EARTH DESTROYED WITH THE EARTH
GENESIS 6:11-13
11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.(WORLD TERRORISM,MURDERS)
12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence (TERRORISM) through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
EARTHQUAKES
MATTHEW 24:7-8
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.
MARK 13:8
8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:(ETHNIC GROUP AGAINST ETHNIC GROUP) and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.
LUKE 21:11
11 And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.
Thousands flee on flooding fears after China quake
Sat May 17, 6:54 PM By Chris Buckley and John Ruwitch
BEICHUAN, China (Reuters) - Thousands of Chinese fled their homes on Saturday amid fears a lake could burst its banks, hampering rescue efforts after the deadliest earthquake in more than three decades killed about 29,000 people.Rescue workers returned to Beichuan county, near the epicenter of the quake, in Sichuan province, but many residents were too frightened to go home, worried about a lake formed after aftershocks triggered landslides blocking a river.After briefly evacuating, rescue work returned to normal at Beichuan, an official Web site (www.china.com.cn) said, blaming the evacuation on a false alarm.A paramilitary officer had told Reuters earlier that the likelihood of the lake bursting its banks was extremely big.The situation was very dangerous because there are still tremors causing landslides that could damage the dam, said Luo Gang, a building worker who left the southeastern port city of Xiamen and rushed home to look for his missing fiancee.
Rescue work had been complicated by bad weather, treacherous terrain and hundreds of aftershocks.The United States Geological Survey reported a tremor of 6.1 magnitude centered 49 miles west of Guangyuan, the latest in a series of aftershocks to hit Sichuan province. China's official Xinhua news agency said there was no immediate word from the area of additional damage or casualties.
President Hu Jintao urged emergency workers not to give up efforts to find survivors of Monday's 7.9 magnitude earthquake. Thousands of people are believed to remain trapped under rubble.We should put people first and saving people's lives is still the top priority of the relief work, he said.In a glimmer of hope that more people could be found alive, 33 people were rescued in Beichuan, including a 69-year-old villager who had been buried for 119 hours.Hu also praised international help given to China.I express heartfelt thanks to the foreign governments and international friends that have contributed to our quake-relief work, Xinhua quoted Hu as saying.Offers of help have flooded in and foreign rescue teams from Japan, Russia, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore have arrived. Donations from home and abroad have topped 6 billion yuan ($858 million).
FEARS FOR FUTURE
As the weather becomes warmer, survivors were worried about hygiene and asked questions about their longer-term future.What we don't need now is more instant noodles, said truck driver Wang Jianhong in the city of Dujiangyan. We want to know now what will happen with our lives.Officials plan to distribute 0.5 kg (1.102 lb) of food and a 10 yuan subsidy each day to people with financial difficulties in quake-hit areas for three months, Xinhua reported, after a meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao.They also want to install mobile homes, temporary classrooms and clinics for quake-affected people.China has said it expects the final death toll from the earthquake to exceed 50,000. About 4.8 million people have lost their homes and the days are numbered in which survivors can be found.Cabinet spokesman Guo Weimin, taking a long pause to compose himself as he read from an updated casualty report at a news conference, put the death toll so far at 28,881.Premier Wen said the quake was the biggest and most destructive since before the Communist revolution of 1949 and the quick response had helped reduce casualties.China has sent 150,000 troops to the disaster area, but roads buckled by the quake and blocked by landslides have made it hard for supplies and rescuers to reach the worst-hit areas.
(Additional reporting by Guo Shipeng and Benjamin Kang Lim in Beijing and Donny Kwok in Hong Kong; Writing by Benjamin Kang Lim; Editing by Keith Weir)
China holding 3 days of mourning for quake victims By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer MAY 18,08
BEICHUAN, China - Flags flew at half-staff, public entertainment was canceled and 1.3 billion people were asked to observe three minutes of silence as China began three days of mourning Monday for the victims of the nation's massive earthquake. Officials asked for the horns of cars, trains and ships and air raid sirens to sound as people fell silent at 2:28 p.m. — exactly one week after the quake splintered thousands of buildings and killed an estimated 50,000 people. Chinese news portal sina.com said the government had ordered all visitors to online entertainment and game pages to be redirected to Web sites dedicated to commemorating earthquake victims.The Olympic torch relay — a potent symbol of national pride in the countdown to August's much anticipated Beijing games — was also suspended during the mourning period.Hope of finding more trapped survivors dwindled, and preventing hunger and disease among the homeless became more pressing.It will soon be too late to find trapped survivors, said Koji Fujiya, deputy leader of a Japanese rescue team working in Beichuan, a town reduced to rubble. His team pulled 10 bodies out of Beichuan's high school Sunday.The steady run of rescue news flashed by the official Xinhua News Agency has slowed. Just three rescues were reported Sunday, including a woman in Yingxiu town who was reached by soldiers who dug a 15-foot tunnel through the wreckage of a flattened power station and had to amputate both her legs to set free, after 150 hours.
She was in a delirious state and told rescuers to leave her alone, thinking she was already in a hospital, Xinhua quoted rescuer Ma Gang as saying. We fed her milk and water, and her family was there to reassure her.Dozens of aftershocks have rumbled through the region, extending the damage and fear of survivors. A magnitude 6 temblor on Sunday killed three people, injured more than 1,000 and caused further damage to houses and roads, Xinhua reported.With more bodies discovered, the confirmed death toll rose to 32,476, the State Council, China's cabinet, reported. The injured numbered more than 220,000.Many bodies lay by roadsides in body bags or wrapped in plastic sheeting, as authorities struggled to deal with the sheer number of corpses by digging burial pits and working crematoriums overtime.The World Health Organization warned that shortages of clean water and warmer, humid weather in Sichuan province — which bore the brunt of the earthquake — were ripe for epidemics. It urged officials not to be distracted by the false belief that corpses were a health threat.The Health Ministry said no major epidemics or other public health hazards had been reported so far, Xinhua said. Two field hospitals with 400 beds have been set up in isolated areas and medical staff have reached all townships affected by the quake, Xinhua said.The three-day mourning period starting Monday was the most extensive one the government has ordered since the death 11 years ago of communist patriarch Deng Xiaoping, the architect of the free-market reforms that have brought many Chinese from poverty to moderate prosperity in a generation.
Officials initially resisted changing the relay, which corporate sponsors have paid millions of dollars to fund, though some of the pomp was toned down in recent days. Organizers say the relay will resume in Sichuan next month.Responding to concerns about nuclear sites in the quake zone, a Chinese military spokesman, air force Maj. Gen. Ma Jian, told reporters Sunday that all nuclear facilities jolted by the quake were confirmed safe.Though Ma did not elaborate, China has a research reactor, two nuclear fuel production sites and two atomic weapons sites within 90 miles of the quake's epicenter, according to the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety.Flood threats from rivers blocked by landslides from the quake appeared to have eased after three waterways near the epicenter overflowed with no problems, Xinhua said. County officials diverted released water as a precaution.The quake damaged some water projects, such as reservoirs and hydroelectric stations, but no reservoirs had burst, Liu Ning, engineer-in-chief with the Ministry of Water Resources, told Xinhua. Worries about possible flooding had sent thousands of people fleeing the day before. Also in the quake area, three giant pandas were missing from the Wolong Nature Reserve for the endangered animals. Five staff members were killed in the quake, forestry spokesman Cao Qingyao told Xinhua. The 60 other giant pandas at the were safe. President Hu Jintao continued to tour the destruction for a third day and was surrounded by wailing women at a camp for homeless survivors in Yinghua. I know you lost family and property, Hu was quoted by state media as saying. I share the pain with you. We will try every effort to save your people once there is the slightest hope and possibility.China also raised the magnitude of last Monday's quake, to 8.0 from 7.8, though it did not give reasons for the reassessment and the U.S. Geological Survey kept its 7.9 measure. A magnitude-8 quake has the equivalent energy of 790 nuclear bombs, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Foreign aid continued to arrive, including two U.S. Air Force cargo planes loaded with tents, lanterns and 15,000 meals.
A vast, impromptu humanitarian operation has sprung up among Chinese, with thousands flooding into Sichuan in cars loaded with instant noodles, blankets, clothes and whatever else they could carry. Chinese people, organizations and companies donated around $1.1 billion for quake relief in the first week after the disaster, Xinhua said. Associated Press writers Tini Tran in Muyu and Henry Sanderson in Beijing contributed to this report.
STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES
LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.
Four dead as Halong lashes northern Philippines: officials
MAY 18,08
MANILA (AFP) - Four people were killed as tropical storm Halong battered the northern Philippines on Sunday, with powerful winds triggering floods and landslides, relief officials said.All four were hit by tin sheets torn from the roofs of houses in Pangasinan province on the main Philippine island of Luzon, the civil defence office reported.Huge waves known as storm surges destroyed more than 20 houses and a dozen fishing boats and forced 845 people from their homes in the towns of Iba and Botolan, about 145 kilometres (90 miles) northwest of the capital.The northwestern coast of Luzon and the northern mountain resort of Baguio were without electricity, while the coastguard barred small ferries from taking to sea, it said in a report.More than 5,000 other people were displaced by flooding and landslides in the central island of Panay when the storm brushed past the region last week, the relief agency said in a statement.The storm struck the country's northwest coast overnight Saturday at wind speeds of 95 kilometres (59 miles) an hour before weakening slightly as it raked northeast across the Cordillera mountain range, the weather bureau said.Its eye hovered above the town of Gonzaga on Luzon's northeast coast at 2:00pm (0600 GMT) and was forecast to cross over the northern tip of the Sierra Madre Range overnight on its way to the Philippine Sea.Floods cut off key roads in Panay and on the neighbouring island of Mindoro and northern Luzon while landslides shut down roads to Baguio and nearby areas in the Cordillera, it said.
The storm uprooted trees and even a school building in Iba, where about 500 soldiers mounted a search and rescue operation for families displaced by the storm surges, it said.In the town of San Jose, in the central Luzon plain east of Iba, residents laid sandbags to protect their village from rising floodwaters, the agency said.The weather bureau warned residents in low-lying areas and near mountain slopes across Luzon to take all necessary precautions against possible flash floods and landslides.Luzon's west coast and the islands on the western half of the central Philippines could be hit by big waves, it added.
Burmese children facing starvation, agency warns
Sun May 18, 7:50 AM
VANCOUVER (CBC) - Thousands of children who survived Burma's cyclone will starve to death in two to three weeks unless food is rushed to them, an international aid agency warned Sunday.Save the Children said it believes 30,000 children under the age of five in the hard-hit Irrawaddy Delta were already severely malnourished before Cyclone Nargis hit on May 2.We are extremely worried that many children in the affected areas are now suffering from severe acute malnourishment, the most serious level of hunger, said Jasmine Whitbread, who heads the agency's operation in Britain. When people reach this stage, they can die in a matter of days.
Burmese refugees desperate for aid to start flowing to their families back home held a small protest on Sunday in Mae Sot, which borders Burma, also known as Myanmar. About half the city's 150,000 residents are political exiles or refugees from the neighbouring country.Demonstrators told CBC News they're frustrated over the slow pace of aid distribution and that the international community should be pushing harder to gain entry to cyclone-ravaged areas. They said their families in Burma are starving and that the military regime is not doing enough to help.UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, rebuffed so far in attempts to discuss the situation with the Burmese junta's leaders, announced Sunday he will go to the disaster zone Wednesday to try to ramp up aid efforts.Cyclone Nargis hit just over two weeks ago, killing at least 78,000 people. Another 56,000 people are officially reported as missing.
International aid is arriving in Thailand for the victims, including a shipment from Canada on Saturday, but the ruling military junta insists on handing out the aid without assistance.A number of Buddhist monks joined the more than 100 people in Mae Sot who took part in the peaceful protest, which was confined to a small courtyard.Burmese are not allowed to hold open demonstrations in Thailand. Violators risk arrest by Thai police and deportation.
With files from the Associated Press
Bush lectures Arab world on political reform, women's rights By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent MAY 18,08
SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt - President Bush lectured the Arab world Sunday about everything from political repression to the denial of women's rights but ran into Palestinian complaints he is favoring Israel in stalled Mideast peace talks. Freedom and peace are within your grasp, Bush said despite scant signs of progress. Winding up a five-day trip to the region, Bush took a strikingly tougher tone with Arab nations than he did with Israel in a speech Thursday to the Knesset. Israel received effusive praise from the president while Arab nations heard a litany of U.S. criticisms mixed with some compliments.Too often in the Middle East, politics has consisted of one leader in power and the opposition in jail, Bush said in a speech to 1,500 global policymakers and business leaders at this Red Sea beach resort. That was a clear reference to host Egypt, where main secular opposition figure Ayman Nour has been jailed and President Hosni Mubarak has led an authoritarian government since 1981.America is deeply concerned about the plight of political prisoners in this region, as well as democratic activists who are intimidated or repressed, newspapers and civil society organizations that are shut down and dissidents whose voices are stifled, Bush said.I call on all nations in this region to release their prisoners of conscience, open up their political debate and trust their people to chart their future, Bush said.
Scattered applause followed, with barely a ripple of reaction later to his declaration than Iran must not be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon.Bush arrived back in Washington late Sunday with little to show for the trip. Saudi Arabia rebuffed his plea for help with soaring oil prices, Egypt's leader questioned his seriousness about peacemaking and there was not enough progress in the peace talks to warrant a three-way meeting of Bush with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, did not conceal his disappointment over Bush's remarks to the Israeli parliament. The speech barely mentioned Palestinian hopes.
We do not want the Americans to negotiate on our behalf, Abbas said Sunday after talks with Mubarak. All that we want from them is to stand by (our) legitimacy and have a minimum of neutrality. Abbas had dinner Saturday with Bush.In principle, the Bush speech at the Knesset angered us, and we were not happy with it, Abbas said Sunday. This is our position and we have a lot of remarks (about the speech) and I frankly, clearly and transparently asked him that the American position should be balanced.Abbas told Israeli parliament member Yossi Beilin on Sunday he would resign if there was no substantial progress in peace talks over the next six months, according to the lawmaker's office.Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on Air Force One with Bush returning to Washington, said there were serious peace negotiations going on in private and that she expected them to intensify in the months ahead. She said Bush inserted the wording in the speech that I believe the Palestinians will build a democracy, as a sign of his confidence that will happen.As for Arab criticism Bush leans too far in supporting Israel, Rice said, The president isn't pro this or pro that. The president is pro-democracy and pro-peace.
The trip was Bush's second to the Mideast this year. His national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said Bush might return again before his term ends in January if there is work for him to advance the peace process.The White House made clear that Bush's goal for a peace accord before his leaves office does not mean it will be put into place by then or produce an immediate Palestinian state. That would be a process that would take years, Hadley said.Bush ended his visit with an address to the World Economic Forum on the Middle East, an offshoot of the annual gathering of political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland.After talking privately with key leaders, the president in public touched only broadly on Mideast peacemaking. He did not suggest concrete steps to resolve the generations-old differences standing in the way of an agreement.
