ISRAEL LEADS IN CANCER TREATMENT

TO THE LADIES HAPPY VALENTINES DAY 2011.ALL THE LOVE AND BEST FOR THE YEAR.

GENESIS 12:2-3
2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:
3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

Israel at the Cutting Edge of Cancer Treatment
by Chana Ya'ar FEB 14,11

Israeli hospitals are on the cutting edge of providing treatment for cancer, according to the chief of the Department of Oncology at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa.Professor Avraham Katan said that Israeli hospitals have the capacity to offer cancer sufferers the leading treatment in the world supplied by a highly trained and skilled medical staff.Israel is on the verge of a new medical era that focuses on genetic and molecular treatment, he said.One state-of-the-art prostate cancer treatment brought to Israel this year was the SMART Surgery robotic prostatectomy by Dr. David Samadi. The Vice Chair of Urology and Chief of Robotics and Minimally Invasive Surgery at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York developed the procedure, which he introduced in Israel at Rambam Medical Center.The disease is diagnosed in 15 percent of all men, according to statistics released by the American Cancer Society, which said that 1 in 35 die from the cancer.

However, when caught early, prostate cancer has a 95 percent five-year survival rate. New technologies such as the robotic prostate removal surgery are used to provide survivors with a better quality of life.Robotic prostatectomy is considered the least invasive technique for prostate cancer, Samadi explained.The surgeon has also collaborated closely with Dr. Jack Baniel of Rabin Medical Center and Dr. Jacob Ramon of Tel HaShomer Medical Center in mentoring Israeli doctors in the SMART Surgery technique.Most hospitals in Israel include a Department of Oncology, but there are several that actually specialize in the treatment of cancer. These include both public and private hospitals, located primarily in the central region of the country.The Israel Cancer Association (ICA), founded in 1952, promotes research, prevention and early detection of the disease. The organization funds professional posts in oncology medical centers and in the community, and provides professional training for multidisciplinary staff and professional support for patients as well.
(IsraelNationalNews.com)

Egypt declares bank holiday after worker strikes
By Patrick Werr – Sun Feb 13, 1:42 pm ET

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt declared Monday a bank holiday after workers emboldened by the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak and angered by low wages and poor working conditions disrupted operations at the country's state banks.The Egyptian pound was little changed in slow trade on Sunday, the first day of trading since President Hosni Mubarak was toppled from power on Friday, and the central bank said it had successfully covered an auction of 6.5 billion Egyptian pounds ($1.1 billion) in treasury bills.Banks were already due to be closed on Tuesday, an official holiday marking the Prophet Mohamed's birthday.Employees are demanding higher salaries, Deputy Central Bank Governor Hisham Ramez said by telephone, adding that the strikes were mainly at state and not private banks.Tarek Amer, chairman of state-owned National Bank of Egypt, the country's biggest commercial bank, submitted his resignation on Sunday after angry employees prevented him from reaching his office, bankers said.The central bank, responsible for the state banks, had not yet accepted the resignation, the bankers added.

CURRENCY LITTLE CHANGED

The currency closed the day unchanged from Thursday at around 5.878 to the U.S. dollar, forex dealers said.Volume was low because of a decline in business activity after nearly three weeks of political protests that shut down large swaths of the economy and because of new central bank guidelines that lengthened the clearance period for large transfers of funds abroad, bankers said.Egyptians seeking to transfer funds outside the country will have to wait five days after the transaction is made instead of the previous two before the money is transferred.This is so that no money is laundered and to prevent transfers by politically connected people, a banker said.One trader in a bank treasury said the longer wait was being applied to transfers of $100,000 or more.The government sold 3 billion pounds of 91-day and 3.5 billion pounds of 266-day treasury bills on Sunday at its third auction since banks reopened from a week-long closure.The entire amount offered by the central bank was covered, with the average yield on the 91-day bills declining to 10.949 percent from 10.972 percent at an auction last week. The yield on the 266-day bills was 11.676 percent.

Terrorist Who Trained London Bombers Was Working For US Government
Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com February 14, 2011

While talking heads like Glenn Beck continue to invoke the threat of radical Islam, they habitually ignore the blindingly obvious, that radical Islam is a creature of the US military-industrial complex. Case in point – the terrorist who trained the London bombers was a US informant and has been freed after serving only four and a half years of a possible 70-year sentence.Citing his exceptional co-operation, in working with US authorities, a New York Judge released Mohammed Junaid Babar despite him pleading guilty to five counts of terrorism, an outcome that has, Raised questions over whether Babar was a US informer at the time he was helping to train the ringleader of the 7 July tube and bus bombings, reports the London Guardian.

Babar admits to consorting with high level Al-Qaeda terrorists, as well as providing senior members with money and equipment, running weapons. He also set up a training camp in Pakistan in 2003 where alleged 7/7 ringleader Mohammad Sidique Khan learned bomb-making techniques.Graham Foulkes, a magistrate whose 22-year-old son David was killed by Khan at Edgware Road underground station in 2005, said: People get four and a half years for burglary. They can get more for some road traffic offences. So for an international terrorist who’s directly linked to the death of my son and dozens and dozens of people to get that sentence is just outrageous.But Babar’s release makes perfect sense given the fact that he was likely working for US authorities as an informant while training one of the alleged London bombers.A remark from the sentencing judge that Babar began co-operating even before his arrest”, has raised the possibility, supported by other circumstantial evidence obtained by the Guardian, that he may have been an informant for the US government before his detention by the FBI in April 2004, writes the Guardian’s Shiv Malik, who in a separate article goes into greater depth on how, Babar may have been working for the US security services while pretending to be a jihadi – allegations that could imply serious failures to prevent the 7 July bombings.The Guardian article describes how a top US terrorism lawyer has seen sealed evidence in the case which suggests Babar could have been working for the US authorities before his arrest in April 2004.Having reviewed the court transcript himself, bereaved father Graham Foulkes said: There’s a hint from one or two of the sentences [in the transcript] that do strongly suggest [Babar's] co-operation was going well beyond his official arrest. And it looks as if the Americans may well have known in detail what Babar was up to in Pakistan [at the time] and that is a very, very serious matter.The fact that Babar has served less than 5 years for playing a crucial role in attacks which killed 52 people and injured hundreds more clearly indicates that he is being rewarded by US authorities for his involvement in the 7/7 bombings.

Lest we forget that the the so-called mastermind behind the 7/7 London bombings, Haroon Rashid Aswat, was a British intelligence asset. Former Justice Dept. prosecutor and terror expert John Loftus revealed that the so called Al-Muhajiroun group, based in London, had formed during the Kosovo crisis, during which fundamentalist muslim leaders (Or what is now referred to as Al-Qaeda) were recruited by MI6 to fight in Kosovo.The revelations about Babar once again underscore the myopic and ludicrous assertions of people like Glenn Beck, who constantly invoke the threat of radical Islam, particularly in the context of recent events in Egypt, while failing to point out that radical Islam is being fostered and fomented by the US military-industrial complex.Almost every single major terror plot over the last decade plus blamed on radical Islam has had the combined or individual fingerprints of US, British, Canadian and Israeli intelligence agencies and federal law enforcement bodies all over it.

9/11

Every single shred of evidence concerning the alleged 9/11 hijackers points to the fact that they were patsies controlled by informants working for the US government.
The US Special Operations Command’s Able Danger program identified the hijackers and their accomplices long before 9/11, but when the head of the program, Colonel Anthony Shaffer, tried to pass the information on to the 9/11 Commission, he was gagged and slandered and the vital information his team had passed on was ignored and buried.Curt Weldon, Former U.S. Republican Congressman and senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, documented how the US government tracked the hijackers’ movements before 9/11.Louai al-Sakka, the man who trained six of the hijackers, was a CIA informant. A number of the other alleged hijackers were trained at US air bases. In the months prior to 9/11, alleged hijackers Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi were renting rooms in a house owned and lived in by an FBI informant.

In a 2002 article entitled The Hijackers We Let Escape, Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman documented how, The CIA tracked two suspected terrorists to a Qaeda summit in Malaysia in January 2000, then looked on as they re-entered America and began preparations for September 11.The fact that there were numerous Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists involved in the pre-planning stages of 9/11 is unsurprising given former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds’ testimony that Bin Laden was working for the US right up until the day of 9/11.On the very morning of 9/11, the money man behind the alleged hijackers, Pakistan’s ISI Chief Mahmoud Ahmad, was meeting with U.S. government and intelligence officials.Indeed, even after 9/11, the so-called spiritual leader of the very hijackers who allegedly slammed Flight 77 into the Pentagon, Anwar al-Awlaki, was himself invited to dine with Pentagon top brass mere months after the attack.

UNDERWEAR BOMBER

Al-Awlaki was later involved in directing the underwear bomber, who was allowed to board the plane by order of the US State Department aided by a well-dressed man who got Abdulmutallab on the airliner despite the fact that he was on a terror watch list and had no passport. Eyewitness and Delta 253 passenger Kurt Haskell subsequently blew the whistle to state that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was given the bomb by the US government to create a pretext for the implementation of naked body scanners and boost the TSA’s budget.

FORT HOOD SHOOTING

Fort Hood shooter Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan repeatedly communicated with alleged Al-Qaeda leaders for nearly a year before his rampage. The FBI knew Hasan was sending emails to terrorists, but they did nothing, allowed him to remain on a U.S. Army base, and even invited him to participate in Homeland Security exercises. Hasan was also being handled by US agent Al-Awlaki.

FORT DIX

Lawyers in a case relating to the much vaunted 2007 terror plot to attack Fort Dix and kill as many soldiers as possible concluded that FBI informants were the key figures behind the operation and that the accused, six foreign-born Muslims, were merely bungling patsies. US agent Al-Awlaki was again involved in training the would-be terrorists.

TORONTO PLOT

The Toronto 18 terrorists turned out to be a bunch of incompetent guys who were primarily misled by a delusional megalomaniac. The explosive fertilizer material the terrorist cell apparently planned to use was in fact purchased by an informant working for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, agents of which had radicalized the group. US agent Al-Awlaki was again involved in the plot.

PORTLAND PLOT

The man accused of attempting to blow up a Christmas tree in Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, was a befuddled patsy, groomed and radicalized from start to finish by the FBI as part of a radicalization and entrapment program. Shortly after news of the attempted bombing broke, it emerged that the FBI had provided Mohamud with a fake bomb, van, and cell phone (to be used as a detonator) in the incident, as well as thousands of dollars in cash at every step of the plot.

MUMBAI MASSACRE

The man accused of being the mastermind behind the 2008 Mumbai massacre, David Headley, was a US government informant and was also at one time on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency.

SHOE BOMBER

Hundreds of terror suspects have been convicted in civilian federal courts, including convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid who attended the Finsbury Park Mosque in North London. The Finsbury imam at the time was Abu Hamza al-Masri who began working with British Security Services in 1997.

MIAMI PLOT

In the media-lauded Miami terror case in 2007, the supposed ringleader Narseal Prince Marina Batiste had heard of Al-Qaeda, but wasn’t sure what it stood for. The FBI instigators made Batiste swear loyalty to al-Qaida; then had him call on his local buddies to form an Islamic army in Miami. None had military training. Some could barely read. But Batiste assured the group in the midst of its collective marijuana buzz of greatness ahead, wrote Saul Landau.These were the men who comedian John Stewart referred to as seven dipshits in a warehouse after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had ludicrously told the press that the group of semi-retarded gang-bangers had planned to wage a ground war against America.

NEW YORK SYNAGOGUE BOMB PLOT

A group of so-called Muslim terrorists were busted in New York for supposedly planning to blow up synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military airplanes flying out of the New York Air National Guard base. The men were provided with fake explosives and inactive missiles by an FBI informant, reported the Christian Science Monitor. Two of the ringleaders of the deadly plot which was endlessly hyped by the media turned out to be semi-retarded potheads, exactly as we had predicted would be the case due to the innumerable past cases with the exact same modus operandi.I could go on for pages and pages listing details of ever major terror plot since and indeed before 9/11 that were blamed on radical Islam yet in fact turned out to be completely contrived by the FBI, CIA, Canadian or British authorities.It is a glaring and manifestly provable fact that radical Islam is being manufactured and provoked by the US military-industrial complex in order to provide itself with an enemy to justify billions every year in weapons sales along with giant federal government slush funds that enrich the coffers of public-private partnerships while crushing the constitutional rights of American citizens.Glenn Beck is completely accurate when he says that radical Islam represents a direct threat to the future of freedom in the west. The ultimate clash of civilizations is a very real possibility. But by deliberately obscuring the fact that radical Islam is a creature of the US military-industrial complex, a bastard child of the new world order that is being strengthened by our own governments to be used as a weapon against us, Beck and others who regurgitate the same rhetoric are misleading Americans into thinking that radical Islam itself is the new world order, when in fact radical Islam is merely a tool of the new world order, being from its very inception completely owned and controlled by the US military-industrial complex.

11 February, 2011
Jihad1 : Islam awakes! Europe falls asleep, comatose on its Energy addiction
http://eurdemocracy.blogspot.com/
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Radio/News.aspx/2898

Islam Awakes! That's what the news ticker said on the monitors of the press area of the European Council building on 4 February. Mubarak had already announced he was going. The European Council was in its usual secret session, closed to the press and closed to the public. On its agenda the topic of most vital interest to the public: Energy.The European Union is the world's greatest importer of energy. That is not a boast. That is a mark of shame. It is also a sign pointing to Europe's greatest danger: Energy Blackmail. Europe has already experienced the effects of an oil embargo in the 1970s.The EU pays 2.5% of its GDP on imported energy -- money that could be used stimulate its own innovations, an energy efficiency economy and native energy production. On oil alone the EU spends an enormous 270 billion euros. It cost only a fraction of that to produce, as it flows freely from wells. The surplus profits are used too often against the welfare of Europeans and Americans. Instead Europe's economy is still driven by Arab oil. Moreover it mostly comes from the Persian Gulf countries and is exported through a narrow and dangerous strait.

The poorer Arab States are now being aroused by their richer religious cousins. North African States are now much more mosque-orientated than only a decade ago. Daily habits and clothes have changed. More than piety is involved. Egypt is a key State between Saudi and Iranian power grabs. No wonder that the 86-year old Saudi King Abdullah was reportedly apoplectic at naive American attempts to unseat Mubarak.

The events in Tunisia and Egypt are the sign of the Islamic Awakening and an Islamic liberation movement -- these were the words of Iran's Supreme Leader Khomenei. He addressed the Friday crowds for the first time in seven months. These movements will spell an irreparable defeat for the United States, he said to cheering crowds raising their fists and shouting Death to America! Death to Israel!.Did the Europe's 27 leaders closeted in secret hear about Iran's pronouncement on the Mediterranean revolution? Did anyone tell them that the leader of nuclear Iran was laying ideological claim to Europe's southern frontiers? Are they talking about it now the Council has dispersed? We don't know.Through Egypt by ship and pipeline comes 5 per cent of the world's oil and much of it destined for European and American consumers. Around 8 per cent of the world's exports comes through the Suez canal. It is the major umbilical that attaches marine trade of Europe, the Near East and Asia. Who is behind this revolt? There are many factors, such as wanting the freedoms of the West across the water, a sense of purpose, work and an end to grinding poverty. Others are more dangerous, including the Muslim Brethren, an organisation that for decades has spawned jihadi spin-offs worldwide. It has been called the mother of modern jihadis, including Iran and Al Qaida. Like Communism, Nazism and other isms, it is ideological to the core. It still retains its poisonous ideological connection with Nazism and the Arabic version of Hitler's Mein Kampf and the fictitious propaganda The protocols of the Elders of Zion are widely published. Danish cartoons are not.

