1-WORLD QUAKES LAST 2 DAYS.2-Earthquake in Laos shakes Thailand. 3-Tornado probably struck near Stratford: weather service 4-Notre Dame basilica spire falls in storm 5-Rain boosts efforts to control South Jersey wildfire. 6-Smoke from Georgia, Florida fires reaches N.C. 7-Israeli aircraft fires on Hamas targets. 8-Rabbi mourns death of great Christian leader and friend of Israel Reverend Jerry Falwell. 9-Merkel gives up on God in EU treaty. 10-Commission defines red lines for new EU treaty. 11-Solana reiterates EU commitment to Mideast peace process. 12-European Union Opens Its Market to 80 Countries. 13-HOW THE SIX DAY WAR ALMOST LED TO ARMAGEDDON.
EARTHQUAKES
MATTHEW 24:7-8
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.
MARK 13:8
8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:(ETHNIC GROUP AGAINST ETHNIC GROUP) and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.
LUKE 21:11
11 And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.
WORLD QUAKES LAST 2 DAYS (USGS)
Update time = Thu May 17 2:00 AM EDT
MAY 17.07
MAP 3.1 OFF THE COAST OF SOUTHEASTERN ALASKA
MAP 4.6 NEAR THE COAST OF SOUTHERN PERU
MAP 2.8 ANDREANOF ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN IS., ALASKA
MAP 5.3 NEAR THE NORTH COAST OF PAPUA, INDONESIA
MAP 5.1 FOX ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 3.0 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
MAY 16,07
MAP 5.7 BOUGAINVILLE REGION, PAPUA NEW GUINEA
MAP 5.0 SUNDA STRAIT, INDONESIA
MAP 2.5 HAWAII REGION, HAWAII
MAP 3.1 SOUTHERN ALASKA
MAP 3.3 PUERTO RICO REGION
MAP 3.0 ARKANSAS
MAP 2.5 ANDREANOF ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN IS., ALASKA
MAP 4.9 ANDREANOF ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN IS., ALASKA
MAP 5.5 KURIL ISLANDS
MAP 6.3 LAOS
MAP 3.1 PUERTO RICO REGION
MAP 4.4 KURIL ISLANDS
MAP 4.6 MARIANA ISLANDS REGION
MAP 5.7 SOUTH INDIAN OCEAN
MAY 15,07
MAP 2.7 MOUNT ST. HELENS AREA, WASHINGTON
MAP 4.5 NEAR THE COAST OF NICARAGUA
MAP 3.1 ALASKA PENINSULA
MAP 4.4 HOKKAIDO, JAPAN REGION
MAP 4.7 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 4.7 NIAS REGION, INDONESIA
MAP 5.1 EAST OF THE KURIL ISLANDS
MAP 2.7 VIRGIN ISLANDS REGION
MAP 2.7 ISLAND OF HAWAII, HAWAII
MAP 2.5 SOUTHERN ALASKA
MAP 4.7 COSTA RICA
MAP 4.9 BATAN ISLANDS REGION, PHILIPPINES
MAP 2.8 SOUTHERN ALASKA
MAP 2.7 GULF OF ALASKA
MAP 5.0 SOLOMON ISLANDS
MAP 2.8 PUERTO RICO REGION
MAP 4.8 BONIN ISLANDS, JAPAN REGION
MAP 5.3 KURIL ISLANDS
MAP 4.6 NEAR THE COAST OF NICARAGUA
MAP 3.4 SOUTHERN ALASKA
MAP 3.0 PUERTO RICO REGION
MAP 2.7 FOX ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 2.7 PUERTO RICO REGION
MAP 5.6 PACIFIC-ANTARCTIC RIDGE
MAP 3.1 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
Earthquake in Laos shakes Thailand Wed May 16, 8:26 PM ET
BANGKOK, Thailand - Thousands of workers fled swaying high-rise office buildings in Bangkok on Wednesday but there were no injuries or major damage reported after an earthquake struck about 465 miles north in western Laos, officials said. The earthquake, centered in a remote region of Laos, was measured at magnitude 6.1 by the U.S. Geological Survey and Thailand's Meteorological Department.
Smith Dharmasaroja, chairman of the National Disaster Warning Center, told Thai TV Channel 3 there were numerous aftershocks and warned people not to return to houses for at least 24 hours.Yong Chanthalansy, a Lao Foreign Ministry spokesman, said from the Laotian capital of Vientiane that the earthquake lasted about 10 seconds. He said it was not felt in Vientiane and there were no initial reports of casualties.
Many offices in Bangkok's business districts were evacuated after the earthquake
struck, with their panicky occupants gathered in the street. Numerous workers went home early from their jobs.The quake also was felt in Chiang Mai, a popular Thai tourist destination about 160 miles southwest of the epicenter. Officials there said there were no reports of damage.
STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES
LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.
Tornado probably struck near Stratford: weather service
Last Updated: Wednesday, May 16, 2007 | 1:47 PM ET - CBC News
It is almost certain that a tornado touched down Tuesday night near the city of Stratford in southern Ontario, Environment Canada says.The tornado likely hit near near the community of Monkton in Perth County north of Stratford, meteorologist Geoff Coulson said Wednesday, but that has not yet been confirmed.Environment Canada is also investigating reports of tornados in up to five other locations, Coulson said.On its website, Environment Canada reported early Wednesday that the storm ripped a roof off a house, snapped branches off trees and knocked down power lines near Monkton. It said hail damaged a home and an outdoor pool west of the community.
The storm, which swept across southwestern and south central Ontario, brought more than 50 millimetres of rain, winds of up to 113 kilometres an hour, large hail and reports of funnel clouds.Summer severe weather roared through southern Ontario Tuesday afternoon and through the night with an intense line of thunderstorms, which brought frequent lightning, very heavy rain at times, strong wind, and pea- to marble-size hail, the Meteorological Service of Canada said in a statement.
Regions along the southern shoreline of Lake Huron east toward Hamilton saw the heaviest thunderstorm activity. There were numerous reports of near zero visibility due to torrential rain and power outages, it added.The storm left thousands of people in the dark in southwestern and eastern Ontario.Hydro crews were working on Wednesday to restore power in affected areas, which included homes between Brighton to Tyendinaga in eastern Ontario and in Huron County on the eastern shore of Lake Huron.Coulson said the the extreme weather also damaged trees near McMaster University in Hamilton and in the Kitchener area.No injuries were reported.
Notre Dame basilica spire falls in storm Wed May 16, 10:39 AM ET
SOUTH BEND, Ind. - A powerful storm toppled a small spire from the University of Notre Dame's Basilica of the Sacred Heart and left more than 16,000 people without power Wednesday. One person died when a tree fell on his car.At Notre Dame, one of four smaller spires that surround the basilica's main spire fell about 60 feet to the ground, bringing with it some bricks and mortar. No one was injured.That's a fairly significant amount of damage to one of the university's most important landmarks, spokesman Dennis Brown said. Several large trees on campus also were damaged, he said.The Tuesday evening storm brought heavy rain and wind up to 70 mph to LaPorte and St. Joseph counties, the National Weather Service said. Several people reported seeing funnel clouds, and the weather service was trying to confirm whether any tornadoes touched down.There were reports of trees falling on cars and homes across northern Indiana and into Ohio and Michigan, meteorologist Patrick Murphy (news, bio, voting record) said. The storm initially knocked out power to 52,000 customers of Northern Indiana Public Service Co. About 16,000 customers, most in Gary and Portage, remained without electricity Wednesday, the company said.
FIRES AND EXPLOSIONS
REVELATION 8:7
7 The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.
Rain boosts efforts to control South Jersey wildfire
WAYNE PARRY - The Associated Press MAY 16,07
LITTLE EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP, N.J. - More than a half-inch of rain gave a major assist to firefighters working to subdue a massive wildfire that has charred 14,000 acres of the New Jersey Pinelands, and it is now 70 percent contained, a fire official said Wednesday night.
Maris Gabliks, chief of the New Jersey Forest Fire Service, said firefighters expect to declare the blaze under control sometime Thursday.We now believe we have turned the corner. The people of the Pinelands are fortunate tonight, said Lisa Jackson, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection.A thunderstorm that firefighters had anxiously awaited for most of the day arrived over the blaze at about 6:30 p.m., just after high winds from the approaching storm pushed the fire eastward toward the Garden State Parkway, jeopardizing not only the road but thousands of homes east of it.
Some residents of Barnegat Township who had been allowed to return to their homes Wednesday after being evacuated the day before, were once again told to leave when the flames briefly picked up. About 500 people were in shelters Wednesday night, officials said.The blaze, which is believed to have been touched off by a National Guard F-16 that dropped a flare during a training exercise Tuesday afternoon in the tinder-dry Pinelands region, soon sent walls of flame racing toward senior citizen communities, where elderly residents grabbed their pets and ran.It was as close to hell on Earth as you'll ever experience in your life, said Bert Plante, a spokesman for the Forest Fire Service.
Speaking in a trailer park where two homes were incinerated and others damaged, Plante said, The wall of fire that came here was twice as tall as the trees, easily 80 to 100 feet in the air.About 6,000 people were evacuated from 2,500 homes at the height of the blaze. That included 300 patients in three nursing homes who had been relocated without incident, said State Police Superintendent Col.
Rick Fuentes.
More than 600 firefighters, some called from as far away as 30 miles, used helicopters, water tanker trucks, bulldozers and other equipment to try to contain the fire. Many of those called in from nearby communities to assist the forest fire service were sent home Wednesday night as the rain helped douse the flames.The Parkway, one of the state's main north-south routes, was closed for a time Wednesday in the vicinity of the fire because dense smoke was making it difficult for motorists to see.Authorities downgraded their count of homes damaged by the flames to 13, down from 50 Tuesday night. A closer inspection revealed that many of the houses that were believed to have suffered damage were not structurally harmed.Five homes in two senior citizen housing developments in Barnegat were destroyed.Dry conditions and strong winds helped fan the blaze, which began Tuesday afternoon on a military aerial bombing range about 25 miles north of Atlantic City.
Two state forest fire officials suffered minor injuries, but no serious injuries or deaths were reported.However, some of those evacuated recalled frantic flights to escape the blaze.I didn't grab anything but the cat and myself, and we scrammed, said Helen Sura, who evacuated a housing development in Barnegat.She and the cat, the aptly named Smoky, spent a sleepless night in her car in a Burger King parking lot.I was freezing because I didn't think to grab a sweater or a blanket, she said. I figured we'd be back home in a few hours at most.Eileen Papini also grabbed her cat, Puddycat, and fled the advancing flames.
The smoke was so bad you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, she said.Her trailer park, Pinewood Estates in Barnegat, suffered serious damage, authorities said. Several mobile homes there were damaged by the blaze. Papini was wondering if hers was among them.You don't know if you have a home to go back to, she said. Evacuees described a rapidly advancing fire that mowed down everything in its path.It looked like big black clouds, lit up with orange fire, 40, 50 feet in the air, coming right toward you, said Stan Wesolowski of Barnegat.
The fire started about 2:15 p.m. Tuesday on the Warren Grove Gunnery Range, a 9,400-acre expanse of sand and scrub pine used for aerial bombing practice by Air National Guard units.Lt. Col. James Garcia, a spokesman for the New Jersey Air National Guard, said it was believed a flare dropped from one its F-16s may have started the blaze, though an investigation was ongoing.The range was the same facility from which a National Guard jet accidentally strafed an elementary school with large-caliber rounds in 2004 during a training exercise.
U.S. Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg complained Wednesday that the military hadn't followed up on safety pledges after the 2004 accident.This wildfire shows that the Air National Guard has not followed through on its pledge of increased safety, said Lautenberg, who said he would request a meeting with the Air Force and Air National Guard to address safety issues.In 2001, an errant Air National Guard practice bomb caused a fire that burned more than 1,600 acres in the Pine Barrens.Associated Press writer Jeffrey Gold in Newark contributed to this story.
Smoke from Georgia, Florida fires reaches N.C.
May 16, 2007 12:26 EDT
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- Smoke from massive wildfires in Georgia and Florida has drifted hundreds of miles into central North Carolina.It's triggering emergency calls to fire departments and warnings for people with breathing ailments to limit their time outdoors.Charlotte Fire Captain Rob Brisley is urging the public --not-- to call 9-1-1 just to report smoke. He says people should call only if they see smoke or flames coming from a structure.Emergency dispatchers in Davidson County
about 50 miles northeast of Charlotte say they've been overwhelmed by callers reporting the smoke.
The smoke created a haze more than 100 miles north of Charlotte in Orange County.The smoke's being driven into North Carolina by strong winds preceding a cold front.
Israeli aircraft fires on Hamas targets By SARAH EL DEEB, Associated Press Writers MAY 17,07
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli aircraft launched missiles at Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing at least five people, after Hamas fired rocket barrages into Israel in an apparent attempt to draw Israel into increasingly violent Palestinian infighting. Hamas gunmen fatally shot six guards from the rival Fatah movement and mistakenly ambushed a jeep carrying their own fighters, killing five. In all, 16 Palestinians were killed in Palestinian infighting Wednesday — the bloodiest day since violence broke out in the Gaza Strip four days ago.The streets of central Gaza City echoed with gunfire and were empty except for gunmen in black ski masks. Terrified residents stayed home from school and work, huddling in dark homes after electricity to some neighborhoods was cut off by a downed power line.At nightfall, Hamas announced its intention to begin observing a unilateral cease-fire, and President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah also called on the warring parties to hold their fire. However, similar truces the two previous evenings did not hold.
In four days of fighting, 41 people have been killed and dozens more have been injured — not including the dead from the Israeli airstrikes. Most of the dead have been from Fatah. The violence threatened to bring down the Palestinians' two-month-old unity government — and brought the Palestinians dangerously close to all-out civil war.Despite Israel's vow to stay out of the fray, its missile strikes added another layer of complexity to Gaza's mayhem, and raised the specter of a large-scale Israeli invasion.
What is happening in Gaza endangers not only the unity government, but the Palestinian social fabric, the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian strategy as a whole, said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.Abbas was expected to meet with Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas in Gaza on Thursday to discuss the situation, Abbas aide Yasser Abed Rabbo said. One option was declaring a state of emergency, he said. Abbas also spoke by phone with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Syria on Wednesday, and the two agreed to work to end the violence.Hamas officials said the organization's men launched eight rockets at Israel, following a barrage of around 20 rockets Tuesday. That salvo at the Israeli town of Sderot, just outside Gaza, wounded five Israelis, one seriously, said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.
There were no casualties Wednesday, but school was canceled in Sderot and residents huddled in bomb shelters.Hamas said its rockets were retaliation for Israeli violence, but more likely it was an attempt to draw Israel into the fighting as a way of uniting the Palestinians against a common foe.
Before that attack, Israel launched an airstrike at the Hamas military building in the southern town of Rafah, Palestinian officials and the army said. Medics said four Hamas gunmen were killed and 30 others were wounded. In a rare display of unity, Hamas and Fatah men worked together to evacuate the casualties.Later in the day, an Israeli aircraft attacked a car carrying a group of Hamas militants in the northern Gaza Strip, killing one person and wounding two others, Palestinian medical officials said. The attack came shortly after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel cannot continue to restrain itself in the face of repeated rocket fire by Palestinian militants.The army said the airstrike was aimed at a Palestinian squad that had just fired rockets into Israel, and did not strike a vehicle.Earlier in the day, Israeli government spokeswoman Miri Eisin said Israel would not be dragged into the Gaza Strip the way that Hamas wants. We will choose the time, the place to respond and we will protect our citizens.In the latest infighting, police from the Fatah-allied Preventive Security force arrested five Hamas men and were driving them through Gaza City when the vehicle was ambushed by Hamas fighters, Preventive Security officials said. The five Hamas men were killed, along with two Fatah men, they said.
Hamas radio reported that a Hamas man was killed in a separate clash, and a nurse in an ambulance was shot in the head after being caught in the crossfire, hospital officials said. Her family said she was brain-dead and on a respirator.In another incident, Hamas gunmen set fire to an 11-story apartment building housing Fatah lawmaker Nema Sheik Ali, the wife of the head of Preventive Security.
Witnesses said the gunmen broke into her apartment and struck her and two of her children with their weapons. One of the children is 14 years old; the age of the other wasn't immediately known. They came, they broke the door, she said. They assaulted my children and they pushed me aside, then they torched the apartment. Shadi al-Kashir, a building resident, said his father, wife, five children and two sisters had been trapped inside by smoke in the halls and gunbattles raging in the entranceway. They tried to send ambulances, but the ambulances came under fire, he said. They later managed to escape. A group of about 200 Palestinians marched in central Gaza City, waving Palestinian flags and demanding an end to the fighting. Dozens of masked gunmen used the cover of the demonstration to improve their positions on the street, and then opened fire on the demonstrators, wounding one in the leg. The rest fled.Earlier Wednesday, Hamas gunmen fired mortars and pipe bombs at the home of Fatah security chief Rashid Abu Shbak before storming it and killing six bodyguards, Palestinians security and medical officials said. Abu Shbak and his family were not home at the time.
Abdel Hakim Awad, a Fatah spokesman, angrily accused Hamas' leadership of the attack, charging that the Islamist group wanted to turn Gaza into a new Somalia or Darfur.Fighting also raged close to President Mahmoud Abbas' heavily guarded compound, which was also targeted by Hamas mortar fire overnight, and the bodies of two Fatah gunmen were sprawled on the street nearby. Abbas, a moderate from Fatah, was not present. More than 30 journalists from different news agencies were holed up at the Gaza offices of Al-Jazeera television, unable to venture outside because of heavy fighting next to the building.
We are in fact, without exaggeration, in grave danger, said Al-Jazeera correspondent Wael Dahdouh, his words interrupted by sounds of gunfire. Gaza's turmoil further weakened hopes for a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, despite a new push by the Arab world to bring the sides to the table. The offer proposes Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from all lands it occupied in the 1967 Mideast War. But negotiations are inconceivable if the Palestinians descend into civil war. This week's fighting was the worst since Hamas and Fatah agreed in February to share power. At its core is the unresolved power struggle between Hamas, which won parliament elections last year, and Fatah, which dominated Palestinian politics for four decades. After a year in power and squeezed by an international aid boycott, Hamas realized it could not govern alone and brought Fatah into the government. But the two sides never worked out all their differences, particularly over who would control security forces.