Palestinians must fight terror and continue to build the institutions of a free and peaceful society, Bush said. Israel must make tough sacrifices for peace, ease the restrictions on Palestinians. Arab states, especially oil-rich nations, must seize this opportunity to invest aggressively in the Palestinian people and to move past their old resentments against Israel.And all nations in the region must stand together in confronting Hamas, which is attempting to undermine efforts at peace with acts of terror and violence from the Gaza Strip, Bush said. Hamas, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group, controls that territory; the U.S.-backed Abbas is in charge of the West Bank. The heart of Bush's speech was a warning that Mideast nations lag behind the developing world and cannot count on their oil wealth forever. Bush urged countries to make their economies more diverse, open to free trade, with lower taxes and protection for intellectual property rights. He called for political changes that bring competitive, legitimate elections where leaders are held to account and appealed to nations to push back against the negative influence of spoilers such as Iran and Syria. He urged an expansion of women's rights as a matter of morality and of basic math. No nation that cuts off half its population from opportunities will be as productive or prosperous as it could be. Women are a formidable force, as I have seen in my own family and my own administration.At the same time, Bush hailed democratic advances in countries such as Turkey, Afghanistan, Iraq, Morocco and Jordan and said, The light of liberty is beginning to shine.Bush's speech recalled his promise in his second inaugural address to work in every nation for ending tyranny in our world. One of the obvious targets of his message was Egypt, the country hosting the conference. Egypt has often been publicly singled out by his administration, especially in its early years, as a country that needs to do more in terms of political liberalization and democracy. Egypt did hold its first presidential elections in 2005 but pulled back following strong gains by the Muslim Brotherhood in later parliamentary elections.
In addition to Nour's jailing, independent newspaper editors were sentenced to prison for criticizing the president and his government, and hundreds of members of the Muslim Brotherhood were put behind bars. Public criticism of Mubarak's government by the Bush administration, however, has been increasingly muted in recent years as the situation in Iraq worsened and worries grew over Iran, and as the U.S. sought Egypt's help on a Palestinian-Israeli peace deal. Bush said political changes must accompany economic ones in Egypt. Associated Press writer Salah Nasrawi contributed to this report. On the Net: White House site on Bush's trip: http://tinyurl.com/598kka
Bin Laden calls on Muslims to end Israeli Gaza blockade: website Sun May 18, 7:05 PM ET
DUBAI (AFP) - Osama bin Laden has called on Muslims to help lift the Israeli blockade on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, in an audio message purportedly recorded by the Al-Qaeda chief and posted on the Internet Sunday. The message, which could not immediately be authenticated, was addressed to the Islamic nation and posted on a website used by Islamist militants.It called on Muslims, especially those in Egypt, to work to break the unjust blockade on Gaza, which has resulted in dozens of deaths.It also cited the participation of some western leaders in recent celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of the creation of Israel as proof that (their) values of justice, freedom and humanism are mere slogans brandished about to trick the weak.US President George W. Bush was among top leaders who joined in the anniversary festivities -- an occasion marked by Palestinians as a catastrophe.The new recording upbraided Arab states for having sold out the Palestinian people, insisting that Israel owed its continued existence not to its own power, but to the fact that (Arab) governments have renounced their struggle against the Jewish state.
In order to liberate Palestine there is no other path than the battle against the governments and parties ... who stand between us and the Jews, said the recording.It also upbraided Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah for ending the Lebanese Shiite militia's 2006 war against Israel.Hassan Nasrallah said he didn't need money ... or men as he had those. If he was sincere why didn't he continue the battle for the liberation of Palestine? The Internet site had announced earlier Sunday that it was about to carry a very strong address from the lion of Islam, Sheikh Osama bin Laden.It was the second audio message attributed to Bin Laden to surface on the Internet in the past three days, following a similar recording on Friday that vowed a sustained Muslim battle for Palestine.We will continue the fight against the Israelis and their allies... and we will not give up one inch of Palestine, God willing, as long as there is one sincere Muslim on this earth, the earlier message said.
The Al-Qaeda chief has taken credit for the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States which killed nearly 3,000 people and triggered the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.The Saudi-born bin Laden has a 25-million-dollar bounty on his head but his whereabouts are unknown.
FIRES AND EXPLOSIONS
REVELATION 8:7
7 The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.
Florida under dense smoke adivsory amid wildfires Sun May 18, 3:14 PM ET
MIAMI - Parts of southern Florida were under a dense smoke advisory on Sunday as firefighters worked to control several wildfires that have burned about 62 square miles. The majority of fires burned around Lake Okeechobee in Glades County and on the coast in Brevard County, where a smokey haze was expected to linger throughout the day.In the area around Lake Okeechobee, the Florida Highway Patrol used electronic highway signs to warn people about lingering smoke, and areas northeast of the lake were continuing to experience haze from the fires, said Division of Forestry spokeswoman Melissa Yunas.
In Brevard County, fires were 75 percent contained, said State Division of Forestry spokesman Todd Schroeder.
DANIEL 7:23-24
23 Thus he said, The fourth beast(THE EU,REVIVED ROME) shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth,(7TH WORLD EMPIRE) which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.(TRADE BLOCKS)
24 And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise:(10 NATIONS) and another shall rise after them;(#11 SPAIN) and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.(BE HEAD OF 3 KINGS OR NATIONS).
EU seeks to speed up negotiations with ACN, Mercosur
www.chinaview.cn 2008-05-17 10:56:25
LIMA, May 16 (Xinhua) -- European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Friday it is necessary to speed up negotiations on cooperation with the Andean Community of Nations (ACN) and the Common Market of the South (Mercosur). Barroso, who is attending the Latin American, Caribbean and European Union Summit, said the European Union (EU) will consider changing some of its positions on the disparities between Latin American countries. The aim is to complete the EU's accords with the ACN, Mercosur and Central America next year, Barroso said. To date, the EU has free trade deals with Mexico and Chile. These are not simple commercial trades, but are accompanied with political dialogue based on social inclusion and the fight against climate change, Barroso said.
The EU will double its budget for food cooperation as a measure to help address economic imbalance in Latin America. The strategic association between Latin America and Europe is now more necessary than when it was proposed during the Rio de Janeiro summit. Global challenges demand today global answers, Barroso said. These challenges are climate change, energy security, food price, terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime, he said. The ACN, Peru and Colombia want to move forward faster in the negotiations with the EU, while Bolivia is interested in migratory and human rights subjects. Editor: Sun Yunlong
Fifth Latin America-European Union Summit advocates democracy MAY 18,08
The Fifth Latin America, Caribbean-European Union Summit -held in Lima- Friday made a call whereby the two regions undertake to enhance their relations and find a solution to the problems hitting people worldwide.The meeting -attended by some 60 heads of state and presidents from the two regions- was closed by Peruvian President Alan García late Friday.EU, Latin American and Caribbean representatives whose countries have agreements pending for execution -including those under the Common Market of the South (Mercosur), the Andean Community of Nations (CAN), the Central American Integration System, among others- are meeting on May 17 in the Peruvian capital city.García hailed the fact that the summit reached an agreement to take actions to fight against poverty, a problem hitting almost one third of Latin Americans.The Peruvian ruler also urged to uproot illiteracy and put an end to the insanity of an arms race and rivalries among countries in the two regions.The next Latin America, Caribbean-European Union Summit is scheduled to be held in 2010 in Spain, Efe reported.
Socialists introduce alternatives to the Union for the Mediterranean Saturday, May 17, 2008ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News
Party of European Socialists (PES)has presented a proposal designed to influence preparations in the European Commission for a European Union-Mediterranean summit, to be held in Paris on July 13 under the auspices of the French EU presidency. Members of the PES told the EU's information Web site EurActiv that the proposal, unveiled Wednesday, came in response to French President Nicolas Sarkozy's design for a union of Mediterranean countries. Sarkozy first floated the idea of a Mediterranean union during the French election campaign in 2007. The initiative received the backing of Italy, Spain and Greece, but it drew heavy criticism from Germany, which is keen to ensure that the new union does not compete with the EU or the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership formed under the Barcelona Process. Nevertheless, in March, German Chancellor Angela Merkel lent her support to Sarkozy's project, receiving in exchange his assurances that it would be a project for all 27 member states. The final project, called the “Union for the Mediterranean,” was backed by EU leaders at a summit in March, albeit a watered down version.
Pasqualina Napoletano, vice chairperson of the Party of European Socialists, called Sarkozy's proposals too voluntary and not very clear. She also cautioned against a move toward national hegemony, and attempts to reinvent the Mediterranean, adding that Sarkozy had likely not heard of the Barcelona Declaration when he first launched his proposal for the Union for the Mediterranean. However, Napoletano added more positively that she supports the development of Mediterranean relations, but wishes to build on existing relations and the process that began with the 1995 Barcelona Declaration. The document she presented highlights the need to overcome what she calls hysterical fears over immigration. Instead, she said Europe should concentrate on long-term strategies, especially projects that would foster employment in its southern partner countries and reduce the socio-economic gap between northern and southern nations. She also stressed the need to help civil society and democratic political forces in the southern Mediterranean. According to Euractive, she said the PES is also keen to keep the option of EU membership open for Turkey, and does not wish to have that goal overshadowed by a Mediterranean partnership. Napoletano said the PES has, in fact, very close political relations with Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). The PES is also demanding that the European Parliament be consulted over the establishment of permanent bodies for Euro-Mediterranean cooperation. It insists that the new union consist of a robust parliament, building on the existing Euro-Mediterranean parliamentary assembly or the APEM.
Jerusalem, capital of the world MAY 17,08
Simon Goldhill takes readers to the city that lies at the intersection of east and west and the crossroads of competing historical narratives, and that has captured imaginations like no other KORNEL ZATHURECZKY, Freelance Saturday, May 17
If asked to name the capital of the world, many people would reply New York, on account of its grandiose architecture, unsurpassed economic importance and vibrant cultural life.Simon Goldhill would strongly disagree. In Jerusalem: City of Longing, he serves up a playful pastiche of a book, peppered with enchanting anecdotes, that places Jerusalem at the world's centre.Jerusalem, small and insignificant architecturally, the unique splendour of the Dome of the Rock notwithstanding, has captured the imagination of people through the ages like no other city. Abounding in memories, it lies at the intersection of East and West and at the crossroads of competing historical narratives. It is a city of multiple projects of the imagination, where every piece of stone lies at the junction of often profoundly different historical perspectives.
Goldhill focuses on these seemingly insignificant stones to reveal the city's hidden stories. Though people are often captivated by history's grand narratives, these always prove deceptive. The history of a city is more about interruptions, contests and heart-wrenching agonies. This is the kind of history Goldhill presents, and it is the main reason his book distinguishes itself among the many others on Jerusalem.The book unfolds in such a way that it mimics the stages of a love affair, though this is certainly not a case of love at first sight, like being lovestruck by the glamour of Paris, for example. The love affair with Jerusalem begins in a rather reserved way, full of uncertainties and ambiguities regarding the object of one's affections.Each chapter opens with intriguing anecdotes that lead easily toward more detailed discussions of particular features of the city. This quality makes Goldhill's book a valuable guide for visitors, current residents and even for people who can only dream of ever visiting.Jerusalem, like any good lover, holds exciting surprises. Once the author has persuaded the reader to fall in love with Jerusalem, he serves up one such surprise, presenting it in the unexpected guise of a Victorian city. That chapter begins with an English travel writer's description of the strange tradition of Russian peasant pilgrimages to Jerusalem during the Victorian era. This was an epoch when competing empires tried to stake a claim to Jerusalem, recognizing the symbolic significance of such a gesture.However, it was left to ambitious representatives of the British Empire, pilgrims of a different kind, to usher the city into modernity.
This is a book for pilgrims, religious or otherwise. Goldhill reminds us all, not least leaders of the state of Israel and those who seek to eradicate the Jewish state, that Jerusalem belongs to everyone. Although the author discusses, almost by canonical necessity, the three great Abrahamic religions that have staked claims on this most contested and congested piece of real estate, Goldhill does not bog down his book with arguments.The author begins his adventures through the labyrinthine passages of memory that criss-cross Jerusalem, describing the warm hospitality he enjoyed while visiting the home of a Palestinian Muslim who lives in a house adjacent to the Holy Sepulchre, the site most revered by Christians. Through his descriptions of such revealing encounters, enriched by his penchant for small details, Goldhill illustrates how Jerusalem does not allow strict lines of separation to be drawn between people of different creeds and beliefs. In spite of the walls erected and the rituals devised to demarcate the turf of each religious group, the city's various sites and their history make it impossible to segregate one religious group from another.
Lesson from Zachariah stands true for today, too
May 17, 2008
Some 2,400 years ago, as the Jews were slowly building the Second Temple in Jerusalem, they asked the prophet Zachariah (Zachariah 7), Shall we continue to fast for the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple? Or has our period of mourning ended? Commentators explain that this question was born of frustration with the slow pace of Jewish redemption from their exile to Babylon. Persian King Cyrus had permitted the Jews to return to Israel and build their temple anew, but the process had been hampered by Samaritan antagonism as well as Jewish poverty. Those who remembered the glory of the First Temple were unimpressed by the diminished beauty of the second. Only a small percentage of the nation had even returned from exile at this stage of the building process. And so the nation wanted to know: Is this what redemption looks like? Is our suffering truly over, or are we simply in another phase of our exile? Fast-forward to our own day, and May 2008, as Israel celebrates its 60th anniversary of modern statehood. When this new incarnation of a Jewish country was first established, just a few years after the Holocaust, many Jews looked upon its birth as a divine nod of approval, the first sproutings of messianic redemption. A holiday, Yom ha'Atzmaut (Israel Independence Day) was established, complete with special prayers of thanks and great celebrations.
Over the past 60 years, Israel has succeeded in fulfilling much of that messianic promise. Millions of Jews have been saved from persecution in other countries, such as France, Argentina, Yemen, Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union. The Torah is studied there in dozens if not hundreds of institutions. Sites barred to Jews by generations of Arab rulers are now open for all to access. A thriving economy, great universities, a society with civil rights for all of its citizens, a democratically elected government and a free press, all of these have been introduced for the first time in many centuries into a land which had been governed by one despot or another for almost two thousand years, since the eviction of the Jews by the Roman empire. In many ways, the past 60 years have seen a great, even messianic, Jewish renaissance in Israel.But, at the same time, the question of Zachariah's era resonates with Jews of today's generation. For thousands of years, Jewish sages have taught that a messianic time would mean peace with the nations around us, a return to Jewish religion by all Jews, and a temple on the Temple Mount. It is for this that Jews have prayed, And may our eyes behold your merciful return to Zion, three times each day, for millennia. And so Jews today look at constant warfare, internecine squabbles, political corruption and significant poverty among children and the elderly, and ask the question of their ancestors: Shall we continue to fast for the destruction of the First Temple? Or has our period of mourning ended?
To this question, Zachariah's answer is as relevant today as it was in his day. The prophet reminded the populace of the sins which had preceded the First Temple's destruction, as well as the exhortations of his predecessors: Judge truthfully, and act with generosity and mercy toward each other. Do not cheat the widow, the orphan and the stranger, and do not plot evil against your brother in your hearts.In other words, dithering about whether deliverance has arrived or not is a waste of time. Better to focus on righting wrongs and building a proper society, and ensuring that we earn whatever redemption God has in store.This is a timeless message for Jews and for all humanity's eschatology-oriented religions -- divine redemption will come, whatever its form, when it is divinely decreed. Our responsibility is not to attach a label to this salvation, but to work to make it a reality.Mordechai Torczyner is rabbi at Congregation Sons of Israel, Allentown.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008
MALACHI
I HAD A BRIEF DREAM THIS MORNING THAT SHOWED A TRAIN RUSHING INTO NEW YORK AND A VOICE I HEARD SAYING MALACHI. THIS IS MY INSPIRATION FOR PUTTING THE BOOK OF MALACHI ON AT THIS TIME.