Its slogan is Islam is the Solution. But what is the question? What is life's purpose? To die as a so-called martyr? It has not brought happiness, peace, satisfying work, productive industry or the conservation of Nature and the ecological betterment of the planet. Europe has rejected the Islamic solution intellectually and physically with great loss of blood at Tours, Vienna and many other times over a millennium and half. Internal documents of the Brotherhood cite that the goal is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions.Is the only way to show this solution to destroy the successful alternatives? How about a good example? A weak ideology turns to immoral action and illicit expansion, often by violence, intimidation or sabotage. That distracts people from deeper analysis that exposes its false assumptions. The weakest spot of such an ideology is exposed in a public debate. Why do these solutions require the death of Israel? Because Israel has allowed freedom of worship. The Israeli government also pays for the maintenance of mosques. It did not desecrate them or build synagogues on top of them. It has produced a high tech society out of penniless Jewish refugees expelled from Arab lands. It has turned a barren land into an exporter of food. It is an example that many tyrants want to hide from their populations.The interest of Iran should be kept in mind. Its regime can only stay in power at home by attacking and eliminating all its opponents at home and attempting to expand abroad. Its propaganda is powerful and contrasts with the weak reply of the West.

Consider how Iran has created a sphere of influence and propaganda in the Near East in the last few years. This now nearly surrounds Israel. It has gained a decisive interest in Gaza where it has often supplied arms and rockets by sea and by land. This has overexcited the whole of the Muslim world. Iran has also paid for and trained the militant Hizballah movement in Lebanon and has succeeded to make this militant Shi'ite jihadist army an integral part of the government of the once peaceful country. Iran's influence in Syria is also growing. The Jordanian authorities are faced with a stark existential choice -- bend to Tehran or be broken. That seems to be the ground why they have urged America to go to war against Iran, even though this would bring war and destruction to the entire region. The Jordanians see this catastrophe of war as a lesser evil than an inevitable total Shi'ite take-over of the whole region through intimidation and small arms. That would only lead to further major war elsewhere, a global jihad. The Iranian theocracy has as its avowed aim the destruction of America and Europe as the great satans.Is Iran behind the troubles in Egypt? Is it taking an opportunistic hand in the uprising against Mubarak? Iran rather gave its hand away. Last week it accused Israel of supplying plane-loads of anti-riot material to Mubarak's regime. That was swiftly denied by Jerusalem as nonsense. The fact of the matter is that in October last year -- for some unknown reason -- plane flights were resumed between Tehran and Egypt. Who authorized it? Strangely no one seems to know. Why is it significant? Simply because plane flights between the Shi'ite state and Egypt have been stopped not for a year or two but for thirty years.

For years President Mubarak had already warned the Muslims in neighbouring countries of the plans of the sectarian leaders of the Iranian Islamic Republic. The Persians are trying to devour the Arab states, he said. A nuclear armed Iran with hegemonic ambitions is the greatest threat to Arab nations today, Mubarak told the Arab Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 2009.Now we know from WikiLeaks that all the neighbouring States are worried about what they consider the malevolent influence of Iran. The Saudis are calling Iran a snake whose head needs to be cut off. Why then did the Egyptians -- the fiercest enemy of the Persians -- do this most extraordinary thing? They chose this moment to agree to resume airflights with Tehran. They were cut in the days of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the Revolution of 1979-80. At that time the Shah left Iran and in a final trip between the capitals took his plane to Egypt. It is an indication of the growing power of Iran in Egypt.The revolutionaries have a longer memory than many European leaders -- the Crusades are common talk. Are Europeans equally familiar with their past struggles with militant jihadis over 1500 years? The Iranians can recall the vital need to control supply routes. At one stage, 2500 years ago, Egypt fell under the sword of the Persian monarchs Darius 1 and Cambyses of Persia. A three-language monument, unearthed by de Lesseps and now in Paris, declares the words of Darius that his men re-excavated the canal that links the Mediterranean with the Red Sea.

King Darius says:

I am a Persian; setting out from Persia, I conquered Egypt. I ordered to dig this canal from the river that is called Nile and flows in Egypt, to the sea that begins in Persia. Therefore, when this canal had been dug as I had ordered, ships went from Egypt through this canal to Persia, as I had intended.This was when the natives of the land were mainly Egyptians -- that is Copts, whose language is similar to ancient Egyptian. Only later when the Egyptian Empire had been destroyed did the Greeks, the Romans and then the Arabs take over the land. Prior to that Egypt was one of the world's greatest Christian countries. Many Arabs tend to believe civilisation only existed with Islam. The Persians remember they not only had a great civilisation but were controlling Egypt long before the Arabs arrived.The Suez Canal itself can be seen as a historic goal for the Iranian regime. Today the Iranians have decisive influence in all the countries surrounding Israel, the only democracy in the entire Middle East.The Iranians have no reason to be nice to those trying to thwart its nuclear plans. Europe is trying to impose crippling sanctions on the regime. If the Iranians gain influence on the Suez Canal they will have an additional stranglehold on Europe and its oil imports. The other route for oil from the Persian Gulf is by super-tanker around Africa. This too is becoming more dangerous. Witness the capture of hundreds of ships including a couple of tankers with enough oil for a fifth of the daily needs of the USA.

Who are these Somali pirates? They told Reuters: We are Muslims. We are marines, coastguards -- not pirates. Really? They are jihadis. They are at war. One terrorist leader of the al-Shabaab-linked Mu'askar Ras Kamboni (also designated by the US State Department as a terrorist) said on Somali radio: I can say the pirates are part of the Mujahedeen [religious fighters], because they are in a war with Christian countries who want to misuse the Somali coast. Guilty people have poor reasoning. Stealing super tankers worth hundreds of millions of euros shipping oil peacefully hundreds of kilometres out in the Indian Ocean has nothing to do with the coast guards. Osama bin Laden was more frank when he praised the Somalis' war of Islam against Christianity.Maybe Europe's leaders in the European Council briefly discussed the rising demand for democracy across North Africa. Democracy? Islam? Who is right? They cannot both be right because there is no example of Islamic democracy in history. Democracy-- that is the equality of everyone under law -- is based on Judeo-Christian principles. Islam is based on the supremacy of the Islamic believer over the unbeliever. Effectively the voter may get one vote as in late Weimar Germany but only once. Iran shows that once the theocratic power has taken over they are not willing to give it up regardless of what the people vote. Hamas in Gaza is another example where those voted in to power then proceeded to kill and attack their electoral opponents of the Palestinian Authority. Gaza is one of the tentacles of Iran's Shi'ite octopus -- to use the Jordanian description.The other Sunni countries have not been willing to allow overtly religious political parties (who might take over forever) or anti-religious parties (that religious fanatics oppose with suicide martyrs as it would expose their methods, logical deficiencies and intolerance). With no philosophical or constitutional separation of secular from the religious powers, usually the military is needed to separate political competitors. The sword of Islam has been used frequently against unbelievers but also believers of the wrong hue.

Democracy as we know it is based on a religious or spiritual concept. Europe's democracy allows atheists or secularists to survive and even thrive. It allows them to pose the most probing questions and make even blasphemous criticism of Christianity. A Judeo-Christian society thus provides tolerance of antagonistic views of its own religion. The reason is that truth is valued above all and must be examined with all critical faculties. Truth will out. The results are clear. Christianity in all its multiple human imperfections is growing worldwide without the sword, intimidation or blackmail.That is not true for an atheist State. A secular regime like Soviet Communism was at war with spiritual values and the freedom of religion. Only a Judeo-Christian system can produce democracy. Atheistic people's democracies were hollow and false. The core of dialectic materialism was intellectually rotten.As Schuman explained, democracy is not something that arises by spontaneous generations by mobs, by demonstrations or by revolt. It requires a moral base and a soundly founded concept of where ultimate authority comes from. That is not a false god or false religion.Democracy is above all not something made quickly; Europe has taken more than a thousand years of Christianity to fashion it. In Africa we were forced to burn our bridges. Not only did we give the vote to an often illiterate population but what is worse, we turned power over to men who often had no training and who were exposed defenceless to all temptations of capriciousness and injustice. We tried to slacken the rhythm, to bring in controls; these were only frail preventive measures against the thrust of nationalism. I would like to be able to quote on this subject what Jacques Maritain, following Bergson, wrote more than twenty years ago, at the time when a more generous and Christian policy on our overseas territories was being elaborated. I will just keep to a few pertinent phrases:

We must realise that the part that instinct and irrationality plays is much larger role in the animation of a group than an individual. At a time when one people enters history claiming their political and social adulthood, large sections of mankind remain in a state of immaturity or suffering from an unhealthy reactions accumulated during the course of time and are still only sketching out or preparing themselves culturally to be called a people. Let us understand that to enjoy one's privileges as an adult person without the risk of bankruptcy, a people must be capable of behaving as adults...Nothing is easier for political fraudsters to exploit good principles for an illusion, nor is anything more disastrous than good principles badly applied...I conclude with Bergson that democracy is essentially evangelical as it has love as its motor.Schuman summed up several thousand years of history: Democracy will be Christian or it won't exist. An unchristian democracy is a caricature which sinks into tyranny or anarchy.We should have no illusions about installing a real democracy or where a tyranny or anarchy in the Mediterranean can lead.

No Heroes in This Story! Why Does Egypt Matter, Where is it Headed, and US Policy?
by Mordechai Ben-Menachem 02/08/2011
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=41642
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Radio/News.aspx/2898


In this article I endeavour to answer these questions, discuss possibilities, directions and ramifications. This is an attempt to predict what may happen under circumstances as they appear today. As Niels Bohr said, Prediction is difficult, especially if it involves the future.That means I am not attempting to be accurate, I am attempting to inform; the view is strategic and long-term. In the first part I discuss Egypt as a country. In the second part I discuss what matters and why.

A brief historical perspective

The very word Egypt evokes Spielberg-like images for all of us, and for good reasons. Egypt has been around since the dawn of recorded history. In a very real sense, Egypt IS recorded history. Unfortunately, most of that is a different Egypt from what presently exists. But does she matter today, to all of us? Why should your average American care what they do, what government they have?

Demography

In 1950 the population of Egypt was about 18 million (it is 87 million today; 2.5 times that of Canada). Of the 18, about one million were:

-Armenians living there since the Turkish massacre,

-French living there since Napoleon’s conquest,

-Greeks and Jews living there since Alexander.

These four groups essentially were the country’s economy. One of the first things Nasser did after murdering King Faruq was to expel all these people. (To be fair, it was not Nasser, it was his predecessor, who was then murdered by Nasser – it gets very complicated, but the group was one.) The economy of Egypt has not recovered.

What was left is composed of Egyptians (now erroneously called Copts) and the Arab occupiers that conquered Egypt in the First Jihad. The Copts today number about ten percent of the population. (IN the remainder, I call them all Egyptians, though this is technically incorrect.) He also renamed the country The Arab Republic of Egypt – this new name is not without significance. In all of history, no Arab country ever had democratic rule. Democracy is anathema to Sharia according to all systems of Islamic jurisprudence. The very word Islam means submission – while democracy means rule by the people. The two concepts are incompatible to the most basic degree. Indeed, even in Israel, Arab parties eschew democratic principles.
Islam is inherently anti-democratic in nature. All Islamic terror groups were foaled by the Muslim Brotherhood of Al Banna and Sayyib Qutb. This nature must not be cloaked by the Brotherhood’s historic willingness to use elections to reach power (e.g., Gaza).

Arab mind – psychological factors

Anecdote: In the army in 1970, I served in Gaza. My direct commander was Arik Sharon. I still vividly remember a basic lesson taught by him. We had Druse trackers in our unit (it was a special operations and intelligence unit). One day, we caught a terrorist that had just murdered an entire family of Gazan Arabs by slitting the throats of the children and hanging them upside-down in front of their parents, and then killing the parents (their crime was that the father operated an ice crème concession on the beach that the guys from Tunis desired.)
Our tracker wanted to beat the miscreant for information about his accomplices. Arik stopped him. He said, if you want to convince him to tell a story, don’t insult him in public, never insult; do anything (that I don’t see) but never insult him openly.The Obama administration’s first act toward Mubarek was to publicly insult him. All US policy is relegated to garbage. No Arab will ever take him seriously or trust him for anything. Israeli’s are easier, we stopped trusting him after the third time he publicly insulted us. (We never trusted Mrs. Clinton.)By publicly disgracing Mubarak, the administration made statements that will alienate any future government based on Mubarak’s men, which includes all the Armed Forces and industrial leadership.What signal did the threat to cut aid send to King Abdullah of Jordan or to President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, as well as other Gulf allies? It means that as soon as an Arab leader has trouble, he is disowned. The current supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Badi, gave a sermon in September 2010 stating that Muslims need to understand that the improvement and change that the Muslim nation seeks can only be attained through jihad and sacrifice and by raising a jihadi generation that pursues death, just as the enemies pursue life.

America has sent Egypt more than $1.2 billion in annual military aid, every year for over 30 years of Mubarek’s rule (as well as funding his predicessor, the Nazi Party member, Anwar Sadat). The means to subdue and control the Egyptian population were supplied by US taxpayer dollars. This is not lost on those people. By the way, Facebook is illegal in Syria and Gaza (and highly frowned upon in the PA). Use of it is a capital crime.Egypt is not a trivial country; neither is it Yemen, Tunisia or Jordan. Eqypt is, and always has been, THE cultural and political fulcrum of the Arab world - the France and Britain of the region. Egypt is the country that sets the mood and the trends; in literature, art, radio, cinema, industrialization, nationalism and mass politics. Arabs look to Cairo to show the way – even when they don’t like it (e.g., licencious Belly Dancing) they love it. As the Land of Pharaoh goes, so goes Islam. The resonance will be prolific and promulgate through the region. The balance of power will irreversibly go to Muslim hardliners.There exist today four epicentres of Islamic terror (the tactic) and power (the strategy): Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood, Arabia and the House of Saud, the Palestinian Authority and, Iran and the Ayatollahs. So far, the United States has fought the symptoms, and not the disease. The present administration ostensibly fights the symptoms while quickening the disease at each of its’ epicentres.

Persia delenda est … Ceterum censeo Persia esse delendam?

Why does Egypt matter today?

Egypt has a fundamental role in the energy economy. But, much more so than that, Egypt has a role as the most populous, and historically most significant, Arab country. The role of Arabia was traditionally limited to that of the keepers of Mecca and Medina the addition of oil came about from FDR’s intervention, before that oil had a role, albeit apolitical. While Egypt did not have a role in the transfer of two and a half trillion dollars into Arab coffers in the previous decade until the Great Recession, its symbolic value in the Arab mind is legion.