Rabbi mourns death of great Christian leader and friend of Israel Reverend Jerry Falwell MAY 17,07
It is with great sorrow that I come to you to tell you of the death of a true friend of Israel and the Jewish people—and a man that I was honored to call a personal friend as well. The Rev. Jerry Falwell passed away today suddenly at the age of 73. When I started The Fellowship 25 years ago, he was among the first Christians to step forward and express interest in being involved in our bridge-building work. And, over the years, he proved his solidarity repeatedly. His involvement helped break down the barriers of mistrust that characterized the relationship between Jews and evangelical Christians at the time. There were those who remained skeptical of Rev. Falwell's support. I recall on one occasion nearly 30 years ago, I invited him to speak at my synagogue and was criticized by many in the Jewish community who questioned his motives. But this did not deter him one bit in his unfailing support for Israel and the Jewish people. Very directly, but always graciously and lovingly—I never saw him behave otherwise towards people—he would remind those who questioned him that, as a Christian, his support of Israel was based on eternal biblical truths and, because of that, it would not falter. I am happy to say that he managed to win over many of his skeptics through the consistency and obviously genuine quality of his love for Israel and the Jewish people.
The Rev. Falwell once said that the Bible Belt is Israel's safety belt. Over the years, he helped me realize the truth of that saying. Wherever there are faithful, Bible-believing Christians, I can be assured of finding true friends and supporters of Israel. And the Rev. Falwell himself did much to ensure that safety belt remained strong as ever.Please take a moment today to join with me and Fellowship staff to pray for the many friends and family of Rev. Falwell, and all the staff and students at his school, Liberty University, who mourn the loss of their leader and are now left to carry on his great legacy. He will be sorely missed. I also invite you to share your thoughts and memories of Reverend Falwell with us.
With prayers for shalom, peace,
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein
President International Fellowship of Christans and Jews.
Merkel gives up on God in EU treaty
15.05.2007 - 17:44 CET | By Andrew Rettman
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - German chancellor and Christian Democrat Angela Merkel has
voiced regret there will be no reference to Christian roots in the revised EU treaty, amid controversial remarks about damage to churches in Turkish Cyprus at a meeting of religious VIPs in Brussels.
You know what my personal view is. I would have liked the constitution to deliver such a reference. But as president of the European Council, I see there is not much of a chance, she said on the prospects of God appearing in a preamble to the EU text. I can't hold out any hope, she added.Her statement comes in the context of Germany's push to fix the broad outlines of a new EU treaty - still called a constitution by some - in late June, following months of bilateral consultations with EU states after the rejection of the original EU constitution in 2005. The God debate is at least as old as the 2002 EU convention that wrote the original constitution, with Roman Catholic states like Poland and the Vatican pushing for the reference, but with France and the UK worried over national secularist traditions or damaging relations with Islamic EU candidate Turkey. The EU's 50th birthday declaration in March rejuvenated the discussion. But in the end the birthday text made no reference to Christianity, while praising identities and diverse traditions of member states and how the EU is enriched by a variety of languages, cultures.
Universal values
When the German chancellor, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso and European Parliament president Hans-Gert Poettering met Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders at the EU capital on Tuesday (15 May), they stuck to safe ground on universal EU values such as human dignity.
Human dignity is at the basis of the values we share in Europe, Mr Barroso said. We have discussed the need to respect freedom of religion not just in the EU but in all the countries that want to be part of the EU and in the wider world.Earlier at lunch, Mr Barroso told his guests that every time he talks with Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan he stresses the importance of freedom of worship. Mr Poettering also voiced concern over the murder in April of three Christian publishers in Turkey and praised Ankara's handling of the incident. But the meeting was not entirely free of controversy, with Ms Merkel at the final press conference saying the EU can't close its eyes to violations of human dignity in particular terms such as the fact religious property is being damaged in Northern Cyprus.
The Archbishop of All Cyprus
Her comment relates to her conversation with His Beatitude Chrysostomos II, the Archbishop of Nova Justiniana and All Cyprus, who criticised Turkish Cypriot authorities at Tuesday's religious seminar. An EU official later played down Ms Merkel's words, saying she was merely trying to reflect the day's debate. About 500 Orthodox Christian churches fell under Turkish Cypriot control following the Turkish-Greek conflict on the island in 1974. The past 33 years have seen widespread reports of looting and vandalism of priceless, Byzantine-era frescos and icons in the region. But the Turkish Cypriot community refuses to take the blame, saying that non-recognition of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus by the international community means crucial aid from bodies like UNESCO cannot get through. The republic recently sent a letter to MEPs that also complains of damage done to Islamic sites in southern Cyprus. There are issues relating to this on both sides, a Turkish Cypriot representative told EUobserver.
Commission defines red lines for new EU treaty
15.05.2007 - 17:43 CET | By Mark Beunderman
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – The European Commission has issued a warning to states such as the UK and the Netherlands seeking to roll back what it sees as key parts of the EU constitution.The intervention came after the college of commissioners on Monday (14 May) held a seminar on the disputed EU constitution at Groot-Bijgaarden castle, just outside Brussels.Briefing journalists after the seminar, the spokesman for European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said the new treaty must improve the EU's achievements, under no circumstances roll back these achievements.The commission, which has generally been reluctant to wade into member states' sensitive debate on the fate of the constitution – rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005 – has now given first indication of what its red lines are.The red lines when it comes to preserving the [European] community method and the single market must be clearly established, the spokesman said amid ongoing renegotiations of the new treaty.
The so-called community method is EU jargon meaning decision making at the EU level, where member states generally lose their national veto and major powers are transferred to the European Commission and the European Parliament.Commission officials said the community method remark was above all directed at the UK and the Czech Republic which are unhappy with the reduction of national veto powers – especially in the area of justice and home affairs –as proposed in the old constitution. London is said to oppose the scrapping of its veto powers all together, while Prague is promoting a system whereby minorities of member states can opt out of decisions taken by a majority.Meanwhile, Brussels' red line on the EU's single market appears to stem from its worries that states like the Netherlands and France will use the renegotiation of the treaty to secure limits to the application of free market legislation.
Single market worries
The Hague is pushing for reassurances in a new look treaty that national sovereignty over pensions, social security and health is not eroded by an ever-expanding scope of the single market.Brussels' warning was also partly directed at France, officials said, with Paris' new president Nicolas Sarkozy expected to take a nationalistic stance on issues like foreign take-overs of French companies.The commission also indicated it supports ideas for a pared down version of a new treaty. It is clear that when it comes to finding a solution, simplification is the name of the game, the spokesman said.But it must be clear that the discussion does not start from scratch, he added. The constitutional treaty is the starting point for discussion.
Solana reiterates EU commitment to Mideast peace process MAY 17,07
Javier Solana, high representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union, reiterated Tuesday the EU's commitments to the peace process between Israel and the Palestinian and reaffirmed EU's support to the Palestinian people.
At a press conference following his meeting here with Ziad Abu Amr, minister of foreign affairs of the Palestinian National Authority, Solana also stressed the importance of national unity among the Palestinians. Today, we talked more on the Palestinian situation, how we can help, how we can cooperate on the security situation, how we can cooperate economically, said Solana. The two men discussed the latest developments in the Palestinian territories as well as the Arab Peace Initiative.
The initiative, first approved by the Arab League in its 2002 Beirut summit, calls for Israel's pullout from Arab land occupied in the 1967 Middle East War and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in return for the normalization of ties with Arab states. Israel had rejected the initiative after it was first launched in 2002, but the Jewish state has recently said it could provide a basis for talks though there are amendments to the refugee issue. Solana, who had already talked to Abu Amr on Monday during the meeting of EU and Arab League foreign ministers, promised that the talks between the EU and the Palestinian would continue as he planned to visit the Mideast in the near future.
Meanwhile, he stressed the EU's continuing deep engagement with the Israeli-Palestinians peace process, with the Palestinian people and with the region. We would like to see something happening in the foreseeable future and not to have to wait again for a long period of time until some positive news may come on the peace process, he said. He also urged the Palestinian leaders to do everything possible to bring the security situation under control and to make every effort to secure the release of the captured Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, and BBC journalist Alan Johnston. Abu Amr thanked Solana for his persistent effort to convene the Arab League-EU foreign ministers' meeting on Monday, which had been very successful. I would like to also stress the role of Mr. Solana in reviving Arab-European relations and opening new horizons for Arab-European relations, he said.
Turning to the dismal security situation in Gaza, Solana said it would clearly be very difficult to move forward politically if the situation internally among Palestinians is not guaranteed.He said the EU did not feel that the situation could be blamed on the economy because the EU had given more aid to the Palestinian people since 2005 than in previous years. However, he acknowledged that living conditions were very difficult for Palestinians and led to much frustration. Abu Amr urged Israel to release the taxes they collected from Palestinians to the Palestinian National Authority. This would alleviate the social, economic and security problems, he added. He also called on the international community to end the political and financial siege on the Hamas-led Palestinian government and the Palestinian people. Source: Xinhua
European Union Opens Its Market to 80 Countries MAY 17,07
The European Union has agreed to grant duty-free and quota-free market access to some 80 countries from the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) areas. There is still much debate on both sides of the accord, but EU leaders are hailing it as important progress. Teri Schultz has more from Brussels.With the new market access offer, the European Union and the ACP - African, Caribbean and Pacific - group have reached one step closer to a trade deal before the current accord expires at year's end.
EU development ministers meeting in Brussels Tuesday confirmed a proposal made last month by the European Commission that would drop tariffs and quotas on ACP goods once a new trade agreement is signed. German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, who chaired the meeting, said this decision will have a positive impact on other development issues. We'll be freeing up ACP access to our markets to a very great extent, saidHeidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul. I think this is a good signal.
There will be special treatment for products considered highly sensitive - so far that includes sugar and rice - which will have their tariffs scaled back gradually to give industries more time to adjust.
For example, sugar brought into the EU would have its import duties phased out by the year 2015 The transition period for rice has not yet been established. Bananas are widely expected to join that list but ministers put off that decision for now.
Eventually the EU wants reciprocal benefits to be in place for European goods in African markets, but Minister Wieczorek-Zeul told ACP countries they should not be intimidated by this. We have no designs on ACP markets in light of the development requirements of ACP countries, she said. There will be the need for flexibility and ACP countries may have waivers, safeguard measures and particular periods of time of transitional periods for particularly sensitive products.She noted that some countries' transition periods may last up to 25 years! EU and ACP leaders meet again in Brussels on May 25 to try to move forward on the overarching trade deal. - VOA News
HOW THE SIX DAY WAR ALMOST LED TO ARMAGEDDON
Forty years later, Moscow's role in engineering and exacerbating the crisis is revealed. By Joel C. Rosenberg
(Washington, D.C., May 17, 2007) June, 1967. War clouds had been building for months. The Israelis found themselves increasingly surrounded by Soviet-backed forces of the Arab and Islamic world, all of whose leaders were vowing to throw the Jews into the sea, and the Israelis were considering a first strike. The element of surprise might be their only hope of survival, they figured. But President Lyndon Johnson had warned Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in no uncertain terms that such a move would be a serious mistake. As historian Michael B. Oren noted in his highly praised book, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, Johnson sent a secret message to Eskhol saying that it is essential that Israel not take any preemptive military action and thereby make itself responsible for the initiation of hostilities. Preemptive action by Israel would make it impossible for the friends of Israel to stand at your side. Oren noted that Johnson specifically warned of the possibility of direct Soviet intervention.
Marshal Andrei Antonovich Grechko, the Soviet deputy defense minister, had told his Egyptian counterparts in Cairo that the Kremlin had dispatched destroyers and submarines to the waters near Egypt, some armed with missiles and secret weapons to help wipe out the Zionists. One of Israel's top experts on Soviet foreign policy told Israeli Defense Forces intelligence that the USSR would muster all its influence and power to maintain its Middle East position and when asked if the Soviets would intervene directly, replied, of course.Soviet Premier Kosygin, meanwhile, sent a cable to Prime Minister Eshkol warning that if the Israeli Government insists on taking upon itself the responsibility for the outbreak of armed confrontation then it will pay the full price of such an action. But at 8:44
a.m. on the morning of June 5, 1967, Eshkol sent an urgent message back to President Johnson informing him that it was too late. War had begun.
After weeks in which our peril has grown day by day, we are now engaged in repelling the aggression which [Egyptian President] Nasser has been building up against us, Eshkol wrote, explaining his rationale for the preemptive strike Israel had just launched. Israel's existence and integrity have been endangered. The provocative [Arab] troop concentrations in Sinai, now amounting to five infantry and two armored divisions; the placing of more than 900 tanks against our southern frontier; . . . the illegal blockade of the Straits of Tiran; . . . the imminent introduction of MiG-21 aircraft under Iraqi command [into the theater]; Nasser's announcement of total war against Israel and of his basic aim to annihilate Israel. . . . All of this amounts to an extraordinary catalogue of aggression, abhorred and condemned by world opinion and in your great country and amongst all peace-loving nations.Eshkol also noted that three Israeli towns had been bombed that morning by Arab forces, citing these as the last straws that led to war. He thanked Johnson for America's support and expressed hope that our small nation can count on the fealty and resolution of its greatest friend. But he also had a request: that the U.S. prevent the Soviet Union from exploiting and enlarging the conflict at this, Israel's greatest hour of danger.
Eshkol knew and feared the Russians, noted Michael Oren. War with Syria [and Egypt] was risky enough; with the USSR, it would be suicidal. But Eskhol calculated that without U.S. support, the Soviets would find themselves compelled to get involved directly. Moscow had, after all, invested massively in the Middle East, about $2 billion in military aid alone-1,700 tanks, 2,400 artillery pieces, 500 jets, and 1,400 advisers-since 1956, some 43 percent of it to Egypt.Sure enough, as the Israelis demolished the forces of the Arab coalition over the next three days and captured the Sinai, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights, reunified the holy city of Jerusalem, and began an offensive against Damascus itself, Moscow saw itself staring into the face of a geopolitical disaster.
Those were, after all, Soviet-trained soldiers being defeated. Those were Soviet-made arms being seized or destroyed. Those were billions of dollars in Soviet funding to their Arab client states being poured down the drain.
And-it would later be learned by U.S. and Israeli intelligence-the Egyptian war plan itself (code-named, Operation Conqueror) had actually been written in 1966 by the Soviets. As a result, the Soviets feared their prestige was quickly unraveling. U.S. intelligence was already picking up signs of this fear in the Kremlin. In the President's Daily Brief on June 9, for example, the CIA informed President Johnson that the Soviets are finding it hard to conceal their shock over the rapid Egyptian military collapse. A Soviet official [identity still classified] could not understand how our intelligence could have been so wrong. He asked despairingly, How could we have gotten into such a mess?
So the Kremlin decided to dramatically up the ante.
On June 10, at 8:48 a.m., Washington time, Soviet Premier Alexey Kosygin used the Hotline to call President Johnson in the White House Situation Room. His message was as blunt as it was unnerving: A very crucial moment has now arrived, he said, which forces us, if [Israeli] military actions are not stopped in the next few hours, to adopt an independent decision. We are ready to do this.
However, these actions may bring us into a clash which will lead to a grave catastrophe. . . . We propose that you demand from Israel that it unconditionally cease military action. . . . We purpose to warn Israel that if this is not fulfilled, necessary actions will be taken, including military.The Soviets quickly broke off diplomatic relations with Israel, and the Soviet-bloc governments of Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria quickly followed. CIA Director Richard Helms would later recall that the conversation in the Situation Room for the next several hours were in the lowest voices he had ever heard in a meeting of that kind and that the atmosphere was tense as the President and his most senior military, diplomatic, and intelligence advisors contemplated the possibility of a direct Soviet strike at Israel.
Johnson, a devoted friend of Israel and an ardent anti-Communist, was not prepared to kowtow to Moscow or let Israel be destroyed. He immediately ordered the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean to turn around-it was then heading west towards the Strait of Gibraltar-and steam towards Israel as a show of solidarity and to warn the Soviets not to get directly involved.
He did the right thing, for according to Isabella Ginor, a Russian-born correspondent for the BBC World Service and other international news services, new evidence now reveals that the Soviets were indeed poised to attack Israel. . . and had been preparing for such a mission all along.On June 10, 2000-the thirty-third anniversary of Kosygin's ominous Hotline threat to Nixon-Ginor published an article in The Guardian (London) entitled, How The Six Day War Almost Led to Armageddon: New Evidence of 1967 Soviet Plan to Invade Israel Shows How Close the World Came to Nuclear Conflict.In December of that year she published a longer and more detailed article in the Middle East Review of International Affairs entitled, The Russians Were Coming: The Soviet Military Threat in the 1967 Six-Day War. In these and other articles, she quoted Soviet military officials who paint a fragmentary but still disturbing picture of the attack that was being prepared.
Ginor noted, that in his recently published memoirs, Nikita S. Kruschev asserts that the USSR's military command first encouraged high-ranking Egyptian and Syrian delegations, in a series of hush-hush mutual visits, to go to war, then persuaded the Soviet political leadership to support these steps, in the full knowledge they were aimed at starting a war to destroy Israel.
Soviet Acting Defense Minister Andrei A. Grechko and KGB Chairman Yuri V. Andropov, meanwhile, were pressing for the immediate dispatch of Soviet forces to the Middle East. Retired Soviet air force lieutenant Yuri V. Nastenko confirmed in 1998 that bomber and fighter jets, such as the MiG-21s that were under his command, were put on full operational alert on the evening of June 5, 1967 and that he was convinced this was in preparation for real combat.Yuri N. Khripunkov was a former Soviet naval officer who was serving on one of thirty Soviet warships that had been moved from the Black Sea southward to the Mediterranean in June 1967. Khripunkov told Ginor that he and his colleagues were preparing to unleash a force of Soviet forces onto the Israeli mainland. His own platoon, he said, was ordered to penetrate Haifa-Israel's main commercial harbor and naval base.Russian Professor Alexsandr K. Kislov, who was stationed in the Middle East in 1967, told Ginor that the strike force the Soviets had prepared for insertion into Israel included desant [landing] ships with well-prepared marines.