WORLD LEADERS IN THE LAST DAYS.
KING OF THE NORTH - RUSSIA (Ezekiel 38:1-2)
KING OF THE SOUTH - EGYPT (Daniel 11:40-43)
KING OF THE EAST - CHINA (Daniel 11:44)
KING OF THE WEST - EU (EUROPEAN UNION) (Daniel 7:23-24)
THE BOOK OF MALACHI
Malachi 1:1-14 King James Bible
1 The burden of the word of the LORD to Israel by Malachi.
2 I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob,
3 And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.
4 Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the LORD hath indignation for ever.
5 And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The LORD will be magnified from the border of Israel.
6 A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the LORD of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name?
7 Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar; and ye say, Wherein have we polluted thee? In that ye say, The table of the LORD is contemptible.
8 And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? and if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith the LORD of hosts.
9 And now, I pray you, beseech God that he will be gracious unto us: this hath been by your means: will he regard your persons? saith the LORD of hosts.
10 Who is there even among you that would shut the doors for nought? neither do ye kindle fire on mine altar for nought. I have no pleasure in you, saith the LORD of hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand.
11 For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the LORD of hosts.
12 But ye have profaned it, in that ye say, The table of the LORD is polluted; and the fruit thereof, even his meat, is contemptible. 13 Ye said also, Behold, what a weariness is it! and ye have snuffed at it, saith the LORD of hosts; and ye brought that which was torn, and the lame, and the sick; thus ye brought an offering: should I accept this of your hand? saith the LORD.
14 But cursed be the deceiver, which hath in his flock a male, and voweth, and sacrificeth unto the LORD a corrupt thing: for I am a great King, saith the LORD of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the heathen.
Malachi 2:1-17 King James Bible
1 And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you.
2 If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the LORD of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart.
3 Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it.
4 And ye shall know that I have sent this commandment unto you, that my covenant might be with Levi, saith the LORD of hosts.
5 My covenant was with him of life and peace; and I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he feared me, and was afraid before my name.
6 The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips: he walked with me in peace and equity, and did turn many away from iniquity.
7 For the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts. 8 But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the LORD of hosts.
9 Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law.
10 Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?
11 Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah hath profaned the holiness of the LORD which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god.
12 The LORD will cut off the man that doeth this, the master and the scholar, out of the tabernacles of Jacob, and him that offereth an offering unto the LORD of hosts.
13 And this have ye done again, covering the altar of the LORD with tears, with weeping, and with crying out, insomuch that he regardeth not the offering any more, or receiveth it with good will at your hand.
14 Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the LORD hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant.
15 And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.
16 For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away: for one covereth violence with his garment, saith the LORD of hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously.
17 Ye have wearied the LORD with your words. Yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied him? When ye say, Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and he delighteth in them; or, Where is the God of judgment?
Malachi 3:1-18 King James Bible
1 Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the LORD, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts.
2 But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap:
3 And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness.
4 Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the LORD, as in the days of old, and as in former years.
5 And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts.
6 For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.
7 Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return?
8 Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.
9 Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation.
10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. 11 And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the LORD of hosts.
12 And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts.
13 Your words have been stout against me, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, What have we spoken so much against thee?
14 Ye have said, It is vain to serve God: and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinance, and that we have walked mournfully before the LORD of hosts?
15 And now we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up; yea, they that tempt God are even delivered.
16 Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name.
17 And they shall be mine, saith the LORD of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.
18 Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not.
Malachi 4:1-6 King James Bible
1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
2 But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.
3 And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the LORD of hosts.
4 Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.
5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD:
6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
ELIJAH SHOULD SOON BE COMING TO ISRAEL TO PREACH.
WORLD LEADERS IN THE LAST DAYS.
KING OF THE NORTH - RUSSIA (Ezekiel 38:1-2)
KING OF THE SOUTH - EGYPT (Daniel 11:40-43)
KING OF THE EAST - CHINA (Daniel 11:44)
KING OF THE WEST - EU (EUROPEAN UNION) (Daniel 7:23-24)
THE BOOK OF MALACHI
Malachi 1:1-14 King James Bible
1 The burden of the word of the LORD to Israel by Malachi.
2 I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob,
3 And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.
4 Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the LORD hath indignation for ever.
5 And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The LORD will be magnified from the border of Israel.
6 A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the LORD of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name?
7 Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar; and ye say, Wherein have we polluted thee? In that ye say, The table of the LORD is contemptible.
8 And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? and if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith the LORD of hosts.
9 And now, I pray you, beseech God that he will be gracious unto us: this hath been by your means: will he regard your persons? saith the LORD of hosts.
10 Who is there even among you that would shut the doors for nought? neither do ye kindle fire on mine altar for nought. I have no pleasure in you, saith the LORD of hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand.
11 For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the LORD of hosts.
12 But ye have profaned it, in that ye say, The table of the LORD is polluted; and the fruit thereof, even his meat, is contemptible. 13 Ye said also, Behold, what a weariness is it! and ye have snuffed at it, saith the LORD of hosts; and ye brought that which was torn, and the lame, and the sick; thus ye brought an offering: should I accept this of your hand? saith the LORD.
14 But cursed be the deceiver, which hath in his flock a male, and voweth, and sacrificeth unto the LORD a corrupt thing: for I am a great King, saith the LORD of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the heathen.
Malachi 2:1-17 King James Bible
1 And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you.
2 If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the LORD of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart.
3 Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it.
4 And ye shall know that I have sent this commandment unto you, that my covenant might be with Levi, saith the LORD of hosts.
5 My covenant was with him of life and peace; and I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he feared me, and was afraid before my name.
6 The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips: he walked with me in peace and equity, and did turn many away from iniquity.
7 For the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts. 8 But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the LORD of hosts.
9 Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law.
10 Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?
11 Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah hath profaned the holiness of the LORD which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god.
12 The LORD will cut off the man that doeth this, the master and the scholar, out of the tabernacles of Jacob, and him that offereth an offering unto the LORD of hosts.
13 And this have ye done again, covering the altar of the LORD with tears, with weeping, and with crying out, insomuch that he regardeth not the offering any more, or receiveth it with good will at your hand.
14 Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the LORD hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant.
15 And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.
16 For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away: for one covereth violence with his garment, saith the LORD of hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously.
17 Ye have wearied the LORD with your words. Yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied him? When ye say, Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and he delighteth in them; or, Where is the God of judgment?
Malachi 3:1-18 King James Bible
1 Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the LORD, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts.
2 But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap:
3 And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness.
4 Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the LORD, as in the days of old, and as in former years.
5 And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts.
6 For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.
7 Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return?
8 Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.
9 Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation.
10 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. 11 And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the LORD of hosts.
12 And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts.
13 Your words have been stout against me, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, What have we spoken so much against thee?
14 Ye have said, It is vain to serve God: and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinance, and that we have walked mournfully before the LORD of hosts?
15 And now we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up; yea, they that tempt God are even delivered.
16 Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name.
17 And they shall be mine, saith the LORD of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.
18 Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not.
Malachi 4:1-6 King James Bible
1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
2 But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.
3 And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the LORD of hosts.
4 Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.
5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD:
6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
ELIJAH SHOULD SOON BE COMING TO ISRAEL TO PREACH.
BUSH HAILS ISRAELIS AS CHOSEN PEOPLE
EARTHQUAKES
MATTHEW 24:7-8
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.
MARK 13:8
8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:(ETHNIC GROUP AGAINST ETHNIC GROUP) and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.
LUKE 21:11
11 And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.
Aftershock rattles China quake zone By NG HAN GUAN, Associated Press Writer MAY 16,08
YINGXIU, China - A powerful aftershock knocked out roads and communications in some of the most quake-ravaged parts of central China on Friday, as emergency crews rescued 163 people who had survived up to 100 improbable hours trapped in the ruins. As Saturday dawned, rescuers were holding out hope of finding more survivors and authorities were preparing for the daunting task of housing and feeding millions left homeless.With the official death toll at more than 22,000, an air force unit reached Yinchanggou, a scenic spot in the mountains north of the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu, finding landslides had swept away rustic small hotels.There are several hundred hotels, including farmer homestays, probably 800 in all. They are all rubble now, Cai Weisu, an official with an air force unit from the Chengdu Military Region, told Sichuan Television. Most of the dead are tourists, he said, but did not identify whether they were foreign or Chinese.
Tens of thousands of people are considered buried or missing throughout the disaster zone. There were about 12 million people living within a 60-mile radius of the epicenter of Wenchuan, according to a study on the potential impact of the quake by Xu Mingbao, a senior researcher at the University of Michigan's China Data Center.Acutely aware its response to China's worst disaster in 30 years could affect Beijing's image heading into the Olympic Games, President Hu Jintao ramped up the government's public relations efforts, making his first trip to the stricken region.And in response to swelling anger, government officials accustomed to tightly controlled media took the unusual step of fielding questions from people online about why thousands of schools that collapsed were not built to be quake-safe.Damage from the magnitude-5.5 aftershock — one of dozens of strong tremors since the devastating quake Monday — was a temporary setback to the mammoth relief operation. Repair crews were rapidly restoring mobile phone services and unblocking roads within four hours, state media reported.Trucks navigated around boulders and splintered pavement that clogged roads into the forest-clad mountains of Beichuan county, about 100 miles north of Chengdu.China Central Television reported Saturday that rescue teams in the earthquake zone pulled 163 people alive from the rubble on Friday.Augmenting the 130,000 soldiers and police deployed, the official Xinhua news service said specialized international teams had joined the effort_ the first time ever that China has accepted outside professionals for help in a domestic disaster.On Saturday, teams from South Korea, Singapore and Russia joined a Japanese specialist group.
Meanwhile, a U.S. Air Force cargo plane loaded with tents, lanterns and 15,000 meals left Hawaii Saturday for China. It is the first aid flight from the United States to help in Sichuan province. Another Air Force delivery was due to go to China from Alaska.In one hard hit area, soldiers slogged up a slippery mud path Friday into the village of Yingxiu, as some of their comrades stayed back and used rubble from landslides to patch the road so supply and rescue vehicles could get closer.Most buildings in the village collapsed in the quake and the rest appear damaged beyond repair. Hundreds of residents huddled in tents. Small groups of soldiers, some lugging body bags, rushed from place to place checking reports of people trapped. They pulled out bodies and — at least twice — survivors. Others dug a burial pit and laid in at least 80 bodies.
Helicopters whirred overhead, bringing supplies and dropping leaflets with survival instructions that included not drinking dirty water and staying away from collapsed buildings. We should trust the party and the government, the leaflets also said.The government said it would investigate why so many school buildings collapsed in the quake and severely punish anyone responsible for shoddy construction. Officials in at least six provinces promised to tear down dangerous school buildings to protect students, state media reported. The quake destroyed about 6,900 classrooms, not including those in the hardest-hit counties.China's education system is chronically underfunded. Building experts said the problem here, as in many other parts of the world, was a lack of commitment by governments to improve the quality of school buildings. Schools should never collapse, and hospitals and fire stations should never collapse. These are all civic structures that are needed in a disaster, said Roger Bilham, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. So when I hear a school has collapsed, I point the finger at politics.
More than 4 million apartments and homes were damaged or destroyed in Sichuan, Housing Minister Jiang Weixin told reporters. Worried relatives went to sites where missing loved ones might be. In the city of Hanwang, Zhou Furen walked for hours in borrowed shoes to a factory where her son had worked.
I've been coming here every day, sitting here in the early morning, waiting, she wept. He's been missing for more than three days now. But for my son I would come every day.The government said it had allocated $772 million for earthquake relief, according to the central bank's Web site, nearly five times the amount two days earlier. China has also received $457 million in donated money and goods for rescue efforts, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs. AIR Worldwide — a catastrophe risk modeling firm — estimated losses to both insured and uninsured property would likely exceed $20 billion. Associated Press writers Audra Ang in Beichuan, Tini Tran in Hanwang and Cara Anna in Beijing contributed to this report.
US monitoring China's nuclear sites after quake By LILY HINDY and ANGELA CHARLTON, Associated Press Writers Fri May 16, 7:03PM ET
American experts are monitoring nuclear facilities in China's earthquake zone, officials said Friday, after France's nuclear watchdog reported that some had suffered minor damage. The French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety said Chinese authorities reacted well to the quake and immediately shut down nuclear sites for inspection.Thierry Charles, the group's director of plant safety, said China's nuclear safety agency, NNSA, had reported no leaks of radioactivity since the quake.He said the Chinese reported light damage to older nuclear facilities that were being dismantled before the quake, noting that seismic construction codes were less strict when those sites were built. China did not specify which facilities had damage, he said.China has a research reactor, two nuclear fuel production sites and two atomic weapons sites in Sichuan province, where the magnitude-7.9 quake struck Monday, the French agency said. All were between 40 and 90 miles from the epicenter.French authorities do not yet have a full picture of any possible damage at the nuclear weapons sites, where information is more closely guarded, Charles said.At this stage, I don't think there were any leaks, because they would have reported them by now. The worst to worry about now is degradation of buildings, cracks, this kind of thing, he said.
U.S. officials are monitoring China's nuclear facilities in the quake zone, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. He said he had no information about any damage.Wang Baodong, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said he had no information about the state of the atomic sites. But he told reporters the Chinese government was preparing for every consequence as it worked to rescue survivors and repair damage.Nuclear experts said there several possibilities if any significant damage occurred at the plants, at least one of which is alongside a river. A radioactive leak could cause environmental harm, while internal damage could set back China's nuclear modernization, they said.Mianyang, an industrial city of 700,000 people that is the headquarters of China's nuclear weapons design industry, was on the edge of the disaster area. The site has been likened to the U.S. nuclear facility at Los Alamos, N.M.The plutonium production reactor at Guangyuan, China's largest, is also in the quake zone.Damage to these plants could potentially be a serious issue for the Chinese government, said Hans Kristensen, a nuclear arms expert at the Federation of American Scientists.He said the reactor at Guangyuan is at the center of China's fissile material production.If there is damage to (the reactor), it would disrupt China's warhead maintenance capabilities, Kristensen said. That could have impacts for several years.Matthew Bunn, a senior researcher at Harvard University's Project on Managing the Atom, said the risk of radioactive leaks depended mostly on how the facilities were designed, details of which are known only by the Chinese government.
Only in the reactor's case would there likely be any significant danger of some kind of radioactive release that would affect a large area. And how big that danger is depends enormously on specifics of the reactor's seismic design that are not well known outside the Chinese nuclear weapons program, Bunn said.Jeffrey Lewis, director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation who visited Mianyang last summer, said the buildings were designed to withstand earthquakes.
I would be surprised if there were any human impact, said Lewis, referring to radioactive leaks. If anything, there is a possibility for structural damage.Associated Press writer Foster Klug in Washington contributed to this report.
STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES
LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.
Death toll from Myanmar cyclone nearly doubles MAY 16,08
YANGON, Myanmar - The official death toll nearly doubled to 78,000 from Myanmar's killer cyclone as heavy rains on Friday lashed much of the area stricken two weeks ago, further hampering relief efforts. Aid workers shackled by the country's military regime struggled to get even the most basic data about the needs of up to 2.5 million survivors. The Red Cross warned that a lack of clean water may swell the ranks of the dead.Myanmar state television said the official death count from the May 3 cyclone was 77,738, with 55,917 others missing.The toll was nearly double the 43,000 previously reported, but the TV announcement suggested it might be close to a final figure. It said the government had carried out search and rescue and relief work and collection of data, promptly, immediately and extensively.The release of the figures led to dire warnings from the United Nations and renewed calls for the military regime to allow international aid workers access to devastated areas.More than two weeks after the event, we are at a critical point, said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Unless more aid gets into the country — quickly — we face the risk of an outbreak of infectious diseases that could dramatically worsen today's crisis.Jean-Maurice Ripert, France's ambassador to the U.N., criticized the junta for refusing to allow a French navy ship to deliver 1,500 tons of food, drugs and medication to the Irrawaddy delta using small boats.
