CIA AGENT CNN I WAS JUST LISTENING TO AND FAREED ZAKARIA WAS JUST ON SAYNG BY NEXT FRIDAY THE PEOPLE WILL PROTEST AGAIN BECAUSE THE ARMY HAS DONE NOTHING SINCE TAKING OVER RULE IN EGYPT.AND ITS ELBARADEI THE AMERICAN PUPPET WHO HAS TOLD ZAKARIA THIS.IF THIS WILL HAPPEN,I PREDICT THE LEADERS OF THE MOVEMENT WILL BE THAT GOOGLE HACK GHONIM AND ELBARADEI,BOTH PUPPETS OF THE U.S.A. I CAN TELL AMERICA WANTS ELBARADEI AND THAT GOOGLE HACK GHONIM IN QUICK TO GO AFTER IRAN AND ITS NUCLEAR SITE.THEN THE CIA WILL EASILY BE ABLE TO CONTROL THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD AND TEAM UP WITH THEM TO DO FALSE FLAGS ON COUNTRIES AND OBAMA WILL SAVE THE EARTH BY STOPPING THESE FALSE TERROR ATTACKS.OBAMA WILL DO ANYTHING FROM HERE ON IN TO WIN THE 2012 ELECTIONS.GET READY FOLKS FOR LOTS OF FALSE FLAG TERROR ATTACKS WORLDWIDE FROM HERE ON IN.
The Facebook Freedom Fighter-Wael Ghonim’s day job was at Google. But at night he was organizing a revolution.FEB 13,2011
After spending almost two weeks in detention, Ghonim found himself anointed a leader by the leaderless movement he'd helped to create.The telephone call from Cairo came late on Thursday, Jan. 27. I think they’re following me, the caller told the friend on the other end. I’m going to destroy this phone.And then the line went dead.Soon after, so did cell phones across Egypt, and then the Internet, as authorities cut communication in a last-ditch effort to halt the protests gripping the country.The only trace the caller left was in cyberspace, where he had delivered a haunting message via Twitter: Pray for #Egypt.Three days later in Washington, D.C., Nadine Wahab, an Egyptian émigré and media-relations professional, sat staring at her computer, hoping rumors of the caller’s disappearance weren’t true.Suddenly his screen name flashed to life. She stared at the message.Admin 1 is missing, it said. This is Admin 2.
Admin 1 was the caller, the anonymous administrator of a Facebook page that had played a crucial role in inspiring the uprising in Cairo. He had left Wahab with a contingency plan. If he disappeared, Wahab should wait until Feb. 8, two weeks from the date of the first protest, before she revealed his identity and sounded the alarm. At all costs, she was to maintain the appearance of normalcy on the page.
The Agony and the Ecstasy The contingency plan had made no mention of an Admin 2, and Wahab worried that the message might be a trap.For the next week, Wahab and her small cadre of online associates became immersed in what seemed like a shadowy cyberthriller. At its center was a bespectacled techie named Wael Ghonim, a 30-year-old father of two, and Google’s head of marketing in the Middle East.Months of online correspondence between Ghonim and Wahab, parts of which were provided to NEWSWEEK, as well as telephone and online conversations with the magazine, reveal a man who adopted a dead man’s identity to push for democracy, taking on a secret life that nearly consumed him.Ghonim had received a master’s degree in marketing and finance from American University in Cairo and began working for Google in late 2008. In little more than a year, he was promoted to head of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa, a position based in Dubai, where he and his family moved into a house in one of the city’s affluent suburbs.
Ghonim and Wahab met electronically last spring, after Ghonim volunteered to run the Facebook fan page of Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian Nobel Prize winner who had emerged as a key opposition leader; Wahab offered to help with PR. Ghonim had a strong tech background, having already founded several successful Web ventures. But it was his marketing skills that would fuel his transformation into Egypt’s most important cyberactivist.Under Ghonim, ElBaradei’s page, which promoted democratic reform, grew rapidly. He surveyed its fans for input, pushing ideas like crowdsourced video Q&As. Voting is the right way to represent people in a democratic way,he wrote Wahab in May. We use it even inside Google internally. Even when our CEO is live, if someone posts a tough question and others vote, he must answer it.
Ghonim thought Facebook could be the ideal revolutionary tool in Egypt’s suffocating police state. Once you are a fan, whatever we publish gets on your wall, he wrote. So the government has NO way to block it later. Unless they block Facebook completely.As the page grew, it became increasingly consuming, and Ghonim began to feel he was leading two separate lives. In the morning I lead a 1m budget, he mused to Wahab in June. At night, I am a video editor at YouTube.That month, a young Alexandria businessman named Khaled Said, who had posted a video on the Web showing cops pilfering pot from a drug bust, was assaulted at an Internet café by local police. They dragged him outside and beat him to death in broad daylight. Photos of his battered corpse went viral.
Ghonim was moved by the photos to start a new Facebook page called “We Are All Khaled Said,to which he began devoting the bulk of his efforts. The page quickly became a forceful campaign against police brutality in Egypt, with a constant stream of photos, videos, and news. Ghonim’s interactive style, combined with the page’s carefully calibrated posts—emotional, apolitical, and broad in their appeal—quickly turned it into one of Egypt’s largest activist sites.Only select people, including Wahab, who quickly signed on to help, knew of Ghonim’s involvement with the page. To run the page, Ghonim had assumed the pseudonym El Shaheed, or The Martyr, to protect himself and commemorate the dead man—creating a persona that became one of Ghonim’s most powerful tools. My purpose, he said in a conversation with Wahab, is to increase the bond between the people and the group through my unknown personality. Thisway we create an army of volunteers.On Jan. 14, protests in Tunisia felled that country’s longstanding dictator, and Ghonim was inspired to announce, on Facebook, a revolution of Egypt’s own. Each of the page’s 350,000-plus fans was cordially invited to a protest on Jan. 25. They could click yes,no, or maybe to signal whether they’d like to attend.In the space of three days, more than 50,000 people answered yes. Posing as El Shaheed in a Gmail chat, Ghonim was optimistic but cautioned that online support might not translate into a revolt in the streets.
The bottom line is: I have no idea, he said. While some commentators hyped that the internet is making a revolution, others proclaimed that the revolution can’t be tweeted, he said. I don’t know, and I don’t give a s--t. I’m doing what it takes to make my country better.Ghonim implored his Facebook fans to spread word of the protest to people on the ground, and he and other activists constantly coordinated efforts, combining online savvy with the street activism long practiced by the country’s democracy movements. Ghonim seemed to view the page both as a kind of central command and a rallying point—getting people past the psychological barrier.
Ghonim insisted that neither he nor anyone else was in charge. The real driving force behind the protest, he predicted, would be the people he was trying to empower. What you don’t understand, and it seems what you don’t want to understand, is that this protest doesn’t have real organizers, he told NEWSWEEK.It’s a protest without a leader.Despite his insistence on anonymity, Ghonim was far from humble. BTW, I want my photo to be on the cover of the magazine, he joked.When reminded that this might compromise his still-hidden identity, he suggested using a photo of the Guy Fawkes mask worn by the protagonist in V for Vendetta, a film about a mysterious revolutionary, and insisted on being referred to as V in any stories, before eventually settling for El Shaheed.An American NGO had contacted him to offer financial assistance, he claimed. I replied with two words, he said. F--k You.In another conversation, he mocked the idea that any politician could corral the growing protest push. A virtual guy that they don’t know is telling them what to do, he said. I have the people on my side.Ghonim seemed to think the anonymous persona was an equalizer that could prevent the protest push from being hijacked—by politicians like ElBaradei, groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, perhaps even by Ghonim himself. I’ll keep my identity anonymous even if a revolution kicks in and this government is kicked, he said. Cause the reason why I think we are f--ked up in this country is that everyone is looking for his personal fame. Everyone starts somewhere with good intentions. Then eventually they get corrupted.
He had already laid the groundwork for the El Shaheed persona to live on without him, acknowledging in another conversation with NEWSWEEK that the moniker of The Martyr might come to represent his own fate. It was clear, as he flew to Egypt to join the protest, that he would be under threat.On Tuesday, Jan. 25, Ghonim joined the first demonstration, along with hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Esraa Abdel Fattah, another organizer, who knew Ghonim but didn’t realize he was El Shaheed, saw him that night in Tahrir Square, along with scores of other protesters.In an online conversation the following day, Ghonim was ecstatic but also worried. Activists, he said, were beginning to disappear. On Thursday night, as organizers were planning another major protest the following day, Facebook began flicking in and out of service. Facebook is blocked again. Sons of bitches. I was just announcing the locations, Ghonim said.A few hours later, he made the ominous phone call to his friend, saying he thought he was being followed.The next morning, plainclothes police officers came for him.
Ghonim—Admin 1—was now missing.
Admin 2, who asked not to be named—I’m the guy who’s the backup in case something really horrible happens, he said in a Skype call with NEWSWEEK—had his own protocol to follow. Once he realized Ghonim was missing, he notified Google and Ghonim’s family, and then set to work changing passwords and securing things on the Web. I wanted the page to stay alive. The most important thing is the page itself,he said. The page is more important than any individual.In fact, he worried that by changing the passwords, he could be risking greater harm for Ghonim—what if police were torturing him for access to the site? I either protect my friend or I continue the movement, he said, clearly haunted by the dilemma. It turns out I am not a good friend.Still following Ghonim’s instructions, Admin 2 proceeded to pore through the El Shaheed inbox to find the person Ghonim had described only as the girl in the United States, whom he had been told to contact.When Nadine Wahab got his message, she first worried that Admin 2 was Egyptian police, but she quickly saw that Admin 2 was equally frightened, and the two began posting on the Facebook page, posing as El Shaheed. (Admin 2 also gave a sealed envelope to a friend, with instructions to open it if he went missing for more than a day. The envelope contained user names, passwords, and instructions on maintaining the site.)
For more than a week, it was unclear whether Ghonim had even been arrested—an exhaustive search of local prisons and hospitals turned up nothing. Google put out a statement that Ghonim was missing, without mention of his political involvement. The company also set up a phone line and email address for any tips about his whereabouts.As the search continued, and word of the missing Google executive spread, rumors began swirling on the streets and in the press that Ghonim was El Shaheed, which Ghonim’s family feared might put him in even greater danger. Protesters in Tahrir Square, meanwhile, announced him as their symbolic leader. Facebook pages titled We Are All Wael Ghonim began to emerge.Between frantic calls to the State Department, Wahab tried desperately to quash the rumors—even emailing NEWSWEEK from the El Shaheed address in an attempt to suggest that all was well.
All the while, she felt like she was trapped in a movie plot. She put pillow feathers beneath her front door, to tell if someone sneaked into the house. (Her cat dragged them away.) It’s been a theater of the absurd, Wahab said recently. How did I get myself into this? As Ghonim sat blindfolded in detention, trapped in the custody of Egypt’s notorious security forces, the very people he’d spent the last eight months excoriating online, his main concern, he later said in a television interview, was that his identity would be revealed to the protesters.Ghonim spent nearly two weeks in custody with no idea of the fomenting revolution taking place outside. When he was finally released, Ghonim discovered that he had become the face of Egypt’s revolt—the exact fate he had said he wanted to avoid.In a phone interview with NEWSWEEK hours after his release on Monday, Feb. 7, in which he finally admitted his real identity, Ghonim tried at first to distance himself from this new role. That was not my plan, and I hate it, but it was out of my hands, he said.I’m not a hero. I’m just one guy. Actually I did the easiest thing, which was writing. A lot of people died.Yet as Mubarak clung to power, and then finally fell, protesters continued to look to Ghonim for a voice.The anonymous persona was finally dead. But in its absence, it seemed Ghonim had been anointed a leader by the leaderless movement he’d helped to create.
Protesters Clash with Egyptian Military Regime
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu FEB 13,11
Hosni Mubarak is gone as president, but the revolution remains - at least for now. The military is in full control in Egypt, where it clashed with protesters after clearing Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Many citizens have returned to work for the first time in two weeks.Hundreds of thousands of people had filled the square the past two weeks, demanding the ouster of now former-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and implementation of reforms for a democratic Egypt. Mubarak quickly became the principle symbol of protesters' anger, and there even have been calls for his death sentence for corruption.With Mubarak out of office, the people’s revolution has run out of steam as the military fills a vacuum of power, but thousands of opponents, fearing that the military will be a carbon copy of Mubarak's rule, say they are determined to remain in the square until reforms are instituted.The Egyptian military issued a statement saying it will act as a caretaker government, promising a peaceful transition of authority in a free democratic framework which allows an elected civilian authority to rule the country, to build a free democratic country.