Some respected historians and diplomats have disputed the notion that the Soviets were planning to attack Israel in 1967. But while the evidence available from declassified documents and interviews with direct participants may not yet be conclusive, it is compelling. What's more, Soviet Premier Kosygin's threat of direct military intervention into the 1967 war with Israel alone stands as chilling evidence of Moscow's historic and recent animus towards the Jewish State, and as a warning of things to come, especially as Moscow currently arms Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, Sudan, Algeria and other enemies of Israel.
* NOTE: This article is adapted from Chapter 10 of Epicenter. Now, a new book by two Israeli historians, including one I interviewed for Epicenter, documents how the Soviets engineered the Six Day War to destroy Israel's nuclear program. For more on this, see Foxbats Over Dimona: The Soviets' Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War by Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez and a review of the book by the Jerusalem Post(links on my weblog).
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
ISRAEL CELEBRATES JERUSALEM DAY
THANKS GOD FOR FULFILLING THE 2 PROMISES THAT ISRAEL WILL ALWAYS BE A NATION AND THAT JERUSALEM WILL ALWAYS BE THE ISRAELI CAPITAL AND THEN THE WORLD CAPITAL FOREVER.
1-Jerry Falwell dead at age 73. 2-EU wants credibility of World Bank reinstated. 3-EU states forge defence links on military research. 4-AMERICA IS IN DIRE & IMMINENT DANGER. 5-Jerusalem Day Being Boycotted by George Bush. 6-Will America Recognize G-d? 7-Radical Muslim Paramilitary Compound Flourishes in Upper New York State. 8-Will Bush Veto Thought Police?
BREAKING NEWS: Jerry Falwell dead at age 73
Sue Lindsey - Associated Press Writer
OneNewsNow.com - May 15, 2007
LYNCHBURG, Va. Rev. Jerry Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority and built the religious right into a political force, died Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University, a school executive said. He was 73.
Ron Godwin, the university's executive vice president, said Falwell, 73, was found unresponsive around 10:45 a.m. and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital. CPR efforts were unsuccessful, he said.Godwin said he was not sure what caused the collapse, but he said Falwell has a history of heart challenges.I had breakfast with him, and he was fine at breakfast, Godwin said. He went to his office, I went to mine, and they foundhimunresponsive.
Falwell had survived two serious health scares in early 2005. He was hospitalized for two weeks with what was described as a viral infection, then was hospitalized again a few weeks later after going into respiratory arrest. Later that year, doctors found a 70 percent blockage in an artery, which they opened with stents. Falwell credited his Moral Majority with getting millions of conservative voters
registered, electing Ronald Reagan and giving Republicans Senate control in 1980.I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved, Falwell said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987.The fundamentalist church that Falwell started in an abandoned bottling plant in 1956 grew into a religious empire that includes the 22,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church, the Old Time Gospel Hour carried on television stations around the country and 7,700-student Liberty University. He built Christian elementary schools, homes for unwed mothers and a home for alcoholics.
He also founded Liberty University in Lynchburg, which began as Lynchburg Baptist College in 1971.Liberty University's commencement is scheduled for Saturday, with former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich as the featured speaker.In 2006, Falwell marked the 50th anniversary of his church and spoke out on stem cell research, saying he sympathized with people with medical problems, but that any medical research must pass a three-part test: Is it ethically correct? Is it biblically correct? Is it morally correct?
Falwell had once opposed mixing preaching with politics, but he changed his view and in 1979, founded the Moral Majority. The political lobbying organization grew to 6.5 million members and raised $69 million as it supported conservative politicians and campaigned against abortion, homosexuality, pornography and bans on school prayer. Falwell became the face of the religious right, appearing on national magazine covers and on television talk shows. In 1983, U.S. News & World Report named him one of 25 most influential people in America.In 1984, he sued Hustler magazine for $45 million, charging that he was libeled by an ad parody depicting him as an incestuous drunkard. A federal jury found the fake ad did not libel him, but awarded him $200,000 for emotional distress. That verdict was overturned, however, in a landmark 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held that even pornographic spoofs about a public figure enjoy First Amendment protection.
The case was depicted in the 1996 movie The People v. Larry Flynt.
With Falwell's high profile came frequent criticism, even from fellow ministers. The Rev. Billy Graham once rebuked him for political sermonizing on non-moral issues. Falwell quit the Moral Majority in 1987, saying he was tired of being a lightning rod and wanted to devote his time to his ministry and Liberty University. But he remained outspoken and continued to draw criticism for his remarks.
Falwell was re-energized after moral values issues proved important in the 2004 presidential election. He formed the Faith and Values Coalition as the 21st Century resurrection of the Moral Majority, to seek anti-abortion judges, a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and more conservative elected officials.The big, blue-eyed preacher with a booming voice started his independent Baptist church with 35 members. From his living room, he began broadcasting his message of salvation and raising the donations that helped his ministry grow.He was one of the first to come up with ways to use television to expand his ministry, said Robert Alley, a retired University of Richmond religion professor who studied and criticized Falwell's career.American Family News Network.
EU wants credibility of World Bank reinstated Tue May 15, 11:27 AM ET
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union wants the World Bank's board to take a quick decision on whether President Paul Wolfowitz should step down to restore the global lender's credibility, Germany's Development minister said on Tuesday. We need a rapid decision from the board, German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said after EU development ministers discussed the issue at a regular meeting.All of us development ministers want the integrity and the credibility of the Bank to be maintained and reinstated, she told a news conference. We need a strong Bank, a strong president.Wieczorek-Zeul told Wolfowitz at the bank's spring meeting that he should step down voluntarily. She said on Tuesday that she maintained her position.
But EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana appeared to question whether the furor over Wolfowitz's career help for his girlfriend when she was an employee of the bank was harming the institution.I don't think that an institution as established as the World Bank is going to suffer for some debate about an issue that relates to the presidency of the institution, he said.
The White House acknowledged on Tuesday that Wolfowitz erred in the handling of a pay raise and promotion for his companion but said that was not cause for him to be removed from his job.We've made clear that we support Paul Wolfowitz. Furthermore, he has said -- and we agree -- that certainly a lot of mistakes were made in the personnel process. But it's not a firing offense," White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters.The bank's board was to meet on Tuesday to consider a report by the a panel that Wolfowitz violated ethics rules and that his involvement represented a conflict of interest. The former U.S. deputy defense secretary has rejected the criticism.
EU states forge defence links on military research
15.05.2007 - 09:27 CET | By Lucia Kubosova
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU defence ministers have taken a step towards joint planning on defence expenditure and pooling resources to invest in technologies and military materials.
The initiative has been conducted by member states rather than the European Commission with national governments keen to protect their sovereignty in the area. At a meeting in Brussels on Monday (14 May), the bloc's defence chiefs agreed on a strategy for the future development of Europe's defence industry, pledging more mutual cooperation in both research and production.Nineteen EU member states plus Norway also signed up to a joint investment scheme aimed to pool resources for developing battlefield protection technologies, such as defences against mortar attacks or chemical, biological and radiological weapons.
Defence is a sensitive sector outside the EU's internal market rules, with some critics suggesting the status quo leads to Europe wasting millions of euros a year on duplication and protectionism.While the commission is currently contemplating possible ways of introducing more competition in the area through common EU legislation, member states also take initiatives at intergovernmental level, through
the European Defence Agency (EDA) which stands outside the community institutions. Under a non-binding code of conduct launched by the EDA last year, participating countries have committed to posting tenders for defence contracts on an electronic bulletin board open to companies from across the EU, with tenders worth almost €10 billion currently posted, according to the defence agency. At the moment, 23 out of 27 of the EU's member states have signed up to the code of conduct, with Spain, Denmark, Romania and Bulgaria remaining outside the system.
Non-binding or binding rules?
The strategy defence ministers agreed on Monday argues that member states must take urgent action to stop a decline in Europe's defence technological and industrial base by opening up protected national defence markets. Echoing the statements by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana ahead of the meeting, ministers admitted that the current approach with separate national spending on R&D and procurements in member states strictly opened just to national producers is no longer economically sustainable.They singled out the US as a key competitor against which Europe has been performing poorly, suggesting they should work more efficiently and cooperate more in order to improve standards.We recognise that the problem of accessing the US defence market and of establishing balanced technology exchange across the Atlantic, make it natural and necessary for Europeans to cooperate more closely, writes the agreed document. The European Parliament's security and defence subcommittee expressed similar feelings in a special report on the issue published last year, arguing that although EU governments spend €250 billion on defence which is half the amount Americans do, their defence capacities are only about 10 percent as efficient as the US.
The study pointed out that there are 23 parallel programmes for armoured vehicles, three new parallel programmes for combat aircraft and 89 European weapons programmes while the US, by contrast, has 27 programmes.But while the defence ministers acknowledge the same problems as the EU's executive and parliamentarians in their new strategy, they remain reluctant to give any extra powers to Brussels in this area.
CARMEL COMMENT EXTRA: AMERICA IS IN DIRE & IMMINENT DANGER MAY 15,07
It takes a serious situation to cause me to send out a mid week Carmel Alert. Two weeks ago, the Carmel Comment was entitled Israel Is In Dire & Immenent Danger. Israel's threat is from our demonically inspired Islamic neighbours. The title of this comment is inspired by several news items I have received this week concerning the USA. Unlike the threat to Israel that is external, the USA's problem is internal - America Is In Dire & Imminent Danger ..... from herself. The purpose of this email is not to bash President Bush or America, but to stir up Christians in the USA and the other nations to pray and fast for the United States. What ever happens in the USA will affect the rest of the World. I believe that the USA has a mandate from YHVH to stand with Israel and for the Bible and I want to see America rise up and fulfill this calling for her own sake and for the sake of the Kingdom
of God.
The root of the problem lies in three main areas - Israel, the Muslims, and this idiotic Political Correctness, particularly when it comes to the homosexual lobby. In addition I just saw a report on the 700 Club that in several US universities it is illegal to speak against Evolution. What ever happened to freedom of speech ?
The following news items should concern all of us, because sooner or later they WILL concern ALL of us.
PLEASE READ, DIGEST, WATCH, & PRAY ..............
JERUSALEM
1 King 11:36 ...... my servant David may always have a lamp before Me in Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen for Myself, to put My name there. (NKJ)
Ps 137:5-6 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill! If I do not remember you, let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth-- if I do not exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy. (NKJ)
Zechariah 12:3 And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it. (NKJ)
Jerusalem Day Being Boycotted by George Bush. The Golden Report 5-14-07
Jerusalem Day is this Wednesday; It is our 40th celebration of victory over the Jordanians who occupied Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem including the Old City of Jerusalem from 1948 until 1967. For those 19 years Jews were not allowed in the Old City of Jerusalem, or to their Holiest sites the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. The Jordanians destroyed every Synagogue in the Old City turned most of them into toilets, and made it almost impossible for Christians to visit their Holy Sites.
By a miracle of God a small newly formed IDF in an act of self defense was able to defeat Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria in what is now known as the 6-day war.
We took back our Holy City of Jerusalem and cleaned it up, we didn’t run the Arabs out, instead we allowed them to live in the Old City and only took our precious Jewish Quarters back and rebuilt it and our Synagogues, in doing this we didn’t destroy their mosques instead we helped them rebuild them as well, Christians were now allowed to come and go freely to their Holy Sites.
Years ago the United States agreed that Jerusalem was the Capital of Israel and said they would move their Embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem. When Bush took office he said he would move the US Embassy to Jerusalem. But today George Bush says that the United States will not take part in the Jerusalem Day Celebrations and they are joining the EU in their boycott of Jerusalem being the Jewish Capital because Bush says we are occupying East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. It becomes easier every day to see that his intention is too destroy the Jewish State in favor of his Saudi friends, what I can’t understand is why so many Christians in the US can’t now see what this man really is.
Many are calling me a Bush basher, I think I am a truth teller, I have only been reporting to you what Bush is doing that you may not hear on US TV.
David's Note: This is very serious - To oppose Jerusalem as the eternal, undivided capital of Israel is to oppose God Himself. He has warned us in Joel 3 that He will judge the nations on account of how they behave towards Israel.
What An Israeli American Says - Will America Recognize G-d? by Gary Cooperburg - Hevron MAY 15,07
Christian Zionists seem to know, more than most other people, that Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish State. I am sure that American Christian supporters of the Jewish State are outraged that the US ambassador to Israel, Richard Jones, will not participate in tomorrows Jerusalem Day ceremony at the Knesset. I would also assume that most Americans must be quite frustrated at the fact that even though the American legislature passed a law authorizing the moving of the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and nearly every President has pledged to fulfill this law, to this date no progress has been made in fulfilling it.
No country in the world has the right to dictate to any legitimate nation where its capital should or shouldnt be. The PLO is not a nation. It has no legitimate claim on any part of the Land of Israel. Anyone who has read the Bible knows that Jerusalem has always been the capital of the Jewish nation.
No other nation has ever held sovereignty over this nation or this city. How dare any world leader, especially the President of the United States, refuse to recognize the only city in the world whose identity can never be denied as being the legitimate capital of the Jewish State?
Today all nations are being judged by our Creator by how they relate to His People in His Land. In spite of our feeble and foolish leaders, our nation is under the protection of our Creator and simply cannot be destroyed even by the most powerful nations in the world. We suffer from terror in this country only because our leaders refuse to recognize their obligations as Jews. We have no right to negotiate one grain of sand on the Gaza beach. It is our obligation to develop and build all of our homeland and to inhabit it with our people.
As an Israeli, I couldnt care less if Richard Jones refuses to attend our ceremonies. But as an American I am outraged that the leadership of the USA would place that nation in danger by snubbing the nation of G-d. This too will bring Divine Wrath upon America. If the American People want to continue to have a country in which they can be proud to be Americans, they must find a leadership which will return that country to the respect for our Creator that its founding fathers once had.
TWO STATE SOLUTION
The US State Department under the authority of President Bush and Condalesa Rice are forcing the Israelis and the so called Palestinians to conform to the US plan for the creation of a Palestinian State, not side by side, but inside the Jewish State, on the land that God promised to Abraham and his descendants ( thru Issac not Ishmael ). The US has informed both sides that their plan and timing is not negotiable. Who do they think they are ? Both Bush and Rice claim to be Christians I wonder what Bible they read ! Not the same one I read that is for sure !
At the same time that the USA was once again pushing Israel to give away her covenant land, and at the same time the Anti Hate law that also flies against the Word of God in condoning and protecting idolaters, adulterers, abortionists ( murderers ) and sodomites, raging fires destroyed large parts of Florida and California, and raging floodwaters destroyed towns in other parts of the USA.One has to ask IS GOD TALKING TO THE USA ? & IS ANYBODY LISTENING ?
THE MUSLIMS
Radical Muslim Paramilitary Compound Flourishes in Upper New York State
By Paul L. Williams Ph.D., (author of THE DAY OF ISLAM) Friday, May 11, 2007
http://www.canadafreepress.com
Situated within a dense forest at the foothills of the Catskill Mountains on the outskirts of Hancock, New York, Islamberg is not an ideal place for a summer vacation unless, of course, you are an exponent of the Jihad or a fan of Osama bin Laden. The 70 acre complex is surrounded with No trespassing signs; the rocky terrain is infested with rattlesnakes; and the woods are home to black bears, coyotes, wolves, and a few bobcats. The entrance to the community is at the bottom of a very steep hill that is difficult to navigate even on a bright sunny day in May. The road, dubbed Muslim Lane, is unpaved and marred by deep crevices that have been created by torrential downpours. On a wintry day, few, save those with all terrain vehicles, could venture forth from the remote encampment.
A sentry post has been established at the base of the hill.
The sentry, at the time of this visit, is an African American dressed in Islamic garb a skull cap, a prayer shawl, and a loose fitting shalwat kameez. He instructs us to turn around and leave. Our community is not open to visitors, he says. Behind the sentry and across a small stream stand dozens of inhabitants of the compound the men wearing skull caps and loose fitting tunics, the women in full burqa. They appear ready to deal with any unauthorized intruders. The hillside is blighted by
rusty trailers that appear to be without power or running water and a number of outhouses. The scent of raw sewage is in the air.
The place is even off limits to the local undertaker who says that he has delivered bodies to the complex but has never been granted entrance. They come and take the bodies from my hearse. They won't allow me to get past the sentry post. They say that they want to prepare the bodies for burial.
But I never get the bodies back. I don't know what's going on there but I don't think it's legal. It is home to hundreds all in Islamic attire, and all African-Americans. Most drive late model SUVs with license plates from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The locals say that some work as tollbooth operators for the New York State Thruway, while others are employed at a credit card processing center that maintains confidential financial records.
Islamberg is not as benign as a Buddhist monastery or a Carmelite convent. Nearly every weekend, neighbors hear sounds of gunfire. Some, including a combat veteran of the Vietnam War, have heard the bang of small explosives. None of the neighbors wished to be identified for fear of retaliation. We don't even dare to slow down when we drive by, one resident said. They own the mountain and they know it and there is nothing we can do about it but move, and we can't even do that. Who wants to buy a property near that? Islamberg's Grocery Store The complex serves to scare the bejeesus out of the local residents. If you go there, you better wear body armor, a customer at the Circle E Diner in Hancock said. They have armed guards and if they shoot you, nobody will find your body. At Cousins, a watering hole in nearby Deposit, a barfly, who didn't wish to be identified, said: The place is dangerous. You can hear gunfire up there. I can't understand why the FBI won't shut it down.