Egypt’s role in the 21st Century Energy Economy

Egypt is a major factor in the energy economy. Egypt is a net importer of oil as domestic production dropped below indigenous demand, but flow of oil, LNG and coal through the Suez Canal and the SUMED pipeline is critical. Oil production stands at about 660,000 barrels per day, while consumption is at 710,000 barrels. Crude oil production continues to decline. An Israeli wag posted on Facebook: “Dear Egyptian rioters, please don't damage the pyramids. We will not rebuild. Thank you.” Wells developed by Israel in Sinai (Suez Gulf) are a large portion of Egyptian oil production. Egypt also benefits from Israel’s Mediterranean NG discoveries off Haifa (as do Cyprus and Lebanon).Energy prices are on a steep upward slope. Just the suspicion that something may occur to one of the world’s major oil conduits drove oil above $100 per barrel (Brent Crude hit $103.37 on Thursday -- $76 in August). The previous record of $147 is not that far away. All energy resources are driving up:

– uranium has also almost doubled in price;

– The US Energy Information Agency (EIA) recently revealed that in terms of energy content, US coal reserves are dwindling rapidly and are already well below 100-year reserves. (Coal, oil and all ores come in differing compositions that vary in energy content and production and use costs.)OPEC announced $155 billion in spending to maintain capacity over the next four years, but demand is rising at an unprecedented rate. Egypt does not produce oil for export but most Persian Gulf oil and LNG imported to Europe flows through Egypt; this is the single largest component of Egyptian Government revenue. Closure of the canal and pipeline would add about 6000 miles of transit cost around Africa (15 added transit days to Europe). About 5% of all international shipping traverses the Suez Canal. Egypt does export natural gas (though there is a moratorium on new export contracts since 2008). The only viable competitor to SUMED is the Israeli and Iranian governments-owned, Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline. (Yes, you read that right, for money, Iran cooperates with Israel.) Israel imports a small portion of its energy needs from Egypt via the El Arish-Ashkelon NG pipeline.

Where is Egypt likely to be headed?

In 1999, in the run-up to the Year 2000 Problem, Egypt was classed as one of the world’s most irrelevant countries, because there were almost no computers. In terms of electricity use, Egypt's installed generating capacity stood at 23.4 gigawatts in 2008 – that is .269 kilowatts of electric capacity per person. Compare that to next-door-neighbour Israel, with 1,533 kilowatts per person – almost six thousand times the amount. While in the past decade, there has been progress, large portions of the population remain in very primitive living conditions. To 70% of the population, the price of wheat flour is the single most important economic factor in their daily lives.World food prices hit another record in January. The UN Food Price Index has risen continuously for seven months and is the highest in its history. Middle East regime stability is tethered to wheat prices.A feudal system needs stability, an illusion of a timeless order. The Muslim world has a small upper class, a sliver of a middle class and a huge underclass. The system is feudal by intension and design. Tyranny does not produce stability, only quiet, food availability does. Arab rulers buy ‘homeland security’ by exporting surplus populations and their terrorists to America and Europe. They spin hateful fantasies about America and Israel to direct their citizens’ anger. Their artificial stability fuels terrorism and the rape gangs and murders in our cities. Hizbullah now controls most Cocaine cartels in South and Central America.In 2007-2008, Egypt, Yemen, Somalia and Bangladesh saw major food riots. If the Muslim Brotherhood take over they have already (repeatedly) stated that their first priority is genocidal war with Israel. Will US taxpayer dollars be expected to finance that? Authoritarian rule is a terrible yoke, a perennially sick economy and lack of food are far worse. Will participation in ‘democratic rule’ moderate the Muslim Brotherhood? Why would anyone say that?! It certainly did not have that affect on Hamas, the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood; rather quite the opposite, it has become increasingly harsh.

What really is US policy and why is this significant?

The coming years are a transformative period for the entire world, as important as the fall of the USSR. Imperialism, oil, and the dollar, are the trends that matter; events’ handling means everything. (It is always easier for a government to print money than to be rational.)A Pew Research Center opinion survey of Arab attitudes towards Jews from June 2009 makes the facts clear: 95% of Egyptians, 97% of Jordanians and Palestinians, 98% of Lebanese, 75% of Turks, Pakistanis and Indonesians expressed unfavorable opinions of Jews. Remember, most of them (except Palestinians and, to a lesser extent, Turks) has ever seen or spoken with a Jew; it is a capital crime for a Jew to step foot in these hell-holes. What these numbers show is that it makes no difference which regime rules. As long as Arabs are taught by their governments to hate Jews, there can be no peace.Mubarek knows a secret most of the world is unaware of – Egypt today is the weakest it has ever been in all its long history. One bomb on the Aswan Dam and fifty million Egyptians may be washed into the sea. Rumor has it that when the Russians built the dam, they secretly placed such a device so that they could not be double-crossed. There are well over a million former Russians living in Israel.

What does the phrase If Egypt should fall… mean?

Tunisia was the closest the Arab/Muslim world ever came to democracy – women there could drive, learn, be professionals, there was limited freedom of speech and assembly, homosexuals were no longer slaughtered. The government fell in January and we still do not know what may arise in its stead.Lebanon had limited democracy until the Civil War. In that War, vast numbers of Christians were killed, one of every three women were sexually violated. In January, the country was finally taken over by Iran. They can now lob their existing missiles into every European capital city, at will.There is simmering unrest in Jordon, Yemen, Algeria, Syria, Arabia and other areas. Most of the unrest is simple – we want food, and we do not wish to work for it! Most Arab unrest, most of the Arab street looks at UNRWA and asks why the Palestinians get free food and housing for 60 years and they still have to work? Your tax dollars at work! Economist writes in a long article that they expect Egypt to be a democracy within twelve months. What is their definition of democracy? Gaza has a working democracy; Hamas was elected by the people. Homosexuals are thrown off roofs, Christian women are routinely raped, young girls of 6-11 are married to men older than their parents – that’s okay, the marriage is not allowed to be consummated until they reach the ripe age of 9. This is a democracy, Muslim Brotherhood style.The House of Saud, the usurpers of the Arabian throne, are an Islamist epicentre.Persia delenda est … Ceterum censeo Persia esse delendam? Mordechai Ben-Menachem is a former researcher/lecturer at Ben-Gurion University and an author of 30 book ranging from engineering to poetry. He is also an ordained clergyman.


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

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

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

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

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

WORLD MARKET RESULTS
http://money.cnn.com/data/world_markets/
CNBC VIDEOS
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15839263/?tabid=15839796&tabheader=false

HALF HOUR DOW RESULTS MON FEB 14,2011(VALENTINES DAY)

09:30 AM -3.43
10:00 AM -20.80
10:30 AM -20.28
11:00 AM -36.33
11:30 AM -18.12
12:00 PM -18.73
12:30 PM -8.36
01:00 PM -10.25
01:30 PM -12.71
02:00 PM -12.52
02:30 PM -13.96
03:00 PM -0.94
03:30 PM -3.82
04:00 PM -5.07 12,268.19

S&P 500 1332.32 +3.17

NASDAQ 2817.18 +7.74

GOLD 1,362.10 +1.70

OIL 84.90 -0.68

TSE 300 13,910.80 +144.00

CDNX 2380.46 +22.90

S&P/TSX/60 798.56 +8.69

MORNING,NEWS,STATS

YEAR TO DATE PERFORMANCE
Dow -23 points at 4 minutes of trading today.
Dow -31 points at low today.
Dow +4 points at high today so far.
GOLD opens at $1,361.30.OIL opens at $85.38 today.

AFTERNOON,NEWS,STATS
Dow -31 points at low today so far.
Dow +4 points at high today so far.

WRAPUP,NEWS,STATS
Dow -31 points at low today.
Dow +4 points at high today.

GOLD ALLTIME HIGH $1,427.40 (NOT AT CLOSE)

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.

6.8 Earthquake Strikes Off Coast of Chile, Almost One Year After Massive 8.8 Earthquake Tamara L. Morris – Sat Feb 12, 4:54 pm ET

The South American country of Chile was rattled by a magnitude 6.8 earthquake on Feb. 11 -- not quite a year after a massive 8.8 earthquake shook the area and caused a tsunami. According to the United States Geological Survey, this 6.8 earthquake was followed by several smaller earthquakes, or aftershocks, ranging in magnitude from 4.7 to 6.1. The Associated Press reported this earthquake disrupted power and rattled nerves but did not produce reports of damage or injuries.This 6.8 earthquake struck just offshore of Bio-Bio, north of Concepcion in a location that is close to the 2010 8.8 earthquake that was centered near Maule, Chile. According to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, this most recent earthquake did not trigger a tsunami warning, unlike the 2010 quake that spawned a tsunami that wreaked havoc on coastlines.The 2010 earthquake resulted in at least 521 deaths, 56 missing and about 12,000 injuries. More than 800,000 were displaced from their homes and almost 380,000 homes, schools, hospitals and boats were damaged or destroyed by the quake or the resulting tsunami. The damages stemming from the 2010 8.8 quake and tsunami came to around $30 billion.

This massive earthquake also may have shortened the Earth day and actually moved the Earth's axis, according to NASA. This came about due to the location of the 2010 Chilean earthquake in the Earth's mid-latitudes and the deeper angle of the fault responsible for the earthquake. Chile is a seismically active region, with both earthquake activity and volcanic activity. The country and the entire west coast of South America is located along a plate boundary that extends northward along Central America, Mexico and the west coast of the United States. Plate boundaries produce seismic and volcanic activity and Chile sees its fair share. Chile is the site of the strongest volcano in recorded history -- a deadly 9.5 earthquake that struck near Santiago on May 22, 1960, and resulted in at least 1,655 deaths, 3,000 injuries and left at least 2 million people homeless. A tsunami triggered by this earthquake brought the death toll stemming from the quake to around 5,700. Damage from this quake was estimated around $550 million.The 2011 earthquakes that have struck are much smaller in power and intensity than the 8.8 2010 earthquake and the 9.5 1960 earthquake. An 8.8 magnitude earthquake is 800 times more powerful than a 6.8 earthquake. A 6.8 magnitude quake is considered a strong earthquake while an 8.8 would be considered a great earthquake. Damage from a large earthquake, though, is most often dependent upon location, depth and building structures -- as evidenced by the comparison between the 2010 Haiti earthquake which devastated the country and resulted in massive loss of life and the 2010 Chilean earthquake--which was stronger but not as devastating as the Haiti earthquake.Tamara Morris developed a special interest in weather issues and natural disasters after a tornado swept through her hometown in 1982. She is certified as a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) member and has served locally in this capacity after a rare derecho (inland hurricane) struck her area in 2009. She researches and writes about earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes and other natural phenomena.

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.

Australia's floods, cyclone stress Barrier Reef By KRISTEN GELINEAU, Associated Press – Fri Feb 11, 5:31 am ET

CAIRNS, Australia – Murky freshwater runoff from Australia's worst flooding in decades is adding to stresses from pollution and warming seas on the Great Barrier Reef, one of the world's most fragile ecosystems.Researchers say it is too early to know exactly how much of the reef has been affected by the flooding, which carved a wide path of destruction on land before draining into the sea off the country's northeast coast.So far, the signs are that damage will be isolated to relatively small portions of the reef, a popular dive site and network of coral structures rich in marine life that stretches more than 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers) along the coast.A narrow band of the reef was battered by a massive cyclone that passed overhead earlier this month and struck the coast with winds of up to 170 miles (280 kilometers) per hour, though the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority that manages the area said damage such as coral breakage was probably limited.More worrying than the cyclone are the effects of the recent floods, which sent huge plumes of muddy fresh water over coastal portions of the reef, said Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a reef expert from the University of Queensland.Floodwater can hurt reefs in many ways. Coral becomes stressed when the level of salt in the water drops. The high concentration of soil nutrients in floodwater provides food for coral competitors such as certain types of algae. Sediment saps coral of energy by blocking the light it needs to nourish itself, and pesticides in the water can kill the coral outright.

Complicating matters further is the current fragility of the reef, said Hoegh-Guldberg, deputy director of the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. In recent years, the reef has suffered from mass bleaching, in which coral under stress expels the colorful algae living in its tissues. Many scientists believe rising sea temperatures are responsible for the bleaching, which can eventually kill the coral.Their ability to bounce back from these types of localized impacts is reduced, Hoegh-Guldberg said.Drenching rains that pounded Australia's northeastern state of Queensland for months sent swollen rivers over their banks, inundating communities as the water made its way downstream to the ocean. Entire towns were swamped, 35 people were killed and more than 35,000 homes damaged or destroyed.Officials said the inland sea formed by the floodwaters covered an area larger than France and Germany combined, sending huge volumes of fresh water into seas off the coast. The worst of the flooding was south of the southern tip of the reef, though it clipped the edge around the swamped city of Rockhampton.Nick Graham, a senior research fellow at Queensland's James Cook University, said many parts of the reef closer to shore have adapted to floodwaters, which have become common in the rainy summer season.Though it's too early to say for certain what additional damage may have been done by the recent floods, it is probably less significant than we may imagine, he said.Coral ecologist Alison Jones has been examining several reefs in the Keppel Islands, an area in the reef's southern tail where floodwaters spilled into the sea, and found isolated damage to coral in waters less than 6 1/2 feet (2 meters) deep.

I wouldn't like there to be another flood because they're certainly pale, they've obviously been starved of light for a few weeks, she said. But they're doing remarkably well below 2 meters, so that's an enormous relief to me.She cautioned that her observations were preliminary and limited to one small segment of the reef.
Katharina Fabricius, principal research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, said the severe flooding seen in the Queensland capital of Brisbane was too far south to have affected the reef. But rivers farther north are still carrying water loaded with high levels of nutrients and sediment, which is worrying, Fabricius said.She said she is more concerned about the cumulative effects of several severe storms and floods in recent years. Five Category 4 or Category 5 cyclones — the two most powerful storm classifications — have roared over the reef in the past six years, while there were only two of that ferocity in the 40 years before that, she said.We don't fully understand what happens when a reef is hit by so many types of disturbances so often, she said. The reefs just don't get enough time to recover from one disturbance before they're hit again.Scientists predict that extreme weather events will increase in both intensity and frequency due to global warming.Associated Press writer Kelly Doherty in Sydney contributed to this report.

ISAIAH 19:1-15
1 The burden of Egypt. Behold, the LORD rideth upon a swift cloud, and shall come into Egypt: and the idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence, and the heart of Egypt shall melt in the midst of it.
2 And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbour; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom.
3 And the spirit of Egypt shall fail in the midst thereof; and I will destroy the counsel thereof: and they shall seek to the idols, and to the charmers, and to them that have familiar spirits, and to the wizards.
4 And the Egyptians will I give over into the hand of a cruel lord; and a fierce king shall rule over them, saith the Lord, the LORD of hosts.
5 And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and dried up.
6 And they shall turn the rivers far away; and the brooks of defence shall be emptied and dried up: the reeds and flags shall wither.
7 The paper reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of the brooks, and every thing sown by the brooks, shall wither, be driven away, and be no more.
8 The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast angle into the brooks shall lament, and they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish.
9 Moreover they that work in fine flax, and they that weave networks, shall be confounded.
10 And they shall be broken in the purposes thereof, all that make sluices and ponds for fish.
11 Surely the princes of Zoan are fools, the counsel of the wise counsellors of Pharaoh is become brutish: how say ye unto Pharaoh, I am the son of the wise, the son of ancient kings?
12 Where are they? where are thy wise men? and let them tell thee now, and let them know what the LORD of hosts hath purposed upon Egypt.
13 The princes of Zoan are become fools, the princes of Noph are deceived; they have also seduced Egypt, even they that are the stay of the tribes thereof.
14 The LORD hath mingled a perverse spirit in the midst thereof: and they have caused Egypt to err in every work thereof, as a drunken man staggereth in his vomit.
15 Neither shall there be any work for Egypt, which the head or tail, branch or rush, may do.