Theoretically, elections must be held in 60 days, but the military’s emergency legal takeover supersedes stipulations in the Egyptian constitution.Soldiers surrounded Tahir Square on Sunday and opened the area to traffic, sometime forcefully but without the brutal violence used by police in the early days of the protests.The demonstrations prior to the downfall of Mubarak were spontaneous and leaderless, spurred by the revolution in Tunisia. Mohammed ElBaradei, the former director of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, belatedly encouraged the revolution but said from the outset he was not interested in succeeding Mubarak.The revolutionary movement severely crippled Egypt's economy, especially the tourism industry, a factor that has dampened enthusiasm of continue mass protests. We are hungry, we want to eat, we want to work, businessman Ayman el Myonir told CNN.One factor absent in the dramatic events in Egypt is Israel, which many advisors in the Obama administration have blamed as reason for most problems in the Middle East because of the failure of the Palestinian Authority to reach an agreement with the Jewish state. The Arab-Israeli struggle was barely mentioned during the two weeks of protests in Egypt.Many demonstrators brought Israel into their agenda by demanding that Egypt break the peace treaty that was established with Israel on 1979, in which Israel surrendered the Sinai Peninsula. The military has declared it will not tamper with the treaty.The fall of the Mubarak regime has left the area prone to a de facto takeover of Bedouin and Hamas terrorists, many of whom have operated from Gaza.
(IsraelNationalNews.com)
Ashton endorses army as guardians of Egypt's transition
LEIGH PHILLIPS 11.02.2011 @ 20:09 CET
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Union appears to have endorsed the role of the army as guardians of the transition process, while paying tribute to protesters for their calmness. The priority now, Brussels believes, is on regional stability.We respect the decision Mubarak has taken to stand down. We have witnessed scenes of people entering [Tahrir] Square by their hundreds and thousands, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton told a hastily arranged press conference on Friday evening (11 February).I pay enormous tribute to the calm way people have conducted themselves, she said.To those charged with guardianship of the transition process, we have high expectations that they will deliver to the people,she added, addressing the army.She appeared to back the role of the Supreme Council of the armed forces in shepherding developments. The army has always had a very particular relationship with the people. They have been given the opportunity to take the country forward.People really feel a process is underway.She said the EU could help with organising elections: The EU has a lot of knowledge and experience in building democracy. I hope to personally go.
An al Arabiya reporter asked her to compare this moment of freedom to the fall of the Berlin Wall, but she demurred.I never like to make too much of a comparison. The situation is different. It is fantastic to see all the young people to come out and to say way they want in a calm and orderly way. We want them to have a future.She refused to be drawn on when Europe hopes to see fresh elections, Ashton said: It is for the people to decide. Democracy is a process not a moment.Throughout the upheaval in the country, the EU has tailed Washington's endorsement of a orderly transition and looked not to immediate elections, but those already scheduled for September.We will help and support you but we will not dictate, Ms Ashton said. We hope to see a plan, taking Egypt from here through elections and beyond.
Regional stability
In a co-ordinated statement, Ms Ashton together with EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso called for an acceleration in the government's national dialogue process.It is important now that the dialogue is accelerated leading to a broad-based civilian government which will respect the aspirations of, and deliver stability for, the Egyptian people, the communique said.
Brussels however stresses regional stability as the priority.An orderly and irreversible transition towards democracy and free and fair elections is the shared objective of both the EU and the Egyptian people ... The preservation of regional peace and stability should remain our shared priority.The future of Egypt rightly remains in the hands of the Egyptian people. We call on army to continue to act responsibly and to ensure that the democratic change takes place in a peaceful manner.No decisions have been taken on an EU freeze of Mr Mubarak's assets, Ms Ashton added.
MEP mistrusts army
Meanwhile, the chairwoman of the European Parliament's Human Rights Sub-committee, Finnish MEP Heidi Hautala warned that the Egyptian army has been a cornerstone of the Mubarak regime and that the EU should proceed with caution in its dealings with the generals.The Egyptian military must immediately release political prisoners and accept an independent enquiry on the serious allegations of torture by the military police, she said. She urged the EU to closely follow the actions of the Armed Forces Supreme Council that is now ruling Egypt. We cannot befriend rulers or temporary military governments whose commitment for human rights are not clearly evidenced.Let us see how genuine the promises of the Egyptian army are regarding the lifting of the state of emergency.She also said the EU should not be endorsing a leadership role for Omar Suleiman, the head of the dreaded General Intelligence Directorate since 1993 until appointed vice-president two weeks ago. He was the man who announced on television on Friday evening the resignation of Mr Mubarak, but his current position is unclear.It should be made clear that Egypt's vice-pesident cannot lead the transition with cases of torture on his record while he headed Egypt's Intelligence Directorate.He does not fulfill the minimal conditions,she warned.
Sighs of relief as Egyptian leader resigns
VALENTINA POP 11.02.2011 @ 18:21 CET
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU figureheads on Friday (11 February) welcomed the resignation of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak, who stepped down after weeks of street protests and handed over power to the military ahead of elections due this fall.The news was broken late Friday afternoon by Mr Mubarak's vice-president, himself formerly in charge of the country's intelligence service, renowned for its cruel treatment of suspects, but condoned by the US government due to his help with interrogating radical Islamists.In these difficult circumstances that the country is passing through, President Hosni Mubarak has decided to leave the position of the presidency,Mr Suleiman said on national TV.He has commissioned the armed forces council to direct the issues of the state.The end of the 30-year long Mubarak regime has not come about easily. More than 300 people are believed to have died in street clashes with police since the beginning of the anti-government demonstrations, on 25 January.The EU, at the beginning cautious in supporting the popular movement, has since grown gradually critical of Mr Mubarak - as Washington had also taken a cautious stance due to Israel's concerns that a regime change may usher in radical Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood movement.
Reacting to the news, EU Parliament chief Jerzy Buzek however called this a historic day of peaceful, lasting and democratic change. I fully support the aspirations of the Egyptian people,he said in a press statement.But he also urged to carefully cherish and protect the flowers of freedom obtained,especially in regards to the military taking over the reigns of power ahead of general elections due this fall. EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton took a less enthusiastic line. The EU respects President Mubarak's decision today,she said in a press statement.By standing down, he has listened to the voices of the Egyptian people and has opened the way to faster and deeper reforms, she added, while also saluting the courage of Egyptians demonstrating peacefully for democracy.Ms Ashton repeated calls for an orderly and irreversible transition towards democracy, urging for the general elections to be free and fair.
Iranian diplomat: Egyptian protesters should beware EU help
ANDREW RETTMAN 11.02.2011 @ 23:22 CET
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Iran's ambassador to the EU, Ali Asghar Khaji, has said that Egyptian protesters should be wary of EU and US patronage of the revolution due to the Western powers' historic relations with the Mubarak elite.Speaking to EUobserver on Friday (11 February) at an event in Brussels to mark the 32nd anniversary of the Islamic revolution in Iran, Mr Khaji said: The Egyptian people should remember that the US and the EU were the principal supporters of President Mubarak. After his election, [US] President Obama gave his first speech to the Islamic world in Cairo [in 2009].The ambassador welcomed the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, who abdicated power earlier the same day. It is very important that the Egyptian people have taken a step toward realising their objectives. The coincidence that this took place on the anniversary [of the Iranian revolution] is a good omen, he said.It is a very important and positive development for the region. We consider Egypt to be part of our region. It is a fellow Islamic country.Asked if Iranian authorities are concerned that the current of popular uprisings in north Africa could embolden anti-government movements in Iran, he added: No. We are not concerned. You must remember that the Iranian state is also the product of a popular revolution.In terms of official ideology, Iran is depicting the events in Egypt as a mirror image of events in Iran in 1979, when Islamist opposition forces overthrew the regime of US ally, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Iran would like to see the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood party in Egypt share power in a future coalition government.It is concerned that if the EU-and-US-backed former Egyptian spy chief, Omar Suleiman, and the Egyptian army take over, it would be as if the revolution never happened.It is also concerned that Egyptian opposition forces have no clear vision how to rule the country. One negative option for Tehran is a political vacuum in Egypt that would allow EU and US ally Turkey to take over Egypt's role as the pre-eminent Islamic power in the region. Iran has become an international pariah primarily due to its alleged nuclear weapons programme.But Mr Khaji's remarks about the popular nature of the 1979 uprising come in the context of Iran's brutal repression of latter-day anti-government movements. In 2009, at least 15 Green Movement demonstrators were killed in the streets. Iran in January executed on drugs charges a Dutch-Iranian woman who took part in the protests, prompting the Netherlands to cut diplomatic ties.On the likelihood of an Egypt-type uprising in Iran in future, some analysts believe the Iranian opposition's moment of opportunity came and went two years ago.But one diplomat from the region at Mr Khaji's anniversary event on Friday was not so sure.The revolution in Egypt happened because people were kept under pressure for too long, like a spring, the contact said. You can keep a spring under pressure even for 1,000 years. But after 1,001 years, it will rebound.The Wall Street Journal on Friday reported the Green Movement has galvanised 30,000 people to take part in anti-government protests in the coming days on the back of events in Egypt.
Iran Blocks Pre-Rally Internet Sites; US: Tehran Running Scared
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu FEB 13,11
Revolution fever is returning to Tehran, where new and illegal protests are planned tomorrow as the United States charges Iran is scared of the will of its people.The regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already blocked several opposition websites, including one named Bahman, the 11th month of the Persian calendar, in advance of the planned rally Monday.Elsewhere in the Middle East, opposition elements in Yemen have accepted an offer by President Ali Abdullah Saleh not run again after demonstrations threatened stability in the country. Bahrain’s kingdom tried to stem trouble by offering every family $2,653 to praise the 10th anniversary of its constitution.In Algeria, where protesters defied a ban on demonstrations, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika promised to lift emergency laws.Iran was the scene of massive opposition rallies nearly two years ago after Ahmadinejad won re-election in a vote that opponents charged was riddled with fraud. Leaders of the opposition remain under house arrest, and others have been taken into custody ahead of Monday’s planned rally.
The Islamic Republic has praised the Egyptian uprising as being a copy of the Islamic revolution that overthrew the Shah in 1979, but the prospect of new protests in the streets of Tehran have prompted charges of a double standard against the government.Ahmadinejad as recently as last week told Egyptian anti-Mubarak protesters, The Iranian nation is your friend and it is your right to freely choose your path. We will soon see a new Middle East materializing without America and the Zionist regime and there will be no room for world arrogance in it.The Obama administration, which had remained silent on Iran during the Egyptian turmoil, charged on Saturday that the Iranian regime is scared of the will of its people. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, We know that what they really are scared of is exactly what might happen.Iran has jammed BBC’s Persian-language television channel and has arrested several foreign journalists. The recent arrests and effort to block international media outlets underscores the hypocrisy of the Iranian leadership, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said.By announcing that they will not allow opposition protests, the Iranian government has declared illegal for Iranians what it claimed was noble for Egyptians, he added in a statement. We call on the government of Iran to allow the Iranian people the universal right to peacefully assemble, demonstrate and communicate that's being exercised in Cairo.
(IsraelNationalNews.com)
PA CONTINUES TO PRAISE FEMALE TERRORIST BOMBER
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/142293
Outcry at EU plan to mix aid and foreign policy
ANDREW WILLIS 10.02.2011 @ 17:53 CET
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Discussions are under way for a potential merger between the EU's humanitarian aid and crisis management budgets after 2013, raising concerns among a number of NGOs and MEPs that EU aid could become increasingly politicised.
The commission's humanitarian aid budget in 2010 was €1.2 billion, administered by Bulgarian commissioner Kristalina Georgieva, while crisis management resources are being increasingly directed by the EU's new External Action Service under Italian official Agostino Miozzo, working for high representative Catherine Ashton.There is an idea on the table [to merge the two budgets] which is being considered by some people,a commission official working in the humanitarian aid sector said on Thursday (10 February) on condition of anonymity. It's not a formal proposal at the moment and it's not something we would support.The commission is to come forward with a blueprint for the EU's next multi-annual budget in June this year. But some MEPs are already warning they will not tolerate any transfer of humanitarian decision making, implied by the budget merger, to Catherine Ashton, who answers primarily to member states despite her official duties in the EU-centric commission.I don't know where the idea came from or how developed it is. It may be a wrongly interpreted idea of efficiency or part of the inter-institutional power politics currently going on, Dutch Socialist MEP Thijs Berman told this website.If it ends up in the June proposals I will fight it. Humanitarian aid needs to be impartial in order to ensure that all parties in a recipient country accept it as not favouring one side or the other. This is also crucial for the safety of humanitarian aid workers distributing support on the ground.