Islamberg is a branch of Muslims of the Americas Inc., a tax-exempt organization formed in 1980 by Pakistani cleric Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, who refers to himself as the sixth Sultan Ul Faqr, Gilani, has been directly linked by court documents to Jamaat ul-Fuqra or ommunity of the impoverished, an organization that seeks to purify Islam through violence. Though primarily based in Lahore, Pakistan, Jamaat ul-Fuqra has operational headquarters in New York and openly recruits through various social service organizations in the U.S., including the prison system. Members live in hamaats or compounds, such as Islamberg, where they agree to abide by the laws of Jamaat ul-Fuqra, which are considered to be above local, state and federal authority. Additional hamaats have been established in Hyattsville, Maryland; Red House, Virginia; Falls Church, Virginia; Macon, Georgia; York, South Carolina; Dover, Tennessee; Buena Vista, Colorado; Talihina, Oklahoma; Tulane Country, California; Commerce, California; and Onalaska, Washington. Others are being built, including an expansive facility in Sherman, Pennsylvania.
Before becoming a citizen of Islamberg or any of the other Fuqra compounds, the recruits primarily inner city black men who became converts in prison are compelled to sign an oath that reads: I shall always hear and obey, and whenever given the command, I shall readily fight for Allah's sake. In the past, thousands of members of the U.S. branches of Jamaat ul-Fuqra traveled to Pakistan for paramilitary training, but encampments, such as Islamberg, are now capable of providing boot-camp training so raw recruits are no longer required to travel abroad amidst the increased scrutiny of post 9/11.
Over the years, numerous members of Jamaat ul-Fuqra have been convicted in US courts of such crimes as conspiracy to commit murder, firebombing, gun smuggling, and workers' compensation fraud.
Others remain leading suspects in criminal cases throughout the country, including ten unsolved assassinations and seventeen fire-bombings between 1979 and 1990. The criminal charges against the group and the criminal convictions are not things of the past. In 2001, a resident of a California compound was charged with first-degree murder in the shooting of a sheriff's deputy; another was charged with gun-smuggling' and twenty-four members of the Red House community were convicted of firearms violations.
Even though Jamaat ul-Fuqra has been involved in terror attacks and sundry criminal activities, recruited thousands of members from federal and state penal systems, and appears to be operating paramilitary facilities for militant Muslims, it remains to be placed on the official US Terror Watch List. On the contrary, it continues to operate, flourish, and expand as a legitimate nonprofit, tax-deductible charity
David's Note: Why does President Bush wage the War on Terror thousands of miles away in Iraq, but does nothing about an obvious Islamid terror facility on his doorstep ?
HOMOSEXUALS & the THOUGHT POLICE
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING BIBLE VERSES ARE NOW CLASSED AS HATE LITERATURE AND ARE OUTLAWED IN MANY WESTERN NATIONS - BEWARE THE THOUGHT POLICE MAY BE MONITORING YOU RIGHT NOW !!!
Lev 18:21-22 I am the LORD. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. (NKJ)
Rom 1:24-27 Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. (AIDS)(NKJ)
Will Bush Veto Thought Police'? World Net Daily
Opponents say hate crimes plan would destroy American freedoms
The nation's largest public policy women's group is asking President Bush to commit to a veto of a hate crimes plan that, as WND has reported, opponents fear would target Christians and be used to demolish both freedom of speech and religion in the United States. Last week the House Judiciary Committee, egged on by radical homosexual groups, passed what can only be called a Thought Crimes bill, said former White House insider Chuck Colson in his Breakpoint commentary. It's called the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act. But this bill is not about hate. It's not even about crime. It's about outlawing peaceful speech – speech that asserts that homosexual behavior is morally wrong.
The call for the veto promise came from leaders at Concerned Women for America, who said they have written to the president with their request, because Congress is poised to approve H.R. 1592 as early as today.
This bill would grant individuals who engaged in homosexual behavior (sexual orientation) or those who cross-dress (gender identity) preferential treatment over other citizens by elevating them to a specially protected class of victim, the organization said. The 14th Amendment guarantees all citizens equal protection under the law, regardless of their chosen sexual behaviors.
There is no evidence to suggest that homosexuals or cross-dresser do not receive equal protection under the law, the CWFA said.
Victims are – and should be – treated equally in the justice system, regardless of their sexual orientation. This hate crimes bill would overturn this balance, creating second-class victims and a federal justice system that discriminates against grandmothers, children, women and men simply because they are heterosexual, said CWFA President Wendy Wright. We cannot imagine that President Bush would sign a bill that would create a two-tiered justice system that discriminates against grandmothers, she said.
Some say we need this law to prevent attacks on homosexuals. But we already have laws against assaults on people and property, Colson continued. Moreover, according to the FBI, crimes against homosexuals in the United States have dropped dramatically in recent years. In 2005, out of 863,000 cases of aggravated assault, just 177 cases were crimes of bias against homosexuals…He noted, that in other locations, such as England, Sweden, Canada, and even Philadelphia, where similar laws have been approved, the Thought Police already have prosecuted Christians. In Philadelphia, a grandmother was hauled to jail and threatened with 47 years in prison for proclaiming her Christianity on a public street. One Philadelphia woman, Arlene Elshinnawy, 75, and grandmother of three, was holding a sign: Truth is hate to those who hate the truth, before she was hauled off by police officers.
If this dangerous law passes, pastors who preach sermons giving the biblical view of homosexuality could be prosecuted. Christian businessmen who refuse to print pro-gay literature could be prosecuted. Groups like Exodus International, which offer therapy to those with unwanted same-sex attraction, could be shut down, Colson warned. In classic 1984 fashion, peaceful speech will be redefined as a violent attack worthy of punishment. He said that's known because during debate over the plan, U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., offered an amendment to assure that the law would not be used to limit the religious freedom of any person or group, and majority Democrats on the committee refused it.
It also refused to adopt amendments protecting other groups from hate crimes – like members of the military, who are often targets of verbal attacks and spitting. They also shot down amendments that would protect the homeless and senior citizens … Nothing doing, the committee said – the only group they wanted to protect: homosexuals.
Clearly, the intent of this law is not to prevent crime, but to shut down freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of thought, he said. Matt Barber, CWA's policy director for cultural issues, said such narrow focus by Democrats makes clear the exclusionary and discriminatory nature of this bill. The concerns also were echoed by Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth. This is really about getting the heavy hand of the federal government in promoting homosexuality as a civil right, he said.
Observers at the committee debate over the bill noted that nowhere in the bill are the terms sexual orientation or gender identity defined, but Democrats declined to even include that in the proposal.
Rev. Ted Pike, of The National Prayer Network, said reality needs to be faced. Not only do pro -hate bill Democrats have 34 more votes than the Republicans, but at least several dozen Republicans are probably committed to vote for the hate bill. This means that in order to even have a tie in the House more than 55 members would have to cancel their pledge to vote for the hate bill. Not a good possibility, he said.
However, the Senate is different. The pro-hate bill forces may have as many as 65 votes, more than the 60 necessary to win. This includes about 14 Republicans; but if six Republicans are dissuaded from supporting the hate bill, [the plan] will not pass. The federal hate bill would be destroyed, at least for this session of Congress, he said. Glen Lavy, of the Alliance Defense Fund, earlier wrote to Congress warning the plan would criminalize thoughts and beliefs. This is a terrible thing, to criminalize thought or emotion or even speech, Lavy told WND. And Bishop Harry Jackson, chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition, said the plan, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Protection Act of 2007, is no more than a surreptitious attempt by some in Congress to strip the nation of religious freedom and the ability to preach the gospel from our church pulpits. It will stamp all over our doctrine and practice of our faith, he said. We believe what the Bible says. If you start there we've got a major problem.
WND columnist Janet Folge r earlier warned in a commentary called Pastors: Act now or prepare for jail, that in New Hampshire, a crime that typically carries a sentence of 3 1/2 years was enhanced to 30 years because a robber shouted an anti-homosexual name at his victim. Folger's organization, Faith2Action, is the group that was launched the ads about Philadelphia grandmothers who were thrown in jail in Pennsylvania under that state's hate crimes law.
The proposal is by U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the head of the House Judiciary Committee. Pike said technically, the proposal would make it federally indictable to…attempt to…intimidate' a homosexual from believing that he (even if he has AIDS or hepatitis) has the right to work in a restaurant, be employed as a police officer or summer camp counselor, or has equal rights to housing and employment anywhere he wishes. A pastor, Christian broadcaster or publisher who verbally attempts to intimidate homosexuals by describing homosexuality as an abomination (Lev. 18:22) are thus high-profile targets for indictment under this legislation, he said.
AMERICA IS IN DIRE & IMMINENT DANGER - PRAY ! PRAY ! PRAY !
The Lord bless you as you bless Israel by standing in defense of her right to exist on the land given to the Jewish people by the God of Israel . Do not be silent, but share this to your fellow Christians, share it with your pastors and with anyone you have a chance to speak to. Lets also pray for that breakthrough to the Muslims, and please remember to pray for our son Jordan, and all of his fellow soldiers in the IDF.
Shalom .. . David & Josie
CANADIAN REPRESENTATIVE: Peter Robertson ph 250 6490714 peterrobertson@shaw.ca
Please make your checks payable to Out of Zion Canada and mail to Out of Zion Canada Box 2199, MacKenzie, BC, V0J 2CO
David & Josie Silver - Out of Zion Ministries - Mt Carmel Israel
www.out-of-zion.com
1-Jerry Falwell dead at age 73. 2-EU wants credibility of World Bank reinstated. 3-EU states forge defence links on military research. 4-AMERICA IS IN DIRE & IMMINENT DANGER. 5-Jerusalem Day Being Boycotted by George Bush. 6-Will America Recognize G-d? 7-Radical Muslim Paramilitary Compound Flourishes in Upper New York State. 8-Will Bush Veto Thought Police?
BREAKING NEWS: Jerry Falwell dead at age 73
Sue Lindsey - Associated Press Writer
OneNewsNow.com - May 15, 2007
LYNCHBURG, Va. Rev. Jerry Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority and built the religious right into a political force, died Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University, a school executive said. He was 73.
Ron Godwin, the university's executive vice president, said Falwell, 73, was found unresponsive around 10:45 a.m. and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital. CPR efforts were unsuccessful, he said.Godwin said he was not sure what caused the collapse, but he said Falwell has a history of heart challenges.I had breakfast with him, and he was fine at breakfast, Godwin said. He went to his office, I went to mine, and they foundhimunresponsive.
Falwell had survived two serious health scares in early 2005. He was hospitalized for two weeks with what was described as a viral infection, then was hospitalized again a few weeks later after going into respiratory arrest. Later that year, doctors found a 70 percent blockage in an artery, which they opened with stents. Falwell credited his Moral Majority with getting millions of conservative voters
registered, electing Ronald Reagan and giving Republicans Senate control in 1980.I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved, Falwell said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987.The fundamentalist church that Falwell started in an abandoned bottling plant in 1956 grew into a religious empire that includes the 22,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church, the Old Time Gospel Hour carried on television stations around the country and 7,700-student Liberty University. He built Christian elementary schools, homes for unwed mothers and a home for alcoholics.
He also founded Liberty University in Lynchburg, which began as Lynchburg Baptist College in 1971.Liberty University's commencement is scheduled for Saturday, with former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich as the featured speaker.In 2006, Falwell marked the 50th anniversary of his church and spoke out on stem cell research, saying he sympathized with people with medical problems, but that any medical research must pass a three-part test: Is it ethically correct? Is it biblically correct? Is it morally correct?
Falwell had once opposed mixing preaching with politics, but he changed his view and in 1979, founded the Moral Majority. The political lobbying organization grew to 6.5 million members and raised $69 million as it supported conservative politicians and campaigned against abortion, homosexuality, pornography and bans on school prayer. Falwell became the face of the religious right, appearing on national magazine covers and on television talk shows. In 1983, U.S. News & World Report named him one of 25 most influential people in America.In 1984, he sued Hustler magazine for $45 million, charging that he was libeled by an ad parody depicting him as an incestuous drunkard. A federal jury found the fake ad did not libel him, but awarded him $200,000 for emotional distress. That verdict was overturned, however, in a landmark 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held that even pornographic spoofs about a public figure enjoy First Amendment protection.
The case was depicted in the 1996 movie The People v. Larry Flynt.
With Falwell's high profile came frequent criticism, even from fellow ministers. The Rev. Billy Graham once rebuked him for political sermonizing on non-moral issues. Falwell quit the Moral Majority in 1987, saying he was tired of being a lightning rod and wanted to devote his time to his ministry and Liberty University. But he remained outspoken and continued to draw criticism for his remarks.
Falwell was re-energized after moral values issues proved important in the 2004 presidential election. He formed the Faith and Values Coalition as the 21st Century resurrection of the Moral Majority, to seek anti-abortion judges, a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and more conservative elected officials.The big, blue-eyed preacher with a booming voice started his independent Baptist church with 35 members. From his living room, he began broadcasting his message of salvation and raising the donations that helped his ministry grow.He was one of the first to come up with ways to use television to expand his ministry, said Robert Alley, a retired University of Richmond religion professor who studied and criticized Falwell's career.American Family News Network.
EU wants credibility of World Bank reinstated Tue May 15, 11:27 AM ET
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union wants the World Bank's board to take a quick decision on whether President Paul Wolfowitz should step down to restore the global lender's credibility, Germany's Development minister said on Tuesday. We need a rapid decision from the board, German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said after EU development ministers discussed the issue at a regular meeting.All of us development ministers want the integrity and the credibility of the Bank to be maintained and reinstated, she told a news conference. We need a strong Bank, a strong president.Wieczorek-Zeul told Wolfowitz at the bank's spring meeting that he should step down voluntarily. She said on Tuesday that she maintained her position.
But EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana appeared to question whether the furor over Wolfowitz's career help for his girlfriend when she was an employee of the bank was harming the institution.I don't think that an institution as established as the World Bank is going to suffer for some debate about an issue that relates to the presidency of the institution, he said.
The White House acknowledged on Tuesday that Wolfowitz erred in the handling of a pay raise and promotion for his companion but said that was not cause for him to be removed from his job.We've made clear that we support Paul Wolfowitz. Furthermore, he has said -- and we agree -- that certainly a lot of mistakes were made in the personnel process. But it's not a firing offense," White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters.The bank's board was to meet on Tuesday to consider a report by the a panel that Wolfowitz violated ethics rules and that his involvement represented a conflict of interest. The former U.S. deputy defense secretary has rejected the criticism.
EU states forge defence links on military research
15.05.2007 - 09:27 CET | By Lucia Kubosova
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU defence ministers have taken a step towards joint planning on defence expenditure and pooling resources to invest in technologies and military materials.
The initiative has been conducted by member states rather than the European Commission with national governments keen to protect their sovereignty in the area. At a meeting in Brussels on Monday (14 May), the bloc's defence chiefs agreed on a strategy for the future development of Europe's defence industry, pledging more mutual cooperation in both research and production.Nineteen EU member states plus Norway also signed up to a joint investment scheme aimed to pool resources for developing battlefield protection technologies, such as defences against mortar attacks or chemical, biological and radiological weapons.
Defence is a sensitive sector outside the EU's internal market rules, with some critics suggesting the status quo leads to Europe wasting millions of euros a year on duplication and protectionism.While the commission is currently contemplating possible ways of introducing more competition in the area through common EU legislation, member states also take initiatives at intergovernmental level, through
the European Defence Agency (EDA) which stands outside the community institutions. Under a non-binding code of conduct launched by the EDA last year, participating countries have committed to posting tenders for defence contracts on an electronic bulletin board open to companies from across the EU, with tenders worth almost €10 billion currently posted, according to the defence agency. At the moment, 23 out of 27 of the EU's member states have signed up to the code of conduct, with Spain, Denmark, Romania and Bulgaria remaining outside the system.
Non-binding or binding rules?
The strategy defence ministers agreed on Monday argues that member states must take urgent action to stop a decline in Europe's defence technological and industrial base by opening up protected national defence markets. Echoing the statements by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana ahead of the meeting, ministers admitted that the current approach with separate national spending on R&D and procurements in member states strictly opened just to national producers is no longer economically sustainable.They singled out the US as a key competitor against which Europe has been performing poorly, suggesting they should work more efficiently and cooperate more in order to improve standards.We recognise that the problem of accessing the US defence market and of establishing balanced technology exchange across the Atlantic, make it natural and necessary for Europeans to cooperate more closely, writes the agreed document. The European Parliament's security and defence subcommittee expressed similar feelings in a special report on the issue published last year, arguing that although EU governments spend €250 billion on defence which is half the amount Americans do, their defence capacities are only about 10 percent as efficient as the US.
The study pointed out that there are 23 parallel programmes for armoured vehicles, three new parallel programmes for combat aircraft and 89 European weapons programmes while the US, by contrast, has 27 programmes.But while the defence ministers acknowledge the same problems as the EU's executive and parliamentarians in their new strategy, they remain reluctant to give any extra powers to Brussels in this area.
CARMEL COMMENT EXTRA: AMERICA IS IN DIRE & IMMINENT DANGER MAY 15,07
It takes a serious situation to cause me to send out a mid week Carmel Alert. Two weeks ago, the Carmel Comment was entitled Israel Is In Dire & Immenent Danger. Israel's threat is from our demonically inspired Islamic neighbours. The title of this comment is inspired by several news items I have received this week concerning the USA. Unlike the threat to Israel that is external, the USA's problem is internal - America Is In Dire & Imminent Danger ..... from herself. The purpose of this email is not to bash President Bush or America, but to stir up Christians in the USA and the other nations to pray and fast for the United States. What ever happens in the USA will affect the rest of the World. I believe that the USA has a mandate from YHVH to stand with Israel and for the Bible and I want to see America rise up and fulfill this calling for her own sake and for the sake of the Kingdom
of God.
The root of the problem lies in three main areas - Israel, the Muslims, and this idiotic Political Correctness, particularly when it comes to the homosexual lobby. In addition I just saw a report on the 700 Club that in several US universities it is illegal to speak against Evolution. What ever happened to freedom of speech ?
The following news items should concern all of us, because sooner or later they WILL concern ALL of us.
PLEASE READ, DIGEST, WATCH, & PRAY ..............