Now See The 11 Countries At Risk Of Becoming The Next Egypt
Gregory White | Feb. 11, 2011, 11:43 AM |

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak just resigned after weeks of dramatic protests in Cairo and across Egypt.As the biggest country in the Arab world, Egypt is seen as a trend leader for the broader Middle East.

So the question on everyone's mind is: who's next?

The Egyptian revolution is a challenge to state led authoritarian capitalism, but it is also a response to rising food costs and soaring unemployment. There is also the social media factor, which has allowed protesters to circumvent traditional state run media sources and organize more efficiently.What countries offer a similar mixture to that found in Egypt? And what investments are at stake?

Morocco: Reforms already lined up
Investments to watch: SPDR S&P Emerging Middle East & Africa ETF (GAF)
Style of government: Constitutional Monarchy-Inflation: 2.6% year-over-year in December-Unemployment: Among graduates, 25%, Total rate at 9.1%-Social media: Very much a serious part of youth culture.Conclusion: Morocco's government has already undergone democratic reforms, so any political pressure would likely be responded to in a similar manner, with more reforms. Those very reforms have been suggested by a government commission, so Morocco seems pretty safe at the moment, prepared to adjust if things get out of hand.

Jordan: King Abdullah tries to get ahead of the crisisInvestments to watch: SPDR S&P Emerging Middle East & Africa ETF (GAF)-Style of government: Constitutional monarchy, incorporating limited democracy.Inflation: Jordanian inflation up 6.1% year-over-year in December, 1.2% month-over-month-Unemployment: Around 14%-Social media: 38-39% of Jordanians have internet access.Conclusion: Jordan is already experiencing protests related to these factors. The government is responding by providing food and fuel subsidies. King Abdullah has sacked his government and appointed a new one with reforms priority number one. Whether the government moves fast enough to implement these reforms will be the deciding factor in the future size of protests and threat to the regime.

Syria: President pushing for reform already

Investments to watch: None-Style of government: Single party authoritarian, President Bashar al-Assad-Inflation: Government intends to take action to lower prices-Unemployment: 8.1% in 2009.Social media: Facebook still openly used by the public, searches for Egypt on computers, however, crash them.Conclusion: The economic situation is not as dire in Syria as in other countries. The regime is, arguably, more ruthless than its Egyptian counterpart. The President believes his partnership with Iran and support for the Palestinian cause will keep him safe, and he's already pushing for reforms. Syria's state may be too powerful for the little protest movement developing to flourish.

Saudi Arabia: Massive military strength may be enough to quell social dissent
Investments to watch: WisdomTree Middle East Dividend Fund (GULF), Market Vectors Gulf States ETF (MES)-Style of government: Absolute Monarchy-Inflation: Inflation at 5.4% in December, down from November-Unemployment: 10% in 2010-Social media: 3 million Saudi Arabians are on Facebook, with Twitter usage increasing quickly
Conclusion: Saudi Arabia has seen some small protests, but over the government response to flooding, not rising costs and unemployment. There are concerns on the streets that the country doesn't have proper infrastructure and is recklessly spending its oil riches. The repressive regime is unlikely to fall under these smaller concerns, but its youth unemployment problem (42%) and religious minority (Shia) could eventually exert real pressure.

Iran: Could things kick off again in Tehran?

Investments to watch: None-Style of government: Islamic Republic, with democratically elected representatives. Less than certain how democratic elections truly are. Ruled by Supreme Leader, who is a both religious and political leader.
Inflation: Inflation at 13.5% in early 2010, may be more than double that level
Unemployment: 14.6% as of August.Social media: Significant penetration of both Twitter and Facebook. Government showed willingness to crackdown on use during previous protest movement.Conclusion: Iran crushed its most recent protest movement. If inflation continues to rise, the sentiment may become more popular, and Egypt's revolution could inspire Iranians back to the streets.

Libya: Time may be running out for Gaddafi

Investments to watch: None-Style of government: Authoritarian, led by Muammar al-Gaddafi-Inflation: CPI up 2.654% in 2009-Unemployment: Highest unemployment rate in North Africa-Social media: The Muslim Brotherhood has a Facebook page. Unknown levels of internet penetration.Conclusion: Libya would seem a good bet. It's stuck between revolutionary Tunisia and Egypt. Its leader is regarded as an international eccentric. He wants his son to take over, and the public's not pleased. Financial squalor is probably worse than estimated. Whether or not social media could assist is unknown, but Libya is a likely future front in the spillover.

Yemen: Serious unemployment problem and an Al Qaeda threat
Investments to watch: None-Style of government: Presidential democracy, elections not entirely free-Inflation: No data of note, though likely higher that the 5.4% projection-Unemployment: 40%-Social media: 2.2 million internet users, population 23.4 million.Conclusion: Yemen has the deepest unemployment problem in the region, and likely a serious inflation problem too. There's a large terrorist group in the country, as it is a headquarters for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Protests are already significant. There is a sincere likelihood of change here, or, and this might be worse, further radicalization of the population.

Pakistan: Democracy under threat as state remains unstable

Investments to watch: Claymore’s BNY Mellon Frontier Markets ETF (FRN)-Style of government: Democratic republic-Inflation: Over 15%-Unemployment: 14% in 2010 (estimate)-Social media: Heavy use, government has banned use over the depiction of Mohamed before.Conclusion: Pakistan has a serious economic crisis, a weakness of state shown in recent flooding, confused positions over the U.S. and Taliban, as well as large anti-government, pro-Muslim fundamentalist forces.The potential for change is there. The biggest power source remains the military, however, and another coup, similar to the one that brought Musharaf to power, could occur.

Vietnam: A sharp recession could lead to opposition against Communist rule
Investments to watch: Market Vectors Vietnam (VNM)-Style of government: Authoritarian capitalism-Inflation: High inflation, including rising food costs
Unemployment: 6.5%-Social media: Blogs, Facebook, and other social media venues are prevalent.Conclusion: In Asia, Vietnam looks a likely candidate for protests, particularly if the economy slows down and unemployment increases. The economic trigger for a downturn would need to be pulled, however, before any change would take place.

Venezuela: Has Hugo Chavez outstayed his welcome?

Investments to watch: None-Style of government: Authoritarian republic-Inflation: 27.2% in 2010-Unemployment: 8.1% in the first 10 months of 2010-Social media: It exists, and Chavez has a Twitter account.Conclusion: The economic numbers scream change, but there's no way to know whether or not Chavez has outstayed his welcome. The country hasn't had the same, long-term oppressive experience as a country like Egypt. And its leadership still appeals to the anti-American sentiment held by the populace.

China: Could a severe economic downturn derail the Chinese regime?

Investments to watch: iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index Fund (FXI), iShares MSCI Hong Kong Index Fund (EWH)-Style of government: Authoritarian-Inflation: China has a serious inflation problem, with food prices at the forefront.Unemployment: 4.2%
Social media: Significant penetration, but government aggressively censors.
Conclusion: China has all the ingredients except the big one: unemployment. Now, there's no guarantee rural China won't see an uprising related to soaring prices and high unemployment there, but it's unlikely to be passed on to the country's cities. It would take a massive economic downturn, like one created by a liquidity crisis leading to a banking crisis leading to a recession, to trigger an unemployment surge that would threaten the regime.Think all that matters is the surge in food prices?
Then these are the 25 countries you really need to be worried about >
http://www.businessinsider.com/governments-food-price-inflation-2011-1#

Egypt's military rulers dissolve parliament By SARAH EL DEEB and MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated Press – Sun Feb 13, 8:14 pm ET

CAIRO – Egypt's military rulers took sweeping action to dismantle the autocratic legacy of former President Hosni Mubarak on Sunday, dissolving parliament, suspending the constitution and promising elections in moves cautiously welcomed by pro-democracy protesters.They also met with representatives of the broad-based youth movement that brought down the government after an 18-day uprising that transfixed the world.The caretaker government, backed by the military, said restoring security was a top priority even as labor unrest reflected one of the many challenges of steering the Arab world's biggest nation toward stability and democracy.On Sunday, prominent activist Wael Ghonim posted on a Facebook page he manages notes from a meeting between members of the military council and youth representatives, which he described as encouraging.The military defended the caretaker government, stocked with Mubarak loyalists, as necessary for now in the interests of stability but pledged to soon change it, said Ghonim and another protester, Amr Salama, in the statement.They said they will go after corrupt people no matter what their position current or previous, the statement added. Amendments to the much reviled constitution will be prepared by an independent committee over the next 10 days and then presented for approval in a popular referendum to be held in two months, they said.

The military also encouraged the youth to consider forming political parties — something very difficult to do under the old system — and pledged to meet with them regularly.We felt a sincere desire to protect the gains of the revolution and an unprecedented respect for the right of young Egyptians to express their opinions, Ghonim said.Even amid the efforts to build a new system, Egypt's upheaval has splintered into a host of smaller grievances, the inevitable outcome of emboldened citizens feeling free to speak up, most for the first time.They even included about 2,000 police, widely hated for brutality and corruption under Mubarak, who marched to the Interior Ministry to demand better pay and conditions. They passed through the protest camp at Tahrir Square, where demonstrators hurled insults, calling them pigs and dogs.Egypt's state news agency announced banks would be closed Monday due to strikes and again Tuesday for a public holiday. Dozens of employees protested against alleged corruption at the state television building, which broadcast pro-Mubarak messages during the massive demonstrations against his rule.The caretaker government met for the first time, and employees removed a huge frame photograph of Mubarak from the meeting room before they convened.The crowds in the protest encampment that became a symbol of defiance against the government thinned out Sunday — the first working day since the regime fell. Traffic flowed through downtown area for the first time in weeks. Troops cleared most of the makeshift tents and scuffled with holdout activists.The protesters have been pressing the ruling military council, led by Defense Minister Hussein Tantawi, to immediately move forward with the transition by appointing a presidential council, dissolving parliament and releasing political prisoners. Thousands have remained in Tahrir Square and some want to keep up the pressure for immediate steps, including repeal of repressive emergency laws that give police broad power.

As Egypt embarked on its new path — one of great hope but also deep uncertainty — the impact of its historic revolt and an earlier uprising in Tunisia was evident in a region where democratic reform has made few inroads.Yemeni police clashed Sunday with protesters seeking the ouster of the U.S.-backed president, and opposition groups planned a rally in Bahrain on Monday. Demonstrators have also pushed for change in Jordan and Algeria, inspired by the popular revolt centered in downtown Cairo.The 18-member Supreme Council of the Armed Forces allayed some concerns by dismissing the legislature, packed with Mubarak loyalists, and sidelining the constitution, used by Mubarak to buttress his rule. Activists said they would closely watch the military to ensure it does not abuse its unchecked power — something that is clearly starting to make some uneasy.The council believes that human freedom, the rule of law, support for the value of equality, pluralistic democracy, social justice, and the uprooting of corruption are the bases for the legitimacy of any system of governance that will lead the country in the upcoming period, the Council said in a statement. They have definitely started to offer us what we wanted,said activist Sally Touma, who also wants the release of political prisoners and repeal of an emergency law that grants wide powers to police. The military council, which has issued a stream of communiques since taking power, said parliamentary and presidential elections will be held, but did not set a timetable. It said it will run the country for six months, or until elections can be held. It said it will represent Egypt in all internal and external affairs and proclaimed the right to set temporary laws. It was expected to clarify the scope of its legal authority as the complex transition unfolds and the role of the judiciary remains unclear.

It said it was forming a committee to amend the constitution and set rules for a popular referendum to endorse the amendments.Protesters are demanding that the constitution be amended to impose term limits on the president, open up competition for the presidency, and remove restrictions on creating political parties. Others want an entirely new constitution.Judge Hisham Bastawisi, a reformist judge, said the military measures should open the door for free formation of political parties and open the way for any Egyptian to run for presidential elections.Hossam Bahgat, director of the non-governmental Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said the steps were positive but warned that Egypt was on uncharted legal ground.In the absence of a constitution, we have entered a sort of twilight zone in terms of rules, so we are concerned, he said. We are clearly monitoring the situation and will attempt to influence the transitional phase so as to respect human rights.Both the lower and upper houses of parliament are being dissolved. The last parliamentary elections in November and December were marked by allegations of fraud by the ruling party, which was accused of virtually shutting out the opposition.The military council includes the chief of staff and commanders of each branch of the armed forces. It took power after protesters' pleas, and promised reform. The institution, however, was tightly bound to Mubarak's ruling system, and it has substantial economic interests that it will likely seek to preserve.The caretaker Cabinet, appointed by Mubarak shortly after the pro-democracy protests began on Jan. 25, will remain in place until a new Cabinet is formed — a step expected to happen after elections.Our concern now ... is security, to bring security back to the Egyptian citizen, Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq said Sunday after the Cabinet met for the first time since Mubarak was ousted.

Security remains thin in Cairo, more than two weeks after police withdrew following clashes with protesters. Some have returned, but many say they might quit, citing humiliation and ill-treatment from people in the street. Others are on leave. Military police are directing traffic and filling in some of the gaps.Shafiq said the military would decide whether Omar Suleiman, who was appointed vice president by Mubarak in a failed attempt to appease protesters, would play some role in Egypt's transition.He might fill an important position in the coming era, the prime minister said.He also denied reports that Mubarak had fled to Germany or the United Arab Emirates, saying the former president remained in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, where he went soon after stepping down.Egyptians became accustomed to scenes of police beating protesters in the early days of the uprising, but on Sunday it was the police who were demonstrating. A large group marched through Tahrir Square to demand higher wages, and sought to absolve themselves of responsibility for the attempted crackdown in the early days of the Egyptian uprising.You have done this inhuman act, a protester said.Said Abdul-Rahim, a low-ranking officer, broke into tears.I didn't do it. I didn't do it, he implored. All these orders were coming from senior leaders. This is not our fault.Police officers scuffled with soldiers outside the Interior Ministry, and some troops fired gunshots in the air.This is our ministry, the police shouted. The people and the police are one hand, they chanted, using an expression for unity. They complained their monthly salaries are 500-600 Egyptian pounds ($85-$100), and soldiers are far better compensated.Interior Minister Mahmoud Wagdy emerged from the building to talk to the police through a megaphone.Give me a chance, he said. Later, the ministry said it was doubling the pay of low-ranking police.

Some police had been accused of stripping off their uniforms and joining gangs of thugs who attacked protesters at the height of the uprising.There were also protests by workers at a ceramic factory, a textile factory and a port on the Mediterranean coast as Egyptians sought to improve their lot in a country where poverty and other challenges will take years to address.Outside the headquarters of one of Egypt's major public banks, several hundred employees protested against alleged corruption by the bank manager, a government-appointed official. Protester Yasmine Haidar said newly appointed advisers to the manager had salaries nearly 70 times higher than her monthly $190.After the president left, we need the rest to leave behind him, she said. The heads of all the rotten fish should be cut.The five top officials at the bank left the building because employees had stopped working.Meanwhile, in Tahrir Square, soldiers tried to convince the few remaining protesters to clear their tents and blankets.An army vehicle drove through the square, broadcasting the military's announcement that it would dissolve parliament and suspend the constitution. Soldiers got out of the car to converse with protesters about the ruling council's plans. Some people clapped and cheered.Some protesters were unsatisfied, and gathered with a wooden cross and a copy of the Quran.The government is still in place. The corruption is still here. Emergency laws are still here, said Mohammed Ahmed, an accountant. When it is a civil state and we have a parliamentary system and political detainees are released, then we go.

