APPROACH TO JIHAD START YOUNG - ARABS

STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES

LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

Hurricane Dean threatens Mexico after battering Jamaica AUG 20,07

KINGSTON (AFP) - Hurricane Dean headed for Mexico on Monday, after battering Jamaica into a state of emergency by downing power lines, ripping off roofs and blocking roads with felled trees.Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller announced late Sunday that security forces would be granted wider powers after police reported several looting incidents across the island.The state of emergency will be reviewed at a meeting of the Jamaican cabinet later on Monday, but was envisaged for a period of 30 days, and Miller even indicated that national elections on August 27 may be delayed due to Dean.The category four hurricane, packing winds of 150 miles (240 kilometers) an hour which have so far killed five people across the Caribbean basin, was whipping up giant surf as it headed south of the Cayman Islands for Belize and Mexico's Yucatan peninsula.Roads were blocked by fallen trees and flooded in the eastern parts of Jamaica, with power cuts affecting thousands of homes.The sea has dumped debris onto the roads, Portland parish Mayor Bobbie Montague said as the storm surged by Jamaica's southern coast, on course for the nearby Cayman Islands, Mexico and possibly Texas in coming days.

In Texas, Governor Rick Perry has ordered elderly people in the Rio Grande Valley region to be evacuated in case Dean's track takes it in a more northerly direction, which could put it over the southern tip of Texas by Thursday, CNN news reported.
At 0900 GMT, the center of Dean was located 115 miles (185 kilometers) south-southeast of Grand Cayman Island, moving west at about 21 miles (33 kilometers) an hour, said the US National Hurricane Center. Dean remained an extremely dangerous category four hurricane, the center pointed out, adding that the storm had the potential of becoming a deadly category five hurricane in the northwestern Caribbean Sea on Monday. Jamaica's airports were shut since Saturday, and more than 4,500 people have packed into hundreds of shelters opened up by the government around the island amid bitter memories of Hurricane Ivan which killed 14 people in 2004.Miller called on all off-duty police officers, firefighters and prison warders to report for work, while electricity was turned off on the national grid as a safety measure.
The Jamaica Public Service Company said more than 135,000 customers were without power.The prime minister called on all political parties to forget about national elections on August 27 and put all differences aside as a national emergency is on us.

Mexico was, meanwhile, evacuating some 90,000 tourists from Cancun and other islands of the Mayan Riviera, as well as some 13,000 workers on more than 140 of its oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.In Cuba, just to the north of Jamaica, authorities had evacuated some 150,000 people from six eastern provinces to save them from possible flooding.Hurricane Dean earlier brushed past Haiti, one of the world's poorest countries, lashing it with heavy rain and gale-force winds. Two people were killed in Haiti's southeastern town of Moron and southern Tiburon, Haitian officials said, and more than 1,000 people evacuated from low-lying areas.Two people were also killed in the French territory of Martinique, while authorities in the Dominican Republic, where a 16-year-old boy was killed when he was swept away by huge waves, warned of the danger of landslides.The National Emergency Committee there also said that 1,580 people had been evacuated and some 316 houses had been damaged, many of them severely.A leading risk modeling company, California-based Eqecat Inc., on Sunday estimated initial losses in the Lesser Antilles islands and Jamaica at between 1.5 billion and three billion dollars.

Bush, Harper, Calderon to tackle economy, security AUG 20,07
By Randall Palmer

OTTAWA (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush will review the credit crunch and global market turmoil with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon at a two-day summit that starts on Monday.Once ensconced away from protesters at a luxury hotel in Montebello, Quebec, down the Ottawa River from the Canadian capital, the leaders are expected to review the global economy and examine progress towards integrating North America.They are meeting as partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, to develop what they have called a Security and Prosperity Partnership, or SPP.That was drafted in 2005 following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States to try to ensure that North America is a safe place to live and to do business, seemingly innocuous but upsetting to activists on the left and the right who are concerned about a loss of national sovereignty.

Fences three meters (10 feet) high have been erected around the hotel grounds to keep at bay the thousands of anti-capitalist protesters expected to descend on Montebello.Bush and the other leaders might have to go part way by boat if protesters block the way.On the agenda are global competitiveness, the safety of food and products -- including Chinese-made toys -- energy, the environment and secure borders.Christopher Sands, an expert on Canada at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the meeting was unlikely to produce major strides, but would show that the United States was tending regional ties.The summit is a symbolic manifestation of the fact that Bush, the United States, is in fact paying attention to its neighbors and working on an agenda of mutual concern," he said.

AGENDA

Bush will have separate one-on-one meetings with Harper and Calderon on Monday.