The issue of securing political goals through the distribution of aid has come to the fore recently, with UK Prime Minister David Cameron suggesting this week that money from the EU's neighbourhood policy instrument for Egypt could be cut if Cairo fails to implement desired reforms.We have spent billions of taxpayers' money in Egypt and neighbouring countries, Mr Cameron said on Monday. But in Egypt, there has been little or no progress on torture, the judiciary, democracy or ending a 30-year-old state of emergency.This, say NGOs, is precisely the kind of realpolitik that should not influence where the EU delivers money to those suffering from floods, earthquakes or political violence, for example.Scrapping the budget for humanitarian aid would be a fatal error. It would not only tarnish the excellent credentials of the commission as an outstanding humanitarian actor but also endanger millions of people, said Elise Ford, head of Oxfam Internationals EU office.A report published by the NGO on Thursday entitled Whose Aid is it Anyway? says the commission has so far managed to fight the global trend towards humanitarian and development aid being driven by political interests.Government humanitarian agencies in Canada, Spain and the European Commission, for example, have developed principled policies that allocate humanitarian aid according to transparent indices of global needs, to ensure that different crises and countries are not overlooked or over-funded, says the report.
Undermining such progress, however, long-standing political and security biases have since 2001 being written formally into some donors' aid policies and practices, as in the USA and France,continues the document.Other donors, including Australia, the UK and the European Union, may be on the cusp of bringing aid budgets newly under the sway of such priorities.Under a deal reached last year, the EU external action service will now make key decisions under the bloc's development policy, a decision which also faced much opposition.
Apocalypse by Giulio Meotti FEB 13,11
Several days ago a video was shot in the Israeli town of Netivot, a dusty corner of the world in the Negev desert. The latest Hamas rocket missed a wedding party by few meters. In Netivot, hundreds of people were drinking, laughing and dancing. It would have been a massacre.The video explains better than thousands of analyses the current historical process arrayed against Israel: the collapse of the Arab regimes that signed peace deals with the Jewish State; the strengthening of the terror organizations Hamas and Hezbollah; Turkey that has been lost to the West; a weak US administration and political Islam that is on the rise everywhere. The only development awaited is the announcement that Iran has developed the atomic bomb.
In the mindset of the Islamic multitudes and Western appeasers, the goal is clear: they want an Israel that packs up and goes away.A fascinating novel written by the Dutch best selling author Leon de Winter, titled The Right of Return, tells a story of Israel’s imagined apocalypse and all out war for survival. The book is going to be published in many European countries, but not in Tel Aviv. The Israeli publishing houses perceive the book as demoralizing, but it is not meant to cause demoralization, it is meant to awaken the public to the dangers surrounding Israel.
De Winter’s novel describes a State of Israel in 2024 that is reduced to the City-State of Tel Aviv. Even adjoining Jaffa is cut off from the city.I gave in to the deepest pessimistic corners of my soul, De Winter said. It is not what I think will happen, but rather what I fear could happen. A friend and defender of Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her fight against Islamic ideology, De Winter describes an Israel that is basically the area of greater Tel Aviv, with the northern part of the Negev, including Dimona. The north is gone, the south is gone, Jerusalem is gone. No Jews are living in Judea and Samaria.What’s left is a heavily fortified and secured but small area, with the remaining and largely old population centered around Tel Aviv. Cameras and drones keep vigil on the Jewish population, and the rare journey into the unprotected Palestinian-dominated territories requires passing through check-points that are far more heavily secured than contemporary ones.The book has a desperate undertone. The country falls apart because of external pressure - continuous rocket bombardments and suicide attacks - that cause families to leave, and in addition, because of internal erosion: the Israeli Arabs and the hareidi Jews move away from the Zionist heart of the nation. Those with a criminal record, those who are old, a group fascinated to be part of an apocalypse, and those who just want to stay and defend the country no matter what happens, stay behind.
De Winter doesn’t tell us what happened, whether Israel shrinks because of a peace process or because of the Islamic war of attrition. I couldn’t make it concrete, I had to jump over those years, but I always imagined a process of erosion, an increasing pressure with terrorist attacks that will pressure people to leave, De Winter tell us. What we see happening in Egypt right now, is part of that process.The main focus of the book is on Bram Mannheim, originally a Dutch Jew who makes aliyah when he is 18 and becomes, at a young age, a celebrated leftist professor. He teaches history of the Middle East at Tel Aviv University. But tragedy hits when, in 2008, he has moved to Princeton with his wife and young son to become a professor there. His 4-year-old son disappears. His marriage collapses, his life stops, and he turns into a madman, a psychotic transient wandering around in the States.His old father finds him and brings him back to Tel Aviv. And in 2024, Bram runs a little bureau that helps parents of children who have disappeared as well in this Jewish ghetto-city called Israel. And after a devastating attack, apparently executed by a young Jew who disappeared in the same period as Bram’s child, Bram starts to hope again, starts to think that maybe his son is still alive, just like these other Jewish boys - a group that seems to have been kidnapped and trained to become Muslim suicide killers, Jewish children who will come back to Israel to kill their parents.
De Winter is one of the rare Jewish writers of the Diaspora still able to shed the real drama of Israel’s struggle for survival. I am an admirer of the Zionist project, of the historical necessity to create a safe haven for European Jews as a reaction to 19th century anti-Semitism, De Winter said. I fear that Israel will not see its first centennial. Not because of a lack of vitality or commitment, but because after many decades in a region where they have been met with violence, wars, and hatred, the Israeli Jews will conclude that they love their children more than their country.De Winter’s unique book is a glimpse into Israel’s nightmares, however, they remain nightime imaginings.De Winter projects rational, Western, self-oriented processes on Israeli society, a society that has fought many major wars and suffered suicide bombers, rockets and other forms of barbarian terror non-stop since Israel's 1948 creation as a state. Perhaps due to having had enough of bloodsoaked Jewish history in the Diaspora, as he says, perhaps because Israelis are a tough breed, perhaps out of idealism, or all of the above, the 62 years of Israel's existence that include over a thousand civilian victims in one year in what is known as the Oslo War of terror, have had an effect opposite to the one De Winter predicts for 2024.Adar 9, 5771 / 13 February 11
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Parshah Ki Tisa - Exodus 30:11-34:35
SINCE WHAT ISRAEL READS WILL BE FULFILLED IN THAT WEEK I WILL BE PUTTING THE WEEKLY TORAH PORTION ON FOR ALL OF US TO KEEP TRACK OF ISRAEL HAPPENINGS.
TORAH PORTION FROM FEB 13 2011 6PM - FEB 19 6PM 2011
EXODUS 30:11 - 34:35
11 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
12 When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the LORD, when thou numberest them; that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them.
13 This they shall give, every one that passeth among them that are numbered, half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary: (a shekel is twenty gerahs:) an half shekel shall be the offering of the LORD.
14 Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty years old and above, shall give an offering unto the LORD.
15 The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less than half a shekel, when they give an offering unto the LORD, to make an atonement for your souls.
16 And thou shalt take the atonement money of the children of Israel, and shalt appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation; that it may be a memorial unto the children of Israel before the LORD, to make an atonement for your souls.
17 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
18 Thou shalt also make a laver of brass, and his foot also of brass, to wash withal: and thou shalt put it between the tabernacle of the congregation and the altar, and thou shalt put water therein.
19 For Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet thereat:
20 When they go into the tabernacle of the congregation, they shall wash with water, that they die not; or when they come near to the altar to minister, to burn offering made by fire unto the LORD:
21 So they shall wash their hands and their feet, that they die not: and it shall be a statute for ever to them, even to him and to his seed throughout their generations.
22 Moreover the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
23 Take thou also unto thee principal spices, of pure myrrh five hundred shekels, and of sweet cinnamon half so much, even two hundred and fifty shekels, and of sweet calamus two hundred and fifty shekels,
24 And of cassia five hundred shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary, and of oil olive an hin:
25 And thou shalt make it an oil of holy ointment, an ointment compound after the art of the apothecary: it shall be an holy anointing oil.
26 And thou shalt anoint the tabernacle of the congregation therewith, and the ark of the testimony,
27 And the table and all his vessels, and the candlestick and his vessels, and the altar of incense,
28 And the altar of burnt offering with all his vessels, and the laver and his foot.
29 And thou shalt sanctify them, that they may be most holy: whatsoever toucheth them shall be holy.
30 And thou shalt anoint Aaron and his sons, and consecrate them, that they may minister unto me in the priest's office.
31 And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, This shall be an holy anointing oil unto me throughout your generations.
32 Upon man's flesh shall it not be poured, neither shall ye make any other like it, after the composition of it: it is holy, and it shall be holy unto you.
33 Whosoever compoundeth any like it, or whosoever putteth any of it upon a stranger, shall even be cut off from his people.
34 And the LORD said unto Moses, Take unto thee sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum; these sweet spices with pure frankincense: of each shall there be a like weight:
35 And thou shalt make it a perfume, a confection after the art of the apothecary, tempered together, pure and holy:
36 And thou shalt beat some of it very small, and put of it before the testimony in the tabernacle of the congregation, where I will meet with thee: it shall be unto you most holy.
37 And as for the perfume which thou shalt make, ye shall not make to yourselves according to the composition thereof: it shall be unto thee holy for the LORD.
38 Whosoever shall make like unto that, to smell thereto, shall even be cut off from his people.
EXODUS 31:1-18
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
2 See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah:
3 And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship,
4 To devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass,
5 And in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship.
6 And I, behold, I have given with him Aholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan: and in the hearts of all that are wise hearted I have put wisdom, that they may make all that I have commanded thee;
7 The tabernacle of the congregation, and the ark of the testimony, and the mercy seat that is thereupon, and all the furniture of the tabernacle,
8 And the table and his furniture, and the pure candlestick with all his furniture, and the altar of incense,
9 And the altar of burnt offering with all his furniture, and the laver and his foot,
10 And the cloths of service, and the holy garments for Aaron the priest, and the garments of his sons, to minister in the priest's office,
11 And the anointing oil, and sweet incense for the holy place: according to all that I have commanded thee shall they do.
12 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
13 Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the LORD that doth sanctify you.
14 Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.
15 Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.
16 Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant.
17 It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.
18 And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.
EXODUS 32:1-35
1 And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.
2 And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.
3 And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron.
4 And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
5 And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the LORD.
6 And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.
7 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves:
8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
9 And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people:
10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.
11 And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand?
12 Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people.
13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever.
14 And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.
15 And Moses turned, and went down from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony were in his hand: the tables were written on both their sides; on the one side and on the other were they written.
16 And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.
17 And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, There is a noise of war in the camp.
18 And he said, It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome: but the noise of them that sing do I hear.
19 And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.
20 And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.
21 And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee, that thou hast brought so great a sin upon them?
22 And Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord wax hot: thou knowest the people, that they are set on mischief.
23 For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us: for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.
24 And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.
25 And when Moses saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies:)
26 Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD'S side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.
27 And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.
28 And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.
29 For Moses had said, Consecrate yourselves to day to the LORD, even every man upon his son, and upon his brother; that he may bestow upon you a blessing this day.
30 And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses said unto the people, Ye have sinned a great sin: and now I will go up unto the LORD; peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin.
31 And Moses returned unto the LORD, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold.
32 Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin––; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.
33 And the LORD said unto Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book.
34 Therefore now go, lead the people unto the place of which I have spoken unto thee: behold, mine Angel shall go before thee: nevertheless in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them.
35 And the LORD plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made.
EXODUS 33:1-23
1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Depart, and go up hence, thou and the people which thou hast brought up out of the land of Egypt, unto the land which I sware unto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, Unto thy seed will I give it:
2 And I will send an angel before thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite:
3 Unto a land flowing with milk and honey: for I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiffnecked people: lest I consume thee in the way.
4 And when the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned: and no man did put on him his ornaments.
5 For the LORD had said unto Moses, Say unto the children of Israel, Ye are a stiffnecked people: I will come up into the midst of thee in a moment, and consume thee: therefore now put off thy ornaments from thee, that I may know what to do unto thee.
