IS IRAN NUCLEAR - THEY MUST BE STOPPED

HAPPY NEW YEAR ISRAEL PRAISE THE GOD OF ISRAEL AND THE WHOLE EARTH FOR PROTECTING AND KEEPING HIS PROMISE THAT ISRAEL WILL INHERIT THE LAND FOREVER.

WEB BOT PREDICTIONS 2009-OCT WORLD REGIONS PREDICTED
http://urbansurvival.com/2009summary.pdf
http://www.niburu.nl/index.php?articleID=20056

ISRAELS INHERITED LAND IN THE FUTURE

And here are the bounderies of the land that Israel will inherit either through war or peace or God in the future. God says its Israels land and only Israels land. They will have every inch God promised them of this land in the future.

Egypt east of the Nile River, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, The southern part of Turkey and the Western Half of Iraq west of the Euphrates. Gen 13:14-15, Psm 105:9,11, Gen 15:18, Exe 23:31, Num 34:1-12, Josh 1:4.ALL THIS LAND ISRAEL WILL DEFINATELY OWN IN THE FUTURE, ITS ISRAELS NOT ISHMAELS LAND.

HAPPY NEW YEAR ISRAEL ROSH-HASHANA 6PM TONIGHT,11AM EASTERN TIME.THE DAY THE EARTH GETS JUDGED IN HISTORY.ISRAELI BELIEF THE DAY WHEN GOD DECIDES WHO LIVES OR DIES THIS YEAR AND HOW THEY WILL DIE.THE DAY IN THE FUTURE I BELIEVE THE 7 YEAR PEACE FOR SECURITY DEAL WLL BE SIGNED ON OF DANIEL 9:27.

DANIEL 9:26-27
26 And after threescore and two weeks(62X7=434 YEARS+7X7=49 YEARS=TOTAL OF 69 WEEKS OR 483 YRS) shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary;(ROMAN LEADERS DESTROYED THE 2ND TEMPLE) and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.(THERE HAS TO BE 70 WEEKS OR 490 YRS TO FUFILL THE VISION AND PROPHECY OF DAN 9:24).(THE NEXT VERSE IS THAT 7 YR WEEK OR (70TH FINAL WEEK).
27 And he( THE ROMAN,EU PRESIDENT) shall confirm the covenant with many for one week:(1X7=7 YEARS) and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease,(3 1/2 yrs in TEMPLE SACRIFICES STOPPED) and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

Jewish leaders calling for ethical renewal By VICTOR EPSTEIN, Associated Press Writer – Thu Sep 17, 6:05 pm ET

NEWARK, N.J. – Jewish leaders are calling on U.S. rabbis to emphasize the faith's ethical requirements in their sermons during Rosh Hashana in response to recent financial scandals involving its members, including Bernard Madoff.Jews have been embarrassed the past year by the arrest of former Wall Street tycoon Madoff, who is serving a 150-year prison sentence for defrauding investors out of billions of dollars, and several rabbis who were arrested in July on money laundering charges, said Richard Joel, president of Yeshiva University in New York.Widely distributed images showed them being led into the FBI building in Newark in rabbinical garb and handcuffs didn't help.It's troubling, said Rabbi Moshe Kletenik, president of the Rabbinical Council of America, which comprises about 1,000 rabbis in the U.S., Canada and Israel.Ethical living is as significant a part of leading a religious life as ritual law.

Kletenik also leads the Bikur Cholim-Machzikay Hadath Congregation in Seattle.

Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, begins Friday. It's the ideal time to re-emphasize core values that require the faithful to be honest, forthright and sincere, Joel said.He and Kletenik joined four other top Jewish leaders in signing a letter this month that calls on rabbis to remind congregants that they are expected to meet the highest standards both in their dealings inside the temple and outside it.The letter is a message all Americans should heed, Joel said, because greed consumed members of many groups, not just Jews, during the financial boom that preceded the recession. All humans have a responsibility to lead exemplary lives, he said.This is a universal call,Joel said.But the rabbis of America have a lot of Jews trapped in synagogues this weekend, and it's a wonderful time to focus on who we are and how we are.The letter was sent to graduates of Yeshiva University, who serve as religious leaders for 85 percent of the nation's orthodox Jewish synagogues. It also was distributed to members of the Orthodox Union, which represents about 15 percent of U.S. Jews, and the Rabbinical Council. There are believed to be 5.3 million to 5.5million Jews in the U.S.These crimes were extremely hurtful and disappointing, said Rabbi Steven Weil, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union. Judaism has to be associated with the greatest degree of integrity, honesty and sincerity.

The Jewish high holidays begin with Rosh Hashana and end 10 days later with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It's customary for religious Jews to seek forgiveness during that time from those they've wronged.Rabbi Melvin Granatstein, 69, said he's grateful for the letter's timely message. The head of the Green Road Synagogue outside Cleveland plans to incorporate its message into his sermons during the holidays. His congregation has about 700 members.It's terribly important that we all address the issue of moral decay,Granatstein said.We have to recover the greatness of Judaism, and the only way to do that is to emphasize its moral message.Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of the book The Blessings of Enough,said it's impossible to be a good Jew without being a good person, too. Jews have overlooked ostentatious displays of wealth at lavish bar mitzvahs and weddings for too long, he said.I salute the call to return to our call values,said Boteach, of Englewood.We need to start filling the empty spaces in ourselves with more purpose and good deeds, instead of money and impulse purchases.

DISEASES

REVELATION 6:7-8
7 And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse:(CHLORES GREEN) and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword,(WEAPONS) and with hunger,(FAMINE) and with death,(INCURABLE DISEASES) and with the beasts of the earth.(ANIMAL TO HUMAN DISEASE).

DRUG PUSHERS AND ADDICTS

REVELATION 18:23
23 And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries (DRUGS) were all nations deceived.

REVELATION 9:21
21 Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries (DRUGS), nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.

NWO KILLER VACCINES
http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2009/08/nwo-death-control-swine-flu-vaccines.html
MILITARY TO WORK WITH FEMA WHEN PANDEMIC HITS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtGofsHaj3M&feature=player_embedded
SAY NO TO THE VACCINES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGyCeCiG9Kk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqMK_yu8APg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASibLqwVbsk&feature=related
LAB MADE FLU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYrlFMFoaDE&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fbritanniaradio%2Eblogspot%2Ecom%2F&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj0gs1C83Ec&feature=channel

FLU-FORCED VACCINATIONS-CONCENTRATION CAMPS SHIPPED TO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LabiJ9LqTU&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eB7OwPk5Z78&feature=player_embedded
Climate Change Agenda: It’s All About Eugenics and Depopulation - ALL LINKS LOTS
http://www.infowars.com/climate-change-agenda-its-all-about-eugenics-and-depopulation/

Bill Gates Unleashes New Round of Grants on Experimental Genetic Modification and Vaccine Research David Gutierrez Natural News Thursday, Sept 17th, 2009

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has issued more than $8 million in grants to stimulate unconventional research, in the hopes of producing medical breakthroughs unlikely to emerge through traditional research channels.In contrast to most grants, which require applicants to provide lengthy and detailed information, the Gates Foundation required applicants to submit only a two-page application, with no preliminary data needed. Eighty-one recipients were selected for starting grants of $100,000 each, out of more than 3,000 proposals. Recipients who show success in preliminary studies may receive follow-up grants of $1 million.Tachi Yamada, president of the foundation’s global health program, said that he will not be disappointed if 90 percent of the projects fail.The point is that where there are currently no solutions, we must work hard to find new solutions, he said.We really believe that true innovation is needed. Some of the ideas might seem crazy, but there is a fine line between crazy and absolutely novel.Grant recipients include teams working to detect malaria infection with a handheld, magnetic device; to create a genetic library of all possible HIV mutations; to research the body’s ability to carry pneumonia bacteria without becoming ill, in hopes of developing an inhaled vaccine; to give cows a vaccine that causes mosquitoes biting them to die or become sterile; to develop nanoparticles that attach to tuberculosis-infected cells and release antibiotics over time; to test whether vaccines could be delivered via proteins produced by insect viruses; to infect malaria mosquitoes with a fungus that makes it hard for them to smell potential prey; to create antibodies that attack the receptor proteins of immune cells, thus blocking HIV from infecting the cells; and to develop a tomato that can be eaten to receive a dose of antiviral drugs.Some things require a revolution, rather than an evolution, in thinking, Yamada said. The problem is we can be locked into an orthodoxy of thinking that shackles us and prevents us from thinking in novel ways.

H1N1 vaccine production far less than forecast - WHO
SEPT 18,09 Stephanie Nebehay

Production of H1N1 vaccine over the next year will be substantially less than the 4.9billion doses previously forecast but one dose should provide adequate protection, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday.Based on clinical test results from some 25 drugmakers, weekly production of the new vaccine will be less than 94 million doses, WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said.The real figure will be substantially less than 4.9 billion (over the year), Hartl told reporters.But supply fears have eased as the northern hemisphere heads into winter and with major drug manufacturers reporting that a single dose is successfully providing immunity.All the clinical trial results that we have seen show that apparently one dose is enough,Hartl said.The United Nations agency previously forecast one third of the world's nearly seven billion people could be affected by the H1N1 pandemic, but so far the vast majority of victims are suffering only mild symptoms.Health care workers and people at high risk, including pregnant women and those with underlying conditions such as asthma or diabetes, should be top priority for receiving the new vaccine, it says.Hartl gave no exact new forecast for annual production capacity, but WHO vaccine expert Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny is tentatively set to give a briefing next Thursday at 4 p.m. British time.He noted WHO's previous estimate of 4.9 billion doses had been based on drugmakers switching all production of seasonal flu vaccine to the new vaccine, getting good yields and using an immune booster known as an adjuvant to stretch supplies.

WHO continues to recommend that people be inoculated against both seasonal and H1N1 flu, Hartl said.Some 3,486 people have died of swine flu to date, including about 300in the past week, according to a new WHO tally.The virus continues to spread in tropical regions of Asia (India and Bangladesh) and Latin America (Bolivia and Venezuela), it said. Influenza rates are low overall in Europe, apart from France, which like Japan has already far exceeded the normal levels for a seasonal flu epidemic.

INADEQUATE VACCINE SUPPLIES

In a statement, the WHO said current supplies of pandemic vaccine are inadequate for a world population in which virtually everyone is susceptible to infection.But the WHO also welcomed an agreement that nine rich countries will share H1N1 vaccine with less-developed countries under a donation programme over the next 6-8 months.The announcement demonstrates the commitment of these countries to fairness in sharing of scarce resources as the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 continues to evolve,it said.Under the deal announced overnight, the United States pledged 10 percent of its supply, joining Australia, Brazil, Britain, France, Italy, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland. The WHO said it had no overall figure for the vaccine donation.Vaccine makers GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi-Pasteur previously pledged 120 million doses to the Geneva-based WHO.Some 85 of WHO's 193 member states have reported that they do not have access to H1N1 vaccine supplies, according to Hartl.Vaccines donated to the WHO will be distributed to those needy countries able to ensure adequate distribution and vaccination plans are in place, he said. Another criteria is their ability to do checks to detect any side effects.The order in which we distribute vaccines would also depend on where on the epidemiological curve the country is,he said, referring to whether the pandemic strain has already struck a given population or is about to.Switzerland said on Friday it had bought 13 million doses of the H1N1 vaccine from Novartis AG and GlaxoSmithKline.(Editing by Jonathan Lynn and Elizabeth Fullerton)

State Says Forced Injections, Quarantines For Rapidly Spreading Germ, But Not Swine Flu Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com September 18, 2009

Health authorities in Massachusetts have indicated that they will impose quarantines and mandatory vaccinations in the event of the H1N1 virus mutating into a lethal germ, but that forcible injections are not on the agenda for the swine flu outbreak as it stands.Concerns about mandatory vaccination programs have been growing worldwide over recent weeks as governments have failed to unequivocally state that the swine flu shot will be voluntary, while ordering enough batches to inoculate their entire population.These fears have been heightened by warnings from whistle blowers that law enforcement and military officials have been running drills focused around quarantining people who refuse to take the vaccine.Governments of some European countries, such as Greece, have announced that the H1N1 vaccine will be mandatory, while leaked internal French government documents outline a similar plan for a program of mass vaccination without exception.In response to pressure from the Liberty Preservation Association of Massachusetts, state officials have been forced to acknowledge that the swine flu shot will not be mandatory, but they did not rule out the prospect of people being forcibly injected or quarantined if the H1N1 virus mutates into a deadlier germ, which many health authorities have all but guaranteed it will.Massachusetts Public Health Commissioner John Auerbach sent a memo to legislators this week advising them mandatory vaccination is not and has never been part of the plan or discussion in Massachusetts’ pandemic response.However, state legislation passed in April does mandate that people who refuse to follow orders to remain isolated can be hit with a daily fine of $1000 and also face up to a month in jail.A Boston Globe article also notes that the legislation in place describes quarantining people who decline inoculations in the event of a bioterror attack or the emergence of a highly lethal, rapidly spreading germ.

The issue of mandatory vaccinations in Massachusetts is especially prescient due to the fact that authorities in Boston have already trialed vaccination tracking technology with the purpose of creating a vaccination map charting which people have taken the vaccine and which have not, or creating a citywide registry of everyone who has had a flu vaccination,as a Boston Globe article describes, via the use of RFID bracelets. Police and military whistle blowers have warned that these bracelets will be used to single out who hasn’t received the vaccine, upon which the individual will be forcibly quarantined by authorities if they refuse to take the shot.Health authorities in other states have been coy about exactly what level of outbreak severity will trigger a mandatory vaccination program. However, after a concerned blogger called the Arkansas State Health Department it was revealed that authorities there believe that mandatory injections are constitutional and can be enforced at gunpoint if necessary.Health authorities in Massachusetts expressed concern that suspicion surrounding the swine flu shot could impinge on their plan to vaccinate as many people as possible.Auerbach’s letter demonstrates that his agency is worried the dissent could raise doubts about vaccination and imperil an unprecedented campaign to inoculate millions this fall against the seasonal flu and the swine strain,reports the Globe.

However, concerns about the vaccine are firmly rooted in the fact that it will contain a cocktail of dangerous additives and ingredients.As we have previously documented, the swine flu vaccine was rushed through safety procedures while governments have provided pharmaceutical companies with blanket immunity from lawsuits arriving out of the vaccine causing deaths and injuries.It was previously revealed that some batches of the vaccine will contain mercury, a toxin linked with autism and neurological disorders. The vaccine will also contain the dangerous ingredient squalene, which has been directly linked with cases of Gulf War Syndrome and a host of other debilitating diseases.It was also recently reported that the UK government sent a confidential letter to senior neurologists telling them to be on the alert for cases of a brain disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), which could be triggered by the vaccine. The CDC in America replicated this warning weeks later.As a result of the dangers of the vaccine becoming widely known, authorities are moving to get out ahead of the story by acknowledging that millions of health problems in the aftermath of a vaccination campaign will be blamed on the vaccine, citing the 1976 swine flu debacle when the shot proved far deadlier than the actual virus.Reuters reports that public health officials, Expect an avalanche of so-called adverse event reports, which are reports of death, illness or other health trauma that occur within two weeks after receiving treatment — in this case, the swine flu vaccine,in reaction to an estimated one million heart attacks, 700,000 strokes and 900,000 miscarriages.By coming out early and claiming that these problems would have occurred without the swine flu vaccine anyway, authorities are creating plausible deniability for when side-effects from the shot begin to appear.

Mass swine flu coffins warning Date: 17 September 2009
By David Maddox

MINISTERS have been urged to have thousands of cardboard coffins ready for mass deaths should swine flu take a turn for the worse.Scottish Government guidance was published yesterday looking at how to cope with large-scale death from catastrophic events, disease and terrorist attacks.The document – Guidance on Dealing with Mass Fatalities in Scotland – was published amid concern that swine flu, which has so far been relatively mild compared to seasonal flu, could mutate and become much more virulent.The guidance recommends the use of cardboard coffins and refrigeration centres to hold bodies. It also urges that mass graves should not be used.It came as thousands of nurses and midwives whose registration has lapsed were being contacted to help cope with any surge in the swine-flu pandemic. Letters are being sent to about 10,000 people in Scotland, once registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) to work in the UK.To re-register, the nurse or midwife must have worked over the past five years for a minimum of 750 hours. Letters will go to 90,000people in the UK. In Scotland this includes 7,695 nurses, 148 midwives and 1,686 people with dual qualification.NMC chief executive and registrar Kathy George said they were writing to more than 90,000 nurses and midwives whose registration has lapsed in the last four years encouraging them to consider re-applying.Labour health spokesman Dr Richard Simpson MSP said it was absolutely vital the time available was used to prepare for a potential second wave of flu cases. He said:In a worst-case scenario, GPs could be dealing with over 5,000 extra cases per week.