MUSLIM NATIONS

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abbas' cabinet to resign on Monday: sources
– Sun Feb 13, 3:07 pm ET

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – The Palestinian cabinet will tender resignations Monday after which Prime Minister Salam Fayyad will select new ministers at the request of President Mahmoud Abbas, political sources said.The shake-up, disclosed to Reuters Sunday, was long demanded by Fayyad and some in Abbas's Fatah faction. It follows the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to a popular revolt that has set off reform calls throughout the Arab world.There will be massive change in the composition of the government, one political source said of the planned mass-resignations in Abbas's Palestinian Authority, which was formed under 1993 interim peace deals with Israel.Another source said: Dr. Fayyad will immediately start his discussion with the factions to form the cabinet. Some ministers will keep their portfolios.Bankrolled by international donors and engaged in security coordination with Israel, the Palestinian Authority has a limited mandate in the occupied West Bank. It lost control of the Gaza Strip to Hamas Islamists in a 2007 civil war.

Abbas's credibility has been further sapped by long-stalled negotiations with Israel on an accord founding a Palestinian state. Hamas spurns permanent coexistence with the Jewish state.Of the 24 posts in Fayyad's cabinet, only 16 are currently staffed. Two ministers resigned and six are marooned in Gaza. Of those present in the cabinet, some face allegations of incompetence.The Palestinian Authority announced Saturday it would seek new legislative and presidential elections by September but Hamas rejected that call and said it would not take part in the poll, nor recognize the results.(Reporting by Mohammed Assadi and Ali Sawafta; Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)

Egypt unrest puts Mideast peace efforts on hold By JOSEF FEDERMAN, Associated Press – Sun Feb 13, 4:22 pm ET

JERUSALEM – Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's downfall appears to have nudged Israel and the Palestinians toward some common ground: Neither side seems to think now is the time for brave moves toward peace.For Israel, Mubarak's departure has left behind an all-consuming worry that the influence of Islamic extremists will grow, and the two countries' historic 1979 peace treaty could be in jeopardy. For the Western-backed Palestinian leadership, the fall of Egypt's strongman deprives them of a key mediator with the Israelis and — just as crucially — with their Palestinian rivals in the militant Islamic Hamas movement.Both sides are now waiting to see what kind of Egyptian government emerges in Mubarak's wake. It's one more distraction preventing Israelis and Palestinians from reviving a U.S.-backed peace push that ground to a halt only weeks after it started last year.The Palestinians were already reeling from last month's leaks to Al-Jazeera TV disclosing that they had offered deep concessions to Israel in past peace talks. The revelations triggered public outrage. Hoping to diffuse the anger on the street, the Palestinians are now focused on moving ahead with long-delayed elections.One Palestinian official said that with both sides preoccupied and disillusioned it was once again up to America to push for peace.When it comes to the Palestinian people, this is a test for the Americans, said Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the top Palestinian decision-making body, the Palestine Liberation Organization's executive committee. They must understand it's a critical issue.She said that just as President Barack Obama ultimately sided with the Egyptian protesters who brought down Mubarak, he should change what is viewed by the Palestinians as an unfair pro-Israel bias.

In a step to prepare for fall elections called in response to the Egypt turmoil, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and his Cabinet plan to resign Monday, a Palestinian official said. Fayyad will form a new Cabinet with more officials from President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party, he said, to give them a boost against Hamas rivals, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because no announcement was made.Obama made Mideast peace a top priority upon taking office two years ago, believing that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would remove a major source of tension in the region. He personally presided over the relaunch of peace talks at the White House last September, pledging to forge an agreement within one year.The talks broke down just three weeks later with the expiration of an Israeli slowdown on settlement construction, and Obama's September target for an agreement has since appeared increasingly unrealistic. The Palestinians say there can be no good-faith negotiations if Israel continues to build settlements on the occupied lands they claim for a future independent state.Palestinian officials claim that even with the Middle East in turmoil, Israeli settlement construction remains the top obstacle to peace.But the U.S.'s inability to coax Israel into a settlement freeze is just one of the issues dogging peace efforts.The Palestinians are still recovering from last month's leak of dozens of sensitive negotiating documents to the Al-Jazeera satellite channel, and the Egyptian unrest continues to ripple throughout the region.

The Al-Jazeera documents, which showed that Abbas and other top officials were amenable to key concessions to Israel during failed peace talks in 2008, deeply embarrassed the Palestinian leader and over the weekend compelled his chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, to resign.On Saturday, pushed by both the Al-Jazeera leaks and the events in Egypt, Abbas' government said it would hold long overdue general elections by September.Abbas has repeatedly delayed elections, both due to fears that his Fatah Party would lose, and because of the geographical split in Palestinian society.Abbas governs from the West Bank while the rival Hamas militant group rules the Gaza Strip, having taken it over by force in 2007. The Palestinians hope to turn both territories — located on opposite sides of Israel — into a state. Elections could conceivably provide a way for the rivals to reconcile, though Hamas has said it will boycott the vote.In the absence of peace talks, presidential aide Yasser Abed Rabbo said the Palestinians would spend the coming months preparing for the elections, pursuing reconciliation and trying to rally international support for Palestinian independence at the United Nations. They have set September as an informal target date for declaring statehood. For Israel, the reluctance to resume talks is far more straightforward.Mubarak's downfall has robbed Israel of a key ally and raised concerns that the radical Muslim Brotherhood could play a role in a future Egyptian government. The Egyptian army's pledge on Saturday to preserve a bedrock peace treaty with Israel helped ease fears.At a time of such great uncertainty, Israeli officials are highly reluctant to turn over full control of territory on their doorstep to Abbas, a man they view as well-intentioned but weak.

Just as Abbas' forces lost control of Gaza to Hamas, they fear the same thing could happen in the West Bank, putting a hostile group just a few miles from the country's largest cities.Some, however, took the view that in the long run, the changes under way in the region could boost prospects for peace.The good thing could be that we see more democratic regimes here, and a democratic regime is more stable and more likely perhaps to conclude peace agreements, said Eytan Gilboa, an analyst at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv.Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank, and Aron Heller in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

US military chief meets new Israeli commander
– Sun Feb 13, 1:40 pm ET

JERUSALEM – The U.S. military chief has met the incoming Israeli military commander at a time when turmoil in Egypt has left other nations in the region nervous.Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is visiting Israel briefly for talks apparently aimed at reassuring Israel, which is concerned about instability in Egypt and the future of a 1979 peace treaty.Mullen met the incoming Israeli military chief of staff, Benny Gantz, who was approved by Israel's Cabinet on Sunday and takes over Monday. Mullen has talks scheduled with Israel's defense minister and president.The U.S. commander arrived in Israel from Jordan, where he met King Abdullah II. The king replaced his Cabinet in response to demonstrations triggered by the mass protests in Egypt.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS WILL BE USED.

PSALMS 97:3
3 A fire goeth before him, and burneth up his enemies round about.

REVELATION 14:18-20
18 And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire; and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe.
19 And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.
20 And the winepress was trodden without the city,(JERUSALEM) and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.(200 MILES) (THE SIZE OF ISRAEL)

ISAIAH 66:15-18
15 For, behold, the LORD will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire.
16 For by fire and by his sword will the LORD plead with all flesh: and the slain of the LORD shall be many.
17 They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating swine's flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith the LORD.
18 For I know their works and their thoughts: it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and see my glory.

ISAIAH 26:21
21 For, behold, the LORD cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.(WW3,1/2 earths population die).

ISAIAH 13:6-13 KJV
6 Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.
7 Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt:(FROM FRIGHT)
8 And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.
9 Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.
10 For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.
11 And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.
12 I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir.
13 Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.

ISAIAH 24:17-23 KJV
17 Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth.
18 And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit; and he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare: for the windows from on high are open, and the foundations of the earth do shake.
19 The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly.
20 The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again.
21 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth.
22 And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited.
23 Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the LORD of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously.

2 TIMOTHY 3:1
1 This know also, that in the last days perilous (DANGEROUS) times shall come.

JOEL 2:3,30
3 A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.
30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.

ZECHARIAH 14:12-13
12 And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.
13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour.(1/2-3 BILLION DIE IN WW3)

EZEKIEL 20:47
47 And say to the forest of the south, Hear the word of the LORD; Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall devour every green tree in thee, and every dry tree: the flaming flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall be burned therein.

ZEPHANIAH 1:18
18 Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the LORD'S wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land.

MALACHI 4:1
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.

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.

REVELATION 9:18
18 By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.

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

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

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

Iran steadily produces enriched uranium: IAEA head
FEB 14,11

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Iran is steadily producing enriched uranium, the head of the UN nuclear monitoring organization said in an interview published The Washington Post Monday.Yukia Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, expressed concern it might be pursuing military goals.Iran is somehow producing uranium enriched to 3.5 percent and 20 percent. They are producing it steadily, constantly, Amano told the paper.Iran is at loggerheads with the West over its nuclear programme of uranium enrichment, and the last round of talks between Tehran and the world powers broke down in Istanbul in January.Western powers led by the United States suspect Iran is masking a weapons drive under the guise of a civilian atomic programme, a charge strongly denied by the Islamic republic.Iran is currently under four sets of UN sanctions and other unilateral punitive measures imposed by several countries, including the United States and the European Union.We receive information from various countries and collect information from our own sources that give us concern over the possible use of nuclear materials for military purposes - in the past and perhaps now, Amano said.But the IAEA did not have hard evidence implicating Tehran in nuclear bomb making, he said.We are not sure if they are hiding something, Amano noted.We don't have a smoking gun. We have concerns.

ISRAEL SATAN COMES AGAINST

1 CHRONICLES 21:1
1 And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.

Gaddafi tells Palestinians: revolt against Israel By Ali Shuaib And Salah Sarrar – Sun Feb 13, 5:37 pm ET

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Palestinian refugees should capitalize on the wave of popular revolts in the Middle East by massing peacefully on the borders of Israel until it gives in to their demands, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said on Sunday.Gaddafi is respected in many parts of the Arab world for his uncompromising criticism of Israel and Arab leaders who have dealings with the Jewish state, though some people in the region dismiss his initiatives as unrealistic.He was giving his first major speech since a popular uprising in neighboring Egypt forced President Hosni Mubarak to resign, an event which electrified the Arab world and prompted speculation that other Arab governments could also be toppled.Fleets of boats should take Palestinians ... and wait by the Palestinian shores until the problem is resolved, Gaddafi was shown saying on state television. This is a time of popular revolutions.

We need to create a problem for the world. This is not a declaration of war. This is a call for peace, he said in a speech given to mark the birthday of the Prophet Mohamed, a holy day in the Islamic calendar.He also said: All Arab states which have relations with Israel are cowardly regimes.Palestinians have long demanded that refugees who fled or were forced to leave in the war of Israel's creation in 1948 should be allowed to return, along with their descendants.Israel says any resettlement of Palestinian refugees must occur outside of its borders.

ISLAMIST MILITANTS

Gaddafi also issued a call to Muslim countries to join forces against Western powers. He said the world was divided into white, denoting the United States, Europe and their allies, and green for the Muslim world.The white color has decided to get rid of the green color, Gaddafi said. These countries should be united against the white color because all of these white countries are the enemies of Islam.He said violent acts committed by Osama Bin Laden's al Qaeda network went against Islam because they killed innocent people. But he said there was a political explanation for the emergence of militant Islamists.Why did this movement emerge? Regardless of its behavior, in my analysis this movement appeared in response to the American arrogance toward the Islamic nation and in response to its hegemony of the Islamic world, Gaddafi said.It was a response to ... the submission of rulers in the Islamic world, the subservience of rulers in the Islamic world to this arrogance from Europe and the United States, he said.Gaddafi has for decades challenged what he describes as Western imperialism. His oil exporting country spent years under international sanctions for seeking banned weapons and sponsoring militant groups.These were lifted in 2004 when Gaddafi renounced his previous activities, though he still frequently deploys his colorful rhetoric against the West.(Additional reporting by Souhail Karam in Rabat; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Jon Boyle)

Brazil, Germany, India, Japan demand UN change
– Fri Feb 11, 7:51 pm ET

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – Brazil, Germany, India and Japan said Friday that they would press for concrete action this year to open up the UN Security Council to new members.Foreign ministers from the four nations met at the UN headquarters to step up their campaign even though there is no broad acceptance within the 192 UN members on how to reform the world body's supreme peace and security body.Pressure is mounting here at the United Nations for the UN membership to finally face the challenge of addressing Security Council reform in a realistic manner, adjusting it to the current geo-political realities, said Brazil's Foreign Minister Antonio de Aguiar Patriota after the meeting.The four nations believe that we should work towards concrete outcome in the current session of the general assembly, which ends in September, he added.India's Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna said the response that we are getting is overwhelming and we feel confident that we can move in that direction.He said the four would press ahead for reform of the Security Council on an urgent basis.Britain, China, France, Russia and United States have been the only permanent members of the Security Council, able to veto any resolution, since its creation in 1945. The number of non-permanent members was increased from six to 10 in 1963.Brazil, Germany, India and Japan, the so-called Group of Four (G4), renewed their longstanding campaign to get permanent seats on the Security Council last year.

On top of the G4, African nations believe they should have up to two permanent seats on the council, with South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt all considered contenders. Arab and Latin American nations are also demanding stronger representation.Change requires a two thirds majority at the General Assembly, however, and reform efforts have repeatedly floundered on which nations should get a permanent seat and how other places should be divided up.The United States and other permanent members oppose various parts of the G4 ideas made public so far. Diplomats say China could try to block India or Japan getting a permanent place.Patriota acknowledged that there is still no consensus on the important aspects of the reform and the four are testing different ideas.The objectives are well known, I think the challenge is to find a formula that will obtain the widest possible acceptance.Germany's Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle refused to comment on reported Italian opposition to his country's claims to a permanent seat.But Westerwelle stressed that the campaign for change has majority backing within the United Nations.It is not a minority idea, it is something that a clear majority wants: reform of the United Nations, he said.We think it is certainly not in our national interest what we are doing here. If the United Nations will not reflect the world as it is in our days, the authority of the United Nations will decrease, he warned.Japan's State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Takeaki Matsumoto put his country's backing behind the new commitment to gain a concrete outcome.

EU, IMF regret Greek furore over asset sale call
– Sun Feb 13, 9:31 am ET

ATHENS (AFP) – The EU, the IMF and the European Central Bank said Sunday they had the deepest respect for Greece's austerity efforts and that a furore over their demand for a huge asset sale was regrettable.Our collaboration in this effort has always been, and continues to be, based on mutual trust, the three organisations which are closely supervising Greece's economic recovery said in a statement.We recognize the difficult challenges facing the Greek economy and we have the deepest respect for the tremendous efforts being made by the Greek people.It is regrettable if a different impression was perceived at any time, said the three, commonly called the troika in Greece.A quarterly progress mission by the EU, the IMF and the ECB, which in May extended 110-billion-euros ($149 billion) to rescue Greece from bankruptcy, concluded Friday with a news conference in which their auditors said 50 billion euros' worth of state assets should be privatised by 2015.The Greek government initially appeared to take the demand in stride but in a dramatic turnaround some 10 hours later government spokesman George Petalotis rejected the demand as interference in Greek internal affairs.The behaviour of the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank representatives... was unacceptable, Petalotis said.We asked them to help and are fully meeting our obligations. But we did not ask anybody to meddle in the internal matters of the country, he said.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou's office later said he had personally complained to IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn and had also called EU economic affairs commissioner Olli Rehn over the issue.It was the first time since Greece's debt rescue by the EU, the IMF and the European Central Bank in May that the two sides seemed to be at odds over what the next steps of Greek economic recovery should entail.Greece's public debt stands at around 300 billion euros after years of large public deficits that in 2009 stood at 15.4 percent of output, more than five times the allowed EU level.A planned extension of austerity reforms to 2015, two years after the government's current mandate, has prompted speculation that the government could call early elections.