He said refusing to allow aid to be delivered to those in need could lead to a true crime against humanity if we go on like that.On Saturday, the FSS Mistral, carrying 1,500 tons of food, drugs and medication, was sailing near the Irrawaddy delta, hoping for permission to bring the aid to the needy, French officials said.
Myanmar's ruling junta, meanwhile, put up a security cordon around Yangon to restrict travel to the Irrawaddy delta, where scenes of devastation were rife.A small tour to the disaster zone arranged for Saturday will give diplomats their first up-close look at the effects of the cyclone and at the government relief effort.John Holmes, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, was to go to Myanmar on Sunday in an attempt to persuade the junta to admit more U.N. relief workers and to greatly increase aid efforts, said Amanda Pitt, a U.N. spokeswoman in Bangkok, Thailand.If you look at the situation with China, they have accepted relief and assistance teams from Russia, Taiwan and Japan, Pitt said, referring to the response to the earthquake there. They know they can't do it on their own.The junta maintains it has the situation under control. But after two weeks, the U.N. remains largely in the dark about the situation on the ground.We simply don't have the information, and I can't say when we will have it, said Steve Marshall, a U.N. official who just left Myanmar.The Red Cross has put the death toll as high as 128,000 and the most recent official figures on dead and missing have the U.N. saying the number could easily reach 130,000.The highest death estimate is carried by the British government's Department for International Development, which says that unofficial estimates suggest the number of dead or missing is in the region of 217,000. The department said the estimate was reported to them by sources on the ground with knowledge of the situation. They gave no other details and said the estimates could not immediately be verified.
The U.N. estimates some 1.5 million to 2.5 million survivors are in desperate need of food, water, shelter and medical care. If the storm was so massive that it's basically swept away, killed 130,000 people, we can only imagine what it's done to settlements on the ground, said Stephanie Bunker, a New York-based spokeswoman for Holmes. Myanmar is entering the monsoon season and disaster experts warn the wet weather could complicate relief efforts. Heavy rain pelted the country Friday. Aid groups have reached only 270,000 people so far, and the situation for survivors will likely get more difficult as time passes without proper help. Lack of clean water will be deadly in the Irrawaddy delta, Thomas Gurtner, the head of operations for the international Red Cross, told The Associated Press in Geneva. To be able to provide clean water to hundreds of thousands of people stranded in the delta requires a major operation, which we have neither the material, the logistical nor the staff capacity to do, he said.
Officials also worry about disease outbreaks.
The U.S. military flew four more flights of emergency supplies into Yangon on Friday, raising its total to 17 since Monday. Two of the flights carried aid provided by the Thai government. India was also readying flights. The U.N. says the regime has issued only 40 visas to its staffers and another 46 to nongovernment agencies and has confined the personnel to the immediate Yangon area. Marshall, the U.N. official, said the military has set up checkpoints on the two main roads to the delta to keep foreigners out of the disaster zone. Even local staff have to negotiate with the military to gain access to the camps. UNICEF said Friday the agency's fourth flight into Myanmar, scheduled for Saturday, would deliver several tons of food for malnourished children. Radio broadcasts are trying to help lost children find their families, it said. In the meantime, ordinary people are stepping in, with shopkeepers handing out rice gruel and medical students caring for the sick. But the government was reportedly interfering with those efforts as well. In an interview with the Democratic Voice of Burma, the abbot of Mandalay's Maha Gandaryon monastery said monks were stockpiling relief supplies and getting trucks to take in aid. We are still in the preparation stages, he told the radio, which is critical of the junta. We have contacted some private organizations and services, and found out that they were told by the authorities not to work with us in aid distribution. They said we can't go with them.
SPAIN TO HOST BUSINESS FORUM
http://www.ameinfo.com/156990.html
PSALMS 83 COMPLETES THE PROPHECY PUZZLE
http://missing-peace-bsalhus.blogspot.com/2008/05/83rd-and-final-piece-to-middle-east.html
Last-days birth pains have begun May 16, 2008 1:00 am Eastern
The world has endured an almost mind-numbing series of shocks in recent weeks, from the unprecedented swarm of tornadoes across the American Midwest to the death and destruction wrought by Cyclone Nargis as it tore a path through Myanmar, better known as Burma.
There were 368 documented tornadoes in the U.S. in January and February of this year, shattering the previous record of 243 over that two-month period, set in 1999. February's total of 232 tornadoes also shattered previous records.Cyclone Nargis ripped Burma apart, killing at least 128,000, according to Red Cross estimates, and creating some 2.5 million refugees.Al Gore was quick to blame global warming. In an interview on NPR to plug his appropriately named book on global warming, Assault on Reason, he told host Terry Gross: And as we're talking today, Terry, the death count in Myanmar from the cyclone that hit there yesterday has been rising from 15,000 to way on up there to much higher numbers now being speculated. . … And last year a catastrophic storm last fall hit Bangladesh. The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China – and we're seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.
Maybe. But Germany's Institute of Marine Scientists says we're in for a 10-year period of global cooling. There sure seems to be a lot of opposition to what is supposed to be settled science.Global warming can't explain away the devastating earthquake that all but flattened a huge portion of western China. The death toll from Monday's quake is approaching 20,000, with twice that number still listed as missing. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Monday's earthquake was the 25th significant earthquake registered so far this year.Back in 1969, the year I wrote The Late, Great Planet Earth, the USGS identified a total of seven significant earthquakes. I had noted in 1969 that there was a slight but discernible increase in worldwide earthquake activity since Israel's rebirth in 1948.During the entire decade of the 1970s, the USGS recorded a total of 44 earthquakes it classified as significant. The following decade, from January 1980 to December 1989, the USGS recorded 47 significant earthquakes. That is for the entire decade. From 1990 through the end of 1999, the USGS records 57 significant earthquakes. From 2000 thru to Monday's earthquake in Sichuan, China, the USGS recorded an astonishing 109 earthquakes of at least magnitude 7.0 and 13 earthquakes measuring between 8.0 and 9.9 on the Richter Scale.
On the other side of the world, the long-dormant Chaitan volcano erupted May 2 for the first time, say geologists, in more than 7,000years. The BBC reported that a government volcano expert warned there could be a big eruption at any time.There could be a major explosion that could collapse the volcano's cone, said Luis Lara of the National Geologic and Mining Service.The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization warned that Iran had detected a new highly pathogenic strain of wheat stem rust. The U.N. said the fungal disease could spread to other wheat-producing states in the Near East and western Asia that provide one-fourth of the world's wheat supply. The new strain, called Ug99, is capable of infecting up to 90 percent of the existing strains of wheat worldwide – and once infected, crop losses range between 70 percent and total loss.
Coupled with the losses already sustained as a result of the typhoon-related flooding in Java, Bangladesh, and India and from agricultural pests and diseases in Vietnam, it starts to add up. Last year, Australia suffered its second consecutive year of severe drought and a near complete crop failure; heavy rains reduced production in Europe; Argentina suffered heavy frost; and Canada and the U.S. both produced low yields. Food riots have broken out in Egypt, Haiti and several African states, including Mauritania, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Senegal.Meanwhile, the drums of war continue to beat around the planet. Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad renewed his threat to destroy Israel this week. Hezbollah took over West Beirut, while the Arab world mourned the catastrophe of Israel's 60th birthday with threats of annihilation of the Jewish state. In Israel, President Bush again warned that allowing the Iranian regime to obtain nuclear arms would be unforgivable, signaling a continuation along a path that can only lead to an eventual war that will engulf the whole Middle East.
When Jesus was asked by His disciples to tell them what signs would precede His return at the end of the age, He warned that nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines, plagues and earthquakes in various places, He said (Matthew 24 and Luke 21). Using an analogy immediately understandable to all peoples in all nations, he said of these signs, All these are the beginning of birth pains.Jesus used a Greek word for the labor pains of a woman about to give birth. Jesus knew that every generation could understand the illustration. His meaning is clear. Just as a woman experiences birth pains that increase in frequency and intensity just before giving birth, so ALL the signs of His return would increase in frequency and intensity just before His return. Hey, for he first time in history, all of the signs have appeared together in the same time frame and are increasing in frequency and intensity. That, coupled with the fulfillment of the great predicted sign that Israel became a nation again after 2,000 hopeless years of worldwide dispersion, indicates that Jesus Christ is already at the door ready to return. Are you ready?
FAMINE
REVELATION 6:5-6
5 And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.(A DAYS WAGES FOR A LOAF OF BREAD)
Oil sets record near $128; pump price at high, too By ADAM SCHRECK, AP Business Writer Fri May 16, 8:24 PM ET
NEW YORK - News that Saudi Arabia had boosted its oil output by 300,000 barrels a day was greeted as a non-event on oil markets — the move wasn't anywhere near the kind of production increase needed to bring prices down on Friday. And traders were equally unimpressed by the U.S. government's plan to stop adding to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.One day, two moves designed to allay concerns about an overheated oil market that's squeezing motorists and inflating the prices of all sorts of goods.The response in the oil trading pits? Traders did what they've been doing for months now, and pushed crude oil and gasoline futures to new highs.All in all, we're seeing another strong move here on little fundamental news, said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch & Associates, an oil trading advisory firm in Galena, Ill.
The reason for the disconnect has little to do with political decisions in Washington or Riyadh, and everything to do with market expectations. The Saudi production increase was seen in the market as minuscule, and no one expected the suspension of shipments to the U.S. government's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to have much impact on supplies.Even more important, the traders placing the bets expect prices to just keep moving higher.Goldman Sachs, one of the world's most influential investment banks, underscored that sentiment Friday when it hiked its oil price forecast for the second half of the year to $141 a barrel, up from $107 previously. Analysts at the bank argue that the oil market is undergoing a structural repricing that will continue to play out for some time to come.We would view any pullback in oil, regardless of the size or duration — although a correction could be as large as 15 percent — as an opportunity to re-establish long positions in oil before the summer, Goldman Sachs advised traders.Translation: Buy when barrels go on sale, because prices are bound to keep heading higher.And buy they did Friday. The price for a barrel of benchmark light, sweet crude for June delivery jumped $2.17 to settle at record close of $126.29 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier in the session, prices surged to $127.82 a barrel, also a new high.It was the eighth time in the past 10 sessions traders rewrote the record books, and the first time prices topped $127 a barrel.Investors shrugged off the news from Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi that the world's largest oil producer had decided to increase production last week. The market also had little reaction to the Energy Department's announcement said it would cancel shipments into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for six months beginning July 1.It's ridiculous because I don't think this is going to bring the price down, said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp., of the Energy Department's move.
The effect of Saudi Arabia's decision was also not clear. The increase, which went into effect last Saturday, is relatively small, lifting total output from the world's leading producer to 9.45 million barrels per day by June.The addition of 300,000 barrels won't make a lot of difference, said Mir Yousufuddin, who monitors crude prices for the U.S. Energy Information Administration.The announcement came during a visit by Bush, who was in the kingdom to appeal for a more significant increase in production. Bernard Picchi, an energy analyst at research firm Wall Street Access, called the increase a token amount and said the effect on prices would have been different if Saudi Arabia had boosted production by 1 million or 1.5 million barrels a day.
Saudi Arabia often adjusts its output to meet demand, and the increase coincides with the start of the peak driving season in the U.S. The Middle Eastern nation has in the past acknowledged the ability to produce as much as 11 million barrels a day. James Cordier, president of Liberty Trading Group in Tampa, Fla., agreed that the moves by both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were insignificant and would do little to dent the rally in oil prices. Like a number of other analysts, he believes prices are rising not because of a speculative bubble, but simply reflect finite supply and soaring global demand. Crude's latest surge comes a week before the Memorial Day holiday, the traditional start of the summer driving season, suggesting that retail gas prices still have further to rise. Motorists are now paying a national average of $3.787 a gallon for regular gasoline, up nearly a penny from the previous day, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Diesel prices also have risen to record levels, meaning that even Americans who don't drive will likely face even higher prices on all sorts of goods because of increased shipping costs. A gallon of diesel now sells for $4.482 a gallon. Oil prices could rise even higher as U.S. demand picks up during the summer months, when gasoline consumption is typically the heaviest. Traders are clearly betting gasoline prices have a way to go too: Gasoline futures jumped to a record $3.2438 a gallon on the Nymex before easing slightly to settle at $3.2235, up 5.777 cents. In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures rose 8.04 cents to settle at $3.7028 a gallon. Natural gas futures fell 30.5 cents to settle at $11.094 per 1,000 cubic feet. In London, July Brent crude surged $2.36 to settle at $124.99 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange. Associated Press Writers H. Josef Hebert in Washington and Jennifer Loven in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, contributed to this report.
DANIEL 7:23-24
23 Thus he said, The fourth beast(THE EU,REVIVED ROME) shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth,(7TH WORLD EMPIRE) which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.(TRADE BLOCKS)
24 And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise:(10 NATIONS) and another shall rise after them;(#11 SPAIN) and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.(BE HEAD OF 3 KINGS OR NATIONS).
EU to tussle with Latin America's Pink Tide at Lima summit
15.05.2008 - 17:24 CET | By Leigh Phillips
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Tussles over biofuels, trade and even capitalism itself are likely to take centre stage in Lima, Peru on Friday, as European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and some 60 heads of state from the EU and Latin America and the Carribean (LAC) descend on the Peruvian capital for the fifth EU-LAC summit.Under the protection of some 85,000 soldiers and police who have set up the usual array of roadblocks, traffic detours and zones restricted to local citizens, the leaders are to rattle through what is an ambitious agenda. Although the leaders will focus on two key issues – combating inequality and tackling climate change – poverty, social inclusion, sustainable development, energy and the environment in general are also set for discussion. At the summit, the commission is to announce Euroclima, a €5 million fund for Latin American projects that tack climate change. Additionally, the two camps are hoping to boost trade and increase economic co-operation. The EU would like to see some movement towards an agreement in the Doha round of world trade negotiations. The Doha round has been stalled since 2001 largely due to the differing trade priorities of poor and wealthy nations. However, the politicians will also likely end up discussing a range of off-agenda topics that have forced themselves onto the front pages in the last few weeks, such as food shortages and the miniature cold war between Colombia and Ecuador that has simmered away since the former bombed alleged encampments of Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) within Ecuador without Quito's permission in March.
Merkel, Hitler and Chavez
The discussions are expected to be quite fractious, as the largely liberalising perspective of the EU comes up against what can be fairly described as currently the most left-wing continent on the planet. Ahead of the meeting, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned other Latin American nations against the left-wing populist policies of Venezuela's perennially beret-adorned president, Hugo Chavez, who responded in typical bombastic fashion by comparing Ms Merkel to Adolf Hitler.On Sunday (11 May), Mr Chavez criticised the objectives of the European Union in their dealings with Latin America and the Caribbean.The EU is coming here to help us. Where is their plan to help the poor? Ask the president of Haiti how much promises from Europe and the United States have done, he said, according to DPA, the German Press Agency.In recent years, centre-left and socialist governments have been elected in all but a few nations across the region – the so-called Pink Tide.Nonetheless, Latin American and Caribbean leaders are not all of one mind.