Police and Military Train To Intern Swine Flu Vaccine Refusniks
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com Thursday, September 17, 2009

Law enforcement and military personnel are training to set up checkpoints in order to catch people who refuse to take the swine flu vaccination according to whistle blowers, while health authorities are laying the groundwork for a mass vaccination campaign by warning that serious and potentially deadly health problems will be blamed on the H1N1 vaccine.In a You Tube video, a woman describing herself as a soldier explains how she was part of a drill in California centered around setting up roadblocks and checkpoints so authorities could check who has received the swine flu vaccine. Those who have had the shots will be fitted with an RFID bracelet so they can be tracked. Those who have not taken the shot will be offered it there and then and if they still refuse, will be carted off to an internment camp, according to the woman.

This individual needs to go public with her full name and position because she will already be known to authorities. By remaining anonymous to the public only, her testimony can be dismissed as just someone ranting on You Tube. However, her statements about tracking people who have taken the vaccine via RFID bracelets is something that has already been beta tested by health authorities.Former Kansas state trooper Greg Evensen underscored this claim back in July.Have you been made aware of the massive roadblock plans to stop all travelers for a vaccine bracelet (stainless steel band with a micro-chip on board) that will force you to take the shot? Evensen wrote on July 29.Refuse it? You will be placed on a prison bus and taken to a quarantine camp. What will you do when your children are NOT allowed into school without the shot? What will you do when you are not allowed into the workplace without the vaccine paperwork? Buy groceries? Go to the bank? Shop anywhere?? Get on a plane, bus or train? Use the toilet in the mall? Nope. Police officers will become loathed, feared, despised and remembered for their official duties.Mr. Evensen made the following comment at an event in Texas:Authorities in Boston have already trialed such technology, with the purpose of creating a vaccination map charting which people have taken the vaccine and which have not, or creating a citywide registry of everyone who has had a flu vaccination,as a Boston Globe article describes.Participants were given a bracelet with a unique identifier code, exactly as described in the You Tube clip.

Infectious disease specialists in Boston and elsewhere predicted that the registry approach could prove even more useful if something more sinister strikes: a bioterrorism attack or the long-feared arrival of a global flu epidemic. In such crises, the registry could be used to track who received a special vaccine or antidote to a deadly germ,according to the article.Anything you can do to better pinpoint who’s vaccinated and who’s not, that’s absolutely vital,said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy at the University of Minnesota.I wish more cities were doing this kind of thing.While governments have publicly backed away from talk of mandatory mass vaccination programs, their actions behind closed doors indicate that they are preparing for a state of medical martial law.An international swine fu conference held recently in Washington DC and attended by the world’s top health authorities featured workshops on enforced quarantines, mass vaccinations, and how to control and diffuse social unrest and public disorder.Individuals who attempted to gain access to the conference representing the media were turned away by officials at the conference.

As we reported earlier this month, a shocking internal document outlines the French government’s plan to impose a mass swine flu vaccination program on the entire population which would be focused around regional vaccination centers and would be carried out by H1N1 injection teams, completely bypassing medical establishments and GP’s.Legislation has also been passed in the U.S. that would allow state vaccine teams to go door to door to conduction immunization interventions and look for people who have not taken the shot.It is unclear how authorities plan to enforce any such mandatory vaccination campaign, especially in light of anecdotal evidence suggesting that a large majority of the public will refuse to take the shots. Polls taken in the UK indicate that a majority of nurses and other health workers, the primary targets for the first round of vaccinations, will refuse to be vaccinated.It is likely that threats, intimidation and removal of rights and conveniences will force most holdouts to take the shot. Once governments start imposing quarantines and travel bans on people for not taking the shot, a sizeable number are likely to acquiesce.Since the dangerous ingredients that will be included in the H1N1 shots became known to the public, opposition to proposed mass vaccination programs has snowballed.

As we have previously documented, the swine flu vaccine was rushed through safety procedures while governments have provided pharmaceutical companies with blanket immunity from lawsuits arriving out of the vaccine causing deaths and injuries.It was previously revealed that some batches of the vaccine will contain mercury, a toxin linked with autism and neurological disorders. The vaccine will also contain the dangerous ingredient squalene, which has been directly linked with cases of Gulf War Syndrome and a host of other debilitating diseases.It was also recently reported that the UK government sent a confidential letter to senior neurologists telling them to be on the alert for cases of a brain disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), which could be triggered by the vaccine. The CDC in America replicated this warning weeks later.As a result of the dangers of the vaccine becoming widely known, authorities are moving to get out ahead of the story by acknowledging that millions of health problems in the aftermath of a vaccination campaign will be blamed on the vaccine, citing the 1976 swine flu debacle when the shot proved far deadlier than the actual virus.Reuters reports that public health officials,Expect an avalanche of so-called adverse event reports, which are reports of death, illness or other health trauma that occur within two weeks after receiving treatment — in this case, the swine flu vaccine,in reaction to an estimated one million heart attacks, 700,000 strokes and 900,000 miscarriages.We are going to be overwhelmed with potential events,said Mike Osterholm, a public health expert at the University of Minnesota.

By coming out early and claiming that these problems would have occurred without the swine flu vaccine anyway, authorities are creating plausible deniability for when side-effects from the shot begin to appear.A number of factors now indicate that authorities in both America and Europe are not only preparing mass vaccination programs, but are also training law enforcement and military assets on how to deal with those who refuse to take the shot. Given the fact that around 150 million Americans own guns and would be prepared to use them to defend their families against police and troops forcibly jabbing needles into them, it seems unlikely that health authorities in the U.S. will go down this route. However, by implementing travel bans, school bans and other forms of general quarantine, a good number of those refusniks may eventually be intimidated into taking the dangerous shot.But a good number of them will stand firm – and that’s probably where the internment camps and martial law will come into play.Only by diffusing the rampant hype behind the relatively harmless swine flu virus and re-affirming our right to reject enforced medical procedures conducted against our will under the Nuremberg code will the swine flu hoax, which is being used by governments as a smokescreen to accelerate and implement the police state, be defeated.

September 17, 2009, 11:31 AM ET.More Deadly Swine Flu? CDC Mixes H1N1, H5N1 Viruses in Tests.By Betsy McKay WSJ

Public-health officials are breathing a small sigh of relief that the H1N1 swine flu virus hasn’t mutated to become more deadly since emerging last spring. But what are the chances it will? To find out, scientists at the CDC recently launched experiments in the agency’s labs in which they infected ferrets with both the new H1N1 virus and the highly lethal H5N1 avian flu virus to see if they might reassort to create a new hybrid.The scientists want to know whether a combination of the H1N1 virus -– highly transmissible, but not terribly deadly -– and the H5N1 flu virus could create an easily transmissible, deadly scourge. The H5N1 virus has only sickened 440 people world-wide since 2003 and generally isn’t transmitted from one person to another. But it has killed 262, or about 60%, of those people, according to the World Health Organization.As the new H1N1 flu has spread, flu experts have kept a close eye on Egypt and parts of the world where human H5N1 infections are occurring too. The two viruses could mix if they infected the same person simultaneously. The new H1N1 virus was also detected recently in turkeys in Chile, proving that it has the capacity to jump to birds, another potential source for reassortment.The CDC scientists don’t have results of their lab experiments in ferrets yet, said Michael Shaw, associate director for laboratory science for the agency’s influenza division. While the experiments could produce viable combinations of the two viruses, the real question is whether any could create a virus that would spread, he said. Viability is one thing,he cautioned.Whether it’s easily transmissible is another.

Other experiments conducted so far suggest the new H1N1 virus isn’t terribly prone to doomsday changes. Viruses can change through either mutation of genetic material, or by reassorting with another flu virus. The new virus is lacking certain characteristics that would allow it to mutate to become more virulent, said Nancy Cox, chief of the CDC’s influenza division. It would be difficult for this virus to acquire some of those known virulence markers,she said. As for reassortment, so far the new H1N1 virus hasn’t shown a penchant for mixing with other common flu viruses. In a research note published in late August on the Web site PloS Currents: Influenza, scientists infected ferrets both with the new H1N1 virus and common seasonal strains of H1N1 and H3N2 flu. The new H1N1 pandemic virus didn’t reassort.

Co-infection of seasonal and pandemic strains did not result in the rapid selection of reassortant viruses that either improved replication or transmission or exacerbated virulence,they concluded. The federally funded study was led by scientists at the University of Maryland.Whatever any of the experiments show, CDC officials warn against drawing definitive conclusions.Influenza is really unpredictable,Cox said.

Canadian body bags cause H1N1 controversy Thu Sep 17, 4:43 pm ET

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) – The government apologized on Thursday for sending a large shipment of body bags to aboriginal communities in northern Canada bracing for new outbreaks of the H1N1 flu.Aboriginal leaders said the body-bag delivery shows the government has already given up on fighting H1N1 in the communities. They expressed outrage at getting body bags instead of sufficient resources to deal with the flu.The government has made it clear... what happened was inexcusable,Transport Minister John Baird told Parliament, where opposition parties grilled the Conservatives over the issue.The government has ordered a probe into the shipments to reserves in northern Manitoba which are bracing for a repeat of H1N1 flu outbreaks that hit some of the isolated villages earlier in the year.

Health Canada said it regretted the alarm caused by the shipments.

The agency said it routinely restocks medical supplies to help the isolated communities prepare for unknown and unforeseen events such as pandemics and plane crashes, but the shipment was far more than needed.Native leaders say the earlier flu outbreaks were worsened by a slow government response, and the body bag incident was another example of the government's failure to work with them on preparing for the virus.The controversy coincided with a report on Thursday that the first major outbreaks of H1N1 virus of the new flu season in Canada have hit remote aboriginal communities on Vancouver Island on the Pacific Coast.No deaths have been reported, and most of the people who have become sick have suffered fairly mild symptoms, according to the report, according to the on-line journal of the Canadian Medical Association.Health experts say factors such as close living conditions, poverty and poor sanitation are likely to contribute to fast transmission of H1N1 in aboriginal communities.(Reporting by Allan Dowd, Editing by Frank McGurty)

Public Health Officials in Canada Engaged in Cover-Up Operation To Conceal Flu Origin-The Canadian Medical Association Journal reported that public health officials in British Columbia are advising doctors to assume that all flu symptoms are the results of the H1N1 virus.SEPT 18,09

The organization quotes Tofino family doctor Dr. John Armstong, who said he has treated dozens of people infected with the virus. The provincial public health lab in Vancouver instructed him to stop sending swabs.We’ve reduced our swabbing... Armstrong said in the report. BC public health officials more or less told us to stop taking swabs because the lab is getting swamped in Vancouver.Public officials have supposedly confirmed that all the swabs being submitted are positive for H1N1. Several media outlets have requested full disclosure of laboratory analysis and methods of confirmation for those individuals infected with the H1N1 virus. No official statement has been released by public officials regarding the requests.The largest outbreak occurred in Ahousat, the principal settlement on Flores Island, which is accessible only by water or air. Ahousat is also one of the main settlements of the Ahousaht First Nations led by hereditary chief Shawn Atleo, who was recently elected national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.But a big community effort kept a lid on that,as Aboriginal leaders and health officials held public meetings and urged measures to contain the spread, Armstrong said.But now that school is starting, it’s changed again. We’re also seeing the same flu patterns in other communities.

Somebody has to make the clinical diagnosis in time. Who is going to make that clinical diagnosis? The problem is that flu symptoms can look an awful lot like some other things. One of them is kidney infection. You get fever, chills, aches and pains with that. Or tonsillitis, sore throat, fever, aches and pains, headaches. Those are things that you get with influenza. The danger is that you give Tamiflu to somebody when they should be treated for appendicitis, or kidney infection, and actually causes harm because you’ve deferred proper diagnosis.Canadian health officials, meanwhile, have provided no indication whatsoever of when a vaccine might actually be available, beyond saying it might be available in mid-November. The Public Health Agency of Canada did, however, announce yesterday that pregnant women, health workers, residents of remote area and adults with chronic conditions will be given priority access to a vaccine when it becomes available.

Australia to begin vaccinating against swine flu SEPT 17,09

CANBERRA, Australia – Australia's health minister says drug regulators have approved an Australian-made vaccine for swine flu and that the country will become one of the first to vaccinate against the illness.Health Minister Nicola Roxon says the Therapeutic Drug Administration announced Friday that CSL Ltd.'s vaccine was approved.She says: This decision now paves the way for a national vaccination program to start later this month.The World Health Organization has declared the swine flu strain a pandemic that has killed more than 3,500 people worldwide.

Mexico says millions of swine flu cases possible Thu Sep 17, 3:09 pm ET

MEXICO CITY – Mexico could see up to 5 million cases of swine flu during this winter's flu season, a higher projection than officials had previously given, the health secretary said Thursday.Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said that in the worst-case scenario, deaths could reach 2,000.Cordova told the television network Televisa on Thursday that officials in recent weeks have seen a resurgence of the flu that first hit in April and made Mexico Ground Zero for an eventual worldwide epidemic. The number of cases declined after authorities virtually shut down the country to stem its spread, and as summer approached.

The most-recent cases have forced the closure of some schools.

Last month, Cordova said that he expected a maximum of 1 million cases and 1,000 deaths during this year's flu season in Mexico, which has a population of 107 million.Mexico currently has 25,214 reported cases and 217 deaths.

Panama: More tainted medicine in 1,155 bottles By JUAN ZAMORANO, Associated Press Writer – SEPT 17,09

PANAMA CITY – The death toll from contaminated medicine sold three years ago in Panama could be higher than previously believed after 1,155 bottles of tested positive for a chemical commonly found in antifreeze and brake fluid, investigators said Thursday.Authorities are trying to track down the names that appear on the bottles that tested positive for diethylene glycol to see if any of the users of the medication died, possibly raising the official count of 116 fatalities.At the moment, we have no knowledge of these 1,155 people,Guevara said.We don't know if any of them died, we don't know if any were affected.The 1,155 bottles are among 6,774 handed over to authorities after people were sickened in 2006 from poisonous cough syrup, antihistamine tablets, calamine lotion and rash ointment made at a government laboratory.

Prosecutor Dimas Guevara said test results were pending for thousands more bottles.

Relatives of the victims have long questioned the official estimates of how many people were sickened by the chemical, which was allegedly made by two Chinese companies that sold it to a Spanish firm saying it was 99.5 percent pure glycerin, a sweetener and thickening agent commonly used in drugs. The Spanish company then allegedly sold it to a company in Panama, which in turn sold it to the government lab.A director of the Panamanian company, Medicom, has been detained for a year pending the investigation. Another dozen people are also under investigation.The Committee of Families for the Right to Health and Life, which represents relatives of other victims, has always said more than 1,000 people have been affected, said Gabriel Pascual, the leader of the group.

IRAN GOING NUCLEAR CAN ISRAEL FEEL SAFE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oXqXD8TFRo&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29T8cxLbLIQ&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZMno_lOTEk&feature=player_embedded

Netanyahu to world: Back Israeli self-defense By MARK LAVIE, Associated Press Writer – Thu Sep 17, 4:41 pm ET

JERUSALEM – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday rejected the U.N. report alleging Israeli war crimes in its Gaza war this year, warning world leaders that they and their anti-terror forces could be targets for similar charges.

Netanyahu said Israeli forces were exercising their right to self-defense after rocket attacks by Palestinian Hamas militants against southern Israeli towns before and since Israel's 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.They tell us to pull out, and after we do, and we exercise our right to self defense, they call us war criminals? I don't accept that,Netanyahu told Israel TV, speaking on the occasion of the Jewish New Year holiday, which begins Friday.The report of the U.N. commission, headed by South African justice Richard Goldstone, faulted Israel for civilian deaths in Gaza, saying it used disproportionate force in the offensive. About 1,400 Palestinians were killed during the three-week conflict. Israel charged that Gaza's Islamic Hamas rulers were to blame, saying they placed rocket launchers and forces in crowded neighborhoods.The U.N. report also called Hamas' firing of rockets at Israeli civilians a war crime.Netanyahu urged world leaders to support Israel's right to self-defense and reject the report's findings — including its conclusion that formal charges could be brought against Israeli soldiers, officers and leaders.I'm going to tell world leaders, who also suffer from terrorism: It's not only our problem, Netanyahu said.If they charge Israeli soldiers, officers, pilots and even leaders — they will charge you, too.Netanyahu said he would accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza if it were demilitarized, as a way of avoiding the next Goldstone report on an Israeli operation against Palestinian militants.