IRAN WORRIED ABOUT CITIZENS PROTESTING

CIA AGENT CNN I WAS JUST LISTENING TO AND FAREED ZAKARIA WAS JUST ON SAYNG BY NEXT FRIDAY THE PEOPLE WILL PROTEST AGAIN BECAUSE THE ARMY HAS DONE NOTHING SINCE TAKING OVER RULE IN EGYPT.AND ITS ELBARADEI THE AMERICAN PUPPET WHO HAS TOLD ZAKARIA THIS.IF THIS WILL HAPPEN,I PREDICT THE LEADERS OF THE MOVEMENT WILL BE THAT GOOGLE HACK GHONIM AND ELBARADEI,BOTH PUPPETS OF THE U.S.A. I CAN TELL AMERICA WANTS ELBARADEI AND THAT GOOGLE HACK GHONIM IN QUICK TO GO AFTER IRAN AND ITS NUCLEAR SITE.THEN THE CIA WILL EASILY BE ABLE TO CONTROL THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD AND TEAM UP WITH THEM TO DO FALSE FLAGS ON COUNTRIES AND OBAMA WILL SAVE THE EARTH BY STOPPING THESE FALSE TERROR ATTACKS.OBAMA WILL DO ANYTHING FROM HERE ON IN TO WIN THE 2012 ELECTIONS.GET READY FOLKS FOR LOTS OF FALSE FLAG TERROR ATTACKS WORLDWIDE FROM HERE ON IN.

The Facebook Freedom Fighter-Wael Ghonim’s day job was at Google. But at night he was organizing a revolution.FEB 13,2011

After spending almost two weeks in detention, Ghonim found himself anointed a leader by the leaderless movement he'd helped to create.The telephone call from Cairo came late on Thursday, Jan. 27. I think they’re following me, the caller told the friend on the other end. I’m going to destroy this phone.And then the line went dead.Soon after, so did cell phones across Egypt, and then the Internet, as authorities cut communication in a last-ditch effort to halt the protests gripping the country.The only trace the caller left was in cyberspace, where he had delivered a haunting message via Twitter: Pray for #Egypt.Three days later in Washington, D.C., Nadine Wahab, an Egyptian émigré and media-relations professional, sat staring at her computer, hoping rumors of the caller’s disappearance weren’t true.Suddenly his screen name flashed to life. She stared at the message.Admin 1 is missing, it said. This is Admin 2.

Admin 1 was the caller, the anonymous administrator of a Facebook page that had played a crucial role in inspiring the uprising in Cairo. He had left Wahab with a contingency plan. If he disappeared, Wahab should wait until Feb. 8, two weeks from the date of the first protest, before she revealed his identity and sounded the alarm. At all costs, she was to maintain the appearance of normalcy on the page.
The Agony and the Ecstasy The contingency plan had made no mention of an Admin 2, and Wahab worried that the message might be a trap.For the next week, Wahab and her small cadre of online associates became immersed in what seemed like a shadowy cyberthriller. At its center was a bespectacled techie named Wael Ghonim, a 30-year-old father of two, and Google’s head of marketing in the Middle East.Months of online correspondence between Ghonim and Wahab, parts of which were provided to NEWSWEEK, as well as telephone and online conversations with the magazine, reveal a man who adopted a dead man’s identity to push for democracy, taking on a secret life that nearly consumed him.Ghonim had received a master’s degree in marketing and finance from American University in Cairo and began working for Google in late 2008. In little more than a year, he was promoted to head of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa, a position based in Dubai, where he and his family moved into a house in one of the city’s affluent suburbs.

Ghonim and Wahab met electronically last spring, after Ghonim volunteered to run the Facebook fan page of Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian Nobel Prize winner who had emerged as a key opposition leader; Wahab offered to help with PR. Ghonim had a strong tech background, having already founded several successful Web ventures. But it was his marketing skills that would fuel his transformation into Egypt’s most important cyberactivist.Under Ghonim, ElBaradei’s page, which promoted democratic reform, grew rapidly. He surveyed its fans for input, pushing ideas like crowdsourced video Q&As. Voting is the right way to represent people in a democratic way,he wrote Wahab in May. We use it even inside Google internally. Even when our CEO is live, if someone posts a tough question and others vote, he must answer it.
Ghonim thought Facebook could be the ideal revolutionary tool in Egypt’s suffocating police state. Once you are a fan, whatever we publish gets on your wall, he wrote. So the government has NO way to block it later. Unless they block Facebook completely.As the page grew, it became increasingly consuming, and Ghonim began to feel he was leading two separate lives. In the morning I lead a 1m budget, he mused to Wahab in June. At night, I am a video editor at YouTube.That month, a young Alexandria businessman named Khaled Said, who had posted a video on the Web showing cops pilfering pot from a drug bust, was assaulted at an Internet café by local police. They dragged him outside and beat him to death in broad daylight. Photos of his battered corpse went viral.

Ghonim was moved by the photos to start a new Facebook page called “We Are All Khaled Said,to which he began devoting the bulk of his efforts. The page quickly became a forceful campaign against police brutality in Egypt, with a constant stream of photos, videos, and news. Ghonim’s interactive style, combined with the page’s carefully calibrated posts—emotional, apolitical, and broad in their appeal—quickly turned it into one of Egypt’s largest activist sites.Only select people, including Wahab, who quickly signed on to help, knew of Ghonim’s involvement with the page. To run the page, Ghonim had assumed the pseudonym El Shaheed, or The Martyr, to protect himself and commemorate the dead man—creating a persona that became one of Ghonim’s most powerful tools. My purpose, he said in a conversation with Wahab, is to increase the bond between the people and the group through my unknown personality. Thisway we create an army of volunteers.On Jan. 14, protests in Tunisia felled that country’s longstanding dictator, and Ghonim was inspired to announce, on Facebook, a revolution of Egypt’s own. Each of the page’s 350,000-plus fans was cordially invited to a protest on Jan. 25. They could click yes,no, or maybe to signal whether they’d like to attend.In the space of three days, more than 50,000 people answered yes. Posing as El Shaheed in a Gmail chat, Ghonim was optimistic but cautioned that online support might not translate into a revolt in the streets.

The bottom line is: I have no idea, he said. While some commentators hyped that the internet is making a revolution, others proclaimed that the revolution can’t be tweeted, he said. I don’t know, and I don’t give a s--t. I’m doing what it takes to make my country better.Ghonim implored his Facebook fans to spread word of the protest to people on the ground, and he and other activists constantly coordinated efforts, combining online savvy with the street activism long practiced by the country’s democracy movements. Ghonim seemed to view the page both as a kind of central command and a rallying point—getting people past the psychological barrier.

Ghonim insisted that neither he nor anyone else was in charge. The real driving force behind the protest, he predicted, would be the people he was trying to empower. What you don’t understand, and it seems what you don’t want to understand, is that this protest doesn’t have real organizers, he told NEWSWEEK.It’s a protest without a leader.Despite his insistence on anonymity, Ghonim was far from humble. BTW, I want my photo to be on the cover of the magazine, he joked.When reminded that this might compromise his still-hidden identity, he suggested using a photo of the Guy Fawkes mask worn by the protagonist in V for Vendetta, a film about a mysterious revolutionary, and insisted on being referred to as V in any stories, before eventually settling for El Shaheed.An American NGO had contacted him to offer financial assistance, he claimed. I replied with two words, he said. F--k You.In another conversation, he mocked the idea that any politician could corral the growing protest push. A virtual guy that they don’t know is telling them what to do, he said. I have the people on my side.Ghonim seemed to think the anonymous persona was an equalizer that could prevent the protest push from being hijacked—by politicians like ElBaradei, groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, perhaps even by Ghonim himself. I’ll keep my identity anonymous even if a revolution kicks in and this government is kicked, he said. Cause the reason why I think we are f--ked up in this country is that everyone is looking for his personal fame. Everyone starts somewhere with good intentions. Then eventually they get corrupted.

He had already laid the groundwork for the El Shaheed persona to live on without him, acknowledging in another conversation with NEWSWEEK that the moniker of The Martyr might come to represent his own fate. It was clear, as he flew to Egypt to join the protest, that he would be under threat.On Tuesday, Jan. 25, Ghonim joined the first demonstration, along with hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Esraa Abdel Fattah, another organizer, who knew Ghonim but didn’t realize he was El Shaheed, saw him that night in Tahrir Square, along with scores of other protesters.In an online conversation the following day, Ghonim was ecstatic but also worried. Activists, he said, were beginning to disappear. On Thursday night, as organizers were planning another major protest the following day, Facebook began flicking in and out of service. Facebook is blocked again. Sons of bitches. I was just announcing the locations, Ghonim said.A few hours later, he made the ominous phone call to his friend, saying he thought he was being followed.The next morning, plainclothes police officers came for him.

Ghonim—Admin 1—was now missing.

Admin 2, who asked not to be named—I’m the guy who’s the backup in case something really horrible happens, he said in a Skype call with NEWSWEEK—had his own protocol to follow. Once he realized Ghonim was missing, he notified Google and Ghonim’s family, and then set to work changing passwords and securing things on the Web. I wanted the page to stay alive. The most important thing is the page itself,he said. The page is more important than any individual.In fact, he worried that by changing the passwords, he could be risking greater harm for Ghonim—what if police were torturing him for access to the site? I either protect my friend or I continue the movement, he said, clearly haunted by the dilemma. It turns out I am not a good friend.Still following Ghonim’s instructions, Admin 2 proceeded to pore through the El Shaheed inbox to find the person Ghonim had described only as the girl in the United States, whom he had been told to contact.When Nadine Wahab got his message, she first worried that Admin 2 was Egyptian police, but she quickly saw that Admin 2 was equally frightened, and the two began posting on the Facebook page, posing as El Shaheed. (Admin 2 also gave a sealed envelope to a friend, with instructions to open it if he went missing for more than a day. The envelope contained user names, passwords, and instructions on maintaining the site.)

For more than a week, it was unclear whether Ghonim had even been arrested—an exhaustive search of local prisons and hospitals turned up nothing. Google put out a statement that Ghonim was missing, without mention of his political involvement. The company also set up a phone line and email address for any tips about his whereabouts.As the search continued, and word of the missing Google executive spread, rumors began swirling on the streets and in the press that Ghonim was El Shaheed, which Ghonim’s family feared might put him in even greater danger. Protesters in Tahrir Square, meanwhile, announced him as their symbolic leader. Facebook pages titled We Are All Wael Ghonim began to emerge.Between frantic calls to the State Department, Wahab tried desperately to quash the rumors—even emailing NEWSWEEK from the El Shaheed address in an attempt to suggest that all was well.

All the while, she felt like she was trapped in a movie plot. She put pillow feathers beneath her front door, to tell if someone sneaked into the house. (Her cat dragged them away.) It’s been a theater of the absurd, Wahab said recently. How did I get myself into this? As Ghonim sat blindfolded in detention, trapped in the custody of Egypt’s notorious security forces, the very people he’d spent the last eight months excoriating online, his main concern, he later said in a television interview, was that his identity would be revealed to the protesters.Ghonim spent nearly two weeks in custody with no idea of the fomenting revolution taking place outside. When he was finally released, Ghonim discovered that he had become the face of Egypt’s revolt—the exact fate he had said he wanted to avoid.In a phone interview with NEWSWEEK hours after his release on Monday, Feb. 7, in which he finally admitted his real identity, Ghonim tried at first to distance himself from this new role. That was not my plan, and I hate it, but it was out of my hands, he said.I’m not a hero. I’m just one guy. Actually I did the easiest thing, which was writing. A lot of people died.Yet as Mubarak clung to power, and then finally fell, protesters continued to look to Ghonim for a voice.The anonymous persona was finally dead. But in its absence, it seemed Ghonim had been anointed a leader by the leaderless movement he’d helped to create.

Protesters Clash with Egyptian Military Regime
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu FEB 13,11

Hosni Mubarak is gone as president, but the revolution remains - at least for now. The military is in full control in Egypt, where it clashed with protesters after clearing Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Many citizens have returned to work for the first time in two weeks.Hundreds of thousands of people had filled the square the past two weeks, demanding the ouster of now former-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and implementation of reforms for a democratic Egypt. Mubarak quickly became the principle symbol of protesters' anger, and there even have been calls for his death sentence for corruption.With Mubarak out of office, the people’s revolution has run out of steam as the military fills a vacuum of power, but thousands of opponents, fearing that the military will be a carbon copy of Mubarak's rule, say they are determined to remain in the square until reforms are instituted.The Egyptian military issued a statement saying it will act as a caretaker government, promising a peaceful transition of authority in a free democratic framework which allows an elected civilian authority to rule the country, to build a free democratic country.

Theoretically, elections must be held in 60 days, but the military’s emergency legal takeover supersedes stipulations in the Egyptian constitution.Soldiers surrounded Tahir Square on Sunday and opened the area to traffic, sometime forcefully but without the brutal violence used by police in the early days of the protests.The demonstrations prior to the downfall of Mubarak were spontaneous and leaderless, spurred by the revolution in Tunisia. Mohammed ElBaradei, the former director of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, belatedly encouraged the revolution but said from the outset he was not interested in succeeding Mubarak.The revolutionary movement severely crippled Egypt's economy, especially the tourism industry, a factor that has dampened enthusiasm of continue mass protests. We are hungry, we want to eat, we want to work, businessman Ayman el Myonir told CNN.One factor absent in the dramatic events in Egypt is Israel, which many advisors in the Obama administration have blamed as reason for most problems in the Middle East because of the failure of the Palestinian Authority to reach an agreement with the Jewish state. The Arab-Israeli struggle was barely mentioned during the two weeks of protests in Egypt.Many demonstrators brought Israel into their agenda by demanding that Egypt break the peace treaty that was established with Israel on 1979, in which Israel surrendered the Sinai Peninsula. The military has declared it will not tamper with the treaty.The fall of the Mubarak regime has left the area prone to a de facto takeover of Bedouin and Hamas terrorists, many of whom have operated from Gaza.
(IsraelNationalNews.com)

Ashton endorses army as guardians of Egypt's transition
LEIGH PHILLIPS 11.02.2011 @ 20:09 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Union appears to have endorsed the role of the army as guardians of the transition process, while paying tribute to protesters for their calmness. The priority now, Brussels believes, is on regional stability.We respect the decision Mubarak has taken to stand down. We have witnessed scenes of people entering [Tahrir] Square by their hundreds and thousands, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton told a hastily arranged press conference on Friday evening (11 February).I pay enormous tribute to the calm way people have conducted themselves, she said.To those charged with guardianship of the transition process, we have high expectations that they will deliver to the people,she added, addressing the army.She appeared to back the role of the Supreme Council of the armed forces in shepherding developments. The army has always had a very particular relationship with the people. They have been given the opportunity to take the country forward.People really feel a process is underway.She said the EU could help with organising elections: The EU has a lot of knowledge and experience in building democracy. I hope to personally go.