The more centre-left presidents Lula da Silva of Brazil, Michele Bachelet of Chile, and Peru's own Alan Garcia largely support the free market and the so-called Washington Consensus – policies of fiscal discipline, deregulation, privatisation and trade liberalisation – albeit with more of a social cushion than their centre-right counterparts would prefer. Meanwhile, to their left, Evo Morales – Bolivia's first indigenous leader in 500 years, Mr Chavez and Ecuador's Rafael Correa are committed to building what they call a socialism of the 21st century, and have instituted a range of policies that favour the poor of their countries, such as boosting health and literacy programmes and, more controversially, the nationalisation of key industries. Fernando Lugo, a former Catholic bishop and adherent of liberation theology won Paraguay's presidency in April, adding to the continent's collection of progressives. Analysts expect Mr Lugo's policies, as with those of Argentina's Cristina Kirchner, to fall somewhere between that of Mr da Silva and Mr Chavez.
Biofuels debate will be central
The sides align themselves slightly differently however when it comes to the question of biofuels.EU leaders last spring agreed that the EU should increase the use of biofuels in transport fuel to ten percent by 2020, up from a planned 5.75 percent target to be achieved by 2010.But the European Union has come under repeated pressure from international institutions such as the World Bank and the UN World Food Programme, as well as environmental and development NGOs, to abandon its biofuels targets due to concerns that the controversial fuels contribute to global warming and food price rises.As a result, the commission has touted as-yet undefined sustainability standards that it says will ensure the biofuels Europe uses are green.Brazil, the world's leading producer of ethanol, while publicly supporting these sustainability criteria, is very worried that if standards are too strict, European markets will be closed off to them.On the other hand, most of the other LAC countries have lined up against both Brazil and the EU's positions on biofuels, aghast at the site of Haiti's government falling in April as a result of food riots on the island nation.Even Peru's moderate Mr Garcia complains that biofuel crop cultivation is pushing up the prices of staples such as corn, rice and wheat, and is planning to ask for a limit to biofuel production.I have no doubt that the theme of food will be central to the debates of the summit, Peru's foreign minister, Jose Garcia Belaunde, said last week. As with many such international gatherings, an alternative People's Summit, is currently being held all week in a working class Lima neighbourhood, with attendants from social, labour and indigenous groups. The Brussels Consensus is the new Washington Consensus, and has started a new period of neocolonialism, said Brid Brennan of the Netherlands-based Transnational Institute, one of the organisers of the People's Summit.However, unlike similar counter-summits elsewhere, this one will also be attended by a number of heads of state, notably Mr Chavez, Mr Morales, Mr Correa and the new president of Cyprus, Dimitris Christofias.
External relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, and development commissioner Louis Michel will join President Barroso at the EU-LAC summit.The EU-LAC summit was preceded on Thursday (15 May) by the second EU-LAC Business Forum, bringing together business and political leaders, and will be followed on Saturday by separate summits between the EU and each of Mexico, Chile, the Andean Community and Central America.
Study sees no realistic Plan B in case of Irish EU treaty rejection 15.05.2008 - 17:25 CET | By Honor Mahony
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - A rejection by Irish voters of the EU treaty in next month's referendum would be a catastrophe for Europe, because there is no credible Plan B, a new study has concluded.A paper by the Bertelsmann foundation, a German think-tank, believes there are four possible courses of action if charter is rejected in Ireland on 12 June, but none is especially exhilarating.It authors suggest that putting the treaty to voters again as happened in 2002 following Ireland's vote against the Nice Treaty the previous year is not particularly probable as French and Dutch voters were not asked to vote again on the now ditched EU constitution, which they rejected in 2005.But amending the treaty is also seen as unrealistic as it is unclear what Ireland would need to change in the treaty to make it appeal to voters a second time round. In addition, this route would have to be approved by all member states, meaning going back to the drawing board and re-opening old institutional and political sores.
Offering Dublin the chance to opt out of certain areas could mean that ratification would not have to be re-commenced in other member states but it is unclear where the country could opt out. It already does not take part in substantial parts of justice and home affairs areas and sensitive areas for the country, such as tax issues, remain unanimity issues under the Lisbon Treaty.The paper suggests that the final option is that the EU abandons its attempts to introduce comprehensive treaty reforms looking instead to minimal reforms which could be introduced by a mini-treaty or by inter-institutional agreements.A No in the Irish referendum would simply be a catastrophe for Europe, the paper concludes. Meanwhile Czech foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg broke the political taboo on talking about a possible treaty rejection by Irish voters, but offered a more prosaic reaction.He said it would lead to the usual European crisis.Then we will look for some solution. However, at present, no one is ready to consider that the outcome may not be good, he was quoted as saying on Wednesday (14 May) by Czech news agency CTK.
20 May: European Maritime Day set up by European institutionspublished on Thursday, May 15, 2008 under Agriculture & Fisheries
The European Union has decided to celebrate the achievements and potential of Europe's ocean and seas by declaring 20 May as a dedicated European Maritime Day. The official launch ceremony will be held in Strasbourg, where Commission President José Manuel Barroso, European Council President Janez Janša and the President of the European Parliament Hans-Gert Pöttering will sign a Joint Tripartite Declaration.European Maritime Day will provide an occasion to highlight the crucial role that oceans and seas play in the everyday life not only of coastal communities, but of all EU citizens, and for Europe's sustainable growth and jobs at large. Based on a proposal from the Commission, this dedicated Maritime Day will also encourage better stewardship of coastal zones, seas and oceans by all citizens and actors concerned.The Commission hopes that citizens and stakeholders living and working in Europe's maritime regions will seize this occasion to showcase their contribution to the EU as a whole, and to stimulate broad debate around the challenges they face.The first ever European Maritime Day on 20th May 2008 will see the European Parliament vote on a report on the EU's Integrated Maritime Policy.The report highlights, inter alia, the exceptional maritime dimension conferred on the EU by its extensive coastline, islands and outermost regions. It also underlines the unique opportunities offered by the maritime sector as regards innovation, research, environment and biodiversity, calling for these to be fully taken into account in the emerging Integrated Maritime Policy. Furthermore, the report stresses how the involvement of regional and local partners is essential to making a success of the maritime policy and advocates closer cooperation between Europe's coastal regions.
There will be a Ministerial Panel headed by the Slovenian Presidency in which members of the Governments of France, Germany, Portugal and Norway will participate. Discussions will focus on how to promote continued stakeholder dialogue in support of the development of an Integrated Maritime Policy and ensure that the new policy is fully adapted to the regional dimension of maritime affairs.The sea, the maritime sectors and marine resources are essential for Europe's prosperity and well-being. By setting up a European Maritime Day, we, as Europeans, want to celebrate this reality and to raise awareness about maritime opportunities and our new Integrated Maritime Policy, said the President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso.Since the proposal of an Integrated Maritime Policy by the European Commission on October 2007 and its subsequent endorsement by Heads of State and Government at the European Council of 14 December 2007, real progress has been made towards building a coherent framework to promote synergies and resolves potential conflicts between different sea-related policy areas. In line with the detailed Action Plan published in October, the Commission itself has already come forward with proposals to combat illegal fishing, boost development of EU ports and port cities, re-assess the social framework regulating seafaring jobs, and promote a better fit between energy policy and maritime policy. It has also carried out a stock-taking exercise looking at maritime surveillance systems, and the offshore activities and competences of the Member States.
EU plans international embassies By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels Last Updated: 2:31AM BST 03/05/2008
The European Union will open its own embassies under a plan critics fear represents a power grab by Brussels officials pushing for a federal superstate. The secret plan represents the first time that full EU embassies have been discussed seriously. The Embassies of the Union would be controlled by a new EU diplomatic service created by the Lisbon Treaty. The Daily Telegraph has seen a high-level Brussels document discussing plans for a European External Action Service (EEAS) which was proposed under the new EU Treaty, currently being ratified in Westminster.
Talks have so far remained behind closed doors. Officials fear political fallout over plans to implement the new Treaty before it has been fully ratified. Working papers circulating in Brussels suggest that more than 160 EU offices around the world, including in member states, would become embassies. The new service would rival established diplomatic services. Britain, with one of the world's largest, maintains 139 embassies and high commissions in capital cities. Equally controversial is a proposal for EU ambassadors who would be accountable to the European Parliament.
Parliament should aim for proper hearings of special representatives and ambassadorial nominees in the tradition of the US Congress for nominations of a clearly political nature, says the document. Plans for the new foreign service have raised highly sensitive political issues by giving trappings of statehood to the EU and by fusing, for the first time, national diplomats with existing eurocrats. A vicious battle over who should control the diplomatic corps has broken out between national governments and the European Commission. Countries such as Britain are alarmed that the EEAS, which is expected to take on some consular activities, would be a stepping stone to a single supranational euro-diplomatic service. Meanwhile, Brussels officials fear that, if controlled by national governments, the new EEAS would draw power from Community bodies, such as the Commission, to inter-governmental institutions such as the Council of the EU, which represents member states.
Any inter-governmentalism of policy areas under Community competence has to be avoided, states the confidential document. The EEAS will have to be in a specific way administratively connected to the European Commission.The EEAS will number between 2,500 to 3,000 officials at its inception in January next year. It is then expected to grow to 7,000, or even up to 20,000, according to different estimates. Britain, which loses its veto over the EEAS after it is created by a European summit decision expected in October, is expected to contribute around 20 to 30 senior diplomats to the EU service. William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, said yesterday: As predicted the renamed EU Constitution is forming the basis of a power grab by the EU. It exposes Labour's stupidity in giving up the veto on an area key to Britain's interests.A Foreign Office spokesman said: The UK opposes and will argue against naming EEAS offices embassies.
Trade minister urges EU to want Canada's oil MAY 15,08
OTTAWA (AFP) — Canada's trade minister, itching for a free trade pact with a wary European Union, said on Thursday the EU should want to deepen its trade relations with Canada for its oil.Canada's an energy power, Trade Minister David Emerson told a conference on the prospects of closer economic ties between Canada and the EU.
And Canada's development of huge oil and gas reserves in the coming decades, particularly in the Arctic, is a very, very powerful reason why partners like the EU should want to deepen their relationship with Canada, he said.I think if the European Union is visionary, they'll realize that Canada could be one of the most critical, strategic trade moves that they make in the next few decades.Canada and the EU are currently studying removing barriers to improve bilateral trade, currently at 110 billion dollars annually, but the EU has not shown much interest in a full free trade pact with Canada.At an estimated 173 billion barrels, the oil sands in western Canada are the second largest oil reserve in the world behind Saudi Arabia, but they have been neglected, except by local companies, because of high extraction costs.Since 2000, skyrocketing crude oil prices and improved extraction methods have made exploitation more economical, and have lured several multinational oil companies to mine the sands.The Arctic, meanwhile, is believed to hold the world's largest remaining undiscovered oil and gas fields, and the receding ice cap due to global warming is said to be opening up the region to greater development.
US COULD STRIKE IRAN THIS YEAR
http://www.infolive.tv/en/infolive.tv-22568-israelnews-sources-jerusalem-say-u-s-could-strike-iran-year
Bush hails Israelis as chosen people but ignores Palestinians on catastrophe day By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem Friday, 16 May 2008
President George Bush lavished anniversary praise on Israel yesterday, as Palestinians commemorated the Nakba or catastrophe when 700,000 were forced from or fled their homes 60 years ago.In a special address to the Israeli Knesset, Mr Bush declared that the US was proud to be the closest ally and best friend in the world of a nation that was a homeland for the chosen people and had worked tirelessly for peace and... fought valiantly for freedom.And in a speech that linked together Hamas, Hizbollah and al-Qa'ida, the President likened those – including good and decent people – who urged negotiations with terrorists and radicals, with supporters of appeasing the Nazis before the Second World War.On Iran, Mr Bush said that permitting the world's leading sponsor of terror to possess the world's deadliest weapon would be an unforgiveable betrayal of future generations.Mr Bush's speech was notable for only one reference to Palestinian aspirations for a state. He did not allude to the current negotiations between the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, on the outlines of two-state solution that he himself helped to kick-start at the Annapolis conference last year.
Instead, his only mention was in a passage envisaging Israel's 120th anniversary – 60 years hence – in which Palestinians would have the homeland they have long dreamed of and deserved – a democratic state that is governed by law. By that time, he prophesied, the Middle East would consist of free and independent societies, and Hamas, Hizbollah and al-Qaida would have been defeated as Muslims across the region recognise the emptiness of the terrorists' vision and the injustice of their cause.Nor did Mr Bush make even an oblique reference to the fact that he was delivering his speech on the day that Palestinians annually commemorate the Nakba in the 1948war that left a victorious Israel in control of 78 per cent of mandatory Palestine.As sirens sounded and thousands of black balloons were released across the West Bank, several thousand Palestinians gathered in Ramallah's main Manara Square to hear a taped address by Mr Abbas urging reconciliation and an end to Israeli settlement building in the West Bank to facilitate negotiations on a future state. Sixty years have passed, he said. It's time to end the Nakba for the Palestinian people.But a Nakba day message from Hamas, which controls Gaza, called on Palestinians to continue resistance and urged the Palestinian President to abandon the illusion of negotiations.At least one Palestinian youth was injured in Gaza after several dozen teenagers broke away at the end of a Hamas-organised protest near the northern Erez crossing. As youths threw stones, Israeli forces fired live rounds and tear gas.Three Arab Knesset members were led away before the President's speech by security guards after unfurling a banner saying We shall overcome.Mr Bush repeated the symbolic oath traditionally uttered by Israeli soldiers at Masada, the fortress where 960 Jews in the first century rebellion against Roman rule committed suicide rather than surrender, and which he had visited yesterday: Masada shall never fall again. He added to a standing ovation: And America will be at your side.But his speech did not mention the occupation of Palestinian territory since the 1967 war or restate US and international stances critical of Israel – such as demands for settlement outposts to be removed or for expansion of settlements to be halted. Nor did he mention that those calling for some engagement with Hamas include some former Israeli military and intelligence figures.Mr Olmert told parliamentarians that he was confident that a peace agreement would be approved in the Knesset by a large majority and... supported by the vast majority of the Israeli public.
The CARMEL ALERT May 16th 2008
A compilation of news reports from the past week for the information of those committed to praying for Israel and the salvation of the Jewish people.Guest Comment: I am a Zionist By Reuven Koret Originally Published on Independence Day, May 13, 2002
I belong to a people who brought the Bible to the world, transmitting the tradition of the Torah, the Ten Commandments, and the idea of One God from generation to generation. I am part of an ancient nation that reclaimed its homeland two thousand years after being expelled from it, rising up like a phoenix from the ashes and impotence of the Holocaust. I am a citizen of a country that has gathered in her scattered people, taking in refugees from one hundred nations, rescuing the persecuted and the impoverished, welcoming idealists and adventurers and restless wanderers who chose to join her, like me. I am defended by the IDF, the finest small fighting force in the world, a citizens' army with high moral standards and purity of arms second to no other nation. I am grateful to merit Jerusalem as my capital, the place to which our people have always turned, the city that our soldiers reunited and redeemed from desecration after our enemies destroyed her synagogues and sacred sites, using her shrines as garbage dumps and the tombstones of our ancestors to line their sewers. I am grateful to walk the streets in a land where a Jew can wear a skullcap or a Star of David or a black robe without fearing ridicule or persecution or even looks askance.