In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said he hoped the Goldstone report would not become an obstacle to renewing peace talks. He said the U.S. has concerns about the content of the report but would not elaborate.Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, reiterated U.S. concern about what it calls the U.N. team's unbalanced, one-sided and unacceptable mandate.Our view is that we need to be focused on the future. This is a time to work to cement progress towards the resumption of negotiations and their early and successful conclusion,she said.

President Barack Obama's Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, is scheduled to meet Netanyahu early Friday after extending his stay in the region by several days. Netanyahu said he discussed an eight-point document of Israel's security needs with Mitchell, but he did not give details.Netanyahu did not indicate he is giving in to the main U.S. demand — a freeze of construction in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.There is a slowdown in settlement construction, but not a freeze, he told Channel 10 TV.There are 2,400 units being built, and their construction will continue.Mitchell is hoping to arrange a meeting between Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas next week in New York, during the session of the U.N. General Assembly. Netanyahu said no meeting has been scheduled so far, but added,I hope there will be one.Abbas has said peace negotiations cannot resume until Israel halts all construction in the settlements, but Netanyahu said that issue should be settled in negotiations.It is clear that the fate of settlements and borders and territory in Judea and Samaria will be determined,he said, using the biblical term for the West Bank.But it can't be determined before we start.On Iran, Netanyahu repeated Israeli policy that Iran must not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons, but he would not be drawn about what Israel might do to prevent that.

In the past, Israeli leaders have not taken military options off the table.Also Thursday, Nasser al-Shaer, a Hamas political leader in the West Bank, was released from an Israeli prison after six months behind bars. Al-Shaer is among dozens of Hamas lawmakers Israel arrested as pressure to free an Israeli soldier held in Gaza for more than three years.At Israel's border with Gaza, the captive soldier's father was among a group that delivered a package for his son. It was handed to Palestinian activists in hope that the letters would reach the soldier, who has not been seen since his capture in June 2006.In return, the Israelis took supplies for Hamas prisoners in Israel.Sami Abeed, a Palestinian journalist who accepted the Israeli package, said it contained letters, fruit and drawings for the soldier. He said he did not know whether the goods would reach him.Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer contributed to this report from the United Nations.

Israel says Mideast not ready for nuclear arms ban By STEVE WEIZMAN, Associated Press Writer – Thu Sep 17, 6:09 am ET

JERUSALEM – Israel's defense minister said in remarks published Thursday that the Middle East is too unruly for a region-wide nuclear arms ban, arguing that the Muslim world must first behave like Western Europe.Defense Minister Ehud Barak also said Iran's nuclear program is a threat to world peace. His comments come ahead of a U.S.-sponsored world meeting later this month to discourage nuclear proliferation.

Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear arms, though it refuses to confirm or deny it. Barak made no mention of Israeli weapons in the interview, but pointedly said Israel would not agree to a nuclear weapons ban in the current climate.Until the Muslim world from Marakesh to Bangladesh behaves like Western Europe, there can be no debate on nuclear disarmament,Barak told the Yediot Ahronot daily. Extracts of the interview were published Thursday, while the full text is to run on Friday, the eve of the Jewish New Year.Barak also called for the international community to step up efforts to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions, saying that now is the time for diplomacy and intensifying sanctions.Officials from the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany are to meet Iranian diplomats in Turkey on Oct.1, for the first time since a 2008 session in Geneva foundered over Iran's refusal to discuss its uranium enrichment program.Israel considers Iran a strategic threat because of its nuclear program, long-range missiles that have Israel within their reach and references by Iran's president to the destruction of Israel.Israel — whose war planes crippled Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons — has not ruled out a pre-emptive strike on Iran.

Israeli officials have compared Iran to Nazi Germany and its attempt to eradicate the Jewish people but Yediot Ahronot quoted Barak as saying that that while Iran poses a challenge to Israel and the world it cannot destroy Israel.Iran does not pose an existential threat to the state of Israel,he said.Israel is strong.He did not elaborate.Details and pictures leaked in 1986 to the Sunday Times of London by Mordechai Vanunu, a renegade former technician at Israel's Dimona nuclear plant, led foreign experts to conclude Israel has the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.Vanunu was later kidnapped by Israeli intelligence agents in Rome, brought back to Israel to stand trial, and served 18 years in prison, including 11 in solitary confinement. Vanunu is now free, but is banned from leaving the country.

Dep FM Ayalon interview on Fox News On the Record Thursday, 17 September 2009 07:14 News from Jerusalem .Israel Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon FOX NEWS CHANNEL ON THE RECORD INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL AYALON, ISRAELI DEPUTY FOREIGN MINISTER INTERVIEWER: GRETA VAN SUSTEREN

MS. VAN SUSTEREN: Two blunt questions that must be answered: Can Iran be stopped from going nuclear? And what happens if Iran pushes forward with its program no matter what? Days from now on October 1st, the face-to-face talk begins. Iran is set to negotiate with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany. And regardless of what Iran says, can Israel ever feel safe? Joining us live is Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon.
Good evening, sir.

MR. AYALON: Thank you, Greta. Good to be here.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN: Nice to see you. How in the world can Israel ever feel safe in this? I don't get it, because this man, Ahmadinejad, has said he wants to wipe your country right off the globe.

MR. AYALON: Well, Israel is quite capable of defending itself. But certainly, if Iran becomes nuclear, it becomes a threat, an existential threat not just to Israel but for the entire globe, because its program is such, you know, big in scope with global reach, coupled with very dangerous, radical policy that they have. And they have professed ambitions which they do not even bother to hide, which is really to turn around the Middle East to an Iranian hegemony, to go even beyond.And we know that they are very aggressive in trying to penetrate, whether it's in Latin America. And today, unfortunately, they have a friend and ally like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. They're trying also to push in Africa. And also, we know how they are supporting very actively terror organizations, whether it's the Hizbullah, Hamas, Islamic jihad.
So if Iran, God forbid, becomes nuclear, I think the world order will not be as we know it. The danger will be really something which cannot be imagined. And Iran must be stopped, and I believe it can be stopped.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN: But here's the thing. The last thing I want to do is suggest or provoke or say there should be a war. But the more that Iran keeps sort of talking and sort of almost, you know, amusing other nations with its discussion, gives them more time, gives them more capability. And I suspect that Israel is very carefully watching everything having to do with Iran. But Iran just went racing up to Russia recently to buy the S-300 missiles so that it can protect any of its nuclear installations.So you know, time is not on your side. And the more that Iran can sit and talk, the more it has a chance to develop everything it intends to do against your country.

MR. AYALON: No, time is not on our side. And this is not particularly Israel but the entire international community. You mentioned, Greta, the S-300. I want to believe that Russia will continue to be a very responsible country. And you know, they do have a commitment to prevent Iran from becoming nuclear. Certainly such a sophisticated defense system will make Iran much more bolder and encourage them to continue what they're doing now. And I think it is very clear --

MS. VAN SUSTEREN: But see, that's the curious thing. If Russia is so committed to these talks on October 1st, why in the world are they selling Iran these missiles to protect themselves presumably from people coming in and taking out any of their nuclear programs? I mean, that's the very purpose is to shoot down something that's going to come in and try to take out their nuclear program.

MR. AYALON: Well, absolutely. But Greta, I'm not aware of the fact that they are indeed selling them to the Iranians. We have been engaged with very intense talks with the Russians, so was the American administration here. And I hope we will not be in a position where we really have to deal with such a real dangerous development which can only go south if Iran indeed will have the capabilities to defend its nuclear installations and feel, as I say, impugned from any consequence that should be emitted to her.But also, I wanted to emphasize here, there is a very easy way to stop the Iranians if indeed the world will come together. Iran, with all the bravado, is a very vulnerable country. We have witnessed its vulnerability in the realm of politics and the social areas after the elections of there and the brutal clash of these riots.But also economically, they will not be able to sustain effective sanctions more than a few weeks. And once there is a price tag to their flagrant violations of all the commitments and the demands from the international community, I believe then they will have the dilemma and not us how to stop them. And I do believe that this ayatollah in Tehran will not want to collapse or risk their well-being. So this is why the threat of sanctions, I can guarantee you, will be very effective if indeed the international community can come together and make this happen.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN: And I'm hopeful that sanctions work. I'm also very hopeful that the meeting on October 1st is very successful as well.All right, let me turn to another question, the construction in the West Bank. President Obama wants that to stop. We only have about 30 seconds left. But it doesn't look like that's going to stop.

MR. AYALON: Well, we would like to move forward, and we have limited the construction there in a very significant way. We don't want to allow any excuses for the Palestinians not to come forward. But they need to meet us half way, and there are a lot of obligations on their part. Firstly, to dismantle and outlaw all the terror organizations that still exist there, to collect illegal weapons and indeed to meet us half way diplomatically.This has not been the case. We have always, since this government was installed, called on Abu Mazen to meet with us. We are ready to meet with him without preconditions. And I hope this will be the case on their part as well. So far, we do not see any relent on their part or its organizations and also coexistence in a peaceful way.

MS. VAN SUSTEREN: Deputy Foreign Minister, always nice to see you, sir.

MR. AYALON: Thank you, Greta. Good to be here.MFA

ANGEL OF THE MIDEAST TO DR DOCTORIAN-The angel showed me that the United Nations shall be broken in pieces because of the crisis in the Middle East. There shall be no more United Nations. The angel with the sickle shall reap the harvest.

The UN has outdone itself this time Thursday, 17 September 2009 06:20 News from Jerusalem .U.N report has nothing to do with justice

Even for a body with a steady and dependable record of demonizing Israel, the UN has truly outdone itself this time. Mustering all the righteous indignation at its disposal, the world organization has deemed itself morally fit to accuse the Jewish state of actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity during last winter's conflict in Gaza.These were among the unsavory findings of the 575-page report released on Tuesday by the Goldstone Commission, under the authority of the UN Human Rights Council to investigate the fighting between Israel and Hamas.The harshness of the report is simply breathtaking. It lambastes Israel for using collective punishment and asserts that the IDF's military operations were carefully planned in all their phases as a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population.Israel's assault, the report concludes,was directed at the people of Gaza as a whole,which is about as close as you can come to depicting a country's actions as Nazi-like without actually using the N word.THE PANEL, headed by South African Jewish jurist Richard Goldstone, also recommended that Israel be given three months to launch its own investigations in conformity with international standards or face possible referral by the UN Security Council to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Yes, you read that correctly. The Jewish state and its wartime leaders now face the prospect of being hauled before the very same tribunal that is pursuing the perpetrators of genocide in Darfur and the murder and conscription of children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Sure, the report also accused the Palestinians of similar violations of international law, but we all know perfectly well just how this is going to play around the world.In short, the Goldstone report is nothing less than a political pogrom, one which reeks of anti-Semitism, moral relativism and bias. It has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with a political agenda which seeks to isolate the Jewish state, besmirch its good name and pressure it into making concessions to its enemies.More than 60 years may have passed since the State of Israel was founded, but clearly much of the world still seems incapable of forgiving us for having the gall to defend ourselves.Various legal experts have already weighed in, asserting that Israel has little to fear from the report in the form of practical consequences because of jurisdictional and other issues. They point to the fact that its recommendations are not binding, and that in any event Israel is not a party to the treaty which established the court at The Hague.

All that may be true, but regardless of the legal ramifications, this is a body-blow in political and diplomatic terms. It reinforces all the hostile propaganda that has been hurled in Israel's direction over the years by the Palestinians and their supporters, and enshrines Israel alongside thugs such as Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic and Liberia's Charles Taylor as modern-day war criminals.WORSE YET, the fact that the report bears the imprimatur of a panel headed by a prominent international Jewish jurist will make it that much more difficult to counter the slanders it contains, as people will naturally assume that the ethnic identity of its author shields against any possible underlying anti-Israel partiality.Whether Goldstone consciously sought to lay this outrageous document at Israel's doorstep just days before Rosh Hashana is debatable, and we may never truly know. But in a sense that he surely never intended, its timing could not possibly have been more fortuitous.

Starting with Rosh Hashana, Israel is entering a period of judgment, an annual rite of passage when the creator of the world assesses us both individually and collectively and determines our fates for the coming year.In contrast to Goldstone and his ilk, this is one tribunal where we can and will get a fair hearing, from a judge who truly has our best interests at heart and wishes to dispense justice tempered with mercy.The slap in the face that the UN has given Israel is a timely reminder that we cannot place our trust in man, or rely on him to adjudicate on our behalf. It is a sharp and unpleasant signal that Israel remains very much alone among the nations, maligned and misunderstood.Surely, we must criticize and condemn the Goldstone report with every ounce of our being, and redouble our efforts to explain Israel and its cause. But the onset of the High Holy Days presents us with a unique and far more powerful opportunity.Everything that happens on a day-to-day basis has already been decreed on the previous Rosh Hashana and will be reevaluated and judged on the upcoming Rosh Hashana,writes Rabbi Avigdor Nebenzahl, chief rabbi of the Old City of Jerusalem, in his brilliant work Thoughts for the Month of Elul. All the headlines of the upcoming year, may they be for the good, will be written in Heaven on Rosh Hashana and will only be published later, when the events themselves transpire.Each of us, then, now has an opportunity in the coming days to literally write the future. Through our prayers and our actions, we can influence events and sway the heavenly verdict in Israel's favor. We can write the coming year's headlines through the power of our pleas and the resonance of our repentance.If you believe, as I do, that there is a God who actively intervenes and guides the course of history while granting us free will, then by necessity the course of the future has yet to be finalized.So this Rosh Hashana, let's strike a blow at all the Goldstones and Israel-bashers out there, and channel our passions in the direction of prayer. Let's show the UN what we think of its courts and their rulings, by going over their heads and appealing to a much higher authority. For in doing so we can be assured that justice will, for once, finally be served.jpost.

Jewish activists concerned ahead of UNESCO vote By ANGELA DOLAND, Associated Press Writer – Thu Sep 17, 3:14 pm ET

PARIS – He's an Egyptian culture minister who once threatened to burn Israeli books —and he might soon become the face of the United Nations' arm for learning and culture.Paris-based UNESCO began voting for its new secretary-general on Thursday in secret balloting that could take days and go up to five rounds. There was no clear-cut winner, and a new vote was due on Friday.Farouk Hosni, a painter and Egyptian culture minister for over two decades, is considered a leading candidate, despite the concerns of activists who question whether he would deal fairly with Israel and whether a man who oversees censorship at home should be entrusted with high international office.There are eight others running for the four-year term, including European Union External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner. Many UNESCO members, including the United States and France, have not officially stated their favorites.Hosni is often cited as the front-runner because he has support from the Arab League, the Organization of African Unity and the Organization of the Islamic Conference — though countries belonging to those groups aren't bound by those endorsements. The winner needs 30 votes from the agency's 58-seat executive board.Whoever wins, UNESCO's newly restored reputation is at stake. The organization was troubled by cronyism and mismanagement until the current leader, Koichiro Matsuura of Japan, was elected in 1999. His work helped lure back the United States, which had quit UNESCO in 1984, calling it corrupt and anti-Western.UNESCO, or the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, has never had a leader from the Arab world since its founding in 1945. Egypt has been pushing Hosni's candidacy hard, and when Israel dropped its objection, it seemingly cleared a path for him.

Yet Hosni has for months been fighting accusations of anti-Semitism. He has apologized for his famous book-burning threat last year, saying it was off-the-cuff and should be viewed in the context of his anger at the suffering of the Palestinian people. In 2008, speaking before Egyptian lawmakers and trying to defend himself against charges of being soft on Israel, he vowed to burn any Israeli books in Egypt's famed Library of Alexandria.Asked Wednesday by France 24 television if he was anti-Semitic, Hosni responded, Of course not.As one example of his open-mindedness, he said he had restored the country's synagogues.The theme of his candidacy is reconciliation, Hosni said,between religions, between mankind and nature, and of course reconciliation between all those who are divided.It can be hard to pin Hosni down — to survive so long in an authoritarian nation like Egypt, he has had to please both liberals and conservatives. Last year, he criticized the prevalence of the Muslim headscarf as a sign of backwardness.But for the benefit of Egyptian Islamic hard-liners, he has implemented censorship of some books and movies.