An al Arabiya reporter asked her to compare this moment of freedom to the fall of the Berlin Wall, but she demurred.I never like to make too much of a comparison. The situation is different. It is fantastic to see all the young people to come out and to say way they want in a calm and orderly way. We want them to have a future.She refused to be drawn on when Europe hopes to see fresh elections, Ashton said: It is for the people to decide. Democracy is a process not a moment.Throughout the upheaval in the country, the EU has tailed Washington's endorsement of a orderly transition and looked not to immediate elections, but those already scheduled for September.We will help and support you but we will not dictate, Ms Ashton said. We hope to see a plan, taking Egypt from here through elections and beyond.

Regional stability

In a co-ordinated statement, Ms Ashton together with EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso called for an acceleration in the government's national dialogue process.It is important now that the dialogue is accelerated leading to a broad-based civilian government which will respect the aspirations of, and deliver stability for, the Egyptian people, the communique said.
Brussels however stresses regional stability as the priority.An orderly and irreversible transition towards democracy and free and fair elections is the shared objective of both the EU and the Egyptian people ... The preservation of regional peace and stability should remain our shared priority.The future of Egypt rightly remains in the hands of the Egyptian people. We call on army to continue to act responsibly and to ensure that the democratic change takes place in a peaceful manner.No decisions have been taken on an EU freeze of Mr Mubarak's assets, Ms Ashton added.

MEP mistrusts army

Meanwhile, the chairwoman of the European Parliament's Human Rights Sub-committee, Finnish MEP Heidi Hautala warned that the Egyptian army has been a cornerstone of the Mubarak regime and that the EU should proceed with caution in its dealings with the generals.The Egyptian military must immediately release political prisoners and accept an independent enquiry on the serious allegations of torture by the military police, she said. She urged the EU to closely follow the actions of the Armed Forces Supreme Council that is now ruling Egypt. We cannot befriend rulers or temporary military governments whose commitment for human rights are not clearly evidenced.Let us see how genuine the promises of the Egyptian army are regarding the lifting of the state of emergency.She also said the EU should not be endorsing a leadership role for Omar Suleiman, the head of the dreaded General Intelligence Directorate since 1993 until appointed vice-president two weeks ago. He was the man who announced on television on Friday evening the resignation of Mr Mubarak, but his current position is unclear.It should be made clear that Egypt's vice-pesident cannot lead the transition with cases of torture on his record while he headed Egypt's Intelligence Directorate.He does not fulfill the minimal conditions,she warned.

Sighs of relief as Egyptian leader resigns
VALENTINA POP 11.02.2011 @ 18:21 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU figureheads on Friday (11 February) welcomed the resignation of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak, who stepped down after weeks of street protests and handed over power to the military ahead of elections due this fall.The news was broken late Friday afternoon by Mr Mubarak's vice-president, himself formerly in charge of the country's intelligence service, renowned for its cruel treatment of suspects, but condoned by the US government due to his help with interrogating radical Islamists.In these difficult circumstances that the country is passing through, President Hosni Mubarak has decided to leave the position of the presidency,Mr Suleiman said on national TV.He has commissioned the armed forces council to direct the issues of the state.The end of the 30-year long Mubarak regime has not come about easily. More than 300 people are believed to have died in street clashes with police since the beginning of the anti-government demonstrations, on 25 January.The EU, at the beginning cautious in supporting the popular movement, has since grown gradually critical of Mr Mubarak - as Washington had also taken a cautious stance due to Israel's concerns that a regime change may usher in radical Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Reacting to the news, EU Parliament chief Jerzy Buzek however called this a historic day of peaceful, lasting and democratic change. I fully support the aspirations of the Egyptian people,he said in a press statement.But he also urged to carefully cherish and protect the flowers of freedom obtained,especially in regards to the military taking over the reigns of power ahead of general elections due this fall. EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton took a less enthusiastic line. The EU respects President Mubarak's decision today,she said in a press statement.By standing down, he has listened to the voices of the Egyptian people and has opened the way to faster and deeper reforms, she added, while also saluting the courage of Egyptians demonstrating peacefully for democracy.Ms Ashton repeated calls for an orderly and irreversible transition towards democracy, urging for the general elections to be free and fair.

Iranian diplomat: Egyptian protesters should beware EU help
ANDREW RETTMAN 11.02.2011 @ 23:22 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Iran's ambassador to the EU, Ali Asghar Khaji, has said that Egyptian protesters should be wary of EU and US patronage of the revolution due to the Western powers' historic relations with the Mubarak elite.Speaking to EUobserver on Friday (11 February) at an event in Brussels to mark the 32nd anniversary of the Islamic revolution in Iran, Mr Khaji said: The Egyptian people should remember that the US and the EU were the principal supporters of President Mubarak. After his election, [US] President Obama gave his first speech to the Islamic world in Cairo [in 2009].The ambassador welcomed the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, who abdicated power earlier the same day. It is very important that the Egyptian people have taken a step toward realising their objectives. The coincidence that this took place on the anniversary [of the Iranian revolution] is a good omen, he said.It is a very important and positive development for the region. We consider Egypt to be part of our region. It is a fellow Islamic country.Asked if Iranian authorities are concerned that the current of popular uprisings in north Africa could embolden anti-government movements in Iran, he added: No. We are not concerned. You must remember that the Iranian state is also the product of a popular revolution.In terms of official ideology, Iran is depicting the events in Egypt as a mirror image of events in Iran in 1979, when Islamist opposition forces overthrew the regime of US ally, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Iran would like to see the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood party in Egypt share power in a future coalition government.It is concerned that if the EU-and-US-backed former Egyptian spy chief, Omar Suleiman, and the Egyptian army take over, it would be as if the revolution never happened.It is also concerned that Egyptian opposition forces have no clear vision how to rule the country. One negative option for Tehran is a political vacuum in Egypt that would allow EU and US ally Turkey to take over Egypt's role as the pre-eminent Islamic power in the region. Iran has become an international pariah primarily due to its alleged nuclear weapons programme.But Mr Khaji's remarks about the popular nature of the 1979 uprising come in the context of Iran's brutal repression of latter-day anti-government movements. In 2009, at least 15 Green Movement demonstrators were killed in the streets. Iran in January executed on drugs charges a Dutch-Iranian woman who took part in the protests, prompting the Netherlands to cut diplomatic ties.On the likelihood of an Egypt-type uprising in Iran in future, some analysts believe the Iranian opposition's moment of opportunity came and went two years ago.But one diplomat from the region at Mr Khaji's anniversary event on Friday was not so sure.The revolution in Egypt happened because people were kept under pressure for too long, like a spring, the contact said. You can keep a spring under pressure even for 1,000 years. But after 1,001 years, it will rebound.The Wall Street Journal on Friday reported the Green Movement has galvanised 30,000 people to take part in anti-government protests in the coming days on the back of events in Egypt.

Iran Blocks Pre-Rally Internet Sites; US: Tehran Running Scared
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu FEB 13,11

Revolution fever is returning to Tehran, where new and illegal protests are planned tomorrow as the United States charges Iran is scared of the will of its people.The regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already blocked several opposition websites, including one named Bahman, the 11th month of the Persian calendar, in advance of the planned rally Monday.Elsewhere in the Middle East, opposition elements in Yemen have accepted an offer by President Ali Abdullah Saleh not run again after demonstrations threatened stability in the country. Bahrain’s kingdom tried to stem trouble by offering every family $2,653 to praise the 10th anniversary of its constitution.In Algeria, where protesters defied a ban on demonstrations, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika promised to lift emergency laws.Iran was the scene of massive opposition rallies nearly two years ago after Ahmadinejad won re-election in a vote that opponents charged was riddled with fraud. Leaders of the opposition remain under house arrest, and others have been taken into custody ahead of Monday’s planned rally.

The Islamic Republic has praised the Egyptian uprising as being a copy of the Islamic revolution that overthrew the Shah in 1979, but the prospect of new protests in the streets of Tehran have prompted charges of a double standard against the government.Ahmadinejad as recently as last week told Egyptian anti-Mubarak protesters, The Iranian nation is your friend and it is your right to freely choose your path. We will soon see a new Middle East materializing without America and the Zionist regime and there will be no room for world arrogance in it.The Obama administration, which had remained silent on Iran during the Egyptian turmoil, charged on Saturday that the Iranian regime is scared of the will of its people. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, We know that what they really are scared of is exactly what might happen.Iran has jammed BBC’s Persian-language television channel and has arrested several foreign journalists. The recent arrests and effort to block international media outlets underscores the hypocrisy of the Iranian leadership, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said.By announcing that they will not allow opposition protests, the Iranian government has declared illegal for Iranians what it claimed was noble for Egyptians, he added in a statement. We call on the government of Iran to allow the Iranian people the universal right to peacefully assemble, demonstrate and communicate that's being exercised in Cairo.
(IsraelNationalNews.com)

PA CONTINUES TO PRAISE FEMALE TERRORIST BOMBER
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/142293

Outcry at EU plan to mix aid and foreign policy
ANDREW WILLIS 10.02.2011 @ 17:53 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Discussions are under way for a potential merger between the EU's humanitarian aid and crisis management budgets after 2013, raising concerns among a number of NGOs and MEPs that EU aid could become increasingly politicised.
The commission's humanitarian aid budget in 2010 was €1.2 billion, administered by Bulgarian commissioner Kristalina Georgieva, while crisis management resources are being increasingly directed by the EU's new External Action Service under Italian official Agostino Miozzo, working for high representative Catherine Ashton.There is an idea on the table [to merge the two budgets] which is being considered by some people,a commission official working in the humanitarian aid sector said on Thursday (10 February) on condition of anonymity. It's not a formal proposal at the moment and it's not something we would support.The commission is to come forward with a blueprint for the EU's next multi-annual budget in June this year. But some MEPs are already warning they will not tolerate any transfer of humanitarian decision making, implied by the budget merger, to Catherine Ashton, who answers primarily to member states despite her official duties in the EU-centric commission.I don't know where the idea came from or how developed it is. It may be a wrongly interpreted idea of efficiency or part of the inter-institutional power politics currently going on, Dutch Socialist MEP Thijs Berman told this website.If it ends up in the June proposals I will fight it. Humanitarian aid needs to be impartial in order to ensure that all parties in a recipient country accept it as not favouring one side or the other. This is also crucial for the safety of humanitarian aid workers distributing support on the ground.

The issue of securing political goals through the distribution of aid has come to the fore recently, with UK Prime Minister David Cameron suggesting this week that money from the EU's neighbourhood policy instrument for Egypt could be cut if Cairo fails to implement desired reforms.We have spent billions of taxpayers' money in Egypt and neighbouring countries, Mr Cameron said on Monday. But in Egypt, there has been little or no progress on torture, the judiciary, democracy or ending a 30-year-old state of emergency.This, say NGOs, is precisely the kind of realpolitik that should not influence where the EU delivers money to those suffering from floods, earthquakes or political violence, for example.Scrapping the budget for humanitarian aid would be a fatal error. It would not only tarnish the excellent credentials of the commission as an outstanding humanitarian actor but also endanger millions of people, said Elise Ford, head of Oxfam Internationals EU office.A report published by the NGO on Thursday entitled Whose Aid is it Anyway? says the commission has so far managed to fight the global trend towards humanitarian and development aid being driven by political interests.Government humanitarian agencies in Canada, Spain and the European Commission, for example, have developed principled policies that allocate humanitarian aid according to transparent indices of global needs, to ensure that different crises and countries are not overlooked or over-funded, says the report.

Undermining such progress, however, long-standing political and security biases have since 2001 being written formally into some donors' aid policies and practices, as in the USA and France,continues the document.Other donors, including Australia, the UK and the European Union, may be on the cusp of bringing aid budgets newly under the sway of such priorities.Under a deal reached last year, the EU external action service will now make key decisions under the bloc's development policy, a decision which also faced much opposition.

Apocalypse by Giulio Meotti FEB 13,11

Several days ago a video was shot in the Israeli town of Netivot, a dusty corner of the world in the Negev desert. The latest Hamas rocket missed a wedding party by few meters. In Netivot, hundreds of people were drinking, laughing and dancing. It would have been a massacre.The video explains better than thousands of analyses the current historical process arrayed against Israel: the collapse of the Arab regimes that signed peace deals with the Jewish State; the strengthening of the terror organizations Hamas and Hezbollah; Turkey that has been lost to the West; a weak US administration and political Islam that is on the rise everywhere. The only development awaited is the announcement that Iran has developed the atomic bomb.

In the mindset of the Islamic multitudes and Western appeasers, the goal is clear: they want an Israel that packs up and goes away.A fascinating novel written by the Dutch best selling author Leon de Winter, titled The Right of Return, tells a story of Israel’s imagined apocalypse and all out war for survival. The book is going to be published in many European countries, but not in Tel Aviv. The Israeli publishing houses perceive the book as demoralizing, but it is not meant to cause demoralization, it is meant to awaken the public to the dangers surrounding Israel.

De Winter’s novel describes a State of Israel in 2024 that is reduced to the City-State of Tel Aviv. Even adjoining Jaffa is cut off from the city.I gave in to the deepest pessimistic corners of my soul, De Winter said. It is not what I think will happen, but rather what I fear could happen. A friend and defender of Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her fight against Islamic ideology, De Winter describes an Israel that is basically the area of greater Tel Aviv, with the northern part of the Negev, including Dimona. The north is gone, the south is gone, Jerusalem is gone. No Jews are living in Judea and Samaria.What’s left is a heavily fortified and secured but small area, with the remaining and largely old population centered around Tel Aviv. Cameras and drones keep vigil on the Jewish population, and the rare journey into the unprotected Palestinian-dominated territories requires passing through check-points that are far more heavily secured than contemporary ones.The book has a desperate undertone. The country falls apart because of external pressure - continuous rocket bombardments and suicide attacks - that cause families to leave, and in addition, because of internal erosion: the Israeli Arabs and the hareidi Jews move away from the Zionist heart of the nation. Those with a criminal record, those who are old, a group fascinated to be part of an apocalypse, and those who just want to stay and defend the country no matter what happens, stay behind.

De Winter doesn’t tell us what happened, whether Israel shrinks because of a peace process or because of the Islamic war of attrition. I couldn’t make it concrete, I had to jump over those years, but I always imagined a process of erosion, an increasing pressure with terrorist attacks that will pressure people to leave, De Winter tell us. What we see happening in Egypt right now, is part of that process.The main focus of the book is on Bram Mannheim, originally a Dutch Jew who makes aliyah when he is 18 and becomes, at a young age, a celebrated leftist professor. He teaches history of the Middle East at Tel Aviv University. But tragedy hits when, in 2008, he has moved to Princeton with his wife and young son to become a professor there. His 4-year-old son disappears. His marriage collapses, his life stops, and he turns into a madman, a psychotic transient wandering around in the States.His old father finds him and brings him back to Tel Aviv. And in 2024, Bram runs a little bureau that helps parents of children who have disappeared as well in this Jewish ghetto-city called Israel. And after a devastating attack, apparently executed by a young Jew who disappeared in the same period as Bram’s child, Bram starts to hope again, starts to think that maybe his son is still alive, just like these other Jewish boys - a group that seems to have been kidnapped and trained to become Muslim suicide killers, Jewish children who will come back to Israel to kill their parents.