JERUSALEM
1 King 11:36 ...... my servant David may always have a lamp before Me in Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen for Myself, to put My name there. (NKJ)
Ps 137:5-6 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill! If I do not remember you, let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth-- if I do not exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy. (NKJ)
Zechariah 12:3 And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it. (NKJ)
Jerusalem Day Being Boycotted by George Bush. The Golden Report 5-14-07
Jerusalem Day is this Wednesday; It is our 40th celebration of victory over the Jordanians who occupied Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem including the Old City of Jerusalem from 1948 until 1967. For those 19 years Jews were not allowed in the Old City of Jerusalem, or to their Holiest sites the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. The Jordanians destroyed every Synagogue in the Old City turned most of them into toilets, and made it almost impossible for Christians to visit their Holy Sites.
By a miracle of God a small newly formed IDF in an act of self defense was able to defeat Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria in what is now known as the 6-day war.
We took back our Holy City of Jerusalem and cleaned it up, we didn’t run the Arabs out, instead we allowed them to live in the Old City and only took our precious Jewish Quarters back and rebuilt it and our Synagogues, in doing this we didn’t destroy their mosques instead we helped them rebuild them as well, Christians were now allowed to come and go freely to their Holy Sites.
Years ago the United States agreed that Jerusalem was the Capital of Israel and said they would move their Embassy from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem. When Bush took office he said he would move the US Embassy to Jerusalem. But today George Bush says that the United States will not take part in the Jerusalem Day Celebrations and they are joining the EU in their boycott of Jerusalem being the Jewish Capital because Bush says we are occupying East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. It becomes easier every day to see that his intention is too destroy the Jewish State in favor of his Saudi friends, what I can’t understand is why so many Christians in the US can’t now see what this man really is.
Many are calling me a Bush basher, I think I am a truth teller, I have only been reporting to you what Bush is doing that you may not hear on US TV.
David's Note: This is very serious - To oppose Jerusalem as the eternal, undivided capital of Israel is to oppose God Himself. He has warned us in Joel 3 that He will judge the nations on account of how they behave towards Israel.
What An Israeli American Says - Will America Recognize G-d? by Gary Cooperburg - Hevron MAY 15,07
Christian Zionists seem to know, more than most other people, that Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish State. I am sure that American Christian supporters of the Jewish State are outraged that the US ambassador to Israel, Richard Jones, will not participate in tomorrows Jerusalem Day ceremony at the Knesset. I would also assume that most Americans must be quite frustrated at the fact that even though the American legislature passed a law authorizing the moving of the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and nearly every President has pledged to fulfill this law, to this date no progress has been made in fulfilling it.
No country in the world has the right to dictate to any legitimate nation where its capital should or shouldnt be. The PLO is not a nation. It has no legitimate claim on any part of the Land of Israel. Anyone who has read the Bible knows that Jerusalem has always been the capital of the Jewish nation.
No other nation has ever held sovereignty over this nation or this city. How dare any world leader, especially the President of the United States, refuse to recognize the only city in the world whose identity can never be denied as being the legitimate capital of the Jewish State?
Today all nations are being judged by our Creator by how they relate to His People in His Land. In spite of our feeble and foolish leaders, our nation is under the protection of our Creator and simply cannot be destroyed even by the most powerful nations in the world. We suffer from terror in this country only because our leaders refuse to recognize their obligations as Jews. We have no right to negotiate one grain of sand on the Gaza beach. It is our obligation to develop and build all of our homeland and to inhabit it with our people.
As an Israeli, I couldnt care less if Richard Jones refuses to attend our ceremonies. But as an American I am outraged that the leadership of the USA would place that nation in danger by snubbing the nation of G-d. This too will bring Divine Wrath upon America. If the American People want to continue to have a country in which they can be proud to be Americans, they must find a leadership which will return that country to the respect for our Creator that its founding fathers once had.
TWO STATE SOLUTION
The US State Department under the authority of President Bush and Condalesa Rice are forcing the Israelis and the so called Palestinians to conform to the US plan for the creation of a Palestinian State, not side by side, but inside the Jewish State, on the land that God promised to Abraham and his descendants ( thru Issac not Ishmael ). The US has informed both sides that their plan and timing is not negotiable. Who do they think they are ? Both Bush and Rice claim to be Christians I wonder what Bible they read ! Not the same one I read that is for sure !
At the same time that the USA was once again pushing Israel to give away her covenant land, and at the same time the Anti Hate law that also flies against the Word of God in condoning and protecting idolaters, adulterers, abortionists ( murderers ) and sodomites, raging fires destroyed large parts of Florida and California, and raging floodwaters destroyed towns in other parts of the USA.One has to ask IS GOD TALKING TO THE USA ? & IS ANYBODY LISTENING ?
THE MUSLIMS
Radical Muslim Paramilitary Compound Flourishes in Upper New York State
By Paul L. Williams Ph.D., (author of THE DAY OF ISLAM) Friday, May 11, 2007
http://www.canadafreepress.com
Situated within a dense forest at the foothills of the Catskill Mountains on the outskirts of Hancock, New York, Islamberg is not an ideal place for a summer vacation unless, of course, you are an exponent of the Jihad or a fan of Osama bin Laden. The 70 acre complex is surrounded with No trespassing signs; the rocky terrain is infested with rattlesnakes; and the woods are home to black bears, coyotes, wolves, and a few bobcats. The entrance to the community is at the bottom of a very steep hill that is difficult to navigate even on a bright sunny day in May. The road, dubbed Muslim Lane, is unpaved and marred by deep crevices that have been created by torrential downpours. On a wintry day, few, save those with all terrain vehicles, could venture forth from the remote encampment.
A sentry post has been established at the base of the hill.
The sentry, at the time of this visit, is an African American dressed in Islamic garb a skull cap, a prayer shawl, and a loose fitting shalwat kameez. He instructs us to turn around and leave. Our community is not open to visitors, he says. Behind the sentry and across a small stream stand dozens of inhabitants of the compound the men wearing skull caps and loose fitting tunics, the women in full burqa. They appear ready to deal with any unauthorized intruders. The hillside is blighted by
rusty trailers that appear to be without power or running water and a number of outhouses. The scent of raw sewage is in the air.
The place is even off limits to the local undertaker who says that he has delivered bodies to the complex but has never been granted entrance. They come and take the bodies from my hearse. They won't allow me to get past the sentry post. They say that they want to prepare the bodies for burial.
But I never get the bodies back. I don't know what's going on there but I don't think it's legal. It is home to hundreds all in Islamic attire, and all African-Americans. Most drive late model SUVs with license plates from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The locals say that some work as tollbooth operators for the New York State Thruway, while others are employed at a credit card processing center that maintains confidential financial records.
Islamberg is not as benign as a Buddhist monastery or a Carmelite convent. Nearly every weekend, neighbors hear sounds of gunfire. Some, including a combat veteran of the Vietnam War, have heard the bang of small explosives. None of the neighbors wished to be identified for fear of retaliation. We don't even dare to slow down when we drive by, one resident said. They own the mountain and they know it and there is nothing we can do about it but move, and we can't even do that. Who wants to buy a property near that? Islamberg's Grocery Store The complex serves to scare the bejeesus out of the local residents. If you go there, you better wear body armor, a customer at the Circle E Diner in Hancock said. They have armed guards and if they shoot you, nobody will find your body. At Cousins, a watering hole in nearby Deposit, a barfly, who didn't wish to be identified, said: The place is dangerous. You can hear gunfire up there. I can't understand why the FBI won't shut it down.
Islamberg is a branch of Muslims of the Americas Inc., a tax-exempt organization formed in 1980 by Pakistani cleric Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, who refers to himself as the sixth Sultan Ul Faqr, Gilani, has been directly linked by court documents to Jamaat ul-Fuqra or ommunity of the impoverished, an organization that seeks to purify Islam through violence. Though primarily based in Lahore, Pakistan, Jamaat ul-Fuqra has operational headquarters in New York and openly recruits through various social service organizations in the U.S., including the prison system. Members live in hamaats or compounds, such as Islamberg, where they agree to abide by the laws of Jamaat ul-Fuqra, which are considered to be above local, state and federal authority. Additional hamaats have been established in Hyattsville, Maryland; Red House, Virginia; Falls Church, Virginia; Macon, Georgia; York, South Carolina; Dover, Tennessee; Buena Vista, Colorado; Talihina, Oklahoma; Tulane Country, California; Commerce, California; and Onalaska, Washington. Others are being built, including an expansive facility in Sherman, Pennsylvania.
Before becoming a citizen of Islamberg or any of the other Fuqra compounds, the recruits primarily inner city black men who became converts in prison are compelled to sign an oath that reads: I shall always hear and obey, and whenever given the command, I shall readily fight for Allah's sake. In the past, thousands of members of the U.S. branches of Jamaat ul-Fuqra traveled to Pakistan for paramilitary training, but encampments, such as Islamberg, are now capable of providing boot-camp training so raw recruits are no longer required to travel abroad amidst the increased scrutiny of post 9/11.
Over the years, numerous members of Jamaat ul-Fuqra have been convicted in US courts of such crimes as conspiracy to commit murder, firebombing, gun smuggling, and workers' compensation fraud.
Others remain leading suspects in criminal cases throughout the country, including ten unsolved assassinations and seventeen fire-bombings between 1979 and 1990. The criminal charges against the group and the criminal convictions are not things of the past. In 2001, a resident of a California compound was charged with first-degree murder in the shooting of a sheriff's deputy; another was charged with gun-smuggling' and twenty-four members of the Red House community were convicted of firearms violations.
Even though Jamaat ul-Fuqra has been involved in terror attacks and sundry criminal activities, recruited thousands of members from federal and state penal systems, and appears to be operating paramilitary facilities for militant Muslims, it remains to be placed on the official US Terror Watch List. On the contrary, it continues to operate, flourish, and expand as a legitimate nonprofit, tax-deductible charity
David's Note: Why does President Bush wage the War on Terror thousands of miles away in Iraq, but does nothing about an obvious Islamid terror facility on his doorstep ?
HOMOSEXUALS & the THOUGHT POLICE
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING BIBLE VERSES ARE NOW CLASSED AS HATE LITERATURE AND ARE OUTLAWED IN MANY WESTERN NATIONS - BEWARE THE THOUGHT POLICE MAY BE MONITORING YOU RIGHT NOW !!!
Lev 18:21-22 I am the LORD. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. (NKJ)
Rom 1:24-27 Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. (AIDS)(NKJ)
Will Bush Veto Thought Police'? World Net Daily
Opponents say hate crimes plan would destroy American freedoms
The nation's largest public policy women's group is asking President Bush to commit to a veto of a hate crimes plan that, as WND has reported, opponents fear would target Christians and be used to demolish both freedom of speech and religion in the United States. Last week the House Judiciary Committee, egged on by radical homosexual groups, passed what can only be called a Thought Crimes bill, said former White House insider Chuck Colson in his Breakpoint commentary. It's called the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act. But this bill is not about hate. It's not even about crime. It's about outlawing peaceful speech – speech that asserts that homosexual behavior is morally wrong.
The call for the veto promise came from leaders at Concerned Women for America, who said they have written to the president with their request, because Congress is poised to approve H.R. 1592 as early as today.
This bill would grant individuals who engaged in homosexual behavior (sexual orientation) or those who cross-dress (gender identity) preferential treatment over other citizens by elevating them to a specially protected class of victim, the organization said. The 14th Amendment guarantees all citizens equal protection under the law, regardless of their chosen sexual behaviors.
There is no evidence to suggest that homosexuals or cross-dresser do not receive equal protection under the law, the CWFA said.
Victims are – and should be – treated equally in the justice system, regardless of their sexual orientation. This hate crimes bill would overturn this balance, creating second-class victims and a federal justice system that discriminates against grandmothers, children, women and men simply because they are heterosexual, said CWFA President Wendy Wright. We cannot imagine that President Bush would sign a bill that would create a two-tiered justice system that discriminates against grandmothers, she said.
Some say we need this law to prevent attacks on homosexuals. But we already have laws against assaults on people and property, Colson continued. Moreover, according to the FBI, crimes against homosexuals in the United States have dropped dramatically in recent years. In 2005, out of 863,000 cases of aggravated assault, just 177 cases were crimes of bias against homosexuals…He noted, that in other locations, such as England, Sweden, Canada, and even Philadelphia, where similar laws have been approved, the Thought Police already have prosecuted Christians. In Philadelphia, a grandmother was hauled to jail and threatened with 47 years in prison for proclaiming her Christianity on a public street. One Philadelphia woman, Arlene Elshinnawy, 75, and grandmother of three, was holding a sign: Truth is hate to those who hate the truth, before she was hauled off by police officers.
If this dangerous law passes, pastors who preach sermons giving the biblical view of homosexuality could be prosecuted. Christian businessmen who refuse to print pro-gay literature could be prosecuted. Groups like Exodus International, which offer therapy to those with unwanted same-sex attraction, could be shut down, Colson warned. In classic 1984 fashion, peaceful speech will be redefined as a violent attack worthy of punishment. He said that's known because during debate over the plan, U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., offered an amendment to assure that the law would not be used to limit the religious freedom of any person or group, and majority Democrats on the committee refused it.
It also refused to adopt amendments protecting other groups from hate crimes – like members of the military, who are often targets of verbal attacks and spitting. They also shot down amendments that would protect the homeless and senior citizens … Nothing doing, the committee said – the only group they wanted to protect: homosexuals.
Clearly, the intent of this law is not to prevent crime, but to shut down freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of thought, he said. Matt Barber, CWA's policy director for cultural issues, said such narrow focus by Democrats makes clear the exclusionary and discriminatory nature of this bill. The concerns also were echoed by Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth. This is really about getting the heavy hand of the federal government in promoting homosexuality as a civil right, he said.
Observers at the committee debate over the bill noted that nowhere in the bill are the terms sexual orientation or gender identity defined, but Democrats declined to even include that in the proposal.
Rev. Ted Pike, of The National Prayer Network, said reality needs to be faced. Not only do pro -hate bill Democrats have 34 more votes than the Republicans, but at least several dozen Republicans are probably committed to vote for the hate bill. This means that in order to even have a tie in the House more than 55 members would have to cancel their pledge to vote for the hate bill. Not a good possibility, he said.
However, the Senate is different. The pro-hate bill forces may have as many as 65 votes, more than the 60 necessary to win. This includes about 14 Republicans; but if six Republicans are dissuaded from supporting the hate bill, [the plan] will not pass. The federal hate bill would be destroyed, at least for this session of Congress, he said. Glen Lavy, of the Alliance Defense Fund, earlier wrote to Congress warning the plan would criminalize thoughts and beliefs. This is a terrible thing, to criminalize thought or emotion or even speech, Lavy told WND. And Bishop Harry Jackson, chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition, said the plan, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Protection Act of 2007, is no more than a surreptitious attempt by some in Congress to strip the nation of religious freedom and the ability to preach the gospel from our church pulpits. It will stamp all over our doctrine and practice of our faith, he said. We believe what the Bible says. If you start there we've got a major problem.
WND columnist Janet Folge r earlier warned in a commentary called Pastors: Act now or prepare for jail, that in New Hampshire, a crime that typically carries a sentence of 3 1/2 years was enhanced to 30 years because a robber shouted an anti-homosexual name at his victim. Folger's organization, Faith2Action, is the group that was launched the ads about Philadelphia grandmothers who were thrown in jail in Pennsylvania under that state's hate crimes law.
The proposal is by U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the head of the House Judiciary Committee. Pike said technically, the proposal would make it federally indictable to…attempt to…intimidate' a homosexual from believing that he (even if he has AIDS or hepatitis) has the right to work in a restaurant, be employed as a police officer or summer camp counselor, or has equal rights to housing and employment anywhere he wishes. A pastor, Christian broadcaster or publisher who verbally attempts to intimidate homosexuals by describing homosexuality as an abomination (Lev. 18:22) are thus high-profile targets for indictment under this legislation, he said.
AMERICA IS IN DIRE & IMMINENT DANGER - PRAY ! PRAY ! PRAY !
The Lord bless you as you bless Israel by standing in defense of her right to exist on the land given to the Jewish people by the God of Israel . Do not be silent, but share this to your fellow Christians, share it with your pastors and with anyone you have a chance to speak to. Lets also pray for that breakthrough to the Muslims, and please remember to pray for our son Jordan, and all of his fellow soldiers in the IDF.
Shalom .. . David & Josie
CANADIAN REPRESENTATIVE: Peter Robertson ph 250 6490714 peterrobertson@shaw.ca
Please make your checks payable to Out of Zion Canada and mail to Out of Zion Canada Box 2199, MacKenzie, BC, V0J 2CO
David & Josie Silver - Out of Zion Ministries - Mt Carmel Israel
www.out-of-zion.com
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
5 SIGNS OF MAHDI'S RETURN
2ND CORINTHIANS 5:6-8 JERRY INSTANTLY WAS TAKEN BY ANGELS TO GOD AT DEATH
6 Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord:
7 (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)
8 We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.
BREAKING NEWS
PRAY FOR JERRY FALDWELL HE WAS FOUND UNCONCIOUS IN HIS OFFICE IN LINCHBERG VIRGINIA.
HES IN GRAVE CONDITION REPORTS.
JERRY FALWELL HAS DIED. ITS 1:30 IN THE AFTERNOON. 73 YEAR OLD JERRY HAS DIED. A SAD DAY IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY JERRY WAS A MORAL LEADER.
SIGNS OF THE END OF THE AGE (NOT THE WORLD) THE WORLD GOES ON FOREVER.
GENESIS 1:5,14
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:(ISRAELS HOLY DAYS AND SABBATH STARTS AT 6PM) And for SIGNS (PROPHECY SIGNS TO HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE, OUR DAY)
REBUILT 3RD TEMPLE
REVELATION 11:1-2
1 And there was given me a reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein.
2 But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.
DANIEL 9:27
27 And he( THE 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.
ISRAEL WILL BE IN CONTROL OF JERUSALEM, THE SIGN OF THE START OF THE LAST GENERATION.
LUKE 21:24
24 And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.
PSALMS 122:2-9
2 Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem.
3 Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together:
4 Whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the LORD.
5 For there are set thrones of judgment, the thrones of the house of David.
6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.
