from the nearest school board visits to make sure that the children are being educated according to the national curriculum. The local government is tacitly supportive of Vissarion's group, although the Orthodox church has denounced them as a sect. In Siberia, where there is terrible alcoholism and a declining population, Vissarion's community is one of the very few that is healthy, hard-working and growing fast.
A Man of Few Words
On Sunday the community congregates early to begin the rituals of the holy day. Followers from Petropavlovka and other villages make the journey to see their teacher for the day. People dress up for the occasion.
The day begins with a steep walk up the mountain to where Vissarion lives. At the top of the mountain, the followers gather at an altar and sing songs and pray. Standing amongst them, the intensity of their fervour was palpable.
As the liturgy drew to a close I felt excited. We were getting closer to meeting Vissarion. It was finally time.
My first impression seeing the teacher was that he did actually look how one might imagine Jesus. With his long hair, flowing white robes and kind smile, he looked the part. But as the interview began, my feelings soon changed.
I asked him to tell me some of the principals of his religion. After a good 20 second pause, he replied, "The same as all other religions have. People should learn how to love each other." I asked him what he enjoyed to do every day and what he thought the most important philosophy to live by was. Each question provoked the same long pause followed by a monosyllabic reply.
Finally I asked him the question I had traveled all this way to ask: "Are you Jesus Christ?"
"It's not necessary to answer this," he told me.
I asked whether he believed in Judgment Day,
"There is a time, a certain period of time, during which the destiny of the whole human society will be decided. This period is going on already."
He would not elaborate on what will happen at the end of the period of judgment, nor on when that would be.
The next few questions I asked provoked the same truculent answer, "That doesn't interest me." So I finished by asking if he had anything that did interest him that he would like to communicate to our viewers and to Americans.
His reply, "I am not interested to tell them anything. Their time has not yet come."
It seemed that the interview was over before it began. I hadn't expected Jesus to be a man of so few words. Leaving, I noticed a quad bike parked in front of his house. It seemed ironic that he was zipping around while his followers trekked up and down the mountain. Traveling back to civilization, I marvelled at the zeal of Vissarion's followers. What did they see that I did not? Or what did I see that they did not? I felt inexplicably disappointed.
Yet the numbers of Vissarion's followers continues to grow as more and more people abandon their lives and flock to this remote corner of the world, and to this chameleon of a man. Vissarion? The Teacher? Jesus Christ? Or perhaps just Sergei Torop, the self-proclaimed messiah of Siberia.
China Aid wants business sector to speak out on persecution
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/china.aid.wants.business.sector.to.speak.out.on.persecution/20154.htm
China Aid Association this week launched a new campaign to raise awareness within China's business sector of religious persecution against Christians.
The campaign is focused on holding businesses in China accountable for their actions to become more socially responsibility.
The initial campaign will focus on Beijing bookstore owner and house church leader, Shi Weihan. In January of 2008, Beijing resident Shi Weihan was arrested under suspicion of printing illegal Christian material.
He has been illegally held in a detention centre in Beijing for more than three months without receiving formal charges or trial, Christian Aid Association reports.
Shi's family members were prohibited from visiting him while in detention and were held back from delivering his diabetes medication.
Exactly 1,161 foreign invested companies within Beijing will be faxed first hand accurate information concerning Shi Weihan and his case. The companies' leaders are urged to take action as part of their corporate social responsibility contract.
Companies include US, Japanese and European-owned corporations.
It is CAA's hope that the business community within Beijing will respond to local authorities inquiring about the situation, encouraging them to treat Shi in a more humane way and even call for his unconditional release.
"As persecution continues to increase with the approach of the Beijing Olympics, it is time for the corporate and business world to stand against human rights violations and take responsibility for their community," said the CAA.
"China Aid Association will be quick and accurate to report both the action and inaction of the companies who receive word of persecutions within their areas of influence."
‘Bleeding’ picture of Jesus draws crowds at Mumbai
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/bleeding.picture.of.jesus.draws.crowds.at.mumbai/20152.htm
Thousands of devotees thronged St Michael's church in Mahim, Mumbai, following reports of a dark patch resembling blood appearing on a portion of a painting of Jesus Christ.
Some Christians claimed they saw blood oozing out from the heart of Jesus in the picture. They believe it to be a miracle.
However, a spokesperson for the Catholic bishop in Mumbai has brushed off the claims saying that the dark patch is the result of moisture in the air.
Father Donat D’souza of St Michael’s parish said that parishioners noticed it soon after the last service performed on Friday evening.
It might have been caused by moisture," he acknowledged.
The church claims to have welcomed over 100,000 visitors hoping to catch a glimpse of the picture since news of the patch emerged. Some even waited for hours to touch the picture, the church said.
Father Gregory Lobo, secretary of the Bombay Archdiocesan Board of Education, said there was nothing wrong in calling it a "miracle" so long as it changes people's lives.
It is a "matter of faith", he said.
The image has been sent for scrutiny and may even be sent for a lab testing.
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