6 And the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments by the mount Horeb.
7 And Moses took the tabernacle, and pitched it without the camp, afar off from the camp, and called it the Tabernacle of the congregation. And it came to pass, that every one which sought the LORD went out unto the tabernacle of the congregation, which was without the camp.
8 And it came to pass, when Moses went out unto the tabernacle, that all the people rose up, and stood every man at his tent door, and looked after Moses, until he was gone into the tabernacle.
9 And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the LORD talked with Moses.
10 And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle door: and all the people rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent door.
11 And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp: but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle.
12 And Moses said unto the LORD, See, thou sayest unto me, Bring up this people: and thou hast not let me know whom thou wilt send with me. Yet thou hast said, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight.
13 Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, shew me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight: and consider that this nation is thy people.
14 And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.
15 And he said unto him, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence.
16 For wherein shall it be known here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight? is it not in that thou goest with us? so shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth.
17 And the LORD said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken: for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name.
18 And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.
19 And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.
20 And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.
21 And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock:
22 And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by:
23 And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.
EXODUS 34:1-351 And the LORD said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.
2 And be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning unto mount Sinai, and present thyself there to me in the top of the mount.
3 And no man shall come up with thee, neither let any man be seen throughout all the mount; neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount.
4 And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone.
5 And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD.
6 And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,
7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.
8 And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped.
9 And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance.
10 And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation: and all the people among which thou art shall see the work of the LORD: for it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee.
11 Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite.
12 Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee:
13 But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:
14 For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:
15 Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice;
16 And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods.
17 Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.
18 The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt.
19 All that openeth the matrix is mine; and every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male.
20 But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty.
21 Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest.
22 And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end.
23 Thrice in the year shall all your men children appear before the Lord GOD, the God of Israel.
24 For I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the LORD thy God thrice in the year.
25 Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning.
26 The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.
27 And the LORD said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel.
28 And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.
29 And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses' hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him.
30 And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him.
31 And Moses called unto them; and Aaron and all the rulers of the congregation returned unto him: and Moses talked with them.
32 And afterward all the children of Israel came nigh: and he gave them in commandment all that the LORD had spoken with him in mount Sinai.
33 And till Moses had done speaking with them, he put a vail on his face.
34 But when Moses went in before the LORD to speak with him, he took the vail off, until he came out. And he came out, and spake unto the children of Israel that which he was commanded.
35 And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses face shone: and Moses put the vail upon his face again, until he went in to speak with him.
PROPHETS PORTION
1 KINGS 18:1-39
1 And it came to pass after many days, that the word of the LORD came to Elijah in the third year, saying, Go, shew thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth.
2 And Elijah went to shew himself unto Ahab. And there was a sore famine in Samaria.
3 And Ahab called Obadiah, which was the governor of his house. (Now Obadiah feared the LORD greatly:
4 For it was so, when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the LORD, that Obadiah took an hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water.)
5 And Ahab said unto Obadiah, Go into the land, unto all fountains of water, and unto all brooks: peradventure we may find grass to save the horses and mules alive, that we lose not all the beasts.
6 So they divided the land between them to pass throughout it: Ahab went one way by himself, and Obadiah went another way by himself.
7 And as Obadiah was in the way, behold, Elijah met him: and he knew him, and fell on his face, and said, Art thou that my lord Elijah?
8 And he answered him, I am: go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here.
9 And he said, What have I sinned, that thou wouldest deliver thy servant into the hand of Ahab, to slay me?
10 As the LORD thy God liveth, there is no nation or kingdom, whither my lord hath not sent to seek thee: and when they said, He is not there; he took an oath of the kingdom and nation, that they found thee not.
11 And now thou sayest, Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here.
12 And it shall come to pass, as soon as I am gone from thee, that the Spirit of the LORD shall carry thee whither I know not; and so when I come and tell Ahab, and he cannot find thee, he shall slay me: but I thy servant fear the LORD from my youth.
13 Was it not told my lord what I did when Jezebel slew the prophets of the LORD, how I hid an hundred men of the LORD'S prophets by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water?
14 And now thou sayest, Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here: and he shall slay me.
15 And Elijah said, As the LORD of hosts liveth, before whom I stand, I will surely shew myself unto him to day.
16 So Obadiah went to meet Ahab, and told him: and Ahab went to meet Elijah.
17 And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Art thou he that troubleth Israel?
18 And he answered, I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the LORD, and thou hast followed Baalim.
19 Now therefore send, and gather to me all Israel unto mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the groves four hundred, which eat at Jezebel's table.
20 So Ahab sent unto all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together unto mount Carmel.
21 And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.
22 Then said Elijah unto the people, I, even I only, remain a prophet of the LORD; but Baal's prophets are four hundred and fifty men.
23 Let them therefore give us two bullocks; and let them choose one bullock for themselves, and cut it in pieces, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under: and I will dress the other bullock, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under:
24 And call ye on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the LORD: and the God that answereth by fire, let him be God. And all the people answered and said, It is well spoken.
25 And Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, Choose you one bullock for yourselves, and dress it first; for ye are many; and call on the name of your gods, but put no fire under.
26 And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made.
27 And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.
28 And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.
29 And it came to pass, when midday was past, and they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded.
30 And Elijah said unto all the people, Come near unto me. And all the people came near unto him. And he repaired the altar of the LORD that was broken down.
31 And Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, unto whom the word of the LORD came, saying, Israel shall be thy name:
32 And with the stones he built an altar in the name of the LORD: and he made a trench about the altar, as great as would contain two measures of seed.
33 And he put the wood in order, and cut the bullock in pieces, and laid him on the wood, and said, Fill four barrels with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice, and on the wood.
34 And he said, Do it the second time. And they did it the second time. And he said, Do it the third time. And they did it the third time.
35 And the water ran round about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water.
36 And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near, and said, LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word.
37 Hear me, O LORD, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the LORD God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again.
38 Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.
39 And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The LORD, he is the God; the LORD, he is the God.
NEW TESTAMENT PORTION
LUKE 11:14-20
14 And he was casting out a devil, and it was dumb. And it came to pass, when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake; and the people wondered.
15 But some of them said, He casteth out devils through Beelzebub the chief of the devils.
16 And others, tempting him, sought of him a sign from heaven.
17 But he, knowing their thoughts, said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against a house falleth.
18 If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand? because ye say that I cast out devils through Beelzebub.
19 And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out? therefore shall they be your judges.
20 But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you.
ACTS 7:35-8:1
35 This Moses whom they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge? the same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel which appeared to him in the bush.
36 He brought them out, after that he had shewed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, and in the Red sea, and in the wilderness forty years.
37 This is that Moses, which said unto the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear.
38 This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us:
39 To whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt,
40 Saying unto Aaron, Make us gods to go before us: for as for this Moses, which brought us out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.
41 And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice unto the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands.
42 Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness?
43 Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them: and I will carry you away beyond Babylon.
44 Our fathers had the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness, as he had appointed, speaking unto Moses, that he should make it according to the fashion that he had seen.
45 Which also our fathers that came after brought in with Jesus into the possession of the Gentiles, whom God drave out before the face of our fathers, unto the days of David;
46 Who found favour before God, and desired to find a tabernacle for the God of Jacob.
47 But Solomon built him an house.
48 Howbeit the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet,
49 Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my rest?
50 Hath not my hand made all these things?
51 Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.
52 Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers:
53 Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it.
54 When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth.
55 But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God,
56 And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.
57 Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord,
58 And cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet, whose name was Saul.
59 And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.
60 And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
1 And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles.
1 CORINTHIANS 10:1-13
1 Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea;
2 And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea;
3 And did all eat the same spiritual meat;
4 And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.
5 But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
6 Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted.
7 Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.
8 Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.
9 Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents.
10 Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer.
11 Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.
12 Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.
13 There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.
2 CORINTHIANS 3:1-18
1 Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you?
2 Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men:
3 Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.
4 And such trust have we through Christ to God–ward:
5 Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God;
6 Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
7 But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away:
8 How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious?
9 For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.
10 For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth.
11 For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious.
12 Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech:
13 And not as Moses, which put a vail over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished:
14 But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ.
15 But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart.
16 Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away.
17 Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
TORAH PORTION FROM FEB 13 2011 6PM - FEB 19 6PM 2011
EXODUS 30:11 - 34:35
11 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
12 When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the LORD, when thou numberest them; that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them.
13 This they shall give, every one that passeth among them that are numbered, half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary: (a shekel is twenty gerahs:) an half shekel shall be the offering of the LORD.
14 Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty years old and above, shall give an offering unto the LORD.
15 The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less than half a shekel, when they give an offering unto the LORD, to make an atonement for your souls.
16 And thou shalt take the atonement money of the children of Israel, and shalt appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation; that it may be a memorial unto the children of Israel before the LORD, to make an atonement for your souls.
17 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
18 Thou shalt also make a laver of brass, and his foot also of brass, to wash withal: and thou shalt put it between the tabernacle of the congregation and the altar, and thou shalt put water therein.
19 For Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet thereat:
20 When they go into the tabernacle of the congregation, they shall wash with water, that they die not; or when they come near to the altar to minister, to burn offering made by fire unto the LORD:
21 So they shall wash their hands and their feet, that they die not: and it shall be a statute for ever to them, even to him and to his seed throughout their generations.
22 Moreover the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
23 Take thou also unto thee principal spices, of pure myrrh five hundred shekels, and of sweet cinnamon half so much, even two hundred and fifty shekels, and of sweet calamus two hundred and fifty shekels,
24 And of cassia five hundred shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary, and of oil olive an hin:
25 And thou shalt make it an oil of holy ointment, an ointment compound after the art of the apothecary: it shall be an holy anointing oil.
26 And thou shalt anoint the tabernacle of the congregation therewith, and the ark of the testimony,
27 And the table and all his vessels, and the candlestick and his vessels, and the altar of incense,
28 And the altar of burnt offering with all his vessels, and the laver and his foot.
29 And thou shalt sanctify them, that they may be most holy: whatsoever toucheth them shall be holy.
30 And thou shalt anoint Aaron and his sons, and consecrate them, that they may minister unto me in the priest's office.
31 And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, This shall be an holy anointing oil unto me throughout your generations.
32 Upon man's flesh shall it not be poured, neither shall ye make any other like it, after the composition of it: it is holy, and it shall be holy unto you.
33 Whosoever compoundeth any like it, or whosoever putteth any of it upon a stranger, shall even be cut off from his people.
34 And the LORD said unto Moses, Take unto thee sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum; these sweet spices with pure frankincense: of each shall there be a like weight:
35 And thou shalt make it a perfume, a confection after the art of the apothecary, tempered together, pure and holy:
36 And thou shalt beat some of it very small, and put of it before the testimony in the tabernacle of the congregation, where I will meet with thee: it shall be unto you most holy.
37 And as for the perfume which thou shalt make, ye shall not make to yourselves according to the composition thereof: it shall be unto thee holy for the LORD.
38 Whosoever shall make like unto that, to smell thereto, shall even be cut off from his people.
EXODUS 31:1-18
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
2 See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah:
3 And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship,
4 To devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass,
5 And in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship.
6 And I, behold, I have given with him Aholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan: and in the hearts of all that are wise hearted I have put wisdom, that they may make all that I have commanded thee;
7 The tabernacle of the congregation, and the ark of the testimony, and the mercy seat that is thereupon, and all the furniture of the tabernacle,
8 And the table and his furniture, and the pure candlestick with all his furniture, and the altar of incense,
9 And the altar of burnt offering with all his furniture, and the laver and his foot,
10 And the cloths of service, and the holy garments for Aaron the priest, and the garments of his sons, to minister in the priest's office,
11 And the anointing oil, and sweet incense for the holy place: according to all that I have commanded thee shall they do.
12 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
13 Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the LORD that doth sanctify you.
14 Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.
15 Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.
16 Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant.
17 It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.
18 And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.
EXODUS 32:1-35
1 And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.
2 And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.
3 And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron.
4 And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
5 And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the LORD.
6 And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.
7 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves:
8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
9 And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people:
10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.
11 And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand?
12 Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people.
13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever.
14 And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.
15 And Moses turned, and went down from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony were in his hand: the tables were written on both their sides; on the one side and on the other were they written.
16 And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.
17 And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, There is a noise of war in the camp.
18 And he said, It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome: but the noise of them that sing do I hear.
19 And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.
20 And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.
21 And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee, that thou hast brought so great a sin upon them?
22 And Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord wax hot: thou knowest the people, that they are set on mischief.
23 For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us: for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.
24 And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.
25 And when Moses saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies:)
26 Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD'S side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.