De Winter is one of the rare Jewish writers of the Diaspora still able to shed the real drama of Israel’s struggle for survival. I am an admirer of the Zionist project, of the historical necessity to create a safe haven for European Jews as a reaction to 19th century anti-Semitism, De Winter said. I fear that Israel will not see its first centennial. Not because of a lack of vitality or commitment, but because after many decades in a region where they have been met with violence, wars, and hatred, the Israeli Jews will conclude that they love their children more than their country.De Winter’s unique book is a glimpse into Israel’s nightmares, however, they remain nightime imaginings.De Winter projects rational, Western, self-oriented processes on Israeli society, a society that has fought many major wars and suffered suicide bombers, rockets and other forms of barbarian terror non-stop since Israel's 1948 creation as a state. Perhaps due to having had enough of bloodsoaked Jewish history in the Diaspora, as he says, perhaps because Israelis are a tough breed, perhaps out of idealism, or all of the above, the 62 years of Israel's existence that include over a thousand civilian victims in one year in what is known as the Oslo War of terror, have had an effect opposite to the one De Winter predicts for 2024.Adar 9, 5771 / 13 February 11

Parshah Ki Tisa - Exodus 30:11-34:35

SINCE WHAT ISRAEL READS WILL BE FULFILLED IN THAT WEEK I WILL BE PUTTING THE WEEKLY TORAH PORTION ON FOR ALL OF US TO KEEP TRACK OF ISRAEL HAPPENINGS.

TORAH PORTION FROM FEB 13 2011 6PM - FEB 19 6PM 2011

EXODUS 30:11 - 34:35
11 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
12 When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the LORD, when thou numberest them; that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them.
13 This they shall give, every one that passeth among them that are numbered, half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary: (a shekel is twenty gerahs:) an half shekel shall be the offering of the LORD.
14 Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty years old and above, shall give an offering unto the LORD.
15 The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less than half a shekel, when they give an offering unto the LORD, to make an atonement for your souls.
16 And thou shalt take the atonement money of the children of Israel, and shalt appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation; that it may be a memorial unto the children of Israel before the LORD, to make an atonement for your souls.
17 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
18 Thou shalt also make a laver of brass, and his foot also of brass, to wash withal: and thou shalt put it between the tabernacle of the congregation and the altar, and thou shalt put water therein.
19 For Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet thereat:
20 When they go into the tabernacle of the congregation, they shall wash with water, that they die not; or when they come near to the altar to minister, to burn offering made by fire unto the LORD:
21 So they shall wash their hands and their feet, that they die not: and it shall be a statute for ever to them, even to him and to his seed throughout their generations.
22 Moreover the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
23 Take thou also unto thee principal spices, of pure myrrh five hundred shekels, and of sweet cinnamon half so much, even two hundred and fifty shekels, and of sweet calamus two hundred and fifty shekels,
24 And of cassia five hundred shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary, and of oil olive an hin:
25 And thou shalt make it an oil of holy ointment, an ointment compound after the art of the apothecary: it shall be an holy anointing oil.
26 And thou shalt anoint the tabernacle of the congregation therewith, and the ark of the testimony,
27 And the table and all his vessels, and the candlestick and his vessels, and the altar of incense,
28 And the altar of burnt offering with all his vessels, and the laver and his foot.
29 And thou shalt sanctify them, that they may be most holy: whatsoever toucheth them shall be holy.
30 And thou shalt anoint Aaron and his sons, and consecrate them, that they may minister unto me in the priest's office.
31 And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, This shall be an holy anointing oil unto me throughout your generations.
32 Upon man's flesh shall it not be poured, neither shall ye make any other like it, after the composition of it: it is holy, and it shall be holy unto you.
33 Whosoever compoundeth any like it, or whosoever putteth any of it upon a stranger, shall even be cut off from his people.
34 And the LORD said unto Moses, Take unto thee sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum; these sweet spices with pure frankincense: of each shall there be a like weight:
35 And thou shalt make it a perfume, a confection after the art of the apothecary, tempered together, pure and holy:
36 And thou shalt beat some of it very small, and put of it before the testimony in the tabernacle of the congregation, where I will meet with thee: it shall be unto you most holy.
37 And as for the perfume which thou shalt make, ye shall not make to yourselves according to the composition thereof: it shall be unto thee holy for the LORD.
38 Whosoever shall make like unto that, to smell thereto, shall even be cut off from his people.

EXODUS 31:1-18
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
2 See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah:
3 And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship,
4 To devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass,
5 And in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship.
6 And I, behold, I have given with him Aholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan: and in the hearts of all that are wise hearted I have put wisdom, that they may make all that I have commanded thee;
7 The tabernacle of the congregation, and the ark of the testimony, and the mercy seat that is thereupon, and all the furniture of the tabernacle,
8 And the table and his furniture, and the pure candlestick with all his furniture, and the altar of incense,
9 And the altar of burnt offering with all his furniture, and the laver and his foot,
10 And the cloths of service, and the holy garments for Aaron the priest, and the garments of his sons, to minister in the priest's office,
11 And the anointing oil, and sweet incense for the holy place: according to all that I have commanded thee shall they do.
12 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
13 Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the LORD that doth sanctify you.
14 Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.
15 Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.
16 Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant.
17 It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.
18 And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.

EXODUS 32:1-35
1 And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.
2 And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.
3 And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron.
4 And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
5 And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the LORD.
6 And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.
7 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves:
8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
9 And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people:
10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.
11 And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand?
12 Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people.
13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever.
14 And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.
15 And Moses turned, and went down from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony were in his hand: the tables were written on both their sides; on the one side and on the other were they written.
16 And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.
17 And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, There is a noise of war in the camp.
18 And he said, It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome: but the noise of them that sing do I hear.
19 And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.
20 And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.
21 And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee, that thou hast brought so great a sin upon them?
22 And Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord wax hot: thou knowest the people, that they are set on mischief.
23 For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us: for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.
24 And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.
25 And when Moses saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies:)
26 Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD'S side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.
27 And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.
28 And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.
29 For Moses had said, Consecrate yourselves to day to the LORD, even every man upon his son, and upon his brother; that he may bestow upon you a blessing this day.
30 And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses said unto the people, Ye have sinned a great sin: and now I will go up unto the LORD; peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin.
31 And Moses returned unto the LORD, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold.
32 Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin––; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.
33 And the LORD said unto Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book.
34 Therefore now go, lead the people unto the place of which I have spoken unto thee: behold, mine Angel shall go before thee: nevertheless in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them.
35 And the LORD plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made.

EXODUS 33:1-23
1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Depart, and go up hence, thou and the people which thou hast brought up out of the land of Egypt, unto the land which I sware unto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, Unto thy seed will I give it:
2 And I will send an angel before thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite:
3 Unto a land flowing with milk and honey: for I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiffnecked people: lest I consume thee in the way.
4 And when the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned: and no man did put on him his ornaments.
5 For the LORD had said unto Moses, Say unto the children of Israel, Ye are a stiffnecked people: I will come up into the midst of thee in a moment, and consume thee: therefore now put off thy ornaments from thee, that I may know what to do unto thee.
6 And the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments by the mount Horeb.
7 And Moses took the tabernacle, and pitched it without the camp, afar off from the camp, and called it the Tabernacle of the congregation. And it came to pass, that every one which sought the LORD went out unto the tabernacle of the congregation, which was without the camp.
8 And it came to pass, when Moses went out unto the tabernacle, that all the people rose up, and stood every man at his tent door, and looked after Moses, until he was gone into the tabernacle.
9 And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the LORD talked with Moses.
10 And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle door: and all the people rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent door.
11 And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp: but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle.
12 And Moses said unto the LORD, See, thou sayest unto me, Bring up this people: and thou hast not let me know whom thou wilt send with me. Yet thou hast said, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight.
13 Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, shew me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight: and consider that this nation is thy people.
14 And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.
15 And he said unto him, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence.
16 For wherein shall it be known here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight? is it not in that thou goest with us? so shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth.
17 And the LORD said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken: for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name.
18 And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.
19 And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.
20 And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.
21 And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock:
22 And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by:
23 And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.

EXODUS 34:1-351 And the LORD said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.
2 And be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning unto mount Sinai, and present thyself there to me in the top of the mount.
3 And no man shall come up with thee, neither let any man be seen throughout all the mount; neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount.
4 And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone.
5 And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD.
6 And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,
7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.
8 And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped.
9 And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance.
10 And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation: and all the people among which thou art shall see the work of the LORD: for it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee.
11 Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite.
12 Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee:
13 But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:
14 For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:
15 Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice;
16 And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods.
17 Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.
18 The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt.
19 All that openeth the matrix is mine; and every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male.
20 But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty.
21 Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest.
22 And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end.
23 Thrice in the year shall all your men children appear before the Lord GOD, the God of Israel.
24 For I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the LORD thy God thrice in the year.
25 Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning.
26 The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.
27 And the LORD said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel.
28 And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.
29 And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses' hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him.
30 And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him.
31 And Moses called unto them; and Aaron and all the rulers of the congregation returned unto him: and Moses talked with them.
32 And afterward all the children of Israel came nigh: and he gave them in commandment all that the LORD had spoken with him in mount Sinai.
33 And till Moses had done speaking with them, he put a vail on his face.
34 But when Moses went in before the LORD to speak with him, he took the vail off, until he came out. And he came out, and spake unto the children of Israel that which he was commanded.
35 And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses face shone: and Moses put the vail upon his face again, until he went in to speak with him.

PROPHETS PORTION

1 KINGS 18:1-39
1 And it came to pass after many days, that the word of the LORD came to Elijah in the third year, saying, Go, shew thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth.
2 And Elijah went to shew himself unto Ahab. And there was a sore famine in Samaria.
3 And Ahab called Obadiah, which was the governor of his house. (Now Obadiah feared the LORD greatly:
4 For it was so, when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the LORD, that Obadiah took an hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water.)
5 And Ahab said unto Obadiah, Go into the land, unto all fountains of water, and unto all brooks: peradventure we may find grass to save the horses and mules alive, that we lose not all the beasts.
6 So they divided the land between them to pass throughout it: Ahab went one way by himself, and Obadiah went another way by himself.
7 And as Obadiah was in the way, behold, Elijah met him: and he knew him, and fell on his face, and said, Art thou that my lord Elijah?
8 And he answered him, I am: go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here.
9 And he said, What have I sinned, that thou wouldest deliver thy servant into the hand of Ahab, to slay me?
10 As the LORD thy God liveth, there is no nation or kingdom, whither my lord hath not sent to seek thee: and when they said, He is not there; he took an oath of the kingdom and nation, that they found thee not.
11 And now thou sayest, Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here.
12 And it shall come to pass, as soon as I am gone from thee, that the Spirit of the LORD shall carry thee whither I know not; and so when I come and tell Ahab, and he cannot find thee, he shall slay me: but I thy servant fear the LORD from my youth.
13 Was it not told my lord what I did when Jezebel slew the prophets of the LORD, how I hid an hundred men of the LORD'S prophets by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water?
14 And now thou sayest, Go, tell thy lord, Behold, Elijah is here: and he shall slay me.
15 And Elijah said, As the LORD of hosts liveth, before whom I stand, I will surely shew myself unto him to day.
16 So Obadiah went to meet Ahab, and told him: and Ahab went to meet Elijah.
17 And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Art thou he that troubleth Israel?
18 And he answered, I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the LORD, and thou hast followed Baalim.
19 Now therefore send, and gather to me all Israel unto mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the groves four hundred, which eat at Jezebel's table.
20 So Ahab sent unto all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together unto mount Carmel.
21 And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.
22 Then said Elijah unto the people, I, even I only, remain a prophet of the LORD; but Baal's prophets are four hundred and fifty men.
23 Let them therefore give us two bullocks; and let them choose one bullock for themselves, and cut it in pieces, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under: and I will dress the other bullock, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under:
24 And call ye on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the LORD: and the God that answereth by fire, let him be God. And all the people answered and said, It is well spoken.
25 And Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, Choose you one bullock for yourselves, and dress it first; for ye are many; and call on the name of your gods, but put no fire under.
26 And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made.
27 And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.
28 And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.
29 And it came to pass, when midday was past, and they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded.
30 And Elijah said unto all the people, Come near unto me. And all the people came near unto him. And he repaired the altar of the LORD that was broken down.
31 And Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, unto whom the word of the LORD came, saying, Israel shall be thy name:
32 And with the stones he built an altar in the name of the LORD: and he made a trench about the altar, as great as would contain two measures of seed.
33 And he put the wood in order, and cut the bullock in pieces, and laid him on the wood, and said, Fill four barrels with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice, and on the wood.
34 And he said, Do it the second time. And they did it the second time. And he said, Do it the third time. And they did it the third time.
35 And the water ran round about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water.
36 And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near, and said, LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word.
37 Hear me, O LORD, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the LORD God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again.
38 Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.
39 And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The LORD, he is the God; the LORD, he is the God.

NEW TESTAMENT PORTION

LUKE 11:14-20
14 And he was casting out a devil, and it was dumb. And it came to pass, when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake; and the people wondered.
15 But some of them said, He casteth out devils through Beelzebub the chief of the devils.
16 And others, tempting him, sought of him a sign from heaven.
17 But he, knowing their thoughts, said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against a house falleth.
18 If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand? because ye say that I cast out devils through Beelzebub.
19 And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out? therefore shall they be your judges.
20 But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you.

ACTS 7:35-8:1
35 This Moses whom they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge? the same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel which appeared to him in the bush.
36 He brought them out, after that he had shewed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, and in the Red sea, and in the wilderness forty years.
37 This is that Moses, which said unto the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear.
38 This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us:
39 To whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt,
40 Saying unto Aaron, Make us gods to go before us: for as for this Moses, which brought us out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.
41 And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice unto the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands.
42 Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness?
43 Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them: and I will carry you away beyond Babylon.
44 Our fathers had the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness, as he had appointed, speaking unto Moses, that he should make it according to the fashion that he had seen.
45 Which also our fathers that came after brought in with Jesus into the possession of the Gentiles, whom God drave out before the face of our fathers, unto the days of David;
46 Who found favour before God, and desired to find a tabernacle for the God of Jacob.
47 But Solomon built him an house.
48 Howbeit the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet,
49 Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my rest?
50 Hath not my hand made all these things?
51 Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.
52 Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers:
53 Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it.
54 When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth.
55 But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God,
56 And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.
57 Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord,
58 And cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet, whose name was Saul.
59 And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.
60 And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
1 And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles.

1 CORINTHIANS 10:1-13
1 Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea;
2 And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea;
3 And did all eat the same spiritual meat;
4 And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.
5 But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
6 Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted.
7 Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.
8 Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.
9 Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents.
10 Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer.
11 Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.
12 Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.
13 There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

2 CORINTHIANS 3:1-18
1 Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you?
2 Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men:
3 Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.
4 And such trust have we through Christ to God–ward:
5 Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God;
6 Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
7 But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away:
8 How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious?
9 For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.
10 For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth.
11 For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious.
12 Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech:
13 And not as Moses, which put a vail over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished:
14 But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ.
15 But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart.
16 Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away.
17 Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.