7 Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.
8 For my brethren and companions’ sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee.
9 Because of the house of the LORD our God I will seek thy good.
PSALMS 137:5-7
5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
6 If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
7 Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom (Jordon) in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.
AT 6:00 PM ISRAEL CELEBRATES JERUSALEM DAY. THE DAY GOD GAVE JERUSALEM FOREVER TO ISRAEL AND SOON TO BE THE WORLD CAPITAL.
THERE ARE 2 ELECTS THE CHURCH AND ISRAEL.
ISRAEL ON EARTH DURING TRIBULATION 7 YR PEACE TREATY
ISAIAH 42:1
1 Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, (Israel) in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.
ISAIAH 45:4
4 For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me.
ISAIAH 65:9,22
9 And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an inheritor of my mountains: and mine elect (Israel) shall inherit it, and my servants shall dwell there.
22 They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat: for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
ROMANS 11:28
28 As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, (Israel) they are beloved for the fathers' sakes.
THE CHURCH ELECT
1 PETER 1:2
1:2 Elect (Christians) according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.
1-WORLD QUAKES LAST 2 DAYS.2-Thousands of youngsters evacuated from moorland amid flood fears. 3-The Nation's Weather. 4-Hamas kills 8 at Gaza border crossing. 5-Jordan's king set to meet Olmert. 6-Anti-Semitism on rise in parts of Europe: study. 7-Muslim Religious Ban on Leaving Israel. 8-Artifacts From Time of Kings David and Solomon Revealed. 9-Five signs of the Mahdi's return?
EARTHQUAKES
MATTHEW 24:7-8
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.
MARK 13:8
8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:(ETHNIC GROUP AGAINST ETHNIC GROUP) and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.
LUKE 21:11
11 And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.
WORLD QUAKES LAST 2 DAYS (USGS)
Update time = Tue May 15 11:00 AM EDT
MAY 15,07
MAP 2.8 SOUTHERN ALASKA
MAP 2.7 GULF OF ALASKA
MAP 5.0 SOLOMON ISLANDS
MAP 4.8 BONIN ISLANDS, JAPAN REGION
MAP 5.3 KURIL ISLANDS
MAP 2.9 ANDREANOF ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN IS., ALASKA
MAP 4.6 NEAR THE COAST OF NICARAGUA
MAP 3.6 SOUTHERN ALASKA
MAP 2.7 FOX ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 5.2 PACIFIC-ANTARCTIC RIDGE
MAP 3.1 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAY 14,07
MAP 2.8 SOUTHERN ALASKA
MAP 2.7 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 2.8 CENTRAL ALASKA
MAP 2.8 ALASKA PENINSULA
MAP 2.7 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
MAP 2.6 ANDREANOF ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN IS., ALASKA
MAP 2.7 KENAI PENINSULA, ALASKA
MAP 4.9 IZU ISLANDS, JAPAN REGION
MAP 2.5 CENTRAL CALIFORNIA
MAP 5.5 NIAS REGION, INDONESIA
MAP 5.0 PHILIPPINE ISLANDS REGION
MAP 2.5 VERMONT
MAP 3.1 BERING SEA
MAP 5.2 MOLUCCA SEA
MAP 2.6 SOUTHEASTERN MISSOURI
MAP 2.7 SOUTHEASTERN MISSOURI
MAP 3.1 ALASKA PENINSULA
MAP 4.7 SOUTH OF THE FIJI ISLANDS
MAP 2.9 CENTRAL ALASKA
MAP 2.5 SOUTHERN ALASKA
STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES
LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.
Thousands of youngsters evacuated from moorland amid flood fears Sun May 13, 7:11 AM ET
LONDON (AFP) - The army said it was evacuating thousands of youngsters, many of them by helicopter, from moorland in southwest England on Sunday after their annual trek was called off due to concerns about rain-swollen rivers. Some are friends of Charlotte Shaw, a 14-year-old girl who died after falling into a swollen stream on March 4 during training for the two-day, army organised expedition on Dartmoor which involves 2,400 youngsters nationwide.Four hundred teams, each with six members, began long treks Saturday over rugged terrain, but the army, citing deteriorating weather conditions and a high dropout rate of 15 percent, called off the event late Saturday.The weather forecast indicates that the rivers, which are already at their peak, will become increasingly swollen, it said in a statement.Around 200 youngsters have already been evacuated from the moor by two Royal Navy Sea King helicopters, with the rest waiting in their tents or walking back, the army said.
The helicopters carrying the teams were arriving back into Okehampton battle camp at regular intervals from 6 am (0500 GMT) Sunday and all the youngsters were expected to have left the moor by mid-afternoon.Army spokesman David Hamilton said more than 700 personnel, including military and the Dartmoor Rescue Group, were involved in the weekend's activities and the recovery of the teams.Jenna Drew, 17, was on a team completing a 55-mile (88-kilometre) route, the longest of three possible treks, when she was airlifted back to camp early Sunday.I'm really, really devastated. We really wanted to finish. I think we could have done it if we had been allowed to go on. Obviously the safety of everyone is their main priority, Drew said.The annual treks began in 1959 after several officers in the army, which has used Dartmoor for training for years, decided it would be a good challenge for young civilians.
The Nation's Weather By WEATHER UNDERGROUND, For The Associated Press
Tue May 15, 5:59 AM ET
A balmy day dawned over the Northeast and Southwest early Tuesday, while storms stalked the Great Lakes, Rockies and Mississippi Valley. A stormy system was expected to push through the Great Lakes toward the Northeast, with a cold front sweeping across the Plains, Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee valleys.Apart from the rain, cooler air was expected to spread across the Midwest. The stormy weather should move to the East Coast and Gulf States on Wednesday.Low pressure was to remain in the Gulf of Mexico, keeping scattered showers and thunderstorms over southern Florida.
Out West, mostly sunny skies with seasonal temperatures was expected. The California coast was to be cool and clear, while the Desert Southwest was to remain hot and dry.Temperatures in the Lower 48 states on Monday ranged from a low of 22 degrees at Stanley, Idaho, to a high of 109 degrees at Death Valley, Calif.
EUROPEAN UNION ARMY
DANIEL 7:23-25
23 Thus he said, The fourth beast (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.(TRADING BLOCKS)
24 And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings(10 NATIONS) that shall arise: 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 NATIONS)
25 And he (EU PRESIDENT) shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.(3 1/2 YRS)
DANIEL 8:23-25
23 And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king (EU DICTATOR) of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences,(FROM THE OCCULT) shall stand up.
24 And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power:(SATANS POWER) and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people.
25 And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes;(JESUS) but he shall be broken without hand.
DANIEL 11:36-39
36 And the king (EU DICTATOR) shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be done.
37 Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers,(THIS EU DICTATOR IS JEWISH) nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all.(CLAIM TO BE GOD)
38 But in his estate shall he honour the God of forces:(WAR) and a god whom his fathers knew not shall he honour with gold, and silver, and with precious stones, and pleasant things.
39 Thus shall he do in the most strong holds with a strange god,(DESTROY TERROR GROUPS)whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory: and he shall cause them to rule over many,(HIS ARMY LEADERS) and shall divide the land for gain.
REVELATION 19:19
19 And I saw the beast,(EU LEADER) and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse,(JESUS) and against his army.(THE RAPTURED CHRISTIANS)
CIVIL WAR BREAKING OUT IN GAZA NOW, WATCH FOR THE EU TO BRING IN THEIR RAPID REACTION TEAM AT SOME POINT TO GUARENTEE THE PEACE OF ISRAEL AND THE ARABS.
Hamas kills 8 at Gaza border crossing By IBRAHIM BARZAK, AP MAY 15,07
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Hamas gunmen on Tuesday ambushed rival Fatah forces near a key crossing along the Israeli border, killing eight people in the deadliest battle yet in three days of factional fighting. The incident briefly drew Israeli gunfire, threatening to drag Israel into the conflict at a time when its prime minister said his country was ready to discuss an Arab initiative that offers peace for land.At least 20 people, including 11 total on Tuesday, have died in the fighting, bringing life in Gaza to a standstill and pushing the fragile Palestinian unity government closer to collapse. Hamas and Fatah formed the union to end months of violence. Tuesday's fighting began when Hamas gunmen approached a training base used by Fatah forces that guard the crossing, officials said.
The base was set up in part by a U.S. security team sent to train Palestinians on how to check cargo and bags at crossings.
The Islamic militant Hamas force attacked the base with rockets, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, said Ahmed al-Kaisi, spokesman for the pro-Fatah Presidential Guard: We consider this a serious provocation and a crime committed in cold blood.When another Fatah security unit arrived to provide backup, they were ambushed by Hamas gunmen, witnesses said.A jeep full of security men that came under fire veered off the road and crashed. Hamas forces then riddled it with gunfire, said one witness, who gave only his first name, Jamil, out of fear for his safety.Hospital and security officials said eight men were killed in the ambush.As the fighting raged, Israeli troops opened fire at two gunmen who approached the border, the army said. Palestinian officials said one man was killed.
He was identified as a member of the Presidential Guard, who apparently was trying to help his comrades.Witnesses also said three Israeli tanks approached Karni, and the Hamas force quickly withdrew. Israel also closed the crossing, which is the passage for cargo going in and out of Gaza.Hours after the Karni incident, another security officer loyal to Fatah was killed in a clash with Hamas gunmen in Gaza City, Fatah officials said. Another man was killed in a separate fight, but it was not immediately known to which side he belonged.Israel has remained silent throughout the latest Palestinian infighting, but the border incident illustrated how fragile the situation is. Israel has been debating whether to take large-scale military action in Gaza in response to repeated rocket fire aimed at southern Israel.In Jordan, King Abdullah ll held high-level talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert aimed at breathing life into an Arab peace initiative that offers Israel recognition in return for land.
Olmert said his country was ready to discuss the initiative, but Abdullah told him that Israel first had to take concrete steps to improve relations with the Palestinians, and urged him to set a firm timetable for doing that, said Amjad Adayleh, information director at Jordan's royal palace.
The plan would give Israel full recognition in exchange for a total withdrawal from lands it captured in the 1967 Middle East war and the creation of a Palestinian state. Israel has welcomed the plan as a good starting point for negotiations, but objects to several provisions.The Arab peace plan was first floated by Saudi Arabia in 2002 and renewed in March at a meeting of the Arab League. Arab leaders have urged Israel to seize the new opportunity.Abdullah also told the Israeli leader at their meeting in the seaside resort of Aqaba that he was worried about reports Israel is planning new settlements or to expand existing ones, Adayleh said, but Olmert called such reports baseless.Abdullah also urged Olmert to lift an economic blockade on Palestinians, making it easier for them to cross borders and immediately unfreeze all Palestinian money held by Israel. Adayleh said the meeting focused on the Arab land-for-recognition plan and Abdullah told Olmert that all the Arabs are committed to the peace initiative and they have a real intention for a comprehensive peace if Israel accepts that.Before the talks with Abdullah, Olmert told a conference in Petra, Jordan, of Nobel laureates and Israeli and Arab youth that Israel was ready to listen to Arab views.
We heard about the Arab peace initiative and we say come and present it to us. You want to talk to us about it, we are ready to sit down and talk about it carefully, he said. In the West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged the immediate implementation of a security plan to halt the internal fighting. We must do that ... without any reluctance or delay, to put an end to civil strife and the ghost of internal fighting, he said in a speech marking the anniversary of the uprooting of many Palestinians in the 1948 Mideast War fought over Israel's founding. The plan calls for rival security forces to operate under a joint command. A majority of the 80,000 security officers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are loyal to Abbas, while Hamas set up its own 6,000-member militia last year. Associated Press Writer Jamal Halaby contributed to this report in Petra, Jordan.
Jordan's king set to meet Olmert By JAMAL HALABY, Associated Press Writer
Tue May 15, 6:58 AM ET
PETRA, Jordan - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed his country's readiness Tuesday to discuss an Arab peace initiative and find ways to implement such a plan. Olmert said after arriving for talks with Jordan's King Abdullah II that Israel was ready to sit down and talk about it carefully and was willing to listen to Arab views.We heard about the Arab peace initiative and we say come and present it to us. You want to talk to us about it, we are ready to sit down and talk about it carefully, he told a conference in this ancient city.Describing the plan as very interesting, Olmert said we are ready to cooperate to find the appropriate manner to implement. If the Arab countries want to present their peace initiative, we will be more than happy to sit down and listen carefully.Olmert invited the 22 leaders of the Arab nations that are ready to make that kind of peace with Israel, to come to Israel, where ever they want and to sit down with us and start talk and present their ideas.
He added that if they were willing to invite him somewhere for talks, then I'm ready to come.Olmert arrived in Petra for a rare high-level meeting with Abdullah on the sidelines of a conference involving Nobel Laureates and Israeli and Arab youth on ways to solve conflicts in the Mideast.We are ready to come and to invite Arab leaders without preconditions from us or their side, Olmert said.The Petra meetings came as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called for immediate implementation of the government's security plan to halt lawlessness and internal fighting.Earlier, Hamas gunmen attacked rival Fatah forces at a key crossing along the Israeli border, killing seven people and drawing fire from nearby Israeli troops.
Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, urged rival Palestinian factions on Tuesday to end the chaos that threatens to unravel the Palestinian unity government. Ahead of the meeting, however, the Palestinians indicated it would take time to set up a meeting between Olmert and Abbas.I think it will take time before they meet again. The Israelis are not ready. All we've been told it that they are willing to prepare for the next meeting, Palestinian Authority spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeneh said.Jordan, along with Egypt, were the first Arab countries to make peace with Israel and are charged with promoting the Arab-initiated peace deal to the Jewish State, which has welcomed it as a good starting point but objects to several key provisions.The peace process is frozen, but what we are looking for is seeing a real serious step from the Israeli side to sit at the table to negotiate what the roads map and the Arab peace initiative are calling for, Rdeneh added.Ahead of Olmert's meeting with Abdullah, his spokeswoman Miri Eisin said the two leaders planned to break away from the conference and travel to the king's palace in the southern Jordanian resort of Aqaba for their talks.
Abdullah regards the Arab peace plan as a historic chance and will make it the focus of his talks with Olmert.The Arab peace plan offers Israel full recognition in exchange for a full withdrawal from lands it captured in the 1967 Mideast war and the creation of a Palestinian state. Israel has welcomed the plan as a good starting point for negotiations but has objected to several key provisions. The Arab peace plan was proposed in 2002 and renewed in March at a meeting of the Arab League in Saudi Arabia. Arab leaders have urged Israel to seize the new opportunity.
While saying it has positive elements, Israel has objected to major provisions of the plan, including the call to evacuate all captured lands and to repatriate millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants. Israel says such a large influx of Palestinians would destroy Israel's character as a Jewish state. Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed in 2000 after the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising
against Israel. Subsequent efforts to restart peace talks, including the 2003 U.S.-backed road map peace plan and a recent U.S. push to bring the sides back to the negotiating table, have made little progress.
Progress on Arab-Israeli peace could be a welcome boost for Olmert who has been under increasing criticism back home after a scathing government commission report on his performance during Israel's summer war with Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrilla. There have been widespread calls for him to resign. The conference in Petra, a city carved into rose-red stone and built by the Nabataean culture some 2,000 years ago, is hosted jointly by the King Abdullah II Fund for Development and the New York-based Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. Four Israeli schoolchildren hand picked by their government will join Palestinian students and youth from Kuwait, Morocco, Jordan and Egypt.
No details were provided about the youth. Associated Press writers Amy Teibel and Dale Gavlak contributed to this report. On the Net: King Abdullah II Fund for Development: http://www.kafd.jo Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity: http://www.eliewieselfoundation.org Petra conference: http://www.petranobel.com
Anti-Semitism on rise in parts of Europe: study By Allyn Fisher-Ilan
Mon May 14, 9:01 AM ET
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An increasing number of Europeans believe that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to their home countries and have too much influence in world finance, a U.S. group monitoring anti-Semitism said on Monday. A large number of Europeans continue to be infected with anti-Jewish attitudes, holding on to classic anti-Semitic canards and conspiracy theories, Abraham Foxman, director of the Washington-based Anti-Defamation League, told reporters.These attitudes help legitimize anti-Semitism, including violence against Jews, and give us great concern, he said.
A survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League in France, Spain, German, Poland and Italy in March and April found that negative stereotypes about Jews had gained ground in these countries since 2005.The study measured responses to these statements: that Jews are more loyal to Israel than their country, that they have too much power in the business world and financial markets and that they talk too much about the Nazi Holocaust of World War Two.
In all countries studied, with the exception of Italy, the poll found an increase since a survey in 2005 in the percentage of Europeans who felt Jews held Israel above their own states.
In Poland and Spain, about 60 percent of those surveyed expressed that sentiment, up from about 50 percent two years ago. In Germany the figure was 51 percent, with 48 percent in Italy and 39 percent in France.Foxman called the dual loyalty allegation a classical canard of anti-Semitism and a tenet of Hitler's ideology that Jews had sold out Germany for their own interests.One in four of the some 2,700 people surveyed said their attitudes toward Jews are colored by events in the Middle East, Foxman added.
Of these, 52 percent said they held a lower opinion of Jews as a result.Foxman pointed to what he called an emergence of a significant relationship between anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiments or criticism. But he said it was too soon to draw any direct parallels from the survey.The study did not tabulate incidents of anti-Semitic violence in Europe. Tel Aviv University in Israel said in findings
published in April that the numbers of attacks against Jews had doubled worldwide last year compared with 2005.Most of the rise in violence was reported in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and France, the Tel Aviv study said.
Muslim Religious Ban on Leaving Israel
by Hillel Fendel (INN) MAY 15,07
Yet another Islamic religious ruling forbidding Moslems from leaving the Holy Land has been issued, this time from the Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine. Recently, the Hamas-affiliated Association of Religious Sages of Palestine publicized its ruling forbidding emigration from the lands of the Palestinian Authority. The Mufti of Jerusalem has now joined in with his own ban, released on Monday, May 14. The rulings are an indication of the great fear in the Arab world that young people from the Palestinian Authority are increasingly seeking their fortunes abroad. The latest ruling, entitled, No permission to emigrate from the land of Palestine, reads as follows:
There is much talk these days in our land of Palestine about emigration, and especially among the young, and this because of the difficult security and economic situation, and out of a desire to find a living in other lands.