Canadian officials said they were likely to discuss Russia's symbolic laying of claim to the North Pole, where it placed a flag on the seabed, as well as the war in Afghanistan, where Canada has committed 2,500 troops through February 2009.The head of Canada's opposition, Liberal leader Stephane Dion, says Harper should demand that NATO start finding a replacement for Canadian troops.Bush and Harper were also expected to discuss the Middle East, Iran, climate change, and the Doha trade negotiations.Opposition politicians regularly accuse Canada's Conservative prime minister of being a Bush protege, but Harper's spokesman, Dimitri Soudas, pointed out that Liberal Paul Martin was in power when the SPP was set up.For Bush and Calderon, it will be their first face-to-face meeting since U.S. immigration overhaul legislation collapsed in Congress and dealt a blow to a key issue for U.S.-Mexico relations.The Bush administration said this month it would increase scrutiny and impose heftier fines on U.S. businesses that employ illegal immigrants.The United States also will expand the visa term for professional workers from Mexico and Canada to three years from one year. I don't think either country was clamoring for this. It's a gesture, Sands said of the visa change.(Reporting by Tabassum Zakaria in Crawford, Texas)

Gazans battle blackouts as EU mulls resuming fuel aid by Sakher Abu El Oun
AUG 20,2007

GAZA CITY (AFP) - Blackouts plagued the Gaza Strip anew on Monday as the European Union was reviewing whether to renew its financing of fuel deliveries for the impoverished territory's sole power plant. Gaza City hummed with the sound of generators and candles disappeared off supermarket shelves as residents stocked up on supplies on the fourth day of intermittent power supplies in one of the world's most densely populated places.Our life is becoming more and more difficult, said Umm Jaber, a 40-year-old mother of six in Gaza City. They've closed the borders, they've cut jobs. Today they've cut the electricity, tomorrow they'll cut the air for us.

The power cuts were the latest blow to hit the territory that has been effectively sealed off by Israel since the Islamist movement Hamas seized control two months ago, sparking fears of a humanitarian crisis.They also marked the latest point of contention between the Western-shunned Islamists and the Western-backed Palestinian government in the occupied West Bank, as the two sides blamed each other for the cuts.The power outages began late Friday, when Gaza's only power plant -- which according to the EU provides between 25 and 30 percent of the territory's power -- shut down all but one of its generators because its diesel supplies dwindled after Israel shut the fuel border crossing on security concerns.Israel reopened the crossing on Sunday, but diesel for the plant was not delivered because the EU -- which finances the supplies -- suspended payments out of security concerns, forcing the plant to shut down completely.

We are still assessing the situation and hope to resume supplies either later on Monday or Tuesday, an EU spokeswoman in Jerusalem told AFP.The power cuts have become a new source of tension between Hamas and president Mahmud Abbas's government in Ramallah.We warned for weeks that Gaza would fall into darkness if Hamas does not stop occupying the electricity company and does not stop holding on to millions of shekels that they collected from the people of Gaza, information minister Riyad al-Malki told reporters in Ramallah.The people in Gaza, in every home and every house, must go into the street and say to Hamas 'you are responsible for this crime.In Gaza, Hamas's parliamentary bloc said Abbas's government headed by prime minister Salam Fayyad, which it refuses to recognise, was to blame.President Abbas and the Fayyad government are responsible for this criminal cut in electricity, it said in a statement. We call on people to protest against his act.We call on the European donors to reconsider their decision, which was made because of lies and political provocation by the government in Ramallah, it said. This decision is inhumane and could badly affect the Palestinian nation.

AND YOU WONDER WHY THE ARABS AND SO CALLED PEACEFUL RELIGION ISLAM HATES CHRISTIANS AND JEWS WITH THIS KIND OF NONSENCE GOING ON BY ISLAM.

Hamas's approach to jihad: Start em young By Dan Murphy AUG 20,07

Gaza City, Gaza - As a weapon in its struggle with Israel, Nahool the Bee doesn't look like a particularly threatening addition to the Hamas arsenal. He doesn't even have a stinger. But what the bright yellow star of Tomorrow's Pioneers on Hamas-owned Al Aqsa television lacks in muscle he makes up for in fervor. Speaking in a recent episode, Nahool vowed to help take back Jerusalem from the criminal Jews and expressed his hope that he and all of his listeners would grow up to become holy warriors.The show, along with paramilitary-style summer camps for Gazan boys, reveal a key element in Hamas's long-term strategy.Like Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, which spawned Hamas, the group takes a patient approach to tapping religious conviction to build political support. It is the movement's youth focus, critics say, that sets it apart from Hamas's rival, Fatah, which controls the West Bank and enjoys US and Israeli support.