Hosni's critics say that when he decided to seek the UNESCO post he changed his tune for the international community. In April, for example, Hosni dropped his steadfast opposition to cultural normalization with Israel and backed the invitation of Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim to Cairo.It's not on the eve of an election that one can change one's whole personality and one's whole approach to life, said Shimon Samuels of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Paris, who says Hosni's election would sink UNESCO.Many Jewish activists, including Samuels, say the book-burning comment was far from Hosni's only transgression. Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and filmmaker Claude Lanzmann wrote a protest letter listing comments they took issue with, including Hosni's 2001 description of Israeli culture as inhumane and racist.Yet Hosni has convinced at least one influential Jewish activist of his sincerity — Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld.Mr. Hosni has shown his repentance for comments that were unacceptable,Klarsfeld said, adding that Hosni, at his request, wrote a statement decrying Holocaust denial. Klarsfeld said he would welcome a leader from Egypt, a country that played an important role in civilization, and today.Associated Press Writer Sarah El Deeb in Cairo contributed to this report.

DANIEL 7:23-24
23 Thus he said, The fourth beast(THE EU,REVIVED ROME) shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth,(7TH WORLD EMPIRE) which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.(TRADE BLOCKS)
24 And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise:(10 NATIONS) and another shall rise after them;(#11 SPAIN) and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.(BE HEAD OF 3 KINGS OR NATIONS).

Brown says G20 must coordinate exit strategies SEPT 18,09

LONDON (AFP) – Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Friday next week's G20 meet must agree coordinated exit strategies from emergency measures introduced to fight the world economic crisis.Brown reiterated that emergency support that countries pumped in to their economies in the wake of the financial downturn should not be removed until the fragile global economy is secured.At next week's G20 summit in Pittsburgh, concerted international cooperation is again required, Brown wrote in the Daily Telegraph.To this end, I am proposing a new global compact to entrench economic recovery and secure stability, growth and jobs.It requires us both to maintain our support to the global economy, including our stimulus programmes this year and next until the recovery is secured, and to plan coordinated exit strategies,he said.G20 finance ministers meeting in London earlier this month drew up outlines of plans on winding down such emergency state support, with broad agreement that it was too early to remove fiscal stimulus.

Sarkozy warns Czech president on EU treaty
HONOR MAHONY Today SEPT 18,09 @ 00:09 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - French President Nicolas Sarkozy has warned the Czech Republic that it will have to face "consequences" if it continues to delay final ratification of the Lisbon Treaty following a Yes vote in a referendum in Ireland next month.Speaking after a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday (16 September), Mr Sarkozy was careful to praise Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer as a man of great quality before taking a clear sideswipe at the country's president, Vaclav Klaus, who has indicated he will postpone as long as possible putting his signature under the treaty - the final step of ratification.I stated clearly that if the Irish say Yes, there is no question that we will accept to stay in a no man's land with a Europe that does not have the institutions to cope with the crisis.It will be necessary to draw the consequences - but those will be the subject of another meeting,said the president.Mr Sarkozy, who was not asked about the issue, volunteered the warning at the end of a press conference, using it as a parting shot before closing the session.

His words come as Brussels frets that even if the Irish say Yes to the treaty in a vote on 2 October, the EU will not directly be put out of its institutional uncertainty because of foot-dragging by President Klaus.Although the Czech houses of parliament have ratified the treaty, Mr Klaus has indicated he could delay signature until the beginning of next year.In such a case, he would likely be the last obstacle to the treaty coming into force across the European Union as Polish President Lech Kaczynski, another reluctant signatory, earlier this week said he would complete ratification shortly after a Yes vote in Ireland.Others have expressed similar concern at Mr Klaus's stance, with the shape of the next commission also dependent on whether the Lisbon Treaty comes into place or the current Nice Treaty rules continue to apply.If there's a Yes [in Ireland] and still there are uncertainties in the Czech Republic, then we'll have to figure out if there's any possibility to get a date, an answer. If it's just postponed on and on, then we'll have to form a Nice commission, even if Lisbon is ratified by everybody else,Swedish Europe minister Cecilia Malmstrom told EUobserver earlier this week.
With its mandate running out at the end of October, there is concern that the commission could spend several weeks in a caretaker state at a time when it should be an active player in important decisions on climate change and the economy.

EU to tell G20 to keep economy supports but prepare the exits - Worries remain about outsized public deficits (Photo: Duchamp)LEIGH PHILLIPS Today SEPT 18,09 @ 00:10 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - European Union leaders have agreed that the message the bloc is to take to the G20 meeting next week is that the global economic recovery is still fragile and so now is not the time to be packing up the public economic stimulus largesse. However, they believe that the turnaround does suggest that now is the time to begin drafting plans for a withdrawal of government support.The G20 should reaffirm its determination to continue implementing coordinated policy measures in order to develop the basis for sustainable growth and to avoid a repetition of the present financial crisis. Efforts must be maintained until recovery is secured.The presidents and prime ministers of the EU's 27 member states European Union met in Brussels on Thursday evening for an informal dinner to prepare a common position to take to next week's G20 meeting of the world's leading industrialised and developing countries.The meeting will take place in Pittsburgh, USA, from 24-25 September and is to assess progress in tackling the worst economic crisis since the 1930s.The leaders also believe that when stimulus measures are withdrawn, this must be done in a co-ordinated fashion so as not to create competitive imbalances between countries.The 27 EU chiefs are also ready to proved the International Monetary Fund with an additional €50 billion atop the €75 billion already agreed.The EU leaders in Pittsburgh also will push for a clampdown on executive pay. Under the European plan, bonuses would be linked to the performance of a financial institution and guaranteed pay-outs should be avoided.Bonuses would also be restricted to a certain proportion of the individual's pay or the bank's revenues or profits.After the meeting, Frederick Reinfeldt, the prime minister of Sweden - which currently chairs the EU's six-month rotating presidency - said the days of an excessive bonus culture were over.

The bonus bubble burst tonight,he said.The banks, some of which owe their very survival to taxpayers money should not consider this crisis only a minor setback and return to business as usual,he warned.This would be a provocation against the citizens of Europe. Bank profits should not be viewed as private gains and their losses as public responsibility.He also addressed the question of a so-called exit strategies, saying that they would be the main topic for Pittsburgh.Some leaders such as the UK's Gordon Brown has emphasised that to pull the plug on stimulus too quickly is to pull the plug on the recovery.On the one hand, we see signs of a stabilisation of global growth,Mr Reinfeldt told reporters.On the other hand, governments are faced with historically large deficits - some 20 percent of the GDP of G7 countries, according to some studies.So exit strategies need to be designed now but implemented later,he added.We need to get public finances back on track.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said after the summit that the EU's objective for the G20 was nothing less than a new world economic model for sustainable economic growth.The leaders will also take a strong message to the G20 ahead of the UN talks on climate change in Copenhagen in December, he said.Our message to the rest of the developed world is that we need to talk figures. Our message to the developing world, is that if you are serious, we are there to help - not with a blank cheque, but with a fair proposal.No money, no deal,he added brusquely.But at the same time, if there are no actions, no money,he said, referring to the industrialised north's expectation that poor countries commit to climate mitigation measures as well.

Brown to EU: Maintain stimulus or kill off recovery
LEIGH PHILLIPS 17.09.2009 @ 21:01 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has warned that now is not the time to bring an end to economic stimulus, putting less emphasis on exit strategies than other European quarters. To do so risks derailing the global economy's apparent turnaround.Our economies have started what we believe is the road to recovery,he said, speaking to reporters ahead of a summit of European leaders, but warning It is no time for business as usual.European Union leaders are meeting in Brussels to prepare a common position to take to next week's G20 meeting of the world's leading industrialised and developing countries.He praised the unprecedented international co-operation that had been achieved in the battle to tame the economic crisis he said presented levels of unemployment on the scale of the Great Depression of the 1930s.Not even the Marshall Plan achieved such structured, co-ordinated action.Nevertheless, he said that in Pittsburgh, the world faces a major choice: Whether to maintain emergency action or risk choking off recovery.He argued that all countries must implement the stimulus packages they had earlier committed to.

The global recovery depends upon it.However, Finland's centrist prime minister, Matti Vanhanen, told reporters as he arrived at the summit: Today everyone recognises the importance of co-ordinating exit strategies.It is clear that exit strategies need to be tailored to country-specific conditions, he continued. However, by carefully co-ordinating the timing of the exit strategies within the EU, we should be able to optimise European economic growth.He went on to underscore the importance of consolidating public finances, recognising that taxes are bound to increase.Here too, he opined that co-ordination was necessary.I am not asking for harmonised taxation, but intelligent co-ordination and common political guidelines to prevent harmful tax competition.

Permanent G20

Mr Brown also said that he intends to propose to his fellow European leaders that the G20 be made a permanent institution.He added that the crisis had shown that the world needed to commit to even greater levels of economic co-operation in the future.
If we are to meet the challenges ahead, we need to change not just our policies but the way we make policies,he said, describing a new governance structure for the world to allow the G20 to provide continued political leadership and economic management.He said that he will propose to other European leaders a historic global pact for jobs, sustainability and growth.He also backed French and German calls for limits to executive pay, but that such restrictions need to be committed to at an international level to avoid companies escaping to jurisdictions with more lax regulation.The British prime minister said that calls for caps on bankers' bonuses were not just populist exercises.Irresponsible remuneration policies were one of the factors that put the global economy at risk,he said.

Obama junks Bush's European missile defense plan By ANNE GEARAN, AP National Security Writer – SEPT 17,09

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama abruptly canceled a long-planned missile shield for Eastern Europe on Thursday, replacing a Bush-era project that was bitterly opposed by Russia with a plan he contended would better defend against a growing threat of Iranian missiles.The United States will no longer seek to erect a missile base and radar site in Poland and the Czech Republic, poised at Russia's hemline. That change is bound to please the Russians, who had never accepted U.S. arguments, made by both the Bush and Obama administrations, that the shield was intended strictly as a defense against Iran and other rogue states.Scrapping the planned shield, however, means upending agreements with the host countries that had cost those allies political support among their own people. Obama called Polish and Czech leaders ahead of his announcement, and a team of senior diplomats and others flew to Europe to lay out the new plan.Our new missile defense architecture in Europe will provide stronger, smarter, and swifter defenses of American forces and America's allies,Obama said in announcing the shift, which U.S. officials said was based mainly on a May U.S. intelligence assessment that Iran's program to build a nuclear-capable long-range missile would take three years to five years longer than originally expected.The replacement system would link smaller radar systems with a network of sensors and missiles that could be deployed at sea or on land. Some of the weaponry and sensors are ready now, and the rest would be developed over the next 10 years.The Pentagon contemplates a system of perhaps 40 missiles by 2015, at two or three sites across Europe. That would augment a larger stockpile aboard ships. The replacement system would cost an estimated $2.5 billion, compared with $5 billion over the same timeframe under the old plan. The cost savings would be less, however, because the Pentagon is locked into work on some elements of the old system.

The change comes days before Obama is to meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the United Nations and the Group of 20 economic summit. Medvedev reacted positively, calling it a responsible move.The U.S. president's decision is a well-thought-out and systematic one,said Konstantin Kosachev, head of the foreign affairs committee in the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament.Now we can talk about restoration of the strategic partnership between Russia and the United States.At the same time, Russia's top diplomat warned that Moscow remains opposed to new punitive sanctions on Iran to stop what the West contends is a drive toward nuclear weapons.The spokesman of Iran's parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy, Kazem Jalali, called the decision positive, though in a backhanded way.It would be more positive if President Obama entirely give up such plans, which were based on the Bush administration's Iran-phobic policies,Jalali told The Associated Press.Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Iran's changing capabilities drove the decision, not any concern about the Russians, but he acknowledged that the replacement system was likely to allay some of Russia's concerns.American reaction quickly split along partisan lines. Longtime Republican supporters of the missile defense idea called the switch naive and a sop to Russia. Democrats welcomed the move, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling it brilliant.

The administration apparently has decided to empower Russia and Iran at the expense of the national security interests of the United States and our allies in Europe, said Rep. Howard Buck McKeon of California, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee.The Democratic chairman of that committee, Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, told the AP the shift reflected a proper understanding of the current threat from Iran.It's about short- and medium-range missiles,Skelton said.The Obama administration said the shift is a common sense answer to the evolution of both the threat and the U.S. understanding of it. Iran has not shown that it is close to being able to lob a long-range missile, perhaps with a nuclear warhead, at U.S. allies in Europe.The Bush administration had calculated that Iran might be able to do that as soon as 2012, but the new assessment pushes the date back to 2015 to 2020, a U.S. government official familiar with the report told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the report remains classified.

Previous intelligence assessed that Iran would have an ICBM capable of menacing Europe and the United States sometime between 2012 and 2015, another U.S. government official said. Iran has improved its ability to launch shorter-range missiles, however, and despite the crude nature of some of those weapons the Pentagon now considers them a greater short-term threat. Obama's shift comes as a confidential report seen by The Associated Press says Iran experts at the U.N nuclear monitoring agency believe Tehran has the ability to make a nuclear bomb and has worked on developing a missile system that can carry an atomic warhead. The document appeared to be the secret annex on Iran's alleged nuclear arms program that the U.S., France, Israel and other members of the International Atomic Energy Agency say is being withheld by agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei — claims the nuclear watchdog denies. The United States will join international talks with Iran next month, a major shift that makes good on Obama's campaign pledge to engage the main U.S. adversary in the Middle East.Associated Press writers Jennifer Loven, Pauline Jelinek, Desmond Butler and Pamela Hess in Washington and Nasser Karimi in Tehran and George Jahn in Vienna contributed to this report.

US to scrap missile shield in eastern Europe
VALENTINA POP 17.09.2009 @ 09:24 CET

US government officials are likely to tell the Polish and Czech governments on Thursday that Washington will scrap the planned missile defence shield in their countries, as the threat of long-range missiles from Iran is less imminent.The Obama envoys are expected to brief lawmakers and government officials in Warsaw and Prague on the results of the seven-month review commissioned by President Barack Obama, unnamed sources in Washington told the Associated Press.The Wall Street Journal also reported on Thursday that the White House is to shelve the Bush-era plan,a move likely to cheer Moscow and roil the security debate in Europe.The Obama administration's assessment concludes that long-range missile threat from Iran is a far lesser one than short and medium-range, making the case for the development of regional missile defenses for Europe, which are far less controversial for Russia, people familiar with the matter told the WSJ.The multi-billion-dollar project agreed last year planned to install 10 interceptor missiles at a facility in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic.Warsaw also managed to secure a US promise of a battery of Patriot missiles to be permanently based on Polish territory as a defence against possible Russian attack – a security guarantee Poland had sought ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Some 120 American soldiers would have been deployed at the interceptor base in northern Poland, and US soldiers would also have operated the Patriot missiles.Now the plan seems to shift more towards rotating Patriot missiles, which would tour Europe and also be stationed at some point in Poland.

General Carter Hamm, the commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe, said Washington has launched talks with Polish officials in this regard.My position has been: Let's get started as soon as we can with the training rotations, while the longer-term stationing ... is decided between the two governments,General Hamm told the WSJ.
Polish officials have so far avoided commenting on speculations, but stressed they expected the US to honour its commitments to cooperate with Poland militarily in areas beyond the missile-defence programme.Russia is certain to welcome the move after President Dmitri Medvedev threatened to deploy ballistic missiles near the Polish border if the Obama administration did not drop the plans.Last week, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said he expected Washington to scrap the scheme, describing it as a mistaken Bush-era policy.