27 And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.
28 And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.
29 For Moses had said, Consecrate yourselves to day to the LORD, even every man upon his son, and upon his brother; that he may bestow upon you a blessing this day.
30 And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses said unto the people, Ye have sinned a great sin: and now I will go up unto the LORD; peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin.
31 And Moses returned unto the LORD, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold.
32 Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin––; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.
33 And the LORD said unto Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book.
34 Therefore now go, lead the people unto the place of which I have spoken unto thee: behold, mine Angel shall go before thee: nevertheless in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them.
35 And the LORD plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made.
EXODUS 33:1-23
1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Depart, and go up hence, thou and the people which thou hast brought up out of the land of Egypt, unto the land which I sware unto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, Unto thy seed will I give it:
2 And I will send an angel before thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite:
3 Unto a land flowing with milk and honey: for I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiffnecked people: lest I consume thee in the way.
4 And when the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned: and no man did put on him his ornaments.
5 For the LORD had said unto Moses, Say unto the children of Israel, Ye are a stiffnecked people: I will come up into the midst of thee in a moment, and consume thee: therefore now put off thy ornaments from thee, that I may know what to do unto thee.
6 And the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments by the mount Horeb.
7 And Moses took the tabernacle, and pitched it without the camp, afar off from the camp, and called it the Tabernacle of the congregation. And it came to pass, that every one which sought the LORD went out unto the tabernacle of the congregation, which was without the camp.
8 And it came to pass, when Moses went out unto the tabernacle, that all the people rose up, and stood every man at his tent door, and looked after Moses, until he was gone into the tabernacle.
9 And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the LORD talked with Moses.
10 And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle door: and all the people rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent door.
11 And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp: but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle.
12 And Moses said unto the LORD, See, thou sayest unto me, Bring up this people: and thou hast not let me know whom thou wilt send with me. Yet thou hast said, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight.
13 Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, shew me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight: and consider that this nation is thy people.
14 And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.
15 And he said unto him, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence.
16 For wherein shall it be known here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight? is it not in that thou goest with us? so shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth.
17 And the LORD said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken: for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name.
18 And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.
19 And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.
20 And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.
21 And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock:
22 And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by:
23 And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.
EXODUS 34:1-351 And the LORD said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.
2 And be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning unto mount Sinai, and present thyself there to me in the top of the mount.
3 And no man shall come up with thee, neither let any man be seen throughout all the mount; neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount.
4 And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone.
5 And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD.
6 And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,
7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.
8 And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped.
9 And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance.
10 And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation: and all the people among which thou art shall see the work of the LORD: for it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee.
11 Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite.
12 Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee:
13 But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:
14 For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:
15 Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice;
16 And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods.
17 Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.
18 The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt.
19 All that openeth the matrix is mine; and every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male.
20 But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty.
21 Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest.
22 And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end.
23 Thrice in the year shall all your men children appear before the Lord GOD, the God of Israel.
24 For I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the LORD thy God thrice in the year.
25 Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning.
26 The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.
27 And the LORD said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel.
28 And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.
29 And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses' hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him.
30 And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him.
31 And Moses called unto them; and Aaron and all the rulers of the congregation returned unto him: and Moses talked with them.
32 And afterward all the children of Israel came nigh: and he gave them in commandment all that the LORD had spoken with him in mount Sinai.
33 And till Moses had done speaking with them, he put a vail on his face.
34 But when Moses went in before the LORD to speak with him, he took the vail off, until he came out. And he came out, and spake unto the children of Israel that which he was commanded.
35 And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses face shone: and Moses put the vail upon his face again, until he went in to speak with him.
PROPHETS PORTION
1 KINGS 18:1-39
1 And it came to pass after many days, that the word of the LORD came to Elijah in the third year, saying, Go, shew thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth.
2 And Elijah went to shew himself unto Ahab. And there was a sore famine in Samaria.
3 And Ahab called Obadiah, which was the governor of his house. (Now Obadiah feared the LORD greatly:
4 For it was so, when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the LORD, that Obadiah took an hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water.)
5 And Ahab said unto Obadiah, Go into the land, unto all fountains of water, and unto all brooks: peradventure we may find grass to save the horses and mules alive, that we lose not all the beasts.
6 So they divided the land between them to pass throughout it: Ahab went one way by himself, and Obadiah went another way by himself.
7 And as Obadiah was in the way, behold, Elijah met him: and he knew him, and fell on his face, and said, Art thou that my lord Elijah?
8 And he answered him, I am: go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here.
9 And he said, What have I sinned, that thou wouldest deliver thy servant into the hand of Ahab, to slay me?
10 As the LORD thy God liveth, there is no nation or kingdom, whither my lord hath not sent to seek thee: and when they said, He is not there; he took an oath of the kingdom and nation, that they found thee not.
11 And now thou sayest, Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here.
12 And it shall come to pass, as soon as I am gone from thee, that the Spirit of the LORD shall carry thee whither I know not; and so when I come and tell Ahab, and he cannot find thee, he shall slay me: but I thy servant fear the LORD from my youth.
13 Was it not told my lord what I did when Jezebel slew the prophets of the LORD, how I hid an hundred men of the LORD'S prophets by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water?
14 And now thou sayest, Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here: and he shall slay me.
15 And Elijah said, As the LORD of hosts liveth, before whom I stand, I will surely shew myself unto him to day.
16 So Obadiah went to meet Ahab, and told him: and Ahab went to meet Elijah.
17 And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Art thou he that troubleth Israel?
18 And he answered, I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the LORD, and thou hast followed Baalim.
19 Now therefore send, and gather to me all Israel unto mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the groves four hundred, which eat at Jezebel's table.
20 So Ahab sent unto all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together unto mount Carmel.
21 And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.
22 Then said Elijah unto the people, I, even I only, remain a prophet of the LORD; but Baal's prophets are four hundred and fifty men.
23 Let them therefore give us two bullocks; and let them choose one bullock for themselves, and cut it in pieces, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under: and I will dress the other bullock, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under:
24 And call ye on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the LORD: and the God that answereth by fire, let him be God. And all the people answered and said, It is well spoken.
25 And Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, Choose you one bullock for yourselves, and dress it first; for ye are many; and call on the name of your gods, but put no fire under.
26 And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made.
27 And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.
28 And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.
29 And it came to pass, when midday was past, and they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded.
30 And Elijah said unto all the people, Come near unto me. And all the people came near unto him. And he repaired the altar of the LORD that was broken down.
31 And Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, unto whom the word of the LORD came, saying, Israel shall be thy name:
32 And with the stones he built an altar in the name of the LORD: and he made a trench about the altar, as great as would contain two measures of seed.
33 And he put the wood in order, and cut the bullock in pieces, and laid him on the wood, and said, Fill four barrels with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice, and on the wood.
34 And he said, Do it the second time. And they did it the second time. And he said, Do it the third time. And they did it the third time.
35 And the water ran round about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water.
36 And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near, and said, LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word.
37 Hear me, O LORD, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the LORD God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again.
38 Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.
39 And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The LORD, he is the God; the LORD, he is the God.
NEW TESTAMENT PORTION
LUKE 11:14-20
14 And he was casting out a devil, and it was dumb. And it came to pass, when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake; and the people wondered.
15 But some of them said, He casteth out devils through Beelzebub the chief of the devils.
16 And others, tempting him, sought of him a sign from heaven.
17 But he, knowing their thoughts, said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against a house falleth.
18 If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand? because ye say that I cast out devils through Beelzebub.
19 And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out? therefore shall they be your judges.
20 But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you.
ACTS 7:35-8:1
35 This Moses whom they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge? the same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel which appeared to him in the bush.
36 He brought them out, after that he had shewed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, and in the Red sea, and in the wilderness forty years.
37 This is that Moses, which said unto the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear.
38 This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us:
39 To whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt,
40 Saying unto Aaron, Make us gods to go before us: for as for this Moses, which brought us out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.
41 And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice unto the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands.
42 Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness?
43 Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them: and I will carry you away beyond Babylon.
44 Our fathers had the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness, as he had appointed, speaking unto Moses, that he should make it according to the fashion that he had seen.
45 Which also our fathers that came after brought in with Jesus into the possession of the Gentiles, whom God drave out before the face of our fathers, unto the days of David;
46 Who found favour before God, and desired to find a tabernacle for the God of Jacob.
47 But Solomon built him an house.
48 Howbeit the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet,
49 Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my rest?
50 Hath not my hand made all these things?
51 Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.
52 Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers:
53 Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it.
54 When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth.
55 But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God,
56 And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.
57 Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord,
58 And cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet, whose name was Saul.
59 And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.
60 And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
1 And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles.
1 CORINTHIANS 10:1-13
1 Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea;
2 And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea;
3 And did all eat the same spiritual meat;
4 And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.
5 But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
6 Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted.
7 Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.
8 Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.
9 Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents.
10 Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer.
11 Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.
12 Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.
13 There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.
2 CORINTHIANS 3:1-18
1 Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you?
2 Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men:
3 Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.
4 And such trust have we through Christ to God–ward:
5 Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God;
6 Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
7 But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away:
8 How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious?
9 For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.
10 For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth.
11 For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious.
12 Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech:
13 And not as Moses, which put a vail over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished:
14 But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ.
15 But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart.
16 Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away.
17 Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
PATRIOT ACT PASSES
John Loeffler
http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2011/02/john-loeffler-steel-on-steel-behind.html#links
http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2011/02/john-loeffler-steel-on-steel-changes-in.html
WALID SHOEBAT INTERVIEWS
http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2011/02/walid-shoebat-foundation-click-here-to.html
GLENN BECK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LEBaHvJ8Kk&feature=player_embedded
Jim Grant: The Fed Is Now In The Business Of Manipulating The Stock Market...Should Confess It Has Sinned Grievously By Tyler Durden Created 01/28/2011 - 16:03AUDIO ON LINK
http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2011/01/published-on-zero-hedge-httpwww.html#links
Jim Grant, who will never be accused of being a fan of the Criminal Reserve, and whose views [1]on what will happen to asset prices in a printer-happy world are gradually being validated, appeared on Bloomberg TV, telling Margaret Brennan upfront that Bernanke owes the world an apology. Alas, after various revolutions around the world have been catalyzed by Bernanke's policies, we have a feeling that ever more oppressed people will soon see the Printer in Chief as a patron saint of violent revolution, alas against crony regimes fully supported by the US (and hopefully the US will view it the same way when its time comes). That aside, Grant's criticism of the Fed should really start to grate on the Chaircreature: I think what would be very good for the Fed if there would be a confession, the Fed should confess that it has sinned grievously, and is in violation of every single precept of its founders and every single convention of classical central banking. Quantitative Easing is a symptom of the difficulties that the Fed has created for itself. The Fed is running a balance sheet which if it were the balance sheet attached to a bank in the private sector would probably move the FDIC to shut it down. The New York Branch of the Fed is leveraged more than 80 to 1.Meaning, that a loss of asset value of less than 1.5% would send it into receivership if it were a different kind of institution...The Fed is now in the business of manipulating the stock market.Jim also has some very critical discussions on how the Fed never settles up on the $3.4 trillion in custodial debt on its books. As always, we can't get enough as more and more mainstream figures turn to bashing that biggest abortion of modern capital markets.
RAND PAUL SAY NO TO PATRIOT ACT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSDBswx90Cs&feature=player_embedded
DOUG HAGMANN HOUR 2 FRI FEB 11,11 ON PATRIOT ACT
http://therothshow.com/show-archives/february-2011/
CANADA-USA INTEGRATION ON TERRORISM
http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2011/02/north-american-union-revitalized.html
LAURIE ROTHS SITE
http://therothshow.com/
DOUG HAGMANNS SITES
http://homelandsecurityus.com/
https://hagmann-pi.com/Home.html
http://theneinblog.blogspot.com/
CANADA FREE PRESS-JUDI MCLEOD
http://www.canadafreepress.com/
THIS PATRIOT ACT PASSAGE WILL AFFECT US OVER HERE IN CANADA TO BECAUSE HARPER AND OBAMA SIGNED A SECRET DECREE THAT BRINGS OUR INTEGRATED ECONOMIES AND SURVELLENCE AND TERRORISM ACTS ALL TOGETHER.SO THIS MEANS CANADIANS CAN BE WATCHED BY ALL THE SURVELLENCE MOVES THAT THE U.S. USES IN THIS PATRIOT ACT.THEY CAN LISTEN IN ON US THREW OUR PHONES,COMPUTERS AND IF YOU GOT HD ON YOUR TV THEY CAN EVEN WATCH YOUR MOVES AND HEAR WHAT YOU SAY THROUGH YOUR TV,COMPUTER EVEN WHEN ITS TURNED OFF.SO YES THIS PASSAGE OF THE PATRIOT ACT IN AMERICA WILL AFFECT US OVER HERE IN CANADA.THE GOVERNMENTS CAN WATCH US WITH ANY WAY THEY WANT WITHOUT RESTRICTIONS.WE ARE DEFINATELY UNDER MARTIAL LAW LIKE AMERICA IS.