I speak and understand Hebrew, the sacred tongue of Holy Writ, a dead language revived by our people so that our nation would have a common basis for communication. I am proud that every child can read the Torah in its original form. I raise my children in schools where the victories and tragedies of our people are remembered, where the holidays celebrate our God and our traditions. I participate in the only democracy in a region of the world where freedom of expression and human rights are otherwise absent. I live in a land where I can speak of our national flaws, our social failings, our fallible leaders - and there are many, many of each --without fear of being censored, imprisoned or executed. I am proud that our country is hated by some of the most vicious, cruel, backward, repressive, terror-supporting dictatorships in the world.
I am proud that the morally vapid governments of Europe, Africa, and Asia, along with the UN in which their majorities rule, have nothing better to do than to condemn us. I am proud that our strongest ally is the greatest nation in the world, and proud that its people and its elected representatives stand by us and prevent us from isolation and condemnation by lesser nations with weaker moral fiber. I am proud of our entrepreneurial accomplishments, our research, our technologies, our innovative products. I am proud of our artists, our musicians, our authors, our athletes, and our pilots. I'm proud of our national airline, and its legendary security checks, and I'm proud that by now they let me pass with a few perfunctory questions. I am proud of my fellow citizens, who have shown such grace and courage under fire, refusing to allow their love of life and their passion forfreedom to be sapped by death-seeking, freedom-hating terrorists. I am proud of our compassionate leftists, and our patriotic rightists. I'm proud of our unbending ultra-Orthodox and our ultra-rational secularists.
I'm proud of our pioneering settlers and our peace-seeking activists. I am proud that we are a stiff-necked people. I belong to a people who dwell alone, yet shine a light unto the world. We may not always be right, but we're never as wrong as our enemies claim. And even when we are wrong, we are a nation that seeks to make things right. Our people holds the birthright to the land on which we live, inscribed in the Bible, well proven by archaeological excavations, and verified by the investment of agricultural, industrial, and financial investments we have made, sealed by our sweat and by our blood, by our tears of sorrow and of joy, to develop and defend our country. We stretch out our hands in peace to our Arab neighbors, in full knowledge that they rejected the UN Partition in 1947, invaded our fledgling state in 1948, tried to strangle us in 1967, surprised us on Yom Kippur in 1973.
We pray for a just settlement with the Palestinian people, even though from the inception of the PLO in 1964, before the conquests of the Six Day War, their leadership has been dedicated to liberating Palestine, which means eliminating Israel. We have endured from the Palestinians unceasing terror attacks ever since, and despite all political agreements and diplomatic initiatives, we see that the Palestinians continue to incite their people to despise us and to aspire to destroying us.We have offered to share our land with our neighbors, but we will not give land to be used to drive us into the sea. Even if hundreds of millions of people hate us, even if some nations pray we did not exist, even if some of our enemies won't rest till they kill us and many in the rest of the world don't give a damn, I couldn't be prouder. We have come home, and this is it. I am an Israeli, a citizen of the one and only Jewish homeland. I thank God that I was a born in a time when I could fulfill the dream of two thousand years to return to Zion.
I am a Zionist, a believer and supporter and defender of our reborn nation. And you who read these words, with compassion and understanding and identification - whether you are Jewish or not, Israeli or not -- you are a Zionist, too. The Lord bless you as you bless Israel by standing in defense of her right to exist on the land given to the Jewish people by the God of Israel . Lets pray that Israel will turn back to their God. Do not be silent, but share this with your fellow Christians, share it with your pastors, and with anyone you have a chance to speak to. Lets also pray for that breakthrough to the Muslims, and please remember to pray for our son Jordan, and all of his fellow soldiers in the IDF.
Shabbat Shalom ... David & Josie
MATTHEW 24:7-8
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.
MARK 13:8
8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:(ETHNIC GROUP AGAINST ETHNIC GROUP) and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.
LUKE 21:11
11 And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.
Aftershock rattles China quake zone By NG HAN GUAN, Associated Press Writer MAY 16,08
YINGXIU, China - A powerful aftershock knocked out roads and communications in some of the most quake-ravaged parts of central China on Friday, as emergency crews rescued 163 people who had survived up to 100 improbable hours trapped in the ruins. As Saturday dawned, rescuers were holding out hope of finding more survivors and authorities were preparing for the daunting task of housing and feeding millions left homeless.With the official death toll at more than 22,000, an air force unit reached Yinchanggou, a scenic spot in the mountains north of the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu, finding landslides had swept away rustic small hotels.There are several hundred hotels, including farmer homestays, probably 800 in all. They are all rubble now, Cai Weisu, an official with an air force unit from the Chengdu Military Region, told Sichuan Television. Most of the dead are tourists, he said, but did not identify whether they were foreign or Chinese.
Tens of thousands of people are considered buried or missing throughout the disaster zone. There were about 12 million people living within a 60-mile radius of the epicenter of Wenchuan, according to a study on the potential impact of the quake by Xu Mingbao, a senior researcher at the University of Michigan's China Data Center.Acutely aware its response to China's worst disaster in 30 years could affect Beijing's image heading into the Olympic Games, President Hu Jintao ramped up the government's public relations efforts, making his first trip to the stricken region.And in response to swelling anger, government officials accustomed to tightly controlled media took the unusual step of fielding questions from people online about why thousands of schools that collapsed were not built to be quake-safe.Damage from the magnitude-5.5 aftershock — one of dozens of strong tremors since the devastating quake Monday — was a temporary setback to the mammoth relief operation. Repair crews were rapidly restoring mobile phone services and unblocking roads within four hours, state media reported.Trucks navigated around boulders and splintered pavement that clogged roads into the forest-clad mountains of Beichuan county, about 100 miles north of Chengdu.China Central Television reported Saturday that rescue teams in the earthquake zone pulled 163 people alive from the rubble on Friday.Augmenting the 130,000 soldiers and police deployed, the official Xinhua news service said specialized international teams had joined the effort_ the first time ever that China has accepted outside professionals for help in a domestic disaster.On Saturday, teams from South Korea, Singapore and Russia joined a Japanese specialist group.
Meanwhile, a U.S. Air Force cargo plane loaded with tents, lanterns and 15,000 meals left Hawaii Saturday for China. It is the first aid flight from the United States to help in Sichuan province. Another Air Force delivery was due to go to China from Alaska.In one hard hit area, soldiers slogged up a slippery mud path Friday into the village of Yingxiu, as some of their comrades stayed back and used rubble from landslides to patch the road so supply and rescue vehicles could get closer.Most buildings in the village collapsed in the quake and the rest appear damaged beyond repair. Hundreds of residents huddled in tents. Small groups of soldiers, some lugging body bags, rushed from place to place checking reports of people trapped. They pulled out bodies and — at least twice — survivors. Others dug a burial pit and laid in at least 80 bodies.
Helicopters whirred overhead, bringing supplies and dropping leaflets with survival instructions that included not drinking dirty water and staying away from collapsed buildings. We should trust the party and the government, the leaflets also said.The government said it would investigate why so many school buildings collapsed in the quake and severely punish anyone responsible for shoddy construction. Officials in at least six provinces promised to tear down dangerous school buildings to protect students, state media reported. The quake destroyed about 6,900 classrooms, not including those in the hardest-hit counties.China's education system is chronically underfunded. Building experts said the problem here, as in many other parts of the world, was a lack of commitment by governments to improve the quality of school buildings. Schools should never collapse, and hospitals and fire stations should never collapse. These are all civic structures that are needed in a disaster, said Roger Bilham, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. So when I hear a school has collapsed, I point the finger at politics.
More than 4 million apartments and homes were damaged or destroyed in Sichuan, Housing Minister Jiang Weixin told reporters. Worried relatives went to sites where missing loved ones might be. In the city of Hanwang, Zhou Furen walked for hours in borrowed shoes to a factory where her son had worked.
I've been coming here every day, sitting here in the early morning, waiting, she wept. He's been missing for more than three days now. But for my son I would come every day.The government said it had allocated $772 million for earthquake relief, according to the central bank's Web site, nearly five times the amount two days earlier. China has also received $457 million in donated money and goods for rescue efforts, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs. AIR Worldwide — a catastrophe risk modeling firm — estimated losses to both insured and uninsured property would likely exceed $20 billion. Associated Press writers Audra Ang in Beichuan, Tini Tran in Hanwang and Cara Anna in Beijing contributed to this report.
US monitoring China's nuclear sites after quake By LILY HINDY and ANGELA CHARLTON, Associated Press Writers Fri May 16, 7:03PM ET
American experts are monitoring nuclear facilities in China's earthquake zone, officials said Friday, after France's nuclear watchdog reported that some had suffered minor damage. The French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety said Chinese authorities reacted well to the quake and immediately shut down nuclear sites for inspection.Thierry Charles, the group's director of plant safety, said China's nuclear safety agency, NNSA, had reported no leaks of radioactivity since the quake.He said the Chinese reported light damage to older nuclear facilities that were being dismantled before the quake, noting that seismic construction codes were less strict when those sites were built. China did not specify which facilities had damage, he said.China has a research reactor, two nuclear fuel production sites and two atomic weapons sites in Sichuan province, where the magnitude-7.9 quake struck Monday, the French agency said. All were between 40 and 90 miles from the epicenter.French authorities do not yet have a full picture of any possible damage at the nuclear weapons sites, where information is more closely guarded, Charles said.At this stage, I don't think there were any leaks, because they would have reported them by now. The worst to worry about now is degradation of buildings, cracks, this kind of thing, he said.
U.S. officials are monitoring China's nuclear facilities in the quake zone, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. He said he had no information about any damage.Wang Baodong, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said he had no information about the state of the atomic sites. But he told reporters the Chinese government was preparing for every consequence as it worked to rescue survivors and repair damage.Nuclear experts said there several possibilities if any significant damage occurred at the plants, at least one of which is alongside a river. A radioactive leak could cause environmental harm, while internal damage could set back China's nuclear modernization, they said.Mianyang, an industrial city of 700,000 people that is the headquarters of China's nuclear weapons design industry, was on the edge of the disaster area. The site has been likened to the U.S. nuclear facility at Los Alamos, N.M.The plutonium production reactor at Guangyuan, China's largest, is also in the quake zone.Damage to these plants could potentially be a serious issue for the Chinese government, said Hans Kristensen, a nuclear arms expert at the Federation of American Scientists.He said the reactor at Guangyuan is at the center of China's fissile material production.If there is damage to (the reactor), it would disrupt China's warhead maintenance capabilities, Kristensen said. That could have impacts for several years.Matthew Bunn, a senior researcher at Harvard University's Project on Managing the Atom, said the risk of radioactive leaks depended mostly on how the facilities were designed, details of which are known only by the Chinese government.
Only in the reactor's case would there likely be any significant danger of some kind of radioactive release that would affect a large area. And how big that danger is depends enormously on specifics of the reactor's seismic design that are not well known outside the Chinese nuclear weapons program, Bunn said.Jeffrey Lewis, director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation who visited Mianyang last summer, said the buildings were designed to withstand earthquakes.
I would be surprised if there were any human impact, said Lewis, referring to radioactive leaks. If anything, there is a possibility for structural damage.Associated Press writer Foster Klug in Washington contributed to this report.
STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES
LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.
Death toll from Myanmar cyclone nearly doubles MAY 16,08
YANGON, Myanmar - The official death toll nearly doubled to 78,000 from Myanmar's killer cyclone as heavy rains on Friday lashed much of the area stricken two weeks ago, further hampering relief efforts. Aid workers shackled by the country's military regime struggled to get even the most basic data about the needs of up to 2.5 million survivors. The Red Cross warned that a lack of clean water may swell the ranks of the dead.Myanmar state television said the official death count from the May 3 cyclone was 77,738, with 55,917 others missing.The toll was nearly double the 43,000 previously reported, but the TV announcement suggested it might be close to a final figure. It said the government had carried out search and rescue and relief work and collection of data, promptly, immediately and extensively.The release of the figures led to dire warnings from the United Nations and renewed calls for the military regime to allow international aid workers access to devastated areas.More than two weeks after the event, we are at a critical point, said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Unless more aid gets into the country — quickly — we face the risk of an outbreak of infectious diseases that could dramatically worsen today's crisis.Jean-Maurice Ripert, France's ambassador to the U.N., criticized the junta for refusing to allow a French navy ship to deliver 1,500 tons of food, drugs and medication to the Irrawaddy delta using small boats.
He said refusing to allow aid to be delivered to those in need could lead to a true crime against humanity if we go on like that.On Saturday, the FSS Mistral, carrying 1,500 tons of food, drugs and medication, was sailing near the Irrawaddy delta, hoping for permission to bring the aid to the needy, French officials said.
Myanmar's ruling junta, meanwhile, put up a security cordon around Yangon to restrict travel to the Irrawaddy delta, where scenes of devastation were rife.A small tour to the disaster zone arranged for Saturday will give diplomats their first up-close look at the effects of the cyclone and at the government relief effort.John Holmes, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, was to go to Myanmar on Sunday in an attempt to persuade the junta to admit more U.N. relief workers and to greatly increase aid efforts, said Amanda Pitt, a U.N. spokeswoman in Bangkok, Thailand.If you look at the situation with China, they have accepted relief and assistance teams from Russia, Taiwan and Japan, Pitt said, referring to the response to the earthquake there. They know they can't do it on their own.The junta maintains it has the situation under control. But after two weeks, the U.N. remains largely in the dark about the situation on the ground.We simply don't have the information, and I can't say when we will have it, said Steve Marshall, a U.N. official who just left Myanmar.The Red Cross has put the death toll as high as 128,000 and the most recent official figures on dead and missing have the U.N. saying the number could easily reach 130,000.The highest death estimate is carried by the British government's Department for International Development, which says that unofficial estimates suggest the number of dead or missing is in the region of 217,000. The department said the estimate was reported to them by sources on the ground with knowledge of the situation. They gave no other details and said the estimates could not immediately be verified.
The U.N. estimates some 1.5 million to 2.5 million survivors are in desperate need of food, water, shelter and medical care. If the storm was so massive that it's basically swept away, killed 130,000 people, we can only imagine what it's done to settlements on the ground, said Stephanie Bunker, a New York-based spokeswoman for Holmes. Myanmar is entering the monsoon season and disaster experts warn the wet weather could complicate relief efforts. Heavy rain pelted the country Friday. Aid groups have reached only 270,000 people so far, and the situation for survivors will likely get more difficult as time passes without proper help. Lack of clean water will be deadly in the Irrawaddy delta, Thomas Gurtner, the head of operations for the international Red Cross, told The Associated Press in Geneva. To be able to provide clean water to hundreds of thousands of people stranded in the delta requires a major operation, which we have neither the material, the logistical nor the staff capacity to do, he said.
Officials also worry about disease outbreaks.
The U.S. military flew four more flights of emergency supplies into Yangon on Friday, raising its total to 17 since Monday. Two of the flights carried aid provided by the Thai government. India was also readying flights. The U.N. says the regime has issued only 40 visas to its staffers and another 46 to nongovernment agencies and has confined the personnel to the immediate Yangon area. Marshall, the U.N. official, said the military has set up checkpoints on the two main roads to the delta to keep foreigners out of the disaster zone. Even local staff have to negotiate with the military to gain access to the camps. UNICEF said Friday the agency's fourth flight into Myanmar, scheduled for Saturday, would deliver several tons of food for malnourished children. Radio broadcasts are trying to help lost children find their families, it said. In the meantime, ordinary people are stepping in, with shopkeepers handing out rice gruel and medical students caring for the sick. But the government was reportedly interfering with those efforts as well. In an interview with the Democratic Voice of Burma, the abbot of Mandalay's Maha Gandaryon monastery said monks were stockpiling relief supplies and getting trucks to take in aid. We are still in the preparation stages, he told the radio, which is critical of the junta. We have contacted some private organizations and services, and found out that they were told by the authorities not to work with us in aid distribution. They said we can't go with them.