EU leaders take aim at Obama on banks and climate
ANDREW RETTMAN 17.09.2009 @ 09:06 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU leaders meeting in Brussels on Thursday (17 September) are set to call for tougher commitments on bank reform and global warming than plans outlined so far by the White House. The extraordinary EU summit is designed to frame a joint position ahead of next week's G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, US, on the banking sector. The clock is also ticking for EU states to put forward climate change ideas for a UN summit in December.The financial crisis erupted one year ago with the fall of US investment bank Lehman Brothers. With the US, Germany and France now coming out of recession, fears abound that banks have returned to business as usual while conditions remain in place for another meltdown. The financial crisis stripped trillions of euros out of the public purse in order to bail out banks judged too important to fail. The massive outlay could undermine funding for anti-global warming measures, estimated by the European Commission to cost the world up to €118 billion a year by 2020. EU diplomats ahead of the Thursday meeting agreed a draft statement that calls for G20 countries to design exit strategies from the bail out plans put together over the past 12 months, and to curb bonuses paid to risk-taking bank chiefs.Exit strategies need to be designed now and implemented in a co-ordinated manner as soon as the recovery takes hold,the EU statement, leaked on Wednesday, says.The G20 should commit to agreeing to binding rules for financial institutions on variable remunerations backed up by the threat of sanctions at the national level.The EU text runs counter to US plans to hold off on exit strategy commitments and bonuses for now, while instead focusing on rules for big banks to retain minimum amounts of capital in case of a rainy day.

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has threatened to walk out of Pittsburgh if US leader Barack Obama refuses to take on Wall Street, after France and the Netherlands recently imposed bonus curbs at home. Meanwhile, EU officials have voiced concerns that capital requirement rules could prove too complex to tackle at the G20 event. This whole [capital rules] debate is virgin territory, it's uncharted water, European Commission bank expert Patrick Pearson said in London on Tuesday, Dow Jones reports.

Loophole on climate

On the climate change front, the draft EU statement says that each country that has not yet done so should make urgently ambitious commitments to mid-term reductions and quantifiable actions [on CO2 emissions].The EU is concerned that the US is pushing for the Copenhagen agreement on emissions to be subject to conformity with domestic law, according to an EU official cited by UK daily The Guardian. The clause could create loopholes for rich states to avoid making real CO2 cuts. Sweden's Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt criticised the White House on Wednesday in an address to a parliamentary committee in Stockholm. We have to get the US to move more in order to get a global response in place,he said.Mr Reinfeldt's address marked the end of a honeymoon period with President Obama on climate. The new US leader's earlier rhetoric on global warming had raised EU hopes of a major shift in American policy.

Cutting the cake

With European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso's second term in the bag, preliminary discussions among EU leaders on how to allocate commission portfolios for the next five years are also likely to take place.No final choices can be made until Ireland votes again on the Lisbon Treaty next month, not least because the vote should make the future structure of the commission clearer.But several countries have already thrown their hats into the ring, with Finland's Olli Rehn, Estonia's Siim Kallas and Latvia's Andris Piebalgs all asking to stay on in Brussels.Meanwhile, some EU states are keen to upgrade their current commission role, with Poland saying its relatively good performance during the worldwide recession supports its bid for a single market, competition or industry portfolio.

We've managed to raise our profile both politically and economically thanks to the performance of the Polish economy during the crisis. I would even add that if you have so many countries competing for an important economic portfolio related to the single market in the new commission, maybe you should give it to a Pole,Poland's EU affairs minister, Mikolaj Dowgielewicz, told EUobserver.

End the Fed, Save the Dollar: Ron Paul Published: Thursday, 17 Sep 2009 | 10:31 AM ET Text Size By: Brian Beers Senior Producer

Nothing good can come from the Federal Reserve, writes Texas Congressman Ron Paul in his latest book hitting shelves this week, titled End the Fed.It is the biggest taxer of them all. Diluting the value of the dollar by increasing its supply is a vicious, sinister tax on the poor and middle class.Paul makes the case that the Fed is the main culprit responsible for the current economic mess the country faces through the destructive policies of cheap credit and excessive money printing. Prosperity can never be achieved by cheap credit,says Paul.If that were so, no one would have to work for a living. Inflated prices only deceive one into believing that real wealth has been created.The Federal Reserve, created in 1913, has been acting as the main central bank of the United States for nearly one hundred years. Many Americans are either not sure or not interested in what role the Fed plays in managing the economy.The economic crisis has changed everything,writes Congressman Paul.Paul is currently pushing for passage of a bill, H.R. 1207, that would allow for an unprecedented audit of the Federal Reserve. The bill has 289 co-sponsors, and is gaining solid momentum in the House of Representatives. The worse the economy gets, the more power Congress is willing to grant to the Federal Reserve. Trillions of dollars created and distributed by the Fed with no requirement to submit to any oversight argues Congressman Paul.End the Fed is a sharp counter to Keynesian economic theory, and takes aim at the hazards of a managed economy. Paul, a strong advocate of free-markets and the Austrian school of economics counters those looking to blame the near collapse of the financial system on capitalism by penning, Manipulating the money supply and interest rates rejects all the principles of the free market, and so it cannot be said that too free a market caused this mess. The market was not free at all. It was manipulated and distorted.

But, wait.

Didn't Fed Chairman Bernanke hint that the recession may already be over? Wouldn't that indicate that the emergency interventions of the past year or so worked to stabilize the economy, and all is on its way back to normal? Paul writes, The Fed is using all its power to drive the monetary base to unprecedented heights, creating trillions in new money out of thin air. From April 2008 to April 2009, the adjusted monetary base shot up from $856 billion to an unbelievable $1.749 trillion. Was there any new wealth created? New production? No, this was the Ben Bernanke printing press at work. If you and I did anything similar, we would be called counterfeiters and be sent away for a lifetime in prison. But, when the Fed does it - complete with a scientific gloss - it is seen as the perfectly legal and responsible conduct of monetary policy.On the inflation front, Paul adds It's as if we still believe that money can be grown on trees, and we don't stop to realize that if it did grow on trees, it would take on the value of leaves in the fall, to be either mulched or bagged and put in a landfill. That is to say, it would be worthless.You get the feeling after reading this book, that Paul sees his goal of cutting off the power of the Fed as attainable in the long run, but needed a playbook to help educate the general public as to why they should care, and what they should demand be done about it from their elected officials.The passage from the book that stuck with me the most. When we unplug the Fed, the dollar will stop its long depreciating trend, international currency values will stop fluctuating wildly, banking will no longer be a dice game, and financial power will cease to gravitate toward a small circle of government-connected insiders.Ron Paul's case for sound money policies and the end of Fed domination marches on, this time in hardcover.

MUSLIM NATIONS

EZEKIEL 38:1-12
1 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
2 Son of man, set thy face against Gog,(RULER) the land of Magog,(RUSSIA) the chief prince of Meshech(MOSCOW)and Tubal,(TOBOLSK) and prophesy against him,
3 And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech(MOSCOW) and Tubal:
4 And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,(GOD FORCES THE RUSSIA-MUSLIMS TO MARCH) and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords:
5 Persia,(IRAN,IRAQ) Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet:
6 Gomer,(GERMANY) and all his bands; the house of Togarmah (TURKEY)of the north quarters, and all his bands:(SUDAN,AFRICA) and many people with thee.
7 Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them.
8 After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them.
9 Thou shalt ascend and come like a storm, thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land, thou, and all thy bands, and many people with thee.(RUSSIA-EGYPT AND MUSLIMS)
10 Thus saith the Lord GOD; It shall also come to pass, that at the same time shall things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an evil thought:
11 And thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates,
12 To take a spoil, and to take a prey; to turn thine hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited, and upon the people that are gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land.

ISAIAH 17:1
1 The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.

PSALMS 83:3-7
3 They (ARABS,MUSLIMS) have taken crafty counsel against thy people,(ISRAEL) and consulted against thy hidden ones.
4 They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.
5 For they (MUSLIMS) have consulted together with one consent: they are confederate against thee:(TREATIES)
6 The tabernacles of Edom,(JORDAN) and the Ishmaelites;(ARABS) of Moab, PALESTINIANS,JORDAN) and the Hagarenes;(EGYPT)
7 Gebal,(HEZZBALLOH,LEBANON) and Ammon,(JORDAN) and Amalek;(SYRIA,ARABS,SINAI) the Philistines (PALESTINIANS) with the inhabitants of Tyre;(LEBANON)

DANIEL 11:40-43
40 And at the time of the end shall the king of the south( EGYPT) push at him:(EU DICTATOR IN ISRAEL) and the king of the north (RUSSIA AND MUSLIM HORDES OF EZEK 38+39) shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over.
41 He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown: but these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon.(JORDAN)
42 He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries: and the land of Egypt shall not escape.
43 But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt: and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps.

EZEKIEL 39:1-8
1 Therefore, thou son of man, prophesy against Gog,(LEADER OF RUSSIA) and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech (MOSCOW) and Tubal: (TUBOLSK)
2 And I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee, and will cause thee to come up from the north parts,(RUSSIA) and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel:
3 And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand.
4 Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands,( ARABS) and the people that is with thee: I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field to be devoured.
5 Thou shalt fall upon the open field: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD.
6 And I will send a fire on Magog,(NUCLEAR BOMB) and among them that dwell carelessly in the isles: and they shall know that I am the LORD.
7 So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more: and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD, the Holy One in Israel.
8 Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord GOD; this is the day whereof I have spoken.

JOEL 2:3,20,30-31
3 A fire(NUCLEAR BOMB) devoureth before them;(RUSSIA-ARABS) and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.
20 But I will remove far off from you the northern army,(RUSSIA,MUSLIMS) and will drive him into a land barren and desolate, with his face toward the east sea, and his hinder part toward the utmost sea, and his stink shall come up, and his ill savour shall come up, because he hath done great things.(SIBERIAN DESERT)
30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.(NUCLEAR BOMB)
31 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come.

Russia and Germany welcome US missile move
ANDREW RETTMAN Today SEPT 18,09 @ 09:24 CET

Russia and Germany have welcomed a US decision not to build missile shield bases in Eastern Europe, but the move has caused bitterness in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in a TV address that the US pull-back will help in upcoming talks on nuclear disarmament: The statement made in Washington today shows that quite good conditions are evolving for such work.Russia's ambassador to Nato, Dmitry Rogozin, described it in more colourful terms. It's like having a decomposing corpse in your flat and then the mortician comes and takes it away," he said in UK daily The Guardian.This means we're getting rid of one of those niggling problems which prevented us from doing the real work.German Chancellor Angela Merkel also reacted positively.I see the decision today as a very hopeful signal that we can overcome the difficulties with Russia and develop a united front to counter the threat of Iran,she said.US President Barack Obama earlier on Thursday (17 September) confirmed he will no longer build a missile silo in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic, as agreed under George W. Bush. The shift comes after US intelligence downgraded the coming missile threat from Iran from 2012 to between 2015 and 2020. The US will now deploy mobile anti-missile batteries which will tour Europe from 2015 onward. It will also install Patriot missiles in Poland, capable of shooting down small-scale rockets.The scale-down has caused consternation in Poland and the Czech republic, where the Bush-era plan was widely seen as offering extra US guarantees against potential Russian aggression.President Obama's announcement came out on the 70th anniversary of Russia's invasion of Poland on 17 September 1939, with Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski informing US secretary of state Hillary Clinton in a phone conversation of the awkwardness of the timing.

It is the second recent instance of painful US-Polish diplomacy, after the White House declined to send a senior figure to Poland's commemoration of the 70th anniversary outbreak of World War II on 1 September.I can see what kind of policy the Obama administration is pursuing towards this part of Europe. The way we are being approached needs to change,former Polish president and anti-Communist icon Lech Walesa said, AFP reports.This is a very bad signal for Poland. The Russians will have a voice in the affairs of this part of Europe,former Polish defence minister Aleksander Szczyglo said. Czech socialists welcomed the move, saying it will raise US prestige among the large proportion of ordinary people who had voiced opposition to the scheme.But the recently ousted centre-right Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolanek, also interpreted the move as a betrayal.The Americans are not interested in this territory as they were before,he said on national radio.It's bad news for the Czech Republic.

Islam Does Not Qualify Under US Constitution Freedom of Religion Rights
Post.By Randy Taylor, Independent Analyst & Contributor SEPT 18,09

Wake up America, Islam is not just a religion. It is an entire political, cultural and monetary system designed around their so called Religion.Islam and its various advocacy groups are trying to garner sympathy and support from Americans who do not fully understand this wolf hiding in sheep’s clothing. Most Americans simply dismiss issues surrounding Islam thinking that Muslims are simply exercising their religious rights under the 1st Amendment. This is not true.Islam is abusing and perverting the rights afforded to religions under the 1st Amendment. It has to stop.A shining example of the blatant abuse of the 1st Amendment by Islam is the issue of facial or head coverings. Islamic advocates insist that this is their religious right and therefore should be exempt from US law. This is a bold, outright lie. The facial and head coverings are a CULTURAL issue and have absolutely nothing to do with the religion of Islam. Nowhere in the Quran does it instruct women to cover their faces. They are instructed to cover their bosoms. Notably, you will see Muslim women covering their heads and faces with a scarf meanwhile wearing tight form fitting jeans and top with their nipples showing through the material. At that point one can safely dismiss the validity of the issue regarding the required religious modesty of the Muslim women. If I can tell what kind of panties you are wearing and can clearly see your breasts and nipples, you might as well forget the headscarf. Modesty at that time is a moot point.Meanwhile, the Muslims want to try and push this issue as a religious issue when in fact, that could not be further from the truth. Yet ignorant politicians, leaders of state and useless judges seem to think this is a religious right. If I have to take my sunglasses off for a driver’s license photo, then they have no right to cover their faces or heads. When we allow these perversions of the US Constitution by Muslims, the United States is now discriminating against most Americans.

Another disgrace to America, the west, and our values is when you see Muslims in official uniforms for various branches of the western governments adorned in headscarves or Hijabs. You will definitely see this in some airports around the security checkpoints. Reality is that I should be searching them, not them searching me and my baggage. It should be law that the uniforms have to be the uniforms of the government or government entity, no personal deviations. If you cannot leave your cultural preferences behind for an eight hour shift, you should not be working there. Period. At this rate our military will eventually be wearing turbans on the battlefield. Won’t that be just precious? The crux of the problem lies with poor immigration laws and enforcement of those laws in western countries. Right now, the Muslim population in the US is at a fairly low percentage and every effort should be made to keep it low. Unfortunately, when these people come here and are accepted as citizens, they also get the right to vote. The Muslims gather like roaches in small communities and when voting time comes, they vote Muslims into office in their towns, cities and districts. This will only increase as their population in western countries also increases. Look at Keith Ellison, the Muslim Congressman for instance. Since he has been in office in Minnesota we have has numerous incidents with regard to the Islamic issue in this country. The flying imams originated out of Minneapolis, there was a big problem with the cabbies in and around the airport there refusing to transport non-Muslims for various reasons and amazingly, many of the jihadists found fighting in Somalia originated from his district. Coincidence? Not likely.No Muslim should be allowed to hold office anywhere in the United States or in any non-Muslim country period. This is not a racist statement either. This isn’t a racial issue, it is a political issue. It is a National Security Issue. When the majority of the people that want to see the United States destroyed happen to be Muslim, it is a National Security Issue. Allowing them in is no different than allowing a communist into office, or a Nazi or any other person that subscribes to a political philosophy different than ours, especially when it is a direct threat to our republic and our Constitution. Islam is a cancer and is spreading rapidly through our government. This has to stop.The growth of Muslim populations in western society will also equate into the growth and presence of Islam in western society. This has to be stopped. The Islamic mosques and Islamic schools should be closed as they are dens of evil full of followers that want to see Shariah Law implemented into our societies. These buildings, once empty should be turned into battered women’s shelters. If you cannot find a use for them, then level them and turn them into public parks.

There has been a huge drive over the last 20-30 years to remove all references to God from our government buildings, court rooms and even the landscape. People insist that this is a separation of church from state yet at the same time, these same anti-religion advocates say nothing about the advancement of this Islamic filth into our government, schools, courts and bodies of government. We have a government full of terrorist sympathizers and Muslim appeasers.This has to stop America. It has to stop now. Patriots, it’s time to take this country back.Be safe, Stay vigilant.

AP NewsBreak: Nuke agency says Iran can make bomb Concerned by Missile Shield Removal FOXBusiness.By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer George Jahn, Associated Press Writer – SEPT 17,09

VIENNA – Iran experts at the U.N.'s nuclear monitoring agency believe that Tehran has the ability to make a nuclear bomb and worked on developing a missile system that can carry an atomic warhead, according to a confidential report seen by The Associated Press.The document drafted by senior officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency is the clearest indication yet that those officials share Washington's views on Iran's weapon-making capabilities and missile technology — even if they have not made those views public.The document, titled Possible Military Dimension of Iran's Nuclear Program, appeared to be the so-called IAEA secret annex on Iran's alleged nuclear arms program that the U.S., France, Israel and other IAEA members say is being withheld by agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei — claims the nuclear watchdog denies.It is a record of IAEA findings since the agency began probing Iran's nuclear program in 2007 and has been continuously updated.