House passes Patriot Act rule, clears way for passage FEB 10,11 By Josiah Ryan THE HILL
The House passed a rule Thursday setting up a second vote to extend Patriot Act surveillance authorities until Dec. 8. The new rule clears the way for the legislation to be passed by just a simple majority, after the same bill failed to win a two-thirds majority under a suspension of House rules earlier in the week. In the suspension vote, more than two dozen Republicans bucked their leadership and joined Democrats to sink the extension.In floor debate preceding Thursday's vote on the rule, Democrats jabbed Republicans for dropping the first vote and protested the closed rule for the second vote, which prevents amendments.Rep. Sheila Jackson (D-Texas) said Republicans were practicing unique trickery by calling the bill back for a second vote.We have a right to have a voice and that voice has already been expressed, said Lee. What more needs to be said?
Some Democrats said they would have proposed an amendment that extended the law for only 60 days. But in many ways the floor discussion mirrored the debate earlier in the week.Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) called the Patriot Act a destructive undermining of constitutional principals and the rights of people to be secure in their homes.But Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) countered that if the law were unconstitutional, the courts would have struck it down by now. He also accused Kucinich of making up arguments.Some Democrats argued that Republicans should have held hearings on the Patriot Act before rushing through an extension. But Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said Democrats did not require a hearing when they passed an extension last year, and pledging to push for committee hearings later this year. The House could take up the Patriot Act extension bill as early as Friday. The Senate is expected to take up the Patriot Act next week, but is looking at bills that would extend the three surveillance authorities for at least three years.
House clears way for PATRIOT Act extension
By David Edwards Friday, February 11th, 2011 -- 9:20 am
The US House of Representatives voted Thursday night to clear the road for an extension of controversial provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act.The final vote was 248 to 176, largely along party lines. Just 4 Republicans voted against the extension, while only 15 Democrats voted for it.Under the House bill, the act would be extended until Dec. 8. A vote was planned for Monday.Democrats protested a Republican plan to hold the vote under the closed rule, which prevented amendments. The last PATRIOT Act extension was passed in Feb. 2010.Thursday's House vote paved the way for a second ballot on the PATRIOT Act, allowing it to clear the chamber with a simple majority. An earlier vote failed when it did not obtain a two thirds majority.
The Wednesday vote was 23 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass it under a procedure that allows bills that aren't controversial to pass quickly.
When the act was first signed into law, Congress put in some sunset provisions to quiet the concerns of civil libertarians, but they were ignored by successive extensions. Unfortunately, those concerns proved to be well founded, and a 2008 Justice Department report confirmed that the FBI regularly abused their ability to obtain personal records of Americans without a warrant.The only real sign of strong opposition to the act was in 2005, when a Democratic threat to filibuster its first renewal was overcome by Senate Republicans.The Obama administration had called for the act to be extended for three years, two years longer than Republicans were seeking.As a US Senator and candidate for the presidency, Barack Obama never actually argued for a repeal of the Bush administration's security initiatives. Instead, he's consistently argued for enhanced judicial oversight and a pullback on the most extreme elements of the bill, such as the use of National Security Letters to search people's personal records without a court-issued warrant.A prior version of this article said the House had passed the PATRIOT Act extension.-- With earlier reporting by Daniel Tencer and Stephen C. Webster
IT WAS FEB 4,11 WHEN OBAMA,HARPER SIGNED THIS SECRET INTEGRATION OF OUR SERVELLENCE AND TERRORISM WATCHING ACTS.HERE IS THE REMARKS BY HARPER,OBAMA ON FEB 4,11
The White House-Office of the Press Secretary-For Immediate Release February 04, 2011Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada in Joint Press Availability South Court Auditorium 3:21 P.M. EST
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Good afternoon, everyone. Please be seated.
I am very pleased to be welcoming my great friend and partner, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, back to the White House to reaffirm our extraordinary friendship and cooperation between the United States and Canada. I’d like to talk a bit about what we accomplished today, and then address the situation unfolding in Egypt.The United States and Canada are not simply allies, not simply neighbors; we are woven together like perhaps no other two countries in the world. We’re bound together by our societies, by our economies, by our families -- which reminds me my brother-in-law’s birthday is today and I have to call him. (Laughter.) And in our many meetings together I’ve come to value Stephen’s candor and his focus on getting results, both when it comes to our two countries and to meeting global challenges. Although I, unfortunately, have not yet had the pleasure of seeing him and his band jam to the Rolling Stones —- but I’m told the videos have become a sensation on YouTube. So I'll be checking those out after this bilateral. (Laughter.)
We’ve had a very successful day. Our focus has been on how we increase jobs and economic growth on both sides of the border. Canada is our largest trading partner and the top destination for American exports, supporting some 1.7 million jobs here. So today we’ve agreed to several important steps to increase trade, improve our competitiveness, and create jobs for both our people.First, we agreed to a new vision for managing our shared responsibilities —- not just at the border but beyond the border. That means working more closely to improve border security with better screening, new technologies and information-sharing among law enforcement, as well as identifying threats early. It also means finding new ways to improve the free flow of goods and people. Because with over a billion dollars in trade crossing the border every single day, smarter border management is key to our competitiveness, our job creation, and my goal of doubling U.S. exports.
And, Mr. Prime Minister, I thank you for your leadership and commitment to reaching this agreement.We’ve directed our teams to develop an action plan to move forward quickly. And I’m confident that we’re going to get this done so that our shared border enhances our shared prosperity.Second, we’re launching a new effort to get rid of outdated regulations that stifle trade and job creation. Like the government-wide review that I ordered last month, we need to obviously strike the right balance -— protecting our public health and safety, and making it easier and less expensive for American and Canadians to trade and do business, for example, in the auto industry. And a new council that we’re creating today will help make that happen.Third, we discussed a wide range of ways to promote trade and investment, from clean energy partnerships to the steps Canada can take to strengthen intellectual property rights.
And we discussed a range of common security challenges, including Afghanistan, where our forces serve and sacrifice together. Today, I want to thank Prime Minister Harper for Canada’s decision to shift its commitment to focus on training Afghan forces. As we agreed with our Lisbon -- or our NATO and coalition allies in Lisbon, the transition to Afghan lead for security will begin this year, and Canada’s contribution will be critical to achieving that mission and keeping both our countries safe.Finally, we discussed our shared commitment to progress with our partners in the Americas, including greater security cooperation. And I especially appreciated the Prime Minister’s perspective on the region as I prepare for my trip to Central and South America next month.Let me close by saying a few words about the situation in Egypt. This is obviously still a fluid situation and we’re monitoring it closely, so I'll make just a few points.First, we continue to be crystal-clear that we oppose violence as a response to this crisis. In recent days, we’ve seen violence and harassment erupt on the streets of Egypt that violates human rights, universal values and international norms. So we are sending a strong and unequivocal message: Attacks on reporters are unacceptable. Attacks on human rights activists are unacceptable. Attacks on peaceful protesters are unacceptable.The Egyptian government has a responsibility to protect the rights of its people. Those demonstrating also have a responsibility to do so peacefully. But everybody should recognize a simple truth: The issues at stake in Egypt will not be resolved through violence or suppression. And we are encouraged by the restraint that was shown today. We hope that it continues.
Second, the future of Egypt will be determined by its people. It’s also clear that there needs to be a transition process that begins now. That transition must initiate a process that respects the universal rights of the Egyptian people and that leads to free and fair elections.The details of this transition will be worked by Egyptians. And my understanding is that some discussions have begun. But we are consulting widely within Egypt and with the international community to communicate our strong belief that a successful and orderly transition must be meaningful. Negotiations should include a broad representation of the Egyptian opposition, and this transition must address the legitimate grievances of those who seek a better future.Third, we want to see this moment of turmoil turn into a moment of opportunity. The entire world is watching. What we hope for and what we will work for is a future where all of Egyptian society seizes that opportunity. Right now a great and ancient civilization is going through a time of tumult and transformation. And even as there are grave challenges and great uncertainty, I am confident that the Egyptian people can shape the future that they deserve. And as they do, they will continue to have a strong friend and partner in the United States of America.
Mr. Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER HARPER: Well, first of all, thank you, Barack. Both thank you for your friendship both personal and national. And thank you for all the work you’ve done and all of your people have done to bring us to our announcement today.
[Speaks in French.]And I will just repeat that.
Today, President Obama and I are issuing a declaration on our border, but it is, of course, much more than that. It is a declaration on our relationship. Over the past nearly 200 years, our two countries have progressively developed the closest, warmest, most integrated and most successful relationship in the world. We are partners, neighbors, allies, and, most of all, we are true friends.In an age of expanding opportunities but also of grave dangers, we share fundamental interests and values just as we face common challenges and threats.
At the core of this friendship is the largest bilateral trading relationship in history. And since the signing of the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement, a milestone in the development of the modern era of globalization, that partnership has grown spectacularly.Not only is the U.S. Canada’s major export market, Canada is also America’s largest export market -- larger than China, larger than Mexico, larger than Japan, larger than all the countries of the European Union combined. Eight million jobs in the United States are supported by your trade with Canada. And Canada is the largest, the most secure, the most stable, and the friendliest supplier of that most vital of all America’s purchases -- energy.It is in both our interests to ensure that our common border remains open and efficient, but it is just as critical that it remains secure and in the hands of the vigilant and the dedicated. Just as we must continually work to ensure that inertia and bureaucratic sclerosis do not impair the legitimate flow of people, goods and services across our border, so, too, we must up our game to counter those seeking new ways to harm us.
And I say us because as I have said before, a threat to the United States is a threat to Canada -- to our trade, to our interests, to our values, to our common civilization. Canada has no friends among America’s enemies, and America has no better friend than Canada.The declaration President Obama and I are issuing today commits our governments to find new ways to exclude terrorists and criminals who pose a threat to our peoples. It also commits us to finding ways to eliminate regulatory barriers to cross-border trade and travel, because simpler rules lead to lower costs for business and consumers, and ultimately to more jobs.Shared information, joint planning, compatible procedures and inspection technology will all be key tools. They make possible the effective risk management that will allow us to accelerate legitimate flows of people and goods between our countries while strengthening our physical security and economic competitiveness.So we commit to expanding our management of the border to the concept of a North American perimeter, not to replace or eliminate the border but, where possible, to streamline and decongest it.There is much work to do. The declaration marks the start of this endeavor, not the end; an ambitious agenda between two countries, sovereign and able to act independently when we so choose according to our own laws and aspirations, but always understanding this -- that while a border defines two peoples, it need not divide them. That is the fundamental truth to which Canadians and Americans have borne witness for almost two centuries. And through our mutual devotion to freedom, democracy and justice at home and abroad, it is the example we seek to demonstrate for all others.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: All right, we’ve got time for a couple of questions. I’m going to start with Alister Bull.
Q Thank you very much, Mr. President. Is it conceivable to you that a genuine process of democratic reform can begin in Egypt while President Mubarak remains in power, or do you think his stepping aside is needed for reform even to begin? And to Prime Minister Harper, on the energy issue, did you discuss Canada’s role as a secure source of oil for the United States, and in particular, did you receive any assurances the U.S. administration looks favorably on TransCanada’s proposed Keystone Pipeline to the Gulf Coast? Thank you.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I have had two conversations with President Mubarak since this crisis in Egypt began, and each time I've emphasized the fact that the future of Egypt is going to be in the hands of Egyptians. It is not us who will determine that future. But I have also said that in light of what’s happened over the last two weeks, going back to the old ways is not going to work. Suppression is not going to work. Engaging in violence is not going to work. Attempting to shut down information flows is not going to work.In order for Egypt to have a bright future -- which I believe it can have -- the only thing that will work is moving a orderly transition process that begins right now, that engages all the parties, that leads to democratic practices, fair and free elections, a representative government that is responsive to the grievances of the Egyptian people.Now, I believe that President Mubarak cares about his country. He is proud, but he’s also a patriot. And what I've suggested to him is, is that he needs to consult with those who are around him in his government. He needs to listen to what’s being voiced by the Egyptian people and make a judgment about a pathway forward that is orderly, but that is meaningful and serious.And I believe that -- he’s already said that he’s not going to run for reelection. This is somebody who’s been in power for a very long time in Egypt. Having made that psychological break, that decision that he will not be running again, I think the most important for him to ask himself, for the Egyptian government to ask itself, as well as the opposition to ask itself, is how do we make that transition effective and lasting and legitimate.And as I said before, that's not a decision ultimately the United States makes or any country outside of Egypt makes. What we can do, though, is affirm the core principles that are going to be involved in that transition. If you end up having just gestures towards the opposition but it leads to a continuing suppression of the opposition, that's not going to work. If you have the pretense of reform but not real reform, that's not going to be effective.And as I said before, once the President himself announced that he was not going to be running again, and since his term is up relatively shortly, the key question he should be asking himself is, how do I leave a legacy behind in which Egypt is able to get through this transformative period. And my hope is, is that he will end up making the right decision.