The basic unit of the Hamas organization isn't cells or political committees – it's families. The organization has shown that by introducing children early enough to Hamas's hard-line Islamic thinking, it can recruit lifelong supporters.It hurts us so much when the international community misunderstands us, says Samir Abu Mohsen, a senior director at Al Aqsa. Nahool isn't for teaching hate. It's for teaching children to think in the right way, to socialize them in our culture's way of life, and, of course, to remind them of their rights to the land that was taken from us.

Hamas's revolution will be televised

The Nahool puppet replaces a Mickey Mouse-like character named Farfur, who, in an episode several months ago, was shown being killed by an Israeli official after he refused to sell his land to Israelis. Director Mohsen says the show killed off Farfur because of complaints they were infringing on Disney's copyright.Nahool tells his young audience in a high-pitched voice that his anti-Zionist passion is fueled by the memory of his grandfather, who was murdered at the hands of Israeli settlers. Both life-sized puppets have stirred outrage among critics who say that Al Aqsa television teaches children to hate.Mohammed Ramadan, the young man who dons the Nahool costume and who also played Farfur before that character's televised martyrdom, says he's been shocked by international allegations that his characters teach children to hate.Look, Israeli aggression against us is a fact, they kicked these children's grandparents and parents from their homes, and we're not allowed to talk about this? he asks. They need to know.Nevertheless, Mr. Ramadan says that he won't cross certain red lines. A red line would be telling children to go kill Israelis. But talking about our right to our land, to one day return? That's not a red line. That's what they need to know.

Nahool exists for two things, says Mr. Mohsen. Teaching basic stuff like respect for adults, looking twice before crossing the road, and respecting the environment. But No. 2, we want to make sure they remember that we're exiles from our own land, land they have to be committed to regaining.What effect Nahool's antics have on young minds is hard to gauge.Ahmed, a 9-year-old who says he loves recently retired soccer star Zinedine Zidane, allows that he sometimes finds the bumbling bee amusing, but doesn't hesitate to name his favorite character on Palestinian TV – Captain Majid, whose eponymous show chronicles the adventures of a soccer-obsessed boy and his World Cup dreams.

Sun, surf, and paramilitary training

As part of its long-term recruitment policy, in addition to its children's show on Al Aqsa, Hamas is sending tens of thousands of poor Gazan children to camp this summer where they can enjoy sun, surf, and paramilitary training.Life is so tough here we say our children are born men, but they're still just kids, says Mohammed, who runs the Abu Musab Hamas camp in central Gaza and asked that his full name not be used. As he speaks, rows of painfully polite 10-year-olds in green Hamas hats file off the beach at the end of the day. They need entertainment and we give it to them, with a single goal: To get their attention so they develop good Islamic manners, bond their egos to the group, and integrate them into the right way of life.

The group sponsors additional education for top students, much of which is focused on memorizing the Koran. But Hamas isn't neglecting parents, either. The Islamic Group, Hamas's main charity in the territory, has built dozens of homes in recent months for Gazans whose houses were destroyed by Israeli airstrikes. It recently held a mass wedding for about 50 policemen loyal to the movement, covering all costs and giving them a $500 head start on their new lives as married men.To be sure, Fatah runs camps of its own for kids, but not on the scale of Hamas's outreach effort or with the same unity of purpose. Though Mohammed mentions soccer, public safety lessons, and basic Muslim teaching, he fails to mention that many of the Gaza camps also include a paramilitary element. A Hamas official says that such training is reserved for boys over 16, but a photographer who recently visited a camp in central Gaza and others say much younger boys also take part in paramilitary exercises.

In one Gaza City camp, boys practiced field drills with wooden pistols and crawled under barbed wire while being harangued by an adult drill instructor. Teenage boys undergo a tougher regimen that includes hand-to-hand combat and exhausting exercise. Boys that break discipline are sometimes beaten with sticks, said the photographer.
Are the camps an important part of our strategy? Of course, says Museb Malik, who runs the First Educational Childhood camp where children are divided into groups named after cities – Haifa, Acre, and Japfa – that Israel now controls and Hamas would like to someday regain. But we're also filling an important social function. These children need something to take their minds off of the violence.Mehmet Gishrawi, a dimpled 9-year-old at the camp, stands beneath a poster of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas founder who was assassinated by Israel in 2004, and explains that he had trouble sleeping after he survived an airstrike two years ago that claimed his cousin and 20 other neighbors. I have had a lot of fun, I've learned a lot, he says. I'm not as afraid now.