Calls to the Iranian mission at the United Nations were not immediately returned.

The information in the document that is either new, more detailed or represents a more forthright conclusion than found in published IAEA reports includes:
-The IAEA's assessment that Iran worked on developing a chamber inside a ballistic missile capable of housing a warhead payload that is quite likely to be nuclear.
-That Iran engaged in probable testing of explosives commonly used to detonate a nuclear warhead — a method known as a full-scale hemispherical explosively driven shock system.
-An assessment that Iran worked on developing a system for initiating a hemispherical high explosive charge of the kind used to help spark a nuclear blast.
In another key finding, an excerpt notes: The agency ... assesses that Iran has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device (an atomic bomb) based on HEU (highly enriched uranium) as the fission fuel.
ElBaradei said in 2007 there was no concrete evidence that Iran was engaged in atomic weapons work — a source of friction with the United States, which has sought a hard-line stance on Tehran's nuclear ambitions.Responding to the AP report, the agency did not deny the existence of a confidential record of its knowledge and assessment of Iran's alleged attempts to make nuclear weapons. But an agency statement said the IAEA has no concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapon program in Iran.It cited ElBaradei as telling the agency's 35-nation governing board last week that continuing allegations that the IAEA was withholding information on Iran are politically motivated and totally baseless.Information from a variety of sources ... is critically assessed by a team of experts working collectively in accordance with the agency's practices,it said.

The IAEA reiterates that all relevant information and assessments that have gone through the above process have already been provided to the IAEA Board of Governors in reports of the director general.Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in an interview with NBC Nightly News, refused to foreswear ever building nuclear weapons, but said repeatedly that he saw no need for them.Well, nuclear arms, we believe they belong to the past and the past generation,he said.The IAEA document traces Iran's nuclear arms ambitions as far back as 1984, when current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was president and Iran was at war with Iraq.At a top-level meeting at that time, according to the document, Khamenei endorsed a nuclear weapons program, saying a nuclear arsenal would serve Iran as a deterrent in the hands of God's soldiers.He and other top Iranian leaders insist their country is opposed to nuclear weapons, describing them as contrary to Islam. They argue that Iran's uranium enrichment program and other activities are strictly for civilian purposes.Senior U.S. government officials have for years held the view that Iran has the expertise to make a bomb.The Obama administration said Thursday it was scrapping a Bush-era plan for a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the decision came after U.S. intelligence concluded that Iran's short- and medium-range missiles were developing more rapidly than previously projected and now pose a greater near-term threat than the intercontinental ballistic missiles addressed by the plan under former President George W. Bush.

The AP saw two versions of the U.N. document — one running 67 pages that was described as being between six months and a year old, and the most recent one with more than 80 pages and growing because of constant updates. Both were tagged confidential.A senior international official identified the document as one described by the U.S. and other IAEA member nations as a secret annex on Iran's nuclear program. The IAEA has called reports of a secret annex misinformation. The document is based on intelligence provided by member states, the agency's own investigations and input from outside nuclear arms experts under contract with the IAEA.Iran is under three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions for refusing to freeze enrichment, the key to making both nuclear fuel and weapons-grade uranium. It is blocking IAEA attempts to probe allegations based on U.S., Israeli and other intelligence that it worked on a nuclear weapons program. Iran recently agreed to meet Oct. 1 with the U.S. and five other world powers seeking curbs on its atomic activities for the first time in more than a year. But Tehran says it is not prepared to discuss its nuclear activities.Presented with excerpts from the earlier paper, the senior international official said some of the wording and conclusions were outdated because they had been updated as recently as several weeks ago by IAEA experts probing Iran for signs it was — or is — hiding work on developing nuclear arms.At the same time, he confirmed the accuracy of the excerpts, including Khamenei's comments, as well as the IAEA assessment that Iran already had the expertise to make a nuclear bomb and was well-positioned to develop ways of equipping missiles with atomic warheads.

An official from one of the 150 IAEA member nations who showed the AP the older version of the document said much of the information in it has either never been published or, if so, in less direct language within ElBaradei's periodic Iran reports first circulated to the agency's board and released to the public. That was confirmed by the senior international official. The officials providing the information both insisted on anonymity because of the confidentiality of the document, which they said was meant to be seen only by ElBaradei and his top lieutenants.In the case of Khamenei, there is only an oblique reference in the annex to ElBaradei's Iran report of May 26, 2008, saying the agency had asked Tehran for information about a high level meeting in 1984 on reviving Iran's pre-revolution nuclear program.The international official said the Iranians denied that Khamenei backed the concept of nuclear weapons for his country.The agency said earlier this year that Iran had produced more than 1,000 kilograms — 2,200 pounds — of low-enriched, or fuel-grade, uranium. That is more than enough to produce sufficient highly enriched uranium for one weapon, should Iran choose to do so, and its enrichment capacities have expanded since then.The document concludes that while Iran is not yet able to equip its Shahab-3 medium-range missile with nuclear warheads, it is likely that Iran will overcome problems, noting that from the evidence presented to the agency, it is possible to suggest that ... Iran has conducted R&D (research and development) into producing a prototype system.The Shahab-3 missile has a range of up to 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers), putting Israel within striking distance, and is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The document also says Iran already could trigger a nuclear blast through methods of unconventional delivery such as in a container on a cargo ship or carried on the trailer of a truck.ElBaradei last month urged Iran to cooperate with IAEA efforts to probe allegations of a weapons program.That Aug. 28 report noted that the information on Tehran's alleged weapons program shared by board members need to be addressed by Iran with a view to removing the doubts ... about the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program.But in an indication that ElBaradei also is concerned, he departed from the cautious language characterizing his Iran reports last week.He told a closed meeting of the IAEA board that if the intelligence on Iran's alleged weapons program experiments is genuine, there is a high probability that nuclear weaponization activities have taken place — but I should underline 'if' three times.The U.S., Israel, France and other nations critical of Iran's nuclear activities have for months said that ElBaradei was withholding a secret annex on Iran in the IAEA's electronic archives that they say goes far beyond the information and conclusions published by ElBaradei in his regular reports on Iran.French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner urged ElBaradei earlier this month to publish his confidential information, saying it contained elements which enable us to ask about the reality of an atomic bomb.Israel's Haaretz daily cited unidentified government officials as demanding the same.

Asked about the discrepancy between the agency denial that it was withholding information and the existence of the document, the senior international official said the report was at this point an internal and constantly changing record of what the IAEA knows and concludes about Iran. As such, he said, circulating it, even only to IAEA board members, would be counterproductive. Only after the agency has concluded its investigation and drawn final conclusions would it share the information with the board, he said, adding that he could not say when that would be.

Analysis: Shelving missile shield entices Moscow By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press Writer – Thu Sep 17, 8:05 pm ET

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is betting Moscow will return the favor on missile defense by helping him blunt Iran's nuclear ambitions.In what could shape a major geopolitical realignment, the White House is scrapping a key irritant in the soured U.S.-Russian relationship — the Bush-era plan for a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.So far, only the U.S. has showed its hand, but the timing of the announcement, just days before Obama is to meet Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, points to the prospect of deep bargaining to entice Moscow's help on Iran.The United States is deeply concerned that Iran is using a civilian nuclear program as a cover to build atomic weapons. Iran denies that, but has refused to fully open the program to U.N. inspection.American intelligence and independent assessments from international nuclear experts both point to the possibility that Tehran will soon have a nuclear weapon. That would vastly change the balance of power in the Middle East.Washington has tried to divert the Iranian course through a series of international sanctions aimed at isolating its regime. Iran is already struggling economically and distracted by significant internal political upheaval over the recent re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

However, the kind of painful penalties that might have been effective in altering Iranian behavior have long been blocked in the United Nations Security Council by Russia and China.Moscow and Beijing both have major economic links with Iran and fear losing those streams of income. Moscow does a big business in arms sales to the Iranians and the Chinese are heavily dependent on Iranian crude oil.As expected, Moscow was quick to lay down a marker against perceptions it was being bought off. Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, said Thursday that the Kremlin continues to oppose new sanctions, which he says would harm upcoming negotiations with the Iranians.The Russians, however, can do a lot of behind-the-scenes arm-twisting. Medvedev, notably, praised Obama's decision Thursday as a responsible move.Other prominent Russian commentators were more effusive, heralding the administration move as a seminal change for relations between the two countries.Now we can talk about restoration of the strategic partnership between Russia and the United States," said Konstantin Kosachev, head of the foreign affairs committee in the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament.Unlike former President George W. Bush, who refused to negotiate with Iran, Obama said he wanted to talk with the Islamic regime and set a Sept. 15 deadline for Tehran to respond. He promised to push for tougher sanctions, should Iran demur.Tehran has responded, and talks among Iranian negotiators, the five permanent members of the Security Council — the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China — plus Germany are set for early October.Obama took office promising to reset relations with Russia. He visited Moscow this summer to emphasize his desire to repair ties that had soured during the Bush administration, especially over the missile shield.Obama said at the time that the missile system was under review and would only be built if it would be effective. Those statements would likely have been taken as signals by Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that the new American president understood Kremlin sensitivities about the missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, former members of the Soviet bloc and close to the Russian border.And in announcing Thursday that the program was shelved, Obama took cover against Republican political opponents by saying the U.S. would instead be deploying new technology and systems that would more capably protect against the Iranian threat.

And he openly invited Russia to join in that effort with its own missile defense capabilities.Predictably, supporters of the Bush policy and the missile shield were quick to denounce Obama's change, as were politicians in both Poland and the Czech Republic who had heavily spent their political capital by agreeing to accept the U.S. armaments.But even that fallout may be minimal. The majority of U.S. NATO partners, who were the core of the alliance before the Soviet Union dissolved, have been lukewarm toward the missile shield from the start. And NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Obama's decision was a positive step.Having given it his best with Russia, China is next. Obama has three whacks at that in short order. He's meeting Chinese President Hu Jintao during the United Nations sessions next week and again at the G-20 gathering later in the week in Pittsburgh.And he can finish the sales job during a November visit to the Chinese leader in Beijing.

EU sanctions on Iran clash with EU anti-discrimination rules
TERESA KÜCHLER Today SEPT 18,09 @ 09:27 CET

EUOBSERVER / FOCUS - A group of Dutch-Iranian students have filed a case against the Dutch government for its harsh interpretation of EU sanctions aimed at preventing Iranian students in Europe from acquiring information on nuclear and missile technologies, saying the measures are discriminatory and racist and will not stop Tehran from creating an atomic bomb.In a bid to strengthen previously approved UN measures against Iran, EU governments in January 2007 agreed to take measures to prevent Iranian nationals from studying proliferation sensitive subjects within the EU.The purpose of the regulation is to stop Tehran from acquiring enough nuclear knowledge to create its own atomic bomb.How to implement the EU sanction into national law is up to each member state. Concrete legislative measures have so far been rare across the union, with most countries settling for visa restrictions for students from Iran.

The Dutch government, however, has enacted legislation barring Iranian nationals, including those holding dual citizenship in the Netherlands and Iran, from access to courses and facilities related to nuclear technology.Universities and nuclear institutions face criminal sanctions if they accept Iranians to excluded master studies or their nuclear institutes.These measures are in clear violation of international human rights and anti-discriminatory treaties, as well being utterly racist,Dutch lawyer Jelle Klaas, who has filed a case against his government on behalf of an Dutch-Iranian student's activist group, told this website.The group Stop Verdachtmaking van Iraniërs! - stop suspecting Iranians - demands that the government scraps the implementation of the EU regulation, and that the judge declares discriminatory bans directed at a single nationality.The group has also collected over 4000 signatures including prominent personalities such as US academic Noam Chomsky.Mr Klaas said that the measure is not only stigmatising for Iranians in the Netherlands- over 80 percent of the 30,000 strong Iranian community in the Netherlands have Dutch passports, and many are born and raised in the country - but that it is also a pointless regulation in terms of preventing nuclear information from reaching Iran.

What prevents students from other communities like the Dutch or, say, Pakistani, from passing on the information? If the secrets are not secret enough and risk being spread, then the sites should look into their security procedures and start checking everyone, and not just Iranians,Mr Klaas concluded.Mr Behnam Taebi, an Iranian-born Dutch PHD student specialising in the ethics of nuclear energy, and one of the leaders of Stop Verdachtmaking van Iraniërs!, told Euobserver it is common knowledge that most members of the Iranian communities abroad are against the regime in Tehran, and that these regulations actually target the enemy of the enemy. The Netherlands is trying to fix an image problem they suffer from since the seventies, the researcher, who no longer has access to several sites where he previously conducted crucial research for his thesis, explained.The Netherlands played a pivotal role in one of the 20th century's biggest nuclear spying operations. Pakistani nuclear physicist Abdul Qadeer Khan obtained an advanced degree at the Delft technical university, and worked at the Physical Dynamic Research laboratory from 1972 until 1975.Mr Khan disappeared in 1975, only to reappear in 1976 as the leader of the Pakistani nuclear weapons research programme. In 2004, Pakistan announced that Mr Khan had sold nuclear information to Libya, Iran and North Korea, together with a Dutch business partner.

Swedish universities split

In Sweden, a country with a large Iranian community, many of which fled the Islamic coup in 1978, confusion spread through both academic and governmental corridors when Swedish radio this summer put the spotlight on Iranian students being banned from certain educational programmes, following a warning from the country's security service.The security police, along with two other authorities – the Inspectorate of Strategic Product and the Radiation Safety Administration – sent letters to seven Swedish universities alerting them to how their institutions could be affected by the restrictions on Iranians wishing to study in Sweden.The letter pointed to concerns about specific masters and PhD programmes at the schools.But it is still up to each institution to decide which subject areas will be covered by the restrictions, according to the security police spokesperson, Patrik Peter. Our letter was just a letter of information, not a demand,he said.Other authorities have said universities should be aware of the country's anti-discrimination laws. Whoever resides in Sweden is covered by Swedish anti-discrimination law, regardless of where he or she comes from,an official at the country's anti-discrimination Ombudsman's office told Euobserver.A legal expert at the education ministry said that setting up bans based on nationality would be clearly discriminatory. So far, two out of the seven universities contacted by the security police have refused to ban Iranians from applying to their programmes.We do not register applicants' nationality at all. Everybody who has the necessary academic merits is given a chance to study, a spokesperson for the Royal Technical University in Stockholm said in a statement.

Just Google it

Members of the scientific community in Sweden told reporters that the information referred to as sensitive in the master programmes concerned, is available on the internet and in Iranian universities.There is nothing dangerous at all in any of the courses pointed out by the authorities,said professor Christophe Demeziere at Chalmers Technical University in Gotenborg, one of the schools which has decided to not accept Iranian students to study certain topics, told Swedish radio. They actually have nuclear technology courses in Iran too. So this restriction is frankly quite stupid,he added.A European Commission spokeswoman said that the agreement between member states on sanctions against Iran was a strictly political act, and that legislation or other follow-up measures are up to member states themselves, not Brussels.

SKorea: NKorea seeks recognition as nuclear state By JAE-SOON CHANG, Associated Press Writer – SEPT 17,09

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea is insisting on direct talks with the United States in an attempt to obtain recognition as a nuclear state, Seoul's top diplomat said Friday, warning that the North's atomic bombs are intended to target South Korea.The remark — implying that the communist nation has no intention of giving up atomic weapons — is the latest in a series of warnings that a wary South Korea has issued ahead of possible one-on-one negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea.After escalating tensions for months with nuclear and missile tests, Pyongyang recently offered to hold direct talks with the U.S. — a longstanding demand from the reclusive North which maintains it had to develop atomic bombs to cope with what it calls U.S. nuclear threats — which Washington denies making.The U.S. is studying the offer, saying such talks could be worthwhile to get the North back into six-nation disarmament negotiations — that also involve China, Russia, South Korea and Japan. Pyongyang pulled out of the talks in April to protest international criticism of a rocket launch that other nations suspected was a test of long-range missile technology.State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said Thursday that the U.S. will make some judgments in the very near future on the bilateral talks offer after consultations with other countries.South Korea says it does not oppose direct U.S.-North Korea dialogue if it is aimed at resuming the six-party talks.But officials, including President Lee Myung-bak, have cautioned against any hasty optimism, saying that the North has shown no willingness to disarm. They say recent conciliatory gestures from Pyongyang — including resumption of inter-Korean projects and the release of U.S. and South Korean detainees — are just because it feels the pain of U.N. sanctions on its weapons exports and financial dealings that were imposed after a nuclear test it conducted in May.