PRIME MINISTER HARPER: You asked me about the question of energy, and, yes, we did discuss the matter you raised. And let me just say this in that context. I think it is clear to anyone who understands this issue that the need of the United States for fossil fuels far in excess of its ability to produce such energy will be the reality for some time to come. And the choice that the United States faces in all of these matters is whether to increase its capacity, to accept such energy from the most secure, most stable and friendliest location it can possibly get that energy, which is Canada, or from other places that are not as secure, stable or friendly to the interests and values of the United States.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I think we’ve got a Canadian reporter.
Q Prime Minister, can you answer this in English and French? Canadians will be asking how much of our sovereignty and our privacy rights will be given up to have more open borders and an integrated economy. And while I have you on your feet, I want to ask you about Egypt, as well, whether you feel that Mr. Mubarak should be stepping down sooner, it would help the transition? And, Mr. President, on the sovereignty issue, you're welcome to answer it -- you don't have to speak in French, though. (Laughter.)
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you. (Laughter.) Now, I love French, but I'm just not very capable of speaking it. (Laughter.)
PRIME MINISTER HARPER: On the question of sovereignty, this declaration is not about sovereignty. We are sovereign countries who have the capacity to act as we choose to act. The question that faces us is to make sure we act in a sovereign way that serves Canada’s interests. It is in Canada’s interests to work with our partners in the United States to ensure that our borders are secure, and ensure that we can trade and travel across them as safely and as openly as possible within the context of our different laws.And that is what we're trying to achieve here. We share security threats that are very similar on both sides of the border. We share an integrated economic space where it doesn’t make sense to constantly check the same cargo over and over again -- if we can do that at a perimeter, if we can decongest the border, that's what we should be doing. If we can -- if we can harmonize regulations in ways that avoid unnecessary duplication and red tape for business -- these are things that we need to do.So that's what this is all about. This is about the safety of Canadians and it is about creating jobs and economic growth for the Canadian economy.Let me maybe -- I'll do French and then I'll come to Egypt.(Speaks in French.)On the question of Egypt, let me just agree fully with what President Obama has said. I don't think there is any doubt from anyone who is watching the situation that transition is occurring and will occur in Egypt. The question is what kind of transition this will be and how it will lead. It is ultimately up to the Egyptian people to decide who will govern them.What we want to be sure is that we lead towards a future that is not simply more democratic, but a future where that democracy is guided by such values as non-violence, as the rule of law, as respect and respect for human rights, including the rights of minorities, including the rights of religious minorities.(Speaks in French.)
PRESIDENT OBAMA: With respect to security issues and sovereignty issues, obviously, Canada and the United States are not going to match up perfectly on every measure with respect to how we balance security issues, privacy issues, openness issues. But we match up more than probably any country on Earth.We have this border that benefits when it is open. The free flow of goods and services results in huge economic benefits for both sides. And so the goal here is to make sure that we are coordinating closely and that as we are taking steps and measures to ensure both openness and security, that we’re doing so in ways that enhances the relationship as opposed to creates tensions in the relationship. And we are confident that we’re going to be able to achieve that.We’ve already made great progress just over the last several years on various specific issues. What we’re trying to do now is to look at this in a more comprehensive fashion, so that it’s not just border security issues, but it’s a broader set of issues involved. And I have great confidence that Prime Minister Harper is going to be very protective of certain core values of Canada, just as I would be very protective of the core values of the United States, and those won’t always match up perfectly.And I thought -- I agree even more with his answer in French. (Laughter.)All right. Thank you very much, everybody.
END3:49 P.M. EST
http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2011/02/john-loeffler-steel-on-steel-behind.html#links
http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2011/02/john-loeffler-steel-on-steel-changes-in.html
WALID SHOEBAT INTERVIEWS
http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2011/02/walid-shoebat-foundation-click-here-to.html
GLENN BECK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LEBaHvJ8Kk&feature=player_embedded
Jim Grant: The Fed Is Now In The Business Of Manipulating The Stock Market...Should Confess It Has Sinned Grievously By Tyler Durden Created 01/28/2011 - 16:03AUDIO ON LINK
http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2011/01/published-on-zero-hedge-httpwww.html#links
Jim Grant, who will never be accused of being a fan of the Criminal Reserve, and whose views [1]on what will happen to asset prices in a printer-happy world are gradually being validated, appeared on Bloomberg TV, telling Margaret Brennan upfront that Bernanke owes the world an apology. Alas, after various revolutions around the world have been catalyzed by Bernanke's policies, we have a feeling that ever more oppressed people will soon see the Printer in Chief as a patron saint of violent revolution, alas against crony regimes fully supported by the US (and hopefully the US will view it the same way when its time comes). That aside, Grant's criticism of the Fed should really start to grate on the Chaircreature: I think what would be very good for the Fed if there would be a confession, the Fed should confess that it has sinned grievously, and is in violation of every single precept of its founders and every single convention of classical central banking. Quantitative Easing is a symptom of the difficulties that the Fed has created for itself. The Fed is running a balance sheet which if it were the balance sheet attached to a bank in the private sector would probably move the FDIC to shut it down. The New York Branch of the Fed is leveraged more than 80 to 1.Meaning, that a loss of asset value of less than 1.5% would send it into receivership if it were a different kind of institution...The Fed is now in the business of manipulating the stock market.Jim also has some very critical discussions on how the Fed never settles up on the $3.4 trillion in custodial debt on its books. As always, we can't get enough as more and more mainstream figures turn to bashing that biggest abortion of modern capital markets.
RAND PAUL SAY NO TO PATRIOT ACT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSDBswx90Cs&feature=player_embedded
DOUG HAGMANN HOUR 2 FRI FEB 11,11 ON PATRIOT ACT
http://therothshow.com/show-archives/february-2011/
CANADA-USA INTEGRATION ON TERRORISM
http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2011/02/north-american-union-revitalized.html
LAURIE ROTHS SITE
http://therothshow.com/
DOUG HAGMANNS SITES
http://homelandsecurityus.com/
https://hagmann-pi.com/Home.html
http://theneinblog.blogspot.com/
CANADA FREE PRESS-JUDI MCLEOD
http://www.canadafreepress.com/
THIS PATRIOT ACT PASSAGE WILL AFFECT US OVER HERE IN CANADA TO BECAUSE HARPER AND OBAMA SIGNED A SECRET DECREE THAT BRINGS OUR INTEGRATED ECONOMIES AND SURVELLENCE AND TERRORISM ACTS ALL TOGETHER.SO THIS MEANS CANADIANS CAN BE WATCHED BY ALL THE SURVELLENCE MOVES THAT THE U.S. USES IN THIS PATRIOT ACT.THEY CAN LISTEN IN ON US THREW OUR PHONES,COMPUTERS AND IF YOU GOT HD ON YOUR TV THEY CAN EVEN WATCH YOUR MOVES AND HEAR WHAT YOU SAY THROUGH YOUR TV,COMPUTER EVEN WHEN ITS TURNED OFF.SO YES THIS PASSAGE OF THE PATRIOT ACT IN AMERICA WILL AFFECT US OVER HERE IN CANADA.THE GOVERNMENTS CAN WATCH US WITH ANY WAY THEY WANT WITHOUT RESTRICTIONS.WE ARE DEFINATELY UNDER MARTIAL LAW LIKE AMERICA IS.
House passes Patriot Act rule, clears way for passage FEB 10,11 By Josiah Ryan THE HILL
The House passed a rule Thursday setting up a second vote to extend Patriot Act surveillance authorities until Dec. 8. The new rule clears the way for the legislation to be passed by just a simple majority, after the same bill failed to win a two-thirds majority under a suspension of House rules earlier in the week. In the suspension vote, more than two dozen Republicans bucked their leadership and joined Democrats to sink the extension.In floor debate preceding Thursday's vote on the rule, Democrats jabbed Republicans for dropping the first vote and protested the closed rule for the second vote, which prevents amendments.Rep. Sheila Jackson (D-Texas) said Republicans were practicing unique trickery by calling the bill back for a second vote.We have a right to have a voice and that voice has already been expressed, said Lee. What more needs to be said?
Some Democrats said they would have proposed an amendment that extended the law for only 60 days. But in many ways the floor discussion mirrored the debate earlier in the week.Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) called the Patriot Act a destructive undermining of constitutional principals and the rights of people to be secure in their homes.But Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) countered that if the law were unconstitutional, the courts would have struck it down by now. He also accused Kucinich of making up arguments.Some Democrats argued that Republicans should have held hearings on the Patriot Act before rushing through an extension. But Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said Democrats did not require a hearing when they passed an extension last year, and pledging to push for committee hearings later this year. The House could take up the Patriot Act extension bill as early as Friday. The Senate is expected to take up the Patriot Act next week, but is looking at bills that would extend the three surveillance authorities for at least three years.
House clears way for PATRIOT Act extension
By David Edwards Friday, February 11th, 2011 -- 9:20 am
The US House of Representatives voted Thursday night to clear the road for an extension of controversial provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act.The final vote was 248 to 176, largely along party lines. Just 4 Republicans voted against the extension, while only 15 Democrats voted for it.Under the House bill, the act would be extended until Dec. 8. A vote was planned for Monday.Democrats protested a Republican plan to hold the vote under the closed rule, which prevented amendments. The last PATRIOT Act extension was passed in Feb. 2010.Thursday's House vote paved the way for a second ballot on the PATRIOT Act, allowing it to clear the chamber with a simple majority. An earlier vote failed when it did not obtain a two thirds majority.
The Wednesday vote was 23 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass it under a procedure that allows bills that aren't controversial to pass quickly.
When the act was first signed into law, Congress put in some sunset provisions to quiet the concerns of civil libertarians, but they were ignored by successive extensions. Unfortunately, those concerns proved to be well founded, and a 2008 Justice Department report confirmed that the FBI regularly abused their ability to obtain personal records of Americans without a warrant.The only real sign of strong opposition to the act was in 2005, when a Democratic threat to filibuster its first renewal was overcome by Senate Republicans.The Obama administration had called for the act to be extended for three years, two years longer than Republicans were seeking.As a US Senator and candidate for the presidency, Barack Obama never actually argued for a repeal of the Bush administration's security initiatives. Instead, he's consistently argued for enhanced judicial oversight and a pullback on the most extreme elements of the bill, such as the use of National Security Letters to search people's personal records without a court-issued warrant.A prior version of this article said the House had passed the PATRIOT Act extension.-- With earlier reporting by Daniel Tencer and Stephen C. Webster
IT WAS FEB 4,11 WHEN OBAMA,HARPER SIGNED THIS SECRET INTEGRATION OF OUR SERVELLENCE AND TERRORISM WATCHING ACTS.HERE IS THE REMARKS BY HARPER,OBAMA ON FEB 4,11
The White House-Office of the Press Secretary-For Immediate Release February 04, 2011Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada in Joint Press Availability South Court Auditorium 3:21 P.M. EST
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Good afternoon, everyone. Please be seated.
I am very pleased to be welcoming my great friend and partner, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, back to the White House to reaffirm our extraordinary friendship and cooperation between the United States and Canada. I’d like to talk a bit about what we accomplished today, and then address the situation unfolding in Egypt.The United States and Canada are not simply allies, not simply neighbors; we are woven together like perhaps no other two countries in the world. We’re bound together by our societies, by our economies, by our families -- which reminds me my brother-in-law’s birthday is today and I have to call him. (Laughter.) And in our many meetings together I’ve come to value Stephen’s candor and his focus on getting results, both when it comes to our two countries and to meeting global challenges. Although I, unfortunately, have not yet had the pleasure of seeing him and his band jam to the Rolling Stones —- but I’m told the videos have become a sensation on YouTube. So I'll be checking those out after this bilateral. (Laughter.)