Expression of this can be found in the rush to the gates of the embassies and consulates of the Western nations with requests for visas in order to reside permanently in those countries Based on [the ruling of the prophet Muhammed and his friends], emigration from the blessed lands to live permanently in other countries is not permitted in terms of religious law. The people living in these areas must remain in their places of residence, and not leave them to infiltrators and conquerors, and they will thus perform an act of honor, and will be a support for the Al-Aqsa mosque... and will merit the good tiding of the prophet...Regarding temporary travel to other lands for the purpose of study and work, this is permitted as long as there is a determination to return and live in the blessed lands after the stage of study and work.
Tens of Thousands
PA officials reported last November that in the preceding four months, foreign and Arab diplomats had authorized the entry of 10,000 PA residents to their countries, and that another 45,000 emigration requests were under similar consideration. Similar statements were made in October.
Artifacts From Time of Kings David and Solomon Revealed
by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz (INN) MAY 15,07
In honor of Jerusalem Day, which begins Tuesday night, archaeologists revealed a number of seals from the time of the Biblical Kings David and Solomon. The seals, along with other recently uncovered artifacts, were displayed for the first time on Monday, at a conference marking 40 years since the liberation and reunification of Jerusalem by the modern State of Israel. The City of David area was a commercial and trading center.The Bible-period artifacts were unearthed during archaeological excavations underway in Ir David, the City of David, below Jerusalems Old City to the east. The specific artifacts on display on Monday were found at the Beit HaMaayan (well-house) dig, overseen by Haifa University's Archaeology Department Director, Professor Ronny Reich. The greatest scientific and public interest was focused on more than 100 seals and signet rings, used as a means of authentication for written papyrus documents, from the time of the reigns of Kings David and Solomon. The seals bear various markings that, when deciphered, indicate the sender of the document and his or her location. The large number of such seals, archaeologists explained, indicate that the City of David area was a commercial and trading center.
Several hundred leaders of Israel's industry and the economy took part in the Jerusalem gathering at which the artifacts were displayed. Similar seals and signets have been found at various excavation sites around Jerusalem over the past decade. Some of those seals bear names of royal advisors and servants mentioned in various Biblical accounts of the reigns of Jewish monarchs. In 2005, a Hebrew University archaeologist and a leading authority on ancient Jerusalem,Some seals bear the names of royal advisors mentioned in various Biblical accounts.Dr. Eilat Mazar uncovered a clay seal in what she claimed served as the residential palace of Jewish kings from King David until the destruction of the First Temple, for a period of 450 years. That seal, dated from about 580 BCE, bears the name Yehuchal Ben-Sheleimiya, who is identified as a royal envoy and court minister sent by King Zedekiah to the prophet Jeremiah (in chapters 37 and 38 of the Bible's Book of Jeremiah).
Several years earlier, another circa-580 BCE royal seal was found at the same site. It had the name of Gemaryahu, son of Shafan, who is also mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah, and who was a top official in the court of King Zedekiah's predecessor, King Yehoyachim. Another seal found among dozens of others bears the name of Azaryahu Ben-Hilkiyahu, a member of a priestly family, who served in the Temple before Jerusalem's destruction (according to I Chronicles, 9:10).
NEW DETAILS OF AHMADINEJAD'S APOCALYPTIC BELIEFS:
Five signs of the Mahdi's return? Also, part two of Dobson interview runs today.
By Joel C. Rosenberg
(Washington, D.C., May 15, 2007) First, the good news: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Jordan's King Abdullah II will meet today in Petra and Aqaba to discuss peace.
Olmert is expected to personally invite the King to visit Jerusalem to discuss the future of the region. Now, the bad news: Olmert will return from Jordan to oversee a major IDF war games exercise as Israeli intelligence officials warn him that this summer could see a major war. Latest warning signs: The New York Times is reporting this morning that Iran is enriching uranium faster and on a much larger scale than previously known. According to a new report by the IAEA, Iran could have 3,000 centrifuges operating by June - enough to make one bomb's worth of material every year. Tehran may...be able to build an additional 5,000 centrifuges by the end of the year, for a total of 8,000.
There are new reports this week that Iran may join Central Asian military alliance with Russia. Syria has just moved up its schedule for a major military exercise. It was planned for the late summer and early fall. Now it will begin in May and run through July. This has intensified speculation among intelligence analysts that Syria could be preparing for a summer war. Palestinian leaders, meanwhile, are marking the catastrophe of Israel's rebirth by vowing to recapture Jerusalem. The European Union is boycotting Jerusalem Day, which marks the 40th anniversary of Jerusalem coming back under Jewish control for the first time in 2,000 years. Meanwhile, an Israeli newspaper is running a big story this morning entitled, If the Bomb drops..., giving people details of how to protect oneself in case of a nuclear attack. In that context, if you're looking for some light summer reading, you might want to skip The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran by Yossi Melman, a leading Israeli investigative journalist, and Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born Mideast analyst who works closely with the BBC, Voice of America and the Los Angeles Times. But if you're interesting in revealing new insights into Ahmadinejad's apocalyptic religious beliefs, look no further.
Major American news outlets like CBS's 60 Minutes, NBC News, CNN and Time have covered Ahmadinejad extensively -- even interviewed him exclusively this year -- yet keep missing the big story: the end of the world theology driving his foreign policy. But Melman and Javedanfar get it and report it in detail.
Excerpts from their new book:
* Ahmadinejad is the first Muslim leader who has prayed for the hastening of the return of the Shiite Messiah, known as the Mahdi, at teh U.N. General Assembly, an act that reinforced his conviction that he was carrying God's words and acting on behalf of the Messiah....Never before had an Iranian leader so publicly acknowledged his messianic beliefs. (p. 42)
* The Ayandeye Roshan (Bright Future) Institute, based in Qom, specializes in theological research about the Mahdi. It points to at least five 'distinct signs' that need to happen before the Mahdi appears. (p. 43-44)
1. The first is the rise of a fighter from Yemen called the Yamani, who attacks the enemies of Islam.
2. The second sign is the rise of an anti-Mahdi militant leader named Osman Ben Anbase, who will also be known as the Sofiani. He will be joined by another anti-Mahdi militant called Dajal, whom many Muslims clerics have compared to the Antichrist. The uprising of Sofiani will precede the appearance of the Mahdi in Mecca by exactly six months. These two forces, known as the forces of evil, will occupy Syria and Jordan and advance from there....[for] an epic battle near the city of Kufa, in the Shiite heartland of southern Iraq.
3. The third distinct sign will be voices from the sky. The most distinct voice will be that of the Angel Gabriel, who will call the faithful to gather around the Mahdi.
4. The fourth sign will entail the destruction of Sofiani's army.
5. The fifth and final sign is the death of a holy man by the name of Muhammed bin Hassan, called Nafse Zakiye, or the pure soul. Fifteen days after he is killed, the Mahdi will appear in Mecca. The Mahdi will appoint Jesus Christ as his deputy. People will recognize the Mahdi because there will be an angel above his head shouting, This is the Mahdi. Follow him. The Mahdi will be wearing a ring that belonged to King Solomon and will hold the wooden stick that Moses held when he parted the Red Sea. His army of 313 will grow into 10,000, fifty of whom will be women.An additional indicator of the Mahdi's arrival, say the religious scholars to whom Ahmadinejad is listening, will be the death of 80 percent of the world's population in a massive war.The authors note that Ahmadinejad is telling associates time is very short, noting that in 2005, he made the timetable more specific, saying the Mahdi would reappear in 2007. He thus increased government funding for the leading Islamic school that teaches about the coming of the Mahdi by 1,000% to $3.5 million.
With Iran now able to enrich uranium, it could become nuclear in 2007, the authors conclude. If that happens, Iran's nuclear arsenal might give the regime the confidence it needs to start a war, which could then become the 'platform' that Ahmadinejad has said he wants to create for the reappearance of the Mahdi.NOTE: I leave Thursday for a week in Israel. Will send updates on the situation from there. WEBLOG with the latest on events in the Middle East and Russia, including links to articles mentioned in this story, and a link to the audio of my interviews with Dr. Dobson on radical Islam.
www.joelrosenberg.com www.joshuafund.net (new and completely re-designed)
6 Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord:
7 (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)
8 We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.
BREAKING NEWS
PRAY FOR JERRY FALDWELL HE WAS FOUND UNCONCIOUS IN HIS OFFICE IN LINCHBERG VIRGINIA.
HES IN GRAVE CONDITION REPORTS.
JERRY FALWELL HAS DIED. ITS 1:30 IN THE AFTERNOON. 73 YEAR OLD JERRY HAS DIED. A SAD DAY IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY JERRY WAS A MORAL LEADER.
SIGNS OF THE END OF THE AGE (NOT THE WORLD) THE WORLD GOES ON FOREVER.
GENESIS 1:5,14
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:(ISRAELS HOLY DAYS AND SABBATH STARTS AT 6PM) And for SIGNS (PROPHECY SIGNS TO HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE, OUR DAY)
REBUILT 3RD TEMPLE
REVELATION 11:1-2
1 And there was given me a reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein.
2 But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.
DANIEL 9:27
27 And he( THE 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.
ISRAEL WILL BE IN CONTROL OF JERUSALEM, THE SIGN OF THE START OF THE LAST GENERATION.
LUKE 21:24
24 And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.
PSALMS 122:2-9
2 Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem.
3 Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together:
4 Whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the LORD.
5 For there are set thrones of judgment, the thrones of the house of David.
6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.
7 Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.
8 For my brethren and companions’ sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee.
9 Because of the house of the LORD our God I will seek thy good.
PSALMS 137:5-7
5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
6 If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
7 Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom (Jordon) in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.
AT 6:00 PM ISRAEL CELEBRATES JERUSALEM DAY. THE DAY GOD GAVE JERUSALEM FOREVER TO ISRAEL AND SOON TO BE THE WORLD CAPITAL.
THERE ARE 2 ELECTS THE CHURCH AND ISRAEL.
ISRAEL ON EARTH DURING TRIBULATION 7 YR PEACE TREATY
ISAIAH 42:1
1 Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, (Israel) in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.
ISAIAH 45:4
4 For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me.
ISAIAH 65:9,22
9 And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an inheritor of my mountains: and mine elect (Israel) shall inherit it, and my servants shall dwell there.
22 They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat: for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
ROMANS 11:28
28 As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, (Israel) they are beloved for the fathers' sakes.
THE CHURCH ELECT
1 PETER 1:2
1:2 Elect (Christians) according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.
1-WORLD QUAKES LAST 2 DAYS.2-Thousands of youngsters evacuated from moorland amid flood fears. 3-The Nation's Weather. 4-Hamas kills 8 at Gaza border crossing. 5-Jordan's king set to meet Olmert. 6-Anti-Semitism on rise in parts of Europe: study. 7-Muslim Religious Ban on Leaving Israel. 8-Artifacts From Time of Kings David and Solomon Revealed. 9-Five signs of the Mahdi's return?
EARTHQUAKES
MATTHEW 24:7-8
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.
MARK 13:8
8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:(ETHNIC GROUP AGAINST ETHNIC GROUP) and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.
LUKE 21:11
11 And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.
WORLD QUAKES LAST 2 DAYS (USGS)
Update time = Tue May 15 11:00 AM EDT
MAY 15,07
MAP 2.8 SOUTHERN ALASKA
MAP 2.7 GULF OF ALASKA
MAP 5.0 SOLOMON ISLANDS
MAP 4.8 BONIN ISLANDS, JAPAN REGION
MAP 5.3 KURIL ISLANDS
MAP 2.9 ANDREANOF ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN IS., ALASKA
MAP 4.6 NEAR THE COAST OF NICARAGUA
MAP 3.6 SOUTHERN ALASKA
MAP 2.7 FOX ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 5.2 PACIFIC-ANTARCTIC RIDGE
MAP 3.1 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAY 14,07
MAP 2.8 SOUTHERN ALASKA
MAP 2.7 RAT ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA
MAP 2.8 CENTRAL ALASKA
MAP 2.8 ALASKA PENINSULA
MAP 2.7 NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
MAP 2.6 ANDREANOF ISLANDS, ALEUTIAN IS., ALASKA
MAP 2.7 KENAI PENINSULA, ALASKA
MAP 4.9 IZU ISLANDS, JAPAN REGION
MAP 2.5 CENTRAL CALIFORNIA
MAP 5.5 NIAS REGION, INDONESIA
MAP 5.0 PHILIPPINE ISLANDS REGION
MAP 2.5 VERMONT
MAP 3.1 BERING SEA
MAP 5.2 MOLUCCA SEA
MAP 2.6 SOUTHEASTERN MISSOURI
MAP 2.7 SOUTHEASTERN MISSOURI
MAP 3.1 ALASKA PENINSULA
MAP 4.7 SOUTH OF THE FIJI ISLANDS
MAP 2.9 CENTRAL ALASKA
MAP 2.5 SOUTHERN ALASKA
STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES
LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.
Thousands of youngsters evacuated from moorland amid flood fears Sun May 13, 7:11 AM ET
LONDON (AFP) - The army said it was evacuating thousands of youngsters, many of them by helicopter, from moorland in southwest England on Sunday after their annual trek was called off due to concerns about rain-swollen rivers. Some are friends of Charlotte Shaw, a 14-year-old girl who died after falling into a swollen stream on March 4 during training for the two-day, army organised expedition on Dartmoor which involves 2,400 youngsters nationwide.Four hundred teams, each with six members, began long treks Saturday over rugged terrain, but the army, citing deteriorating weather conditions and a high dropout rate of 15 percent, called off the event late Saturday.The weather forecast indicates that the rivers, which are already at their peak, will become increasingly swollen, it said in a statement.Around 200 youngsters have already been evacuated from the moor by two Royal Navy Sea King helicopters, with the rest waiting in their tents or walking back, the army said.
The helicopters carrying the teams were arriving back into Okehampton battle camp at regular intervals from 6 am (0500 GMT) Sunday and all the youngsters were expected to have left the moor by mid-afternoon.Army spokesman David Hamilton said more than 700 personnel, including military and the Dartmoor Rescue Group, were involved in the weekend's activities and the recovery of the teams.Jenna Drew, 17, was on a team completing a 55-mile (88-kilometre) route, the longest of three possible treks, when she was airlifted back to camp early Sunday.I'm really, really devastated. We really wanted to finish. I think we could have done it if we had been allowed to go on. Obviously the safety of everyone is their main priority, Drew said.The annual treks began in 1959 after several officers in the army, which has used Dartmoor for training for years, decided it would be a good challenge for young civilians.
The Nation's Weather By WEATHER UNDERGROUND, For The Associated Press
Tue May 15, 5:59 AM ET
A balmy day dawned over the Northeast and Southwest early Tuesday, while storms stalked the Great Lakes, Rockies and Mississippi Valley. A stormy system was expected to push through the Great Lakes toward the Northeast, with a cold front sweeping across the Plains, Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee valleys.Apart from the rain, cooler air was expected to spread across the Midwest. The stormy weather should move to the East Coast and Gulf States on Wednesday.Low pressure was to remain in the Gulf of Mexico, keeping scattered showers and thunderstorms over southern Florida.
Out West, mostly sunny skies with seasonal temperatures was expected. The California coast was to be cool and clear, while the Desert Southwest was to remain hot and dry.Temperatures in the Lower 48 states on Monday ranged from a low of 22 degrees at Stanley, Idaho, to a high of 109 degrees at Death Valley, Calif.
EUROPEAN UNION ARMY
DANIEL 7:23-25
23 Thus he said, The fourth beast (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.(TRADING BLOCKS)
24 And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings(10 NATIONS) that shall arise: 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 NATIONS)
25 And he (EU PRESIDENT) shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.(3 1/2 YRS)
DANIEL 8:23-25
23 And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king (EU DICTATOR) of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences,(FROM THE OCCULT) shall stand up.
24 And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power:(SATANS POWER) and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people.
25 And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes;(JESUS) but he shall be broken without hand.
DANIEL 11:36-39
36 And the king (EU DICTATOR) shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be done.
37 Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers,(THIS EU DICTATOR IS JEWISH) nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all.(CLAIM TO BE GOD)
38 But in his estate shall he honour the God of forces:(WAR) and a god whom his fathers knew not shall he honour with gold, and silver, and with precious stones, and pleasant things.
39 Thus shall he do in the most strong holds with a strange god,(DESTROY TERROR GROUPS)whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory: and he shall cause them to rule over many,(HIS ARMY LEADERS) and shall divide the land for gain.
REVELATION 19:19
19 And I saw the beast,(EU LEADER) and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse,(JESUS) and against his army.(THE RAPTURED CHRISTIANS)
CIVIL WAR BREAKING OUT IN GAZA NOW, WATCH FOR THE EU TO BRING IN THEIR RAPID REACTION TEAM AT SOME POINT TO GUARENTEE THE PEACE OF ISRAEL AND THE ARABS.
Hamas kills 8 at Gaza border crossing By IBRAHIM BARZAK, AP MAY 15,07
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Hamas gunmen on Tuesday ambushed rival Fatah forces near a key crossing along the Israeli border, killing eight people in the deadliest battle yet in three days of factional fighting. The incident briefly drew Israeli gunfire, threatening to drag Israel into the conflict at a time when its prime minister said his country was ready to discuss an Arab initiative that offers peace for land.At least 20 people, including 11 total on Tuesday, have died in the fighting, bringing life in Gaza to a standstill and pushing the fragile Palestinian unity government closer to collapse. Hamas and Fatah formed the union to end months of violence. Tuesday's fighting began when Hamas gunmen approached a training base used by Fatah forces that guard the crossing, officials said.
The base was set up in part by a U.S. security team sent to train Palestinians on how to check cargo and bags at crossings.