The reason North Korea is repeatedly insisting on direct talks is because it wants to be recognized as a nuclear state in order to proceed with arms reduction talks with the U.S.,Seoul's Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said in speech Friday at the Korea Chamber of Commerce, according to his office.Yu also said the North's atomic bombs are aimed at South Korea, saying the communist neighbor's goal has long been to unify the divided nations by force.The U.S. has long said it will never recognize Pyongyang as a nuclear power.On Thursday, Yu told a parliamentary committee that U.N. sanctions on Pyongyang should continue to be enforced unless the North takes visible steps to disarm.Meanwhile, a presidential envoy from China — the North's principal ally — has been in Pyongyang for talks with North Korean officials.Dai Bingguo, special envoy of Chinese President Hu Jintao, met with First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju, considered Pyongyang's top foreign policy brain and the main nuclear strategist, on Wednesday and met with the North's No. 2 leader Kim Yong Nam on Thursday.Details of their discussions were not available. It is widely believed the nuclear row was a key topic.

China rejects US criticism of its military By CHI-CHI ZHANG, Associated Press Writer – SEPT 18,09

BEIJING – China dismissed U.S. accusations that the growth and modernization of its military poses a threat, saying Friday that the comments were groundless and irresponsible.The rejection of the U.S. criticism comes just weeks before China shows off its military muscle with a hardware display expected to be the centerpiece of a grandiose parade through Beijing on Oct. 1 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic.Earlier this week, U.S. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair released the 2009 National Intelligence Strategy, which raised U.S. concerns about China's aggressive pursuit of natural resources around the world and its work to modernize its military.Hu Changming, a spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense, said the U.S. should respect China's national defense policy and take measures to correct the wrong comments,according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Hu called the U.S. comments totally groundless and irresponsible,according to Xinhua.
Blair said in a speech that U.S. naval carriers and air bases in the Pacific face new threats from China's modernization and that China has become very aggressive in the cyberworld.China shares many interests with the United States, but its increasing natural resource-focused diplomacy and military modernization are among the factors making it a complex global challenge,the report said.China, with its People's Liberation Army of 2.3 million members, has long been tightlipped about its military strength and capacity, drawing criticism and concern from the U.S., which has been wary of the Asian giant's growing power and skyrocketing military spending which reached $71 billion this year, though analysts believe the actual figure is much higher.The spending is second to the U.S. but a fraction of American defense spending. Beijing says its increased defense spending is not a threat to other countries.

THE CARCASSES OF THE RUSSIA MUSLIMS AND THE WORLDS ARMIES WILL BE IN ISRAEL IN THE FUTURE GETTING EATEN BY THE MIGRATING BIRDS AND THE ANIMALS IN THE NEAR FUTURE.I BELIEVE THE RUSSIA MUSLIMS FLESH WILL BE EATIN BY THE MIGRATING BIRDS IN THE SPRING OF THE YEAR.AND THE WORLDS ARMIES FLESH WLL BE EATIN BY THE MIGRATING BIRDS ON ROSH-HASHANA DURING THIS HOLIDAY IN THE FUTURE AT THE END OF THE 7 YEAR PEACE TREATY OF DANIEL 9:27.

Ezekiel 39 In the 1ST WAVE OF WW3 says that the Birds also eat the flesh of the Russia, muslims Army on the mountains of ISRAEL.

EZEKIEL 39:12-22
12 And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of them, that they may cleanse the land.
13 Yea, all the people of the land shall bury them; and it shall be to them a renown the day that I shall be glorified, saith the Lord GOD.
14 And they shall sever out men of continual employment, passing through the land to bury with the passengers those that remain upon the face of the earth, to cleanse it: after the end of seven months shall they search.
15 And the passengers that pass through the land, when any seeth a man’s bone, then shall he set up a sign by it, till the buriers have buried it in the valley of Hamongog.
16 And also the name of the city shall be Hamonah. Thus shall they cleanse the land.
17 And, thou son of man, thus saith the Lord GOD; Speak unto every feathered fowl, and to every beast of the field, Assemble yourselves, and come; gather yourselves on every side to my sacrifice that I do sacrifice for you, even a great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may eat flesh, and drink blood.
18 Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth, of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks, all of them fatlings of Bashan.
19 And ye shall eat fat till ye be full, and drink blood till ye be drunken, of my sacrifice which I have sacrificed for you.
20 Thus ye shall be filled at my table with horses and chariots, with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord GOD.
21 And I will set my glory among the heathen, and all the heathen shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid upon them.
22 So the house of Israel shall know that I am the LORD their God from that day and forward.

So we see here The 1ST WAVE is also eaten by BIRDS.

If we Go by Rosh Hashana in 2011 we will try to figure out the Future. This is just an example.Rosh Hashana the future 7 year treaty is signed on September 29,2011. 3 1/2 years later is when I believe The Russia, Muslim horde will March to Israel.

September 29,2011 ( 3 1/2 YEARS DOWN THE LINE) September 29,2014 + 6 MONTHS = MARCH 29,2015.Ok so if the Russia, Muslim horde would march to Israel From March 29, get defeated and start the 7 months buring by June 21. This would cover The spring migration of the Birds to eat the Russia, muslim Hordes flesh.

Now we have to go to the END of the 7 year treaty which would be Around September 29,2018. Then add the extra 45 days onto this date. This would be around November 13,2018, and December 21 would be Winter, So this would be in the Autumn When
Jesus returns to Earth and 45 days later the Migration would still be in Israel for the Final feast of the Birds.I must admit my Theory would cover both Spring and Autumn migrations of The birds in Israel. And in MATTHEW 24:45 It says in the Parable: TO GIVE THEM MEAT IN DUE SEASON. This would be interesting if God in this passage was giving us the hint that at the Migration seasons these 2 future Armies WAVE 1 AND WAVE 3 will be eaten by the Birds.

Here are the Scriptures that mention this FEAST OF THE BIRDS.

When JESUS Returns in Revelation 19:11-18.

REVELATION 19:11-18
11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.
12 His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.
13 And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.
14 And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.
15 And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.
16 And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.
17 And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God;
18 That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.

HALF OF EARTHS POPULATION DIE DURING THE 7 YR TRIBULATION.(THESE VERSES ARE JUDGEMENT SCRIPTURES NOT RAPTURE SCRIPTURES)

LUKE 17:34-37
34 I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left.
35 Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
36 Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
37 And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.(Christians have new bodies,this is the people against Jerusalem during the 7 yr treaty)(Christians bodies are not being eaten by the birds).

MATTHEW 24:37-51
37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,
39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
40 Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
41 Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
42 Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.
43 But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.
44 Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.
45 Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season?
46 Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing.
47 Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods.
48 But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming;
49 And shall begin to smite his fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken;
50 The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of,
51 And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Carcasses of dead walruses spotted on Alaska coast By DAN JOLING, Associated Press Writer – Thu Sep 17, 3:31 pm ET

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Up to 200 dead walruses have been spotted on the shore of Chukchi Sea on Alaska's northwest coast.

Federal wildlife researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey on their way to a walrus tagging project spotted 100 to 200 of the animals' carcasses near Icy Cape about 140 miles southwest of Barrow.They report the dead walruses appeared to be mostly new calves or yearlings. However, neither the age of the dead animals nor the cause of death is known, said Bruce Woods, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.It's just too early to say until we can get someone on the ground, Woods said.About 3,500 walruses were reported last week at the Icy Cape haulout site, where walruses rest from feeding forays.Young animals can be crushed in stampedes when a herd is startled by a polar bear, human hunters or even a low-flying airplane.

This is the second time in three years that walruses have congregated in large numbers on the Alaska shore.Walrus cannot swim indefinitely and historically have used sea ice as a platform for diving in the Bering and Chukchi seas for clams and other food on the ocean floor.In recent years, however, sea ice has receded far beyond the outer continental shelf, forcing walruses to choose between riding the ice over waters too deep to reach clams or onto shore.Environmental groups calling for measures to slow greenhouse gas emissions say walruses gathering in herds on shore are evidence that global warming is alerting the Arctic environment and forcing major changes in wildlife behavior.The National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado announced Thursday that Arctic sea ice for 2009 shrunk to its third lowest level since satellite measurements began in 1979. The record low was set in 2007 and ice last year melted to the second lowest level on record.

Walruses for years came ashore intermittently in Alaska during their fall southward migration but not so early and not in such numbers.Herds were in the tens of thousands at some locations on the Russian side of the Chukchi Sea. Russian biologists in 2007 reported 3,000 to 4,000 walruses died out of a population of perhaps 200,000, mostly young animals crushed in stampedes.

DOCTOR DOCTORIAN FROM ANGEL OF GOD
then the angel said, Financial crisis will come to Asia. I will shake the world.

JAMES 5:1-3
1 Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.
3 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

REVELATION 18:10,17,19
10 Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.
17 For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off,
19 And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.

EZEKIEL 7:19
19 They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed: their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the LORD: they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels: because it is the stumblingblock of their iniquity.

REVELATION 13:16-18
16 And he(FALSE POPE) causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:(CHIP IMPLANT)
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.(6-6-6) A NUMBER SYSTEM

WORLD MARKET RESULTS
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HALF HOUR DOW RESULTS FRI SEPT 18,2009

09:30 AM +2.22
10:00 AM +27.89
10:30 AM +28.34
11:00 AM +36.50
11:30 AM +26.15
12:00 PM +25.77
12:30 PM +31.37
01:00 PM +53.46
01:30 PM +49.35
02:00 PM +53.13
02:30 PM +54.94
03:00 PM +44.14
03:30 PM +57.06
04:00 PM +36.28 9820.20

S&P 500 1068.30 +2.81

NASDAQ 2132.86 +6.11

GOLD 1,008.80 -4.70

OIL 71.84 -0.63

TSE 300 11,445.95 -82.28

CDNX 1281.80 +9.06

S&P/TSX/60 686.69 -6.14

MORNING,NEWS,STATS

YEAR TO DATE PERFORMANCE
Dow +11.48%
S&P +17.96%
Nasdaq +34.86%
TSX Advances 690,declines 842,unchanged 243,Volume 578,543,959.
TSX Venture Exchange Advances 443,Declines 491,Unchanged 363,Volume 287,508,983.

Dow +51 points at 4 minutes of trading today.
Dow -0.07 points at low today.
Dow +61 points at high today so far.
GOLD opens at $1,018.40.OIL opens at $72.40 today.

AFTERNOON,NEWS,STATS
Dow -0.07 points at low today so far.
Dow +63 points at high today so far.

DAY TODAY PERFORMANCE - 12:30PM STATS
NYSE Advances 1,713,declines 1,779,unchanged 121,New Highs 166,New Lows 28.
Volume 2,299,583,717.
NASDAQ Advances 1,145,declines 1,374,unchanged 114,New highs 77,New Lows 04.
Volume 1,151,786,970.
TSX Advances 580,declines 650,unchanged 237,Volume 211,796,586.
TSX Venture Exchange Advances 341,Declines 270,Unchanged 240,Volume 95,014,089.

WRAPUP,NEWS,STATS
Dow -0.07 points at low today.
Dow +63 points at high today.
Dow +0.37% today Volume 424,931,440.
Nasdaq +0.29% today Volume 3,096,275,562.
S&P 500 +0.26% today Volume N/A

FRIDAYS

YEAR TO DATE PERFORMANCE
Dow +11.89%
S&P +18.27%
Nasdaq +35.25%
TSX Advances 803,declines 728,unchanged 247,Volume 655,823,741.
TSX Venture Exchange Advances 518,Declines 383,Unchanged 340,Volume 254,714,673.

GERALD CELENTE-THERE IS NO RECOVERY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhaEc_4zuFI&feature=player_embedded

EU urges world leaders to keep cash flowing for now
LEIGH PHILLIPS Today SEPT 18,09 @ 00:10 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - European Union leaders have agreed that their message for the G20 meeting next week is that the global economic recovery is still too fragile to begin a roll-back of economic stimulus packages.However, they believe that the turnaround does suggest that now is the time to begin drafting plans for a withdrawal of government support.The G20 should reaffirm its determination to continue implementing coordinated policy measures in order to develop the basis for sustainable growth and to avoid a repetition of the present financial crisis. Efforts must be maintained until recovery is secured.The presidents and prime ministers of the EU's 27 member states European Union met in Brussels on Thursday evening for an informal dinner to prepare a common position to take to next week's G20 meeting of the world's leading industrialised and developing countries.The meeting will take place in Pittsburgh, USA, from 24-25 September and is to assess progress in tackling the worst economic crisis since the 1930s.The leaders also believe that when stimulus measures are withdrawn, this must be done in a co-ordinated fashion so as not to create competitive imbalances between countries.The 27EU chiefs are also ready to proved the International Monetary Fund with an additional €50 billion atop the €75 billion already agreed.The EU leaders in Pittsburgh also will push for a clampdown on executive pay. Under the European plan, bonuses would be linked to the performance of a financial institution and guaranteed pay-outs should be avoided.

Bonuses would also be restricted to a certain proportion of the individual's pay or the bank's revenues or profits.After the meeting, Fredrik Reinfeldt, the prime minister of Sweden - which currently chairs the EU's six-month rotating presidency - said the days of an excessive bonus culture were over.

The bonus bubble burst tonight,he said.The banks, some of which owe their very survival to taxpayers money should not consider this crisis only a minor setback and return to business as usual,he warned.This would be a provocation against the citizens of Europe. Bank profits should not be viewed as private gains and their losses as public responsibility.He also addressed the question of a so-called exit strategies, saying that they would be the main topic for Pittsburgh.Some leaders such as the UK's Gordon Brown has emphasised that to pull the plug on stimulus too quickly is to pull the plug on the recovery.On the one hand, we see signs of a stabilisation of global growth, Mr Reinfeldt told reporters.On the other hand, governments are faced with historically large deficits - some 20 percent of the GDP of G7 countries, according to some studies.So exit strategies need to be designed now but implemented later,he added.We need to get public finances back on track.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said after the summit that the EU's objective for the G20 was nothing less than a new world economic model for sustainable economic growth.The leaders will also take a strong message to the G20 ahead of the UN talks on climate change in Copenhagen in December, he said.Our message to the rest of the developed world is that we need to talk figures. Our message to the developing world, is that if you are serious, we are there to help - not with a blank cheque, but with a fair proposal.No money, no deal, he added brusquely.But at the same time, if there are no actions, no money, he said, referring to the industrialised north's expectation that poor countries commit to climate mitigation measures as well.

EU's most powerful women take aim at male elite
HONOR MAHONY Today SEPT 18,09 @ 06:50 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Some of the most powerful women in the EU are discussing how to bring gender equality to European politics, an arena that continues to be overwhelmingly dominated by men.A who's who of women politicians in Brussels met on Wednesday (16 September) to see how they can better promote women in the EU capital, where women's names routinely fail to be mentioned for the top jobs.The 15-strong gathering, including four EU commissioners, Sweden's Europe minister and seven parliament committee heads, wants women to become better networkers and better at promoting one another in politics.There is still a glass ceiling to reach the very top of European politics. It is still very much an old boy's network and men are very good at praising each other and promoting each other, Finnish Green MEP and head of the human-rights sub-committee, Haidi Hautala, told EUobserver.But as there are so few women, this does not really happen.Danuta Huebner, the head of the parliament's regional development committee and a former EU commissioner, also stressed the importance of women supporting one another.We should do more about networking - that's where we're extremely weak. If we start some networking of women in European institutions, this could have some impact. If you are alone, you just behave as those around you,said the Polish politician.

The women's initiative comes as the 27-nation club gears itself up for what is likely to be fierce haggling on new EU commissioners and their portfolios. This year, the possible creation of two new high-level jobs - an EU foreign representative and an EU president - will bring extra spice to the negotiations.None of the names often mentioned for the posts are those of women.Diana Wallis, vice-president of the European Parliament, said the main point of Wednesday's meeting was to say:Here we are, a group of women all in fairly high posts in the European institutions, so what's all this chat about there not being women able to do any of the senior jobs either as commissioners, or any other posts that might come up under the treaty of Lisbon.