SPAIN TO HOST BUSINESS FORUM
http://www.ameinfo.com/156990.html
PSALMS 83 COMPLETES THE PROPHECY PUZZLE
http://missing-peace-bsalhus.blogspot.com/2008/05/83rd-and-final-piece-to-middle-east.html
Last-days birth pains have begun May 16, 2008 1:00 am Eastern
The world has endured an almost mind-numbing series of shocks in recent weeks, from the unprecedented swarm of tornadoes across the American Midwest to the death and destruction wrought by Cyclone Nargis as it tore a path through Myanmar, better known as Burma.
There were 368 documented tornadoes in the U.S. in January and February of this year, shattering the previous record of 243 over that two-month period, set in 1999. February's total of 232 tornadoes also shattered previous records.Cyclone Nargis ripped Burma apart, killing at least 128,000, according to Red Cross estimates, and creating some 2.5 million refugees.Al Gore was quick to blame global warming. In an interview on NPR to plug his appropriately named book on global warming, Assault on Reason, he told host Terry Gross: And as we're talking today, Terry, the death count in Myanmar from the cyclone that hit there yesterday has been rising from 15,000 to way on up there to much higher numbers now being speculated. . … And last year a catastrophic storm last fall hit Bangladesh. The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China – and we're seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.
Maybe. But Germany's Institute of Marine Scientists says we're in for a 10-year period of global cooling. There sure seems to be a lot of opposition to what is supposed to be settled science.Global warming can't explain away the devastating earthquake that all but flattened a huge portion of western China. The death toll from Monday's quake is approaching 20,000, with twice that number still listed as missing. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Monday's earthquake was the 25th significant earthquake registered so far this year.Back in 1969, the year I wrote The Late, Great Planet Earth, the USGS identified a total of seven significant earthquakes. I had noted in 1969 that there was a slight but discernible increase in worldwide earthquake activity since Israel's rebirth in 1948.During the entire decade of the 1970s, the USGS recorded a total of 44 earthquakes it classified as significant. The following decade, from January 1980 to December 1989, the USGS recorded 47 significant earthquakes. That is for the entire decade. From 1990 through the end of 1999, the USGS records 57 significant earthquakes. From 2000 thru to Monday's earthquake in Sichuan, China, the USGS recorded an astonishing 109 earthquakes of at least magnitude 7.0 and 13 earthquakes measuring between 8.0 and 9.9 on the Richter Scale.
On the other side of the world, the long-dormant Chaitan volcano erupted May 2 for the first time, say geologists, in more than 7,000years. The BBC reported that a government volcano expert warned there could be a big eruption at any time.There could be a major explosion that could collapse the volcano's cone, said Luis Lara of the National Geologic and Mining Service.The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization warned that Iran had detected a new highly pathogenic strain of wheat stem rust. The U.N. said the fungal disease could spread to other wheat-producing states in the Near East and western Asia that provide one-fourth of the world's wheat supply. The new strain, called Ug99, is capable of infecting up to 90 percent of the existing strains of wheat worldwide – and once infected, crop losses range between 70 percent and total loss.
Coupled with the losses already sustained as a result of the typhoon-related flooding in Java, Bangladesh, and India and from agricultural pests and diseases in Vietnam, it starts to add up. Last year, Australia suffered its second consecutive year of severe drought and a near complete crop failure; heavy rains reduced production in Europe; Argentina suffered heavy frost; and Canada and the U.S. both produced low yields. Food riots have broken out in Egypt, Haiti and several African states, including Mauritania, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Senegal.Meanwhile, the drums of war continue to beat around the planet. Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad renewed his threat to destroy Israel this week. Hezbollah took over West Beirut, while the Arab world mourned the catastrophe of Israel's 60th birthday with threats of annihilation of the Jewish state. In Israel, President Bush again warned that allowing the Iranian regime to obtain nuclear arms would be unforgivable, signaling a continuation along a path that can only lead to an eventual war that will engulf the whole Middle East.
When Jesus was asked by His disciples to tell them what signs would precede His return at the end of the age, He warned that nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines, plagues and earthquakes in various places, He said (Matthew 24 and Luke 21). Using an analogy immediately understandable to all peoples in all nations, he said of these signs, All these are the beginning of birth pains.Jesus used a Greek word for the labor pains of a woman about to give birth. Jesus knew that every generation could understand the illustration. His meaning is clear. Just as a woman experiences birth pains that increase in frequency and intensity just before giving birth, so ALL the signs of His return would increase in frequency and intensity just before His return. Hey, for he first time in history, all of the signs have appeared together in the same time frame and are increasing in frequency and intensity. That, coupled with the fulfillment of the great predicted sign that Israel became a nation again after 2,000 hopeless years of worldwide dispersion, indicates that Jesus Christ is already at the door ready to return. Are you ready?
FAMINE
REVELATION 6:5-6
5 And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.(A DAYS WAGES FOR A LOAF OF BREAD)
Oil sets record near $128; pump price at high, too By ADAM SCHRECK, AP Business Writer Fri May 16, 8:24 PM ET
NEW YORK - News that Saudi Arabia had boosted its oil output by 300,000 barrels a day was greeted as a non-event on oil markets — the move wasn't anywhere near the kind of production increase needed to bring prices down on Friday. And traders were equally unimpressed by the U.S. government's plan to stop adding to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.One day, two moves designed to allay concerns about an overheated oil market that's squeezing motorists and inflating the prices of all sorts of goods.The response in the oil trading pits? Traders did what they've been doing for months now, and pushed crude oil and gasoline futures to new highs.All in all, we're seeing another strong move here on little fundamental news, said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch & Associates, an oil trading advisory firm in Galena, Ill.
The reason for the disconnect has little to do with political decisions in Washington or Riyadh, and everything to do with market expectations. The Saudi production increase was seen in the market as minuscule, and no one expected the suspension of shipments to the U.S. government's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to have much impact on supplies.Even more important, the traders placing the bets expect prices to just keep moving higher.Goldman Sachs, one of the world's most influential investment banks, underscored that sentiment Friday when it hiked its oil price forecast for the second half of the year to $141 a barrel, up from $107 previously. Analysts at the bank argue that the oil market is undergoing a structural repricing that will continue to play out for some time to come.We would view any pullback in oil, regardless of the size or duration — although a correction could be as large as 15 percent — as an opportunity to re-establish long positions in oil before the summer, Goldman Sachs advised traders.Translation: Buy when barrels go on sale, because prices are bound to keep heading higher.And buy they did Friday. The price for a barrel of benchmark light, sweet crude for June delivery jumped $2.17 to settle at record close of $126.29 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier in the session, prices surged to $127.82 a barrel, also a new high.It was the eighth time in the past 10 sessions traders rewrote the record books, and the first time prices topped $127 a barrel.Investors shrugged off the news from Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi that the world's largest oil producer had decided to increase production last week. The market also had little reaction to the Energy Department's announcement said it would cancel shipments into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for six months beginning July 1.It's ridiculous because I don't think this is going to bring the price down, said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp., of the Energy Department's move.
The effect of Saudi Arabia's decision was also not clear. The increase, which went into effect last Saturday, is relatively small, lifting total output from the world's leading producer to 9.45 million barrels per day by June.The addition of 300,000 barrels won't make a lot of difference, said Mir Yousufuddin, who monitors crude prices for the U.S. Energy Information Administration.The announcement came during a visit by Bush, who was in the kingdom to appeal for a more significant increase in production. Bernard Picchi, an energy analyst at research firm Wall Street Access, called the increase a token amount and said the effect on prices would have been different if Saudi Arabia had boosted production by 1 million or 1.5 million barrels a day.
Saudi Arabia often adjusts its output to meet demand, and the increase coincides with the start of the peak driving season in the U.S. The Middle Eastern nation has in the past acknowledged the ability to produce as much as 11 million barrels a day. James Cordier, president of Liberty Trading Group in Tampa, Fla., agreed that the moves by both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were insignificant and would do little to dent the rally in oil prices. Like a number of other analysts, he believes prices are rising not because of a speculative bubble, but simply reflect finite supply and soaring global demand. Crude's latest surge comes a week before the Memorial Day holiday, the traditional start of the summer driving season, suggesting that retail gas prices still have further to rise. Motorists are now paying a national average of $3.787 a gallon for regular gasoline, up nearly a penny from the previous day, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Diesel prices also have risen to record levels, meaning that even Americans who don't drive will likely face even higher prices on all sorts of goods because of increased shipping costs. A gallon of diesel now sells for $4.482 a gallon. Oil prices could rise even higher as U.S. demand picks up during the summer months, when gasoline consumption is typically the heaviest. Traders are clearly betting gasoline prices have a way to go too: Gasoline futures jumped to a record $3.2438 a gallon on the Nymex before easing slightly to settle at $3.2235, up 5.777 cents. In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures rose 8.04 cents to settle at $3.7028 a gallon. Natural gas futures fell 30.5 cents to settle at $11.094 per 1,000 cubic feet. In London, July Brent crude surged $2.36 to settle at $124.99 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange. Associated Press Writers H. Josef Hebert in Washington and Jennifer Loven in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, contributed to this report.
DANIEL 7:23-24
23 Thus he said, The fourth beast(THE EU,REVIVED ROME) shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth,(7TH WORLD EMPIRE) which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.(TRADE BLOCKS)
24 And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise:(10 NATIONS) and another shall rise after them;(#11 SPAIN) and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.(BE HEAD OF 3 KINGS OR NATIONS).
EU to tussle with Latin America's Pink Tide at Lima summit
15.05.2008 - 17:24 CET | By Leigh Phillips
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Tussles over biofuels, trade and even capitalism itself are likely to take centre stage in Lima, Peru on Friday, as European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and some 60 heads of state from the EU and Latin America and the Carribean (LAC) descend on the Peruvian capital for the fifth EU-LAC summit.Under the protection of some 85,000 soldiers and police who have set up the usual array of roadblocks, traffic detours and zones restricted to local citizens, the leaders are to rattle through what is an ambitious agenda. Although the leaders will focus on two key issues – combating inequality and tackling climate change – poverty, social inclusion, sustainable development, energy and the environment in general are also set for discussion. At the summit, the commission is to announce Euroclima, a €5 million fund for Latin American projects that tack climate change. Additionally, the two camps are hoping to boost trade and increase economic co-operation. The EU would like to see some movement towards an agreement in the Doha round of world trade negotiations. The Doha round has been stalled since 2001 largely due to the differing trade priorities of poor and wealthy nations. However, the politicians will also likely end up discussing a range of off-agenda topics that have forced themselves onto the front pages in the last few weeks, such as food shortages and the miniature cold war between Colombia and Ecuador that has simmered away since the former bombed alleged encampments of Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) within Ecuador without Quito's permission in March.
Merkel, Hitler and Chavez
The discussions are expected to be quite fractious, as the largely liberalising perspective of the EU comes up against what can be fairly described as currently the most left-wing continent on the planet. Ahead of the meeting, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned other Latin American nations against the left-wing populist policies of Venezuela's perennially beret-adorned president, Hugo Chavez, who responded in typical bombastic fashion by comparing Ms Merkel to Adolf Hitler.On Sunday (11 May), Mr Chavez criticised the objectives of the European Union in their dealings with Latin America and the Caribbean.The EU is coming here to help us. Where is their plan to help the poor? Ask the president of Haiti how much promises from Europe and the United States have done, he said, according to DPA, the German Press Agency.In recent years, centre-left and socialist governments have been elected in all but a few nations across the region – the so-called Pink Tide.Nonetheless, Latin American and Caribbean leaders are not all of one mind.
The more centre-left presidents Lula da Silva of Brazil, Michele Bachelet of Chile, and Peru's own Alan Garcia largely support the free market and the so-called Washington Consensus – policies of fiscal discipline, deregulation, privatisation and trade liberalisation – albeit with more of a social cushion than their centre-right counterparts would prefer. Meanwhile, to their left, Evo Morales – Bolivia's first indigenous leader in 500 years, Mr Chavez and Ecuador's Rafael Correa are committed to building what they call a socialism of the 21st century, and have instituted a range of policies that favour the poor of their countries, such as boosting health and literacy programmes and, more controversially, the nationalisation of key industries. Fernando Lugo, a former Catholic bishop and adherent of liberation theology won Paraguay's presidency in April, adding to the continent's collection of progressives. Analysts expect Mr Lugo's policies, as with those of Argentina's Cristina Kirchner, to fall somewhere between that of Mr da Silva and Mr Chavez.
Biofuels debate will be central
The sides align themselves slightly differently however when it comes to the question of biofuels.EU leaders last spring agreed that the EU should increase the use of biofuels in transport fuel to ten percent by 2020, up from a planned 5.75 percent target to be achieved by 2010.But the European Union has come under repeated pressure from international institutions such as the World Bank and the UN World Food Programme, as well as environmental and development NGOs, to abandon its biofuels targets due to concerns that the controversial fuels contribute to global warming and food price rises.As a result, the commission has touted as-yet undefined sustainability standards that it says will ensure the biofuels Europe uses are green.Brazil, the world's leading producer of ethanol, while publicly supporting these sustainability criteria, is very worried that if standards are too strict, European markets will be closed off to them.On the other hand, most of the other LAC countries have lined up against both Brazil and the EU's positions on biofuels, aghast at the site of Haiti's government falling in April as a result of food riots on the island nation.Even Peru's moderate Mr Garcia complains that biofuel crop cultivation is pushing up the prices of staples such as corn, rice and wheat, and is planning to ask for a limit to biofuel production.I have no doubt that the theme of food will be central to the debates of the summit, Peru's foreign minister, Jose Garcia Belaunde, said last week. As with many such international gatherings, an alternative People's Summit, is currently being held all week in a working class Lima neighbourhood, with attendants from social, labour and indigenous groups. The Brussels Consensus is the new Washington Consensus, and has started a new period of neocolonialism, said Brid Brennan of the Netherlands-based Transnational Institute, one of the organisers of the People's Summit.However, unlike similar counter-summits elsewhere, this one will also be attended by a number of heads of state, notably Mr Chavez, Mr Morales, Mr Correa and the new president of Cyprus, Dimitris Christofias.
External relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, and development commissioner Louis Michel will join President Barroso at the EU-LAC summit.The EU-LAC summit was preceded on Thursday (15 May) by the second EU-LAC Business Forum, bringing together business and political leaders, and will be followed on Saturday by separate summits between the EU and each of Mexico, Chile, the Andean Community and Central America.
Study sees no realistic Plan B in case of Irish EU treaty rejection 15.05.2008 - 17:25 CET | By Honor Mahony
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - A rejection by Irish voters of the EU treaty in next month's referendum would be a catastrophe for Europe, because there is no credible Plan B, a new study has concluded.A paper by the Bertelsmann foundation, a German think-tank, believes there are four possible courses of action if charter is rejected in Ireland on 12 June, but none is especially exhilarating.It authors suggest that putting the treaty to voters again as happened in 2002 following Ireland's vote against the Nice Treaty the previous year is not particularly probable as French and Dutch voters were not asked to vote again on the now ditched EU constitution, which they rejected in 2005.But amending the treaty is also seen as unrealistic as it is unclear what Ireland would need to change in the treaty to make it appeal to voters a second time round. In addition, this route would have to be approved by all member states, meaning going back to the drawing board and re-opening old institutional and political sores.