The Islamic militant Hamas force attacked the base with rockets, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, said Ahmed al-Kaisi, spokesman for the pro-Fatah Presidential Guard: We consider this a serious provocation and a crime committed in cold blood.When another Fatah security unit arrived to provide backup, they were ambushed by Hamas gunmen, witnesses said.A jeep full of security men that came under fire veered off the road and crashed. Hamas forces then riddled it with gunfire, said one witness, who gave only his first name, Jamil, out of fear for his safety.Hospital and security officials said eight men were killed in the ambush.As the fighting raged, Israeli troops opened fire at two gunmen who approached the border, the army said. Palestinian officials said one man was killed.
He was identified as a member of the Presidential Guard, who apparently was trying to help his comrades.Witnesses also said three Israeli tanks approached Karni, and the Hamas force quickly withdrew. Israel also closed the crossing, which is the passage for cargo going in and out of Gaza.Hours after the Karni incident, another security officer loyal to Fatah was killed in a clash with Hamas gunmen in Gaza City, Fatah officials said. Another man was killed in a separate fight, but it was not immediately known to which side he belonged.Israel has remained silent throughout the latest Palestinian infighting, but the border incident illustrated how fragile the situation is. Israel has been debating whether to take large-scale military action in Gaza in response to repeated rocket fire aimed at southern Israel.In Jordan, King Abdullah ll held high-level talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert aimed at breathing life into an Arab peace initiative that offers Israel recognition in return for land.
Olmert said his country was ready to discuss the initiative, but Abdullah told him that Israel first had to take concrete steps to improve relations with the Palestinians, and urged him to set a firm timetable for doing that, said Amjad Adayleh, information director at Jordan's royal palace.
The plan would give Israel full recognition in exchange for a total withdrawal from lands it captured in the 1967 Middle East war and the creation of a Palestinian state. Israel has welcomed the plan as a good starting point for negotiations, but objects to several provisions.The Arab peace plan was first floated by Saudi Arabia in 2002 and renewed in March at a meeting of the Arab League. Arab leaders have urged Israel to seize the new opportunity.Abdullah also told the Israeli leader at their meeting in the seaside resort of Aqaba that he was worried about reports Israel is planning new settlements or to expand existing ones, Adayleh said, but Olmert called such reports baseless.Abdullah also urged Olmert to lift an economic blockade on Palestinians, making it easier for them to cross borders and immediately unfreeze all Palestinian money held by Israel. Adayleh said the meeting focused on the Arab land-for-recognition plan and Abdullah told Olmert that all the Arabs are committed to the peace initiative and they have a real intention for a comprehensive peace if Israel accepts that.Before the talks with Abdullah, Olmert told a conference in Petra, Jordan, of Nobel laureates and Israeli and Arab youth that Israel was ready to listen to Arab views.
We heard about the Arab peace initiative and we say come and present it to us. You want to talk to us about it, we are ready to sit down and talk about it carefully, he said. In the West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged the immediate implementation of a security plan to halt the internal fighting. We must do that ... without any reluctance or delay, to put an end to civil strife and the ghost of internal fighting, he said in a speech marking the anniversary of the uprooting of many Palestinians in the 1948 Mideast War fought over Israel's founding. The plan calls for rival security forces to operate under a joint command. A majority of the 80,000 security officers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are loyal to Abbas, while Hamas set up its own 6,000-member militia last year. Associated Press Writer Jamal Halaby contributed to this report in Petra, Jordan.
Jordan's king set to meet Olmert By JAMAL HALABY, Associated Press Writer
Tue May 15, 6:58 AM ET
PETRA, Jordan - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed his country's readiness Tuesday to discuss an Arab peace initiative and find ways to implement such a plan. Olmert said after arriving for talks with Jordan's King Abdullah II that Israel was ready to sit down and talk about it carefully and was willing to listen to Arab views.We heard about the Arab peace initiative and we say come and present it to us. You want to talk to us about it, we are ready to sit down and talk about it carefully, he told a conference in this ancient city.Describing the plan as very interesting, Olmert said we are ready to cooperate to find the appropriate manner to implement. If the Arab countries want to present their peace initiative, we will be more than happy to sit down and listen carefully.Olmert invited the 22 leaders of the Arab nations that are ready to make that kind of peace with Israel, to come to Israel, where ever they want and to sit down with us and start talk and present their ideas.
He added that if they were willing to invite him somewhere for talks, then I'm ready to come.Olmert arrived in Petra for a rare high-level meeting with Abdullah on the sidelines of a conference involving Nobel Laureates and Israeli and Arab youth on ways to solve conflicts in the Mideast.We are ready to come and to invite Arab leaders without preconditions from us or their side, Olmert said.The Petra meetings came as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called for immediate implementation of the government's security plan to halt lawlessness and internal fighting.Earlier, Hamas gunmen attacked rival Fatah forces at a key crossing along the Israeli border, killing seven people and drawing fire from nearby Israeli troops.
Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, urged rival Palestinian factions on Tuesday to end the chaos that threatens to unravel the Palestinian unity government. Ahead of the meeting, however, the Palestinians indicated it would take time to set up a meeting between Olmert and Abbas.I think it will take time before they meet again. The Israelis are not ready. All we've been told it that they are willing to prepare for the next meeting, Palestinian Authority spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeneh said.Jordan, along with Egypt, were the first Arab countries to make peace with Israel and are charged with promoting the Arab-initiated peace deal to the Jewish State, which has welcomed it as a good starting point but objects to several key provisions.The peace process is frozen, but what we are looking for is seeing a real serious step from the Israeli side to sit at the table to negotiate what the roads map and the Arab peace initiative are calling for, Rdeneh added.Ahead of Olmert's meeting with Abdullah, his spokeswoman Miri Eisin said the two leaders planned to break away from the conference and travel to the king's palace in the southern Jordanian resort of Aqaba for their talks.
Abdullah regards the Arab peace plan as a historic chance and will make it the focus of his talks with Olmert.The Arab peace plan offers Israel full recognition in exchange for a full withdrawal from lands it captured in the 1967 Mideast war and the creation of a Palestinian state. Israel has welcomed the plan as a good starting point for negotiations but has objected to several key provisions. The Arab peace plan was proposed in 2002 and renewed in March at a meeting of the Arab League in Saudi Arabia. Arab leaders have urged Israel to seize the new opportunity.
While saying it has positive elements, Israel has objected to major provisions of the plan, including the call to evacuate all captured lands and to repatriate millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants. Israel says such a large influx of Palestinians would destroy Israel's character as a Jewish state. Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed in 2000 after the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising
against Israel. Subsequent efforts to restart peace talks, including the 2003 U.S.-backed road map peace plan and a recent U.S. push to bring the sides back to the negotiating table, have made little progress.
Progress on Arab-Israeli peace could be a welcome boost for Olmert who has been under increasing criticism back home after a scathing government commission report on his performance during Israel's summer war with Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrilla. There have been widespread calls for him to resign. The conference in Petra, a city carved into rose-red stone and built by the Nabataean culture some 2,000 years ago, is hosted jointly by the King Abdullah II Fund for Development and the New York-based Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. Four Israeli schoolchildren hand picked by their government will join Palestinian students and youth from Kuwait, Morocco, Jordan and Egypt.
No details were provided about the youth. Associated Press writers Amy Teibel and Dale Gavlak contributed to this report. On the Net: King Abdullah II Fund for Development: http://www.kafd.jo Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity: http://www.eliewieselfoundation.org Petra conference: http://www.petranobel.com
Anti-Semitism on rise in parts of Europe: study By Allyn Fisher-Ilan
Mon May 14, 9:01 AM ET
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An increasing number of Europeans believe that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to their home countries and have too much influence in world finance, a U.S. group monitoring anti-Semitism said on Monday. A large number of Europeans continue to be infected with anti-Jewish attitudes, holding on to classic anti-Semitic canards and conspiracy theories, Abraham Foxman, director of the Washington-based Anti-Defamation League, told reporters.These attitudes help legitimize anti-Semitism, including violence against Jews, and give us great concern, he said.
A survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League in France, Spain, German, Poland and Italy in March and April found that negative stereotypes about Jews had gained ground in these countries since 2005.The study measured responses to these statements: that Jews are more loyal to Israel than their country, that they have too much power in the business world and financial markets and that they talk too much about the Nazi Holocaust of World War Two.
In all countries studied, with the exception of Italy, the poll found an increase since a survey in 2005 in the percentage of Europeans who felt Jews held Israel above their own states.
In Poland and Spain, about 60 percent of those surveyed expressed that sentiment, up from about 50 percent two years ago. In Germany the figure was 51 percent, with 48 percent in Italy and 39 percent in France.Foxman called the dual loyalty allegation a classical canard of anti-Semitism and a tenet of Hitler's ideology that Jews had sold out Germany for their own interests.One in four of the some 2,700 people surveyed said their attitudes toward Jews are colored by events in the Middle East, Foxman added.
Of these, 52 percent said they held a lower opinion of Jews as a result.Foxman pointed to what he called an emergence of a significant relationship between anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiments or criticism. But he said it was too soon to draw any direct parallels from the survey.The study did not tabulate incidents of anti-Semitic violence in Europe. Tel Aviv University in Israel said in findings
published in April that the numbers of attacks against Jews had doubled worldwide last year compared with 2005.Most of the rise in violence was reported in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and France, the Tel Aviv study said.
Muslim Religious Ban on Leaving Israel
by Hillel Fendel (INN) MAY 15,07
Yet another Islamic religious ruling forbidding Moslems from leaving the Holy Land has been issued, this time from the Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine. Recently, the Hamas-affiliated Association of Religious Sages of Palestine publicized its ruling forbidding emigration from the lands of the Palestinian Authority. The Mufti of Jerusalem has now joined in with his own ban, released on Monday, May 14. The rulings are an indication of the great fear in the Arab world that young people from the Palestinian Authority are increasingly seeking their fortunes abroad. The latest ruling, entitled, No permission to emigrate from the land of Palestine, reads as follows:
There is much talk these days in our land of Palestine about emigration, and especially among the young, and this because of the difficult security and economic situation, and out of a desire to find a living in other lands.
Expression of this can be found in the rush to the gates of the embassies and consulates of the Western nations with requests for visas in order to reside permanently in those countries Based on [the ruling of the prophet Muhammed and his friends], emigration from the blessed lands to live permanently in other countries is not permitted in terms of religious law. The people living in these areas must remain in their places of residence, and not leave them to infiltrators and conquerors, and they will thus perform an act of honor, and will be a support for the Al-Aqsa mosque... and will merit the good tiding of the prophet...Regarding temporary travel to other lands for the purpose of study and work, this is permitted as long as there is a determination to return and live in the blessed lands after the stage of study and work.
Tens of Thousands
PA officials reported last November that in the preceding four months, foreign and Arab diplomats had authorized the entry of 10,000 PA residents to their countries, and that another 45,000 emigration requests were under similar consideration. Similar statements were made in October.
Artifacts From Time of Kings David and Solomon Revealed
by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz (INN) MAY 15,07
In honor of Jerusalem Day, which begins Tuesday night, archaeologists revealed a number of seals from the time of the Biblical Kings David and Solomon. The seals, along with other recently uncovered artifacts, were displayed for the first time on Monday, at a conference marking 40 years since the liberation and reunification of Jerusalem by the modern State of Israel. The City of David area was a commercial and trading center.The Bible-period artifacts were unearthed during archaeological excavations underway in Ir David, the City of David, below Jerusalems Old City to the east. The specific artifacts on display on Monday were found at the Beit HaMaayan (well-house) dig, overseen by Haifa University's Archaeology Department Director, Professor Ronny Reich. The greatest scientific and public interest was focused on more than 100 seals and signet rings, used as a means of authentication for written papyrus documents, from the time of the reigns of Kings David and Solomon. The seals bear various markings that, when deciphered, indicate the sender of the document and his or her location. The large number of such seals, archaeologists explained, indicate that the City of David area was a commercial and trading center.
Several hundred leaders of Israel's industry and the economy took part in the Jerusalem gathering at which the artifacts were displayed. Similar seals and signets have been found at various excavation sites around Jerusalem over the past decade. Some of those seals bear names of royal advisors and servants mentioned in various Biblical accounts of the reigns of Jewish monarchs. In 2005, a Hebrew University archaeologist and a leading authority on ancient Jerusalem,Some seals bear the names of royal advisors mentioned in various Biblical accounts.Dr. Eilat Mazar uncovered a clay seal in what she claimed served as the residential palace of Jewish kings from King David until the destruction of the First Temple, for a period of 450 years. That seal, dated from about 580 BCE, bears the name Yehuchal Ben-Sheleimiya, who is identified as a royal envoy and court minister sent by King Zedekiah to the prophet Jeremiah (in chapters 37 and 38 of the Bible's Book of Jeremiah).
Several years earlier, another circa-580 BCE royal seal was found at the same site. It had the name of Gemaryahu, son of Shafan, who is also mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah, and who was a top official in the court of King Zedekiah's predecessor, King Yehoyachim. Another seal found among dozens of others bears the name of Azaryahu Ben-Hilkiyahu, a member of a priestly family, who served in the Temple before Jerusalem's destruction (according to I Chronicles, 9:10).
NEW DETAILS OF AHMADINEJAD'S APOCALYPTIC BELIEFS:
Five signs of the Mahdi's return? Also, part two of Dobson interview runs today.
By Joel C. Rosenberg
(Washington, D.C., May 15, 2007) First, the good news: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Jordan's King Abdullah II will meet today in Petra and Aqaba to discuss peace.
Olmert is expected to personally invite the King to visit Jerusalem to discuss the future of the region. Now, the bad news: Olmert will return from Jordan to oversee a major IDF war games exercise as Israeli intelligence officials warn him that this summer could see a major war. Latest warning signs: The New York Times is reporting this morning that Iran is enriching uranium faster and on a much larger scale than previously known. According to a new report by the IAEA, Iran could have 3,000 centrifuges operating by June - enough to make one bomb's worth of material every year. Tehran may...be able to build an additional 5,000 centrifuges by the end of the year, for a total of 8,000.
There are new reports this week that Iran may join Central Asian military alliance with Russia. Syria has just moved up its schedule for a major military exercise. It was planned for the late summer and early fall. Now it will begin in May and run through July. This has intensified speculation among intelligence analysts that Syria could be preparing for a summer war. Palestinian leaders, meanwhile, are marking the catastrophe of Israel's rebirth by vowing to recapture Jerusalem. The European Union is boycotting Jerusalem Day, which marks the 40th anniversary of Jerusalem coming back under Jewish control for the first time in 2,000 years. Meanwhile, an Israeli newspaper is running a big story this morning entitled, If the Bomb drops..., giving people details of how to protect oneself in case of a nuclear attack. In that context, if you're looking for some light summer reading, you might want to skip The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran by Yossi Melman, a leading Israeli investigative journalist, and Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born Mideast analyst who works closely with the BBC, Voice of America and the Los Angeles Times. But if you're interesting in revealing new insights into Ahmadinejad's apocalyptic religious beliefs, look no further.
Major American news outlets like CBS's 60 Minutes, NBC News, CNN and Time have covered Ahmadinejad extensively -- even interviewed him exclusively this year -- yet keep missing the big story: the end of the world theology driving his foreign policy. But Melman and Javedanfar get it and report it in detail.
Excerpts from their new book:
* Ahmadinejad is the first Muslim leader who has prayed for the hastening of the return of the Shiite Messiah, known as the Mahdi, at teh U.N. General Assembly, an act that reinforced his conviction that he was carrying God's words and acting on behalf of the Messiah....Never before had an Iranian leader so publicly acknowledged his messianic beliefs. (p. 42)
* The Ayandeye Roshan (Bright Future) Institute, based in Qom, specializes in theological research about the Mahdi. It points to at least five 'distinct signs' that need to happen before the Mahdi appears. (p. 43-44)
1. The first is the rise of a fighter from Yemen called the Yamani, who attacks the enemies of Islam.
2. The second sign is the rise of an anti-Mahdi militant leader named Osman Ben Anbase, who will also be known as the Sofiani. He will be joined by another anti-Mahdi militant called Dajal, whom many Muslims clerics have compared to the Antichrist. The uprising of Sofiani will precede the appearance of the Mahdi in Mecca by exactly six months. These two forces, known as the forces of evil, will occupy Syria and Jordan and advance from there....[for] an epic battle near the city of Kufa, in the Shiite heartland of southern Iraq.
3. The third distinct sign will be voices from the sky. The most distinct voice will be that of the Angel Gabriel, who will call the faithful to gather around the Mahdi.
4. The fourth sign will entail the destruction of Sofiani's army.
5. The fifth and final sign is the death of a holy man by the name of Muhammed bin Hassan, called Nafse Zakiye, or the pure soul. Fifteen days after he is killed, the Mahdi will appear in Mecca. The Mahdi will appoint Jesus Christ as his deputy. People will recognize the Mahdi because there will be an angel above his head shouting, This is the Mahdi. Follow him. The Mahdi will be wearing a ring that belonged to King Solomon and will hold the wooden stick that Moses held when he parted the Red Sea. His army of 313 will grow into 10,000, fifty of whom will be women.An additional indicator of the Mahdi's arrival, say the religious scholars to whom Ahmadinejad is listening, will be the death of 80 percent of the world's population in a massive war.The authors note that Ahmadinejad is telling associates time is very short, noting that in 2005, he made the timetable more specific, saying the Mahdi would reappear in 2007. He thus increased government funding for the leading Islamic school that teaches about the coming of the Mahdi by 1,000% to $3.5 million.
With Iran now able to enrich uranium, it could become nuclear in 2007, the authors conclude. If that happens, Iran's nuclear arsenal might give the regime the confidence it needs to start a war, which could then become the 'platform' that Ahmadinejad has said he wants to create for the reappearance of the Mahdi.NOTE: I leave Thursday for a week in Israel. Will send updates on the situation from there. WEBLOG with the latest on events in the Middle East and Russia, including links to articles mentioned in this story, and a link to the audio of my interviews with Dr. Dobson on radical Islam.
www.joelrosenberg.com www.joshuafund.net (new and completely re-designed)
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