Those EU family portraits

Although gender equality is enshrined in EU law, there is often little evidence of it at the top of European politics. The family portraits of the regular gatherings of EU leaders are eloquent witnesses of this - amid a sea of men, German chancellor Angela Merkel is the only woman head of government.We talk about gender equality more and more and we have all those laws and everything that is needed to give everyone an equal chance in the political life [yet] when it comes to concrete cases, jobs for taking responsibility in Europe, somehow women disappear,said Mrs Huebner.To illustrate her point, she spoke about a 10-minute video to commemorate the 10th anniversary of European Monetary Union.There were no women in this, like women did not exist in the history of European integration.The group has sent a wishlist to newly re-elected European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and national governments to ask that member states present both a man and woman candidate for commissioner posts and that Mr Barroso make sure his team of commissioners is equally balanced.At the moment, there are eight women commissioners in the 27-member college. Women represent 35 percent of MEPs in the 736-member strong parliament, with Finland sending the highest proportion of women to Brussels (61%) and Malta, with no women for the second legislature running, the least. According to Mrs Wallis, there was a real buzz around the table on Wednesday that these politicians could keep up the pressure even after the negotiations on EU posts begins in earnest.

Wallstrom, Robinson, Halonen

One of the main objectives is for the group to drop names of qualified politicians into the EU jobs discussion, with Mrs Hautala mentioning Finnish President Tarja Halonen, former UN human rights commissioner Mary Robinson and communications commissioner Margot Wallstrom for the EU foreign minister or president jobs.Mrs Wallstrom, for her part, did not categorically deny interest in such a post, but pointed out she had already dedicated much of her life to a public career, including the last 10 years as commissioner in Brussels.There are so many good women candidates and we need to get them out there, she told this website, offering to be a mentor to others seeking EU jobs.The women's proposals are set to meet resistance among national capitals - even in those countries considered to have a more progressive gender equality policy. Mrs Hautala said she discussed the idea of each government suggesting two candidates for a commission post with Finnish leader Matti Vanhanen.Even our prime minister is not convinced,she said, with Mr Vanhanen fearing the proposal would take power away from member states' right to choose commissioners.

SEC proposes new rules for credit rating agencies By MARCY GORDON, AP Business Writer – Thu Sep 17, 8:02 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Regulators on Thursday proposed rules designed to stem conflicts of interest and provide more transparency for credit rating companies. They also proposed banning flash orders,which give some traders a split-second edge in buying or selling stocks.The changes, which were opened to public comment for 60 days, could eventually be adopted by the agency, possibly with revisions.The credit rating industry was widely faulted for its role in the subprime mortgage debacle and the financial crisis. The five members of the Securities and Exchange Commission voted at a public meeting to propose rules that could reshape an industry dominated by three firms: Standard & Poor's, Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings. Their practices would be opened wider to public view and subject to some restraints.

Regulators say they also hope to spur more competition in the rating industry, with possibly new entrants — as well as the other seven existing agencies — challenging the dominant firms. One of the SEC's proposals is intended to bar companies from shopping for favorable ratings of their securities, by requiring companies to disclose whether they had received preliminary ratings from other agencies.
Meanwhile, flash orders have become a hot-button issue in recent weeks amid questions about transparency and fairness on Wall Street. A flash order refers to certain members of exchanges — often large institutions — buying and selling information about ongoing stock trades milliseconds before that information is made public.Nasdaq OMX Group Inc., which operates the Nasdaq Stock Market, and the BATS exchange have voluntarily stopped using flash orders, which made up an estimated 3 percent of stock trading. The New York Stock Exchange has never used them.In July, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., had called on the SEC to ban flash orders, threatening legislation if it failed to act.This proposal will once and for all get rid of flash trading, which if left untouched, could seriously undermine the fairness and transparency of our markets,Schumer said in a statement Thursday.The rating agencies are crucial financial gatekeepers, issuing ratings on the creditworthiness of public companies and securities. Their grades can be key factors in determining a company's ability to raise or borrow money, and at what cost which securities will be purchased by banks, mutual funds, state pension funds or local governments.But the rating agencies have been criticized for failing to identify risks in securities backed by subprime mortgages. They had to downgrade thousands of the securities last year as home-loan delinquencies soared and the value of those investments plummeted. The downgrades contributed to hundreds of billions in losses and writedowns at big banks and investment firms.In a rule that was formally adopted Thursday, the agencies will have to disclose the history of their ratings actions, which normally include reasons for them, back to mid-2007 — when the SEC gained authority to regulate the agencies by law.Also, agencies that are paid by companies to rate complex securities — such as those underpinned by mortgages or student loans, as opposed to more traditional corporate or municipal bonds — must now notify the other agencies that it is in the process of determining the rating.Under another proposed rule, the agencies would have to publicly disclose every entity that paid for a credit rating. They also would have to provide more information about income earned from companies they rate.

These proposals are needed because investors often consider ratings when evaluating whether to purchase or sell a particular security,SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said before the vote.That reliance did not serve them well over the last several years, and it is incumbent upon us to do all that we can to improve the reliability and integrity of the ratings process.In California, Attorney General Jerry Brown launched an investigation into the three big credit rating agencies to determine what role they might have played in the collapse of the financial markets. Brown said he had subpoenaed the three firms to determine whether they violated state law in recklessly giving stellar ratings to shaky assets.In July, the California Public Employees' Retirement System sued the agencies, saying they had lured the fund into bad investments. The nation's largest public pension fund blames them for more than $1 billion in investment losses.The SEC commissioners took their action during a week when memories of the collapse of Lehman Brothers a year ago were fresh in Washington.There is general consensus that the rating agencies contributed significantly to the damage and the widespread loss of confidence, said Commissioner Luis Aguilar.Spokesmen for Standard & Poor's had no immediate comment. Representatives of Fitch and Moody's couldn't immediately be reached for comment. The three firms have said they already have taken steps to increase transparency and will continue to make further enhancements in the future.

Stocks slip as investors take break from rally By TIM PARADIS, AP Business Writer -Thu Sep 17, 5:43 pm ET

NEW YORK – A surprise drop in unemployment claims couldn't fuel another day of gains for the stock market.Stocks posted modest losses in quiet trading Thursday after a three-day advance. Traders found little in the weekly employment data, or in reports on housing and manufacturing, to provide new encouragement about an economic recovery. Stocks surrendered early gains around midday and the Dow Jones industrial average ended with a loss of 8 points.Lackluster earnings reports from FedEx Corp. and Oracle Corp. added to investors' caution.The stock market has risen in eight of the past 10 days and hopes for a recovery have propelled the Standard & Poor's 500 index up 57.5 percent from a 12-year low in early March. The pace of the gains has brought warnings from analysts that stocks have risen too quickly.This market has become kind of saturated with good news,said Jeff Kleintop, chief market strategist at LPL Financial.The Labor Department said workers filing for jobless claims for the first time dipped to 545,000 last week from an upwardly revised 557,000 the previous week. Economists polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting claims to rise.It was the lowest level of new claims since early July, indicating job cuts could be easing. However, those continuing to file for claims came in just above analysts' forecasts at 6.2 million. Many economists consider unemployment to be the biggest obstacle to a rebound in the economy.The Commerce Department said housing starts rose in August to their highest level in nine months amid a jump in apartment building. The increase was just below the pace economists had forecast.

Similarly, the Philadelphia Federal Reserve's index of regional manufacturing conditions rose for a second straight month to its highest level since June 2007. However, a drop in new orders from August worried some investors.Weaker sales at FedEx and Oracle stirred concerns about how corporate revenue will hold up for the July-September quarter. In the prior quarter, companies relied on cost-cutting, not revenue growth, to boost earnings.David Chalupnik, head of equities at First American Funds, still expects stocks will push higher but said a break is necessary. Eventually the market does need to take a breather,he said.The Dow Jones industrial average fell 7.79, or 0.1 percent, to 9,783.92. On Wednesday, the Dow jumped 108 points to a high for the year.The S&P 500 index fell 3.27, or 0.3 percent, to 1,065.49, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 6.40, or 0.3 percent, to 2,126.75.

Kleintop is encouraged that some of the market's recent gains have been moderate and that investors remain skeptical. The counterintuitive logic of Wall Street would argue that all the predictions of a slide could keep the rally going.It's been kind of a steady grind over time bringing investors kind of kicking and screaming back into this market,he said.Bond prices jumped, pushing yields lower. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell to 3.39 percent from 3.48 percent late Wednesday.The dollar was mixed against other currencies, while gold prices fell.
Among stocks, FedEx fell $1.74, or 2.2 percent, to $76.46 and Oracle slid 61 cents, or 2.8 percent, to $21.52. American Airlines' parent AMR Corp. jumped $1.45, or 19.7 percent, to $8.80 after the company said it secured $2.9 billion in cash and financing.Crude oil fell 3 cents to settle at $72.47 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.About three stocks fell for every two that rose on the New York Stock Exchange, where consolidated volume came to 6.7 billion shares compared with 6.9 billion Wednesday.The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 1.91, or 0.3 percent, to 615.47.Overseas, Britain's FTSE 100 rose 0.8 percent, Germany's DAX index gained 0.5 percent, and France's CAC-40 rose 0.6 percent. Japan's Nikkei stock average jumped 1.7 percent.

Fed bought $25.45 billion net in agency MBS: report Thu Sep 17, 3:11 pm ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve bought $25.45 billion net of agency mortgage-backed securities in the latest week, the New York Fed said on its website on Thursday.That was up from the previous week's net purchases of $18.8 billion.The purchases brought the U.S. central bank's purchase of mortgage bonds guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Bank system to roughly $861.9 billion since January.The Fed said it bought $31.22 billion gross of agency MBS from September 10 through September 16. At the same time, it sold $5.77 billion in mortgage securities.The Fed aims to buy up to $1.25 trillion of agency MBS in a bid to bring down mortgage rates and to stimulate the battered housing sector and the overall economy.

EU divided on German Tobin tax proposal Thu Sep 17, 5:26 pm ET

BRUSSELS (AFP) – European leaders were divided on Thursday over proposals by Germany to levy a global tax on financial transactions that could act as a cushion against future economic setbacks.German Chancellor Angela Merkel sought but failed to secure agreement from her fellow European Union leaders for such a proposal to be taken to a summit of the Group of 20 countries in Pittsburgh next week.British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and others fear such a scheme would be rendered useless by some countries not taking it up and therefore becoming de facto tax havens.However, Luxembourg Prime Minister and the head of the eurozone finance minister's Eurogroup, said the issue will be revisited at a later date.We weren't in a position to reach agreement today, said Jean-Claude Juncker, adding that similar notions such as a levy on stock markets could also be explored with Germany demonstrating real will and other support emerging.An international tax like that would be a good idea and we are going to see today if we can find a common position on it, Merkel said ahead of the EU leaders' working dinner in Brussels.Debate over a new version of the so-called Tobin Tax on capital flows has accelerated since Adair Turner, the chairman of Britain's Financial Services Authority, resurrected the idea earlier this year.

Originally proposed in 1971 by Nobel Prize laureate James Tobin as a means of reducing speculation in global markets, supporters of the levy see it as a way of providing buffers against future economic downturn.Others also envisage such a tax as helping to resolve global problems, including the fight against climate change or the supply of aid to countries that have suffered natural disasters.Brown sees it as unworkable.it's an issue of practicality,he told reporters in Brussels.Until we can be assured that we have global action that is commonplace and we don't have authorities or havens or territories that can easily opt out of that action then it is very difficult.Tobin himself later began to doubt his own idea was workable, added the British Prime Minister who presides over the biggest financial centre in Europe.Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden, the current holder of the European Union's presidency, came out firmly against the idea.I don't think that is the answer, he said.It has been proposed in historical times but I think it would be better to see coordinated measures of the kind we are talking about on the (bankers') bonus issue.Speaking to European parliamentarians after being handed a fresh five-year mandate as European Commission president on Wednesday, Jose Manuel Barroso said the tax could work as long as it was applied globally and does not threaten Europe's competitiveness.

Oil slips slightly, eyes weak equities By Edward McAllister – Thu Sep 17, 3:20 pm ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Oil prices slipped slightly in seesaw trading Thursday as U.S. equities fell, again raising concern about the economy and a rebound in energy demand.U.S. crude settled down 4 cents at $72.47 a barrel. London Brent futures slipped 12 cents to settle at $71.55.Oil right now is not a leader but a follower, following stocks and the dollar. Oil seems like it wants to go down, but every time it tries to some data or the dollar's weakness keeps it supported, said Phil Flynn, analyst at PFGBest Research in Chicago.Wall Street fell, weighed down by materials and financial shares as investors paused following a three-day climb. Initially the market was boosted by data showing factory activity in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region rose in September to its highest level since June 2007.Oil has tracked equities markets closely in recent months as dealers look to stocks as a leading indicator of an economic recovery that could boost ailing energy demand.But analysts said weak fundamentals continued to limit oil's price gains.The U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday that inventories of distillates in the world's top energy consumer rose more than expected last week to their highest since 1983. Gasoline inventories also rose, while crude stockpiles fell as refiners ran their plants near 90 percent of capacity to produce fuel, according to the weekly report.

We see no current physical tightness or even an imminent shift to a supply/demand deficit to help push the market higher,said Citi analyst Timothy Evans in a research note, adding,Some of the barrels have simply been moved downstream.The dollar fell broadly on Thursday, hitting a fresh one-year low against the euro as expectations of an economic recovery encouraged investors to seek higher-yielding assets, which had helped push oil higher in earlier trade. A weaker dollar can fuel purchases of oil and other dollar-denominated commodities, as they become relatively less expensive to nondollar holding investors.(Additional reporting by Richard Valdmanis, Gene Ramos and Robert Gibbons in New York, Sambit Mohanty and Emma Farge; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Free forex essential for free trade: Harper By Randall Palmer – SEPT 17,09

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Thursday a proper approach to trade should focus not just on lowering barriers to trade but also on having flexible exchange rates.Harper's remarks appeared to be aimed at China, although he did not mention that country by name. Canada has long criticized that country's inflexible foreign exchange regime.Harper made his comments as he told a business audience that a key lesson of the financial crisis was that the world had to think in terms of a global financial system, not just narrow national interests.He said that meant, for example, that each country should have financial regulation that the whole world can have confidence in, and also not building up huge surpluses by keeping a currency artificially low.We've got to have approaches to trade that don't just keep borders open but assure that we have things like flexible exchange rates that prevent unsustainable imbalances from growing in our global economy,he said.So that's the biggest single thing -- we've got to have a shift, particularly from the major players, toward a systemic view of global economic management, not simply national interests writ very narrowly.His appearance concluded a two-day visit to the United States, which began with talks with President Barack Obama, during which they compared notes on the upcoming Group of 20 summit, which is focusing on how to prevent another crisis.

He did criticize, during a question-and-answer session in New York, climate change legislation in the House of Representatives on the grounds it might provoke protectionism.The House bill has similar objectives to what Canada wants to do, he said, but what concerns him is the application of tariffs on countries deemed not to be compliant with efforts to reduce greenhouse gas.I believe it essential to get all the major emitters contributing to this problem. The way to get them to contribute is not to employ tariffs. If we employ tariffs, we all know that will become a front for protectionism quicker than you can say hello,he said.He asserted that Canada had entered and was exiting the financial crisis stronger than other countries.To paraphrase Warren Buffett, as the tide went out last year, the crisis exposed those who had been swimming naked. And it turns out that Canada was not only not a skinny dipper but one of the strongest swimmers,he said.Elaborating, he said his country had not had to bail out any banks and three of the top 10 banks in North America were now Canadian, joblessness was lower than in the United States and Canada's deficit and debt were relatively small.He said the global economic recovery was under way but was fragile and the G20 should not let up now.We must...continue implementing stimulus measures until we see a much stronger rebound in private investment. But at the same time, there must be exit plans from high levels of government deficits and debt so that capital investment in the private sector is not eventually crowded out,he said.Harper said it was important for the G20 to continue its efforts to fix the financial sector, adding that toxic assets still had to be purged from the international system.(Editing by Chizu Nomiyama; editing by Carol Bishopric)