Offering Dublin the chance to opt out of certain areas could mean that ratification would not have to be re-commenced in other member states but it is unclear where the country could opt out. It already does not take part in substantial parts of justice and home affairs areas and sensitive areas for the country, such as tax issues, remain unanimity issues under the Lisbon Treaty.The paper suggests that the final option is that the EU abandons its attempts to introduce comprehensive treaty reforms looking instead to minimal reforms which could be introduced by a mini-treaty or by inter-institutional agreements.A No in the Irish referendum would simply be a catastrophe for Europe, the paper concludes. Meanwhile Czech foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg broke the political taboo on talking about a possible treaty rejection by Irish voters, but offered a more prosaic reaction.He said it would lead to the usual European crisis.Then we will look for some solution. However, at present, no one is ready to consider that the outcome may not be good, he was quoted as saying on Wednesday (14 May) by Czech news agency CTK.
20 May: European Maritime Day set up by European institutionspublished on Thursday, May 15, 2008 under Agriculture & Fisheries
The European Union has decided to celebrate the achievements and potential of Europe's ocean and seas by declaring 20 May as a dedicated European Maritime Day. The official launch ceremony will be held in Strasbourg, where Commission President José Manuel Barroso, European Council President Janez Janša and the President of the European Parliament Hans-Gert Pöttering will sign a Joint Tripartite Declaration.European Maritime Day will provide an occasion to highlight the crucial role that oceans and seas play in the everyday life not only of coastal communities, but of all EU citizens, and for Europe's sustainable growth and jobs at large. Based on a proposal from the Commission, this dedicated Maritime Day will also encourage better stewardship of coastal zones, seas and oceans by all citizens and actors concerned.The Commission hopes that citizens and stakeholders living and working in Europe's maritime regions will seize this occasion to showcase their contribution to the EU as a whole, and to stimulate broad debate around the challenges they face.The first ever European Maritime Day on 20th May 2008 will see the European Parliament vote on a report on the EU's Integrated Maritime Policy.The report highlights, inter alia, the exceptional maritime dimension conferred on the EU by its extensive coastline, islands and outermost regions. It also underlines the unique opportunities offered by the maritime sector as regards innovation, research, environment and biodiversity, calling for these to be fully taken into account in the emerging Integrated Maritime Policy. Furthermore, the report stresses how the involvement of regional and local partners is essential to making a success of the maritime policy and advocates closer cooperation between Europe's coastal regions.
There will be a Ministerial Panel headed by the Slovenian Presidency in which members of the Governments of France, Germany, Portugal and Norway will participate. Discussions will focus on how to promote continued stakeholder dialogue in support of the development of an Integrated Maritime Policy and ensure that the new policy is fully adapted to the regional dimension of maritime affairs.The sea, the maritime sectors and marine resources are essential for Europe's prosperity and well-being. By setting up a European Maritime Day, we, as Europeans, want to celebrate this reality and to raise awareness about maritime opportunities and our new Integrated Maritime Policy, said the President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso.Since the proposal of an Integrated Maritime Policy by the European Commission on October 2007 and its subsequent endorsement by Heads of State and Government at the European Council of 14 December 2007, real progress has been made towards building a coherent framework to promote synergies and resolves potential conflicts between different sea-related policy areas. In line with the detailed Action Plan published in October, the Commission itself has already come forward with proposals to combat illegal fishing, boost development of EU ports and port cities, re-assess the social framework regulating seafaring jobs, and promote a better fit between energy policy and maritime policy. It has also carried out a stock-taking exercise looking at maritime surveillance systems, and the offshore activities and competences of the Member States.
EU plans international embassies By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels Last Updated: 2:31AM BST 03/05/2008
The European Union will open its own embassies under a plan critics fear represents a power grab by Brussels officials pushing for a federal superstate. The secret plan represents the first time that full EU embassies have been discussed seriously. The Embassies of the Union would be controlled by a new EU diplomatic service created by the Lisbon Treaty. The Daily Telegraph has seen a high-level Brussels document discussing plans for a European External Action Service (EEAS) which was proposed under the new EU Treaty, currently being ratified in Westminster.
Talks have so far remained behind closed doors. Officials fear political fallout over plans to implement the new Treaty before it has been fully ratified. Working papers circulating in Brussels suggest that more than 160 EU offices around the world, including in member states, would become embassies. The new service would rival established diplomatic services. Britain, with one of the world's largest, maintains 139 embassies and high commissions in capital cities. Equally controversial is a proposal for EU ambassadors who would be accountable to the European Parliament.
Parliament should aim for proper hearings of special representatives and ambassadorial nominees in the tradition of the US Congress for nominations of a clearly political nature, says the document. Plans for the new foreign service have raised highly sensitive political issues by giving trappings of statehood to the EU and by fusing, for the first time, national diplomats with existing eurocrats. A vicious battle over who should control the diplomatic corps has broken out between national governments and the European Commission. Countries such as Britain are alarmed that the EEAS, which is expected to take on some consular activities, would be a stepping stone to a single supranational euro-diplomatic service. Meanwhile, Brussels officials fear that, if controlled by national governments, the new EEAS would draw power from Community bodies, such as the Commission, to inter-governmental institutions such as the Council of the EU, which represents member states.
Any inter-governmentalism of policy areas under Community competence has to be avoided, states the confidential document. The EEAS will have to be in a specific way administratively connected to the European Commission.The EEAS will number between 2,500 to 3,000 officials at its inception in January next year. It is then expected to grow to 7,000, or even up to 20,000, according to different estimates. Britain, which loses its veto over the EEAS after it is created by a European summit decision expected in October, is expected to contribute around 20 to 30 senior diplomats to the EU service. William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, said yesterday: As predicted the renamed EU Constitution is forming the basis of a power grab by the EU. It exposes Labour's stupidity in giving up the veto on an area key to Britain's interests.A Foreign Office spokesman said: The UK opposes and will argue against naming EEAS offices embassies.
Trade minister urges EU to want Canada's oil MAY 15,08
OTTAWA (AFP) — Canada's trade minister, itching for a free trade pact with a wary European Union, said on Thursday the EU should want to deepen its trade relations with Canada for its oil.Canada's an energy power, Trade Minister David Emerson told a conference on the prospects of closer economic ties between Canada and the EU.
And Canada's development of huge oil and gas reserves in the coming decades, particularly in the Arctic, is a very, very powerful reason why partners like the EU should want to deepen their relationship with Canada, he said.I think if the European Union is visionary, they'll realize that Canada could be one of the most critical, strategic trade moves that they make in the next few decades.Canada and the EU are currently studying removing barriers to improve bilateral trade, currently at 110 billion dollars annually, but the EU has not shown much interest in a full free trade pact with Canada.At an estimated 173 billion barrels, the oil sands in western Canada are the second largest oil reserve in the world behind Saudi Arabia, but they have been neglected, except by local companies, because of high extraction costs.Since 2000, skyrocketing crude oil prices and improved extraction methods have made exploitation more economical, and have lured several multinational oil companies to mine the sands.The Arctic, meanwhile, is believed to hold the world's largest remaining undiscovered oil and gas fields, and the receding ice cap due to global warming is said to be opening up the region to greater development.
US COULD STRIKE IRAN THIS YEAR
http://www.infolive.tv/en/infolive.tv-22568-israelnews-sources-jerusalem-say-u-s-could-strike-iran-year
Bush hails Israelis as chosen people but ignores Palestinians on catastrophe day By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem Friday, 16 May 2008
President George Bush lavished anniversary praise on Israel yesterday, as Palestinians commemorated the Nakba or catastrophe when 700,000 were forced from or fled their homes 60 years ago.In a special address to the Israeli Knesset, Mr Bush declared that the US was proud to be the closest ally and best friend in the world of a nation that was a homeland for the chosen people and had worked tirelessly for peace and... fought valiantly for freedom.And in a speech that linked together Hamas, Hizbollah and al-Qa'ida, the President likened those – including good and decent people – who urged negotiations with terrorists and radicals, with supporters of appeasing the Nazis before the Second World War.On Iran, Mr Bush said that permitting the world's leading sponsor of terror to possess the world's deadliest weapon would be an unforgiveable betrayal of future generations.Mr Bush's speech was notable for only one reference to Palestinian aspirations for a state. He did not allude to the current negotiations between the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, on the outlines of two-state solution that he himself helped to kick-start at the Annapolis conference last year.
Instead, his only mention was in a passage envisaging Israel's 120th anniversary – 60 years hence – in which Palestinians would have the homeland they have long dreamed of and deserved – a democratic state that is governed by law. By that time, he prophesied, the Middle East would consist of free and independent societies, and Hamas, Hizbollah and al-Qaida would have been defeated as Muslims across the region recognise the emptiness of the terrorists' vision and the injustice of their cause.Nor did Mr Bush make even an oblique reference to the fact that he was delivering his speech on the day that Palestinians annually commemorate the Nakba in the 1948war that left a victorious Israel in control of 78 per cent of mandatory Palestine.As sirens sounded and thousands of black balloons were released across the West Bank, several thousand Palestinians gathered in Ramallah's main Manara Square to hear a taped address by Mr Abbas urging reconciliation and an end to Israeli settlement building in the West Bank to facilitate negotiations on a future state. Sixty years have passed, he said. It's time to end the Nakba for the Palestinian people.But a Nakba day message from Hamas, which controls Gaza, called on Palestinians to continue resistance and urged the Palestinian President to abandon the illusion of negotiations.At least one Palestinian youth was injured in Gaza after several dozen teenagers broke away at the end of a Hamas-organised protest near the northern Erez crossing. As youths threw stones, Israeli forces fired live rounds and tear gas.Three Arab Knesset members were led away before the President's speech by security guards after unfurling a banner saying We shall overcome.Mr Bush repeated the symbolic oath traditionally uttered by Israeli soldiers at Masada, the fortress where 960 Jews in the first century rebellion against Roman rule committed suicide rather than surrender, and which he had visited yesterday: Masada shall never fall again. He added to a standing ovation: And America will be at your side.But his speech did not mention the occupation of Palestinian territory since the 1967 war or restate US and international stances critical of Israel – such as demands for settlement outposts to be removed or for expansion of settlements to be halted. Nor did he mention that those calling for some engagement with Hamas include some former Israeli military and intelligence figures.Mr Olmert told parliamentarians that he was confident that a peace agreement would be approved in the Knesset by a large majority and... supported by the vast majority of the Israeli public.
The CARMEL ALERT May 16th 2008
A compilation of news reports from the past week for the information of those committed to praying for Israel and the salvation of the Jewish people.Guest Comment: I am a Zionist By Reuven Koret Originally Published on Independence Day, May 13, 2002
I belong to a people who brought the Bible to the world, transmitting the tradition of the Torah, the Ten Commandments, and the idea of One God from generation to generation. I am part of an ancient nation that reclaimed its homeland two thousand years after being expelled from it, rising up like a phoenix from the ashes and impotence of the Holocaust. I am a citizen of a country that has gathered in her scattered people, taking in refugees from one hundred nations, rescuing the persecuted and the impoverished, welcoming idealists and adventurers and restless wanderers who chose to join her, like me. I am defended by the IDF, the finest small fighting force in the world, a citizens' army with high moral standards and purity of arms second to no other nation. I am grateful to merit Jerusalem as my capital, the place to which our people have always turned, the city that our soldiers reunited and redeemed from desecration after our enemies destroyed her synagogues and sacred sites, using her shrines as garbage dumps and the tombstones of our ancestors to line their sewers. I am grateful to walk the streets in a land where a Jew can wear a skullcap or a Star of David or a black robe without fearing ridicule or persecution or even looks askance.
I speak and understand Hebrew, the sacred tongue of Holy Writ, a dead language revived by our people so that our nation would have a common basis for communication. I am proud that every child can read the Torah in its original form. I raise my children in schools where the victories and tragedies of our people are remembered, where the holidays celebrate our God and our traditions. I participate in the only democracy in a region of the world where freedom of expression and human rights are otherwise absent. I live in a land where I can speak of our national flaws, our social failings, our fallible leaders - and there are many, many of each --without fear of being censored, imprisoned or executed. I am proud that our country is hated by some of the most vicious, cruel, backward, repressive, terror-supporting dictatorships in the world.
I am proud that the morally vapid governments of Europe, Africa, and Asia, along with the UN in which their majorities rule, have nothing better to do than to condemn us. I am proud that our strongest ally is the greatest nation in the world, and proud that its people and its elected representatives stand by us and prevent us from isolation and condemnation by lesser nations with weaker moral fiber. I am proud of our entrepreneurial accomplishments, our research, our technologies, our innovative products. I am proud of our artists, our musicians, our authors, our athletes, and our pilots. I'm proud of our national airline, and its legendary security checks, and I'm proud that by now they let me pass with a few perfunctory questions. I am proud of my fellow citizens, who have shown such grace and courage under fire, refusing to allow their love of life and their passion forfreedom to be sapped by death-seeking, freedom-hating terrorists. I am proud of our compassionate leftists, and our patriotic rightists. I'm proud of our unbending ultra-Orthodox and our ultra-rational secularists.
I'm proud of our pioneering settlers and our peace-seeking activists. I am proud that we are a stiff-necked people. I belong to a people who dwell alone, yet shine a light unto the world. We may not always be right, but we're never as wrong as our enemies claim. And even when we are wrong, we are a nation that seeks to make things right. Our people holds the birthright to the land on which we live, inscribed in the Bible, well proven by archaeological excavations, and verified by the investment of agricultural, industrial, and financial investments we have made, sealed by our sweat and by our blood, by our tears of sorrow and of joy, to develop and defend our country. We stretch out our hands in peace to our Arab neighbors, in full knowledge that they rejected the UN Partition in 1947, invaded our fledgling state in 1948, tried to strangle us in 1967, surprised us on Yom Kippur in 1973.
We pray for a just settlement with the Palestinian people, even though from the inception of the PLO in 1964, before the conquests of the Six Day War, their leadership has been dedicated to liberating Palestine, which means eliminating Israel. We have endured from the Palestinians unceasing terror attacks ever since, and despite all political agreements and diplomatic initiatives, we see that the Palestinians continue to incite their people to despise us and to aspire to destroying us.We have offered to share our land with our neighbors, but we will not give land to be used to drive us into the sea. Even if hundreds of millions of people hate us, even if some nations pray we did not exist, even if some of our enemies won't rest till they kill us and many in the rest of the world don't give a damn, I couldn't be prouder. We have come home, and this is it. I am an Israeli, a citizen of the one and only Jewish homeland. I thank God that I was a born in a time when I could fulfill the dream of two thousand years to return to Zion.
I am a Zionist, a believer and supporter and defender of our reborn nation. And you who read these words, with compassion and understanding and identification - whether you are Jewish or not, Israeli or not -- you are a Zionist, too. The Lord bless you as you bless Israel by standing in defense of her right to exist on the land given to the Jewish people by the God of Israel . Lets pray that Israel will turn back to their God. Do not be silent, but share this with your fellow Christians, share it with your pastors, and with anyone you have a chance to speak to. Lets also pray for that breakthrough to the Muslims, and please remember to pray for our son Jordan, and all of his fellow soldiers in the IDF.
Shabbat Shalom ... David & Josie
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