We’ve had a very successful day. Our focus has been on how we increase jobs and economic growth on both sides of the border. Canada is our largest trading partner and the top destination for American exports, supporting some 1.7 million jobs here. So today we’ve agreed to several important steps to increase trade, improve our competitiveness, and create jobs for both our people.First, we agreed to a new vision for managing our shared responsibilities —- not just at the border but beyond the border. That means working more closely to improve border security with better screening, new technologies and information-sharing among law enforcement, as well as identifying threats early. It also means finding new ways to improve the free flow of goods and people. Because with over a billion dollars in trade crossing the border every single day, smarter border management is key to our competitiveness, our job creation, and my goal of doubling U.S. exports.
And, Mr. Prime Minister, I thank you for your leadership and commitment to reaching this agreement.We’ve directed our teams to develop an action plan to move forward quickly. And I’m confident that we’re going to get this done so that our shared border enhances our shared prosperity.Second, we’re launching a new effort to get rid of outdated regulations that stifle trade and job creation. Like the government-wide review that I ordered last month, we need to obviously strike the right balance -— protecting our public health and safety, and making it easier and less expensive for American and Canadians to trade and do business, for example, in the auto industry. And a new council that we’re creating today will help make that happen.Third, we discussed a wide range of ways to promote trade and investment, from clean energy partnerships to the steps Canada can take to strengthen intellectual property rights.
And we discussed a range of common security challenges, including Afghanistan, where our forces serve and sacrifice together. Today, I want to thank Prime Minister Harper for Canada’s decision to shift its commitment to focus on training Afghan forces. As we agreed with our Lisbon -- or our NATO and coalition allies in Lisbon, the transition to Afghan lead for security will begin this year, and Canada’s contribution will be critical to achieving that mission and keeping both our countries safe.Finally, we discussed our shared commitment to progress with our partners in the Americas, including greater security cooperation. And I especially appreciated the Prime Minister’s perspective on the region as I prepare for my trip to Central and South America next month.Let me close by saying a few words about the situation in Egypt. This is obviously still a fluid situation and we’re monitoring it closely, so I'll make just a few points.First, we continue to be crystal-clear that we oppose violence as a response to this crisis. In recent days, we’ve seen violence and harassment erupt on the streets of Egypt that violates human rights, universal values and international norms. So we are sending a strong and unequivocal message: Attacks on reporters are unacceptable. Attacks on human rights activists are unacceptable. Attacks on peaceful protesters are unacceptable.The Egyptian government has a responsibility to protect the rights of its people. Those demonstrating also have a responsibility to do so peacefully. But everybody should recognize a simple truth: The issues at stake in Egypt will not be resolved through violence or suppression. And we are encouraged by the restraint that was shown today. We hope that it continues.
Second, the future of Egypt will be determined by its people. It’s also clear that there needs to be a transition process that begins now. That transition must initiate a process that respects the universal rights of the Egyptian people and that leads to free and fair elections.The details of this transition will be worked by Egyptians. And my understanding is that some discussions have begun. But we are consulting widely within Egypt and with the international community to communicate our strong belief that a successful and orderly transition must be meaningful. Negotiations should include a broad representation of the Egyptian opposition, and this transition must address the legitimate grievances of those who seek a better future.Third, we want to see this moment of turmoil turn into a moment of opportunity. The entire world is watching. What we hope for and what we will work for is a future where all of Egyptian society seizes that opportunity. Right now a great and ancient civilization is going through a time of tumult and transformation. And even as there are grave challenges and great uncertainty, I am confident that the Egyptian people can shape the future that they deserve. And as they do, they will continue to have a strong friend and partner in the United States of America.
Mr. Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER HARPER: Well, first of all, thank you, Barack. Both thank you for your friendship both personal and national. And thank you for all the work you’ve done and all of your people have done to bring us to our announcement today.
[Speaks in French.]And I will just repeat that.
Today, President Obama and I are issuing a declaration on our border, but it is, of course, much more than that. It is a declaration on our relationship. Over the past nearly 200 years, our two countries have progressively developed the closest, warmest, most integrated and most successful relationship in the world. We are partners, neighbors, allies, and, most of all, we are true friends.In an age of expanding opportunities but also of grave dangers, we share fundamental interests and values just as we face common challenges and threats.
At the core of this friendship is the largest bilateral trading relationship in history. And since the signing of the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement, a milestone in the development of the modern era of globalization, that partnership has grown spectacularly.Not only is the U.S. Canada’s major export market, Canada is also America’s largest export market -- larger than China, larger than Mexico, larger than Japan, larger than all the countries of the European Union combined. Eight million jobs in the United States are supported by your trade with Canada. And Canada is the largest, the most secure, the most stable, and the friendliest supplier of that most vital of all America’s purchases -- energy.It is in both our interests to ensure that our common border remains open and efficient, but it is just as critical that it remains secure and in the hands of the vigilant and the dedicated. Just as we must continually work to ensure that inertia and bureaucratic sclerosis do not impair the legitimate flow of people, goods and services across our border, so, too, we must up our game to counter those seeking new ways to harm us.
And I say us because as I have said before, a threat to the United States is a threat to Canada -- to our trade, to our interests, to our values, to our common civilization. Canada has no friends among America’s enemies, and America has no better friend than Canada.The declaration President Obama and I are issuing today commits our governments to find new ways to exclude terrorists and criminals who pose a threat to our peoples. It also commits us to finding ways to eliminate regulatory barriers to cross-border trade and travel, because simpler rules lead to lower costs for business and consumers, and ultimately to more jobs.Shared information, joint planning, compatible procedures and inspection technology will all be key tools. They make possible the effective risk management that will allow us to accelerate legitimate flows of people and goods between our countries while strengthening our physical security and economic competitiveness.So we commit to expanding our management of the border to the concept of a North American perimeter, not to replace or eliminate the border but, where possible, to streamline and decongest it.There is much work to do. The declaration marks the start of this endeavor, not the end; an ambitious agenda between two countries, sovereign and able to act independently when we so choose according to our own laws and aspirations, but always understanding this -- that while a border defines two peoples, it need not divide them. That is the fundamental truth to which Canadians and Americans have borne witness for almost two centuries. And through our mutual devotion to freedom, democracy and justice at home and abroad, it is the example we seek to demonstrate for all others.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: All right, we’ve got time for a couple of questions. I’m going to start with Alister Bull.
Q Thank you very much, Mr. President. Is it conceivable to you that a genuine process of democratic reform can begin in Egypt while President Mubarak remains in power, or do you think his stepping aside is needed for reform even to begin? And to Prime Minister Harper, on the energy issue, did you discuss Canada’s role as a secure source of oil for the United States, and in particular, did you receive any assurances the U.S. administration looks favorably on TransCanada’s proposed Keystone Pipeline to the Gulf Coast? Thank you.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I have had two conversations with President Mubarak since this crisis in Egypt began, and each time I've emphasized the fact that the future of Egypt is going to be in the hands of Egyptians. It is not us who will determine that future. But I have also said that in light of what’s happened over the last two weeks, going back to the old ways is not going to work. Suppression is not going to work. Engaging in violence is not going to work. Attempting to shut down information flows is not going to work.In order for Egypt to have a bright future -- which I believe it can have -- the only thing that will work is moving a orderly transition process that begins right now, that engages all the parties, that leads to democratic practices, fair and free elections, a representative government that is responsive to the grievances of the Egyptian people.Now, I believe that President Mubarak cares about his country. He is proud, but he’s also a patriot. And what I've suggested to him is, is that he needs to consult with those who are around him in his government. He needs to listen to what’s being voiced by the Egyptian people and make a judgment about a pathway forward that is orderly, but that is meaningful and serious.And I believe that -- he’s already said that he’s not going to run for reelection. This is somebody who’s been in power for a very long time in Egypt. Having made that psychological break, that decision that he will not be running again, I think the most important for him to ask himself, for the Egyptian government to ask itself, as well as the opposition to ask itself, is how do we make that transition effective and lasting and legitimate.And as I said before, that's not a decision ultimately the United States makes or any country outside of Egypt makes. What we can do, though, is affirm the core principles that are going to be involved in that transition. If you end up having just gestures towards the opposition but it leads to a continuing suppression of the opposition, that's not going to work. If you have the pretense of reform but not real reform, that's not going to be effective.And as I said before, once the President himself announced that he was not going to be running again, and since his term is up relatively shortly, the key question he should be asking himself is, how do I leave a legacy behind in which Egypt is able to get through this transformative period. And my hope is, is that he will end up making the right decision.
PRIME MINISTER HARPER: You asked me about the question of energy, and, yes, we did discuss the matter you raised. And let me just say this in that context. I think it is clear to anyone who understands this issue that the need of the United States for fossil fuels far in excess of its ability to produce such energy will be the reality for some time to come. And the choice that the United States faces in all of these matters is whether to increase its capacity, to accept such energy from the most secure, most stable and friendliest location it can possibly get that energy, which is Canada, or from other places that are not as secure, stable or friendly to the interests and values of the United States.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I think we’ve got a Canadian reporter.
Q Prime Minister, can you answer this in English and French? Canadians will be asking how much of our sovereignty and our privacy rights will be given up to have more open borders and an integrated economy. And while I have you on your feet, I want to ask you about Egypt, as well, whether you feel that Mr. Mubarak should be stepping down sooner, it would help the transition? And, Mr. President, on the sovereignty issue, you're welcome to answer it -- you don't have to speak in French, though. (Laughter.)
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you. (Laughter.) Now, I love French, but I'm just not very capable of speaking it. (Laughter.)
PRIME MINISTER HARPER: On the question of sovereignty, this declaration is not about sovereignty. We are sovereign countries who have the capacity to act as we choose to act. The question that faces us is to make sure we act in a sovereign way that serves Canada’s interests. It is in Canada’s interests to work with our partners in the United States to ensure that our borders are secure, and ensure that we can trade and travel across them as safely and as openly as possible within the context of our different laws.And that is what we're trying to achieve here. We share security threats that are very similar on both sides of the border. We share an integrated economic space where it doesn’t make sense to constantly check the same cargo over and over again -- if we can do that at a perimeter, if we can decongest the border, that's what we should be doing. If we can -- if we can harmonize regulations in ways that avoid unnecessary duplication and red tape for business -- these are things that we need to do.So that's what this is all about. This is about the safety of Canadians and it is about creating jobs and economic growth for the Canadian economy.Let me maybe -- I'll do French and then I'll come to Egypt.(Speaks in French.)On the question of Egypt, let me just agree fully with what President Obama has said. I don't think there is any doubt from anyone who is watching the situation that transition is occurring and will occur in Egypt. The question is what kind of transition this will be and how it will lead. It is ultimately up to the Egyptian people to decide who will govern them.What we want to be sure is that we lead towards a future that is not simply more democratic, but a future where that democracy is guided by such values as non-violence, as the rule of law, as respect and respect for human rights, including the rights of minorities, including the rights of religious minorities.(Speaks in French.)
PRESIDENT OBAMA: With respect to security issues and sovereignty issues, obviously, Canada and the United States are not going to match up perfectly on every measure with respect to how we balance security issues, privacy issues, openness issues. But we match up more than probably any country on Earth.We have this border that benefits when it is open. The free flow of goods and services results in huge economic benefits for both sides. And so the goal here is to make sure that we are coordinating closely and that as we are taking steps and measures to ensure both openness and security, that we’re doing so in ways that enhances the relationship as opposed to creates tensions in the relationship. And we are confident that we’re going to be able to achieve that.We’ve already made great progress just over the last several years on various specific issues. What we’re trying to do now is to look at this in a more comprehensive fashion, so that it’s not just border security issues, but it’s a broader set of issues involved. And I have great confidence that Prime Minister Harper is going to be very protective of certain core values of Canada, just as I would be very protective of the core values of the United States, and those won’t always match up perfectly.And I thought -- I agree even more with his answer in French. (Laughter.)All right. Thank you very much, everybody.
END3:49 P.M. EST
Friday, February 11, 2011
VICTORY FOR THE WORLDS CITIZENS
VICTORY FOR THE PEOPLE IS:
MOMENTUM AGAINST THE NEW WORLD ORDER CONTROL FREAKS TAKEOVER OF OUR LIVES
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)