WEEK OF NOVEMBER 2 THROUGH NOVEMBER 8
Obama-Farrakhan Ties Are Close, Ex-Farrakhan Aide SaysNov. 3….(Newsmax) A former top deputy to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan tells Newsmax that Barack Obama’s ties to the black nationalist movement in Chicago run deep, and that for many years the two men have had “an open line between them” to discuss policy and strategy, either directly or through intermediaries. “Remember that for years, if you were a politician in Chicago, you had to have some type of relationship with Louis Farrakhan. You had to. If you didn’t, you would be ostracized out of black Chicago,” said Dr. Vibert White Jr., who spent most of his adult life as a member and ultimately top officer of the Nation of Islam. White broke with the group in 1995 and is now a professor of African-American history at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. White said Obama was “part of the Chicago scene” where Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. and radicals would go to each other’s events and support each other’s causes. “Even though Chicago is the third-largest city in the country, within the black community, the political and militant nationalist community is very small. So it wouldn’t be uncommon for [Obama and Farrakhan] to show up at events together, or at least be there and communicate with each other,” White told Newsmax. The Anti-Defamation League has denounced Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam as a “hate group.” Farrakhan has called Jews “bloodsuckers,” “satanic” and accused them of running the slave trade. He has labeled gays as “degenerates.” In a 2006 speech, the ADL again condemned Farrakhan when he said: “These false Jews promote the filth of Hollywood that is seeding the American people and the people of the world and bringing you down in moral strength. It's the wicked Jews the false Jews that are promoting lesbianism, homosexuality. It's wicked Jews, false Jews that make it a crime for you to preach the word of God, then they call you homophobic!" Obama was careful to “denounce” Farrakhan’s comments, but not the man, during the Democratic primary season earlier this year, but only after Hillary Clinton called him out for benefiting from Farrakhan’s support. Farrakhan endorsed Obama in a videotaped speech to his followers at Mosque Miryam in Chicago in February. “You are the instruments that God is gonna use to bring about universal change, and that is why Barack has captured the youth,” Farrakhan said. He told the crowd that Obama was the new “messiah.” Once the news media and the Clinton campaign got hold of those comments from Farrakhan, demands mounted from all sides that Obama “renounce” Farrakhan. But as he has done repeatedly throughout this campaign, Obama was careful to parse his words. “You know, I have been very clear in my denunciation of Minister Farrakhan's anti-Semitic comments,” he said during one appearance on “Meet the Press.” “I think that they are unacceptable and reprehensible.” Obama hastened to point out that Farrakhan had been praising him as “an African-American who seems to be bringing the country together. I obviously can't censor him, but it is not support that I sought. And we’re not doing anything, I assure you, formally or informally with Minister Farrakhan.” But Obama, once again, was less than candid. In 1995, according to a profile of Obama that appeared in the Chicago Reader newspaper, Obama “took time off from attending campaign coffees to attend October’s Million Man March in Washington, DC.” At the time, Obama was running for the Illinois Senate from Chicago’s South Side, a seat he won after getting surrogates to challenge the signatures on nominating petitions for his chief rival, the incumbent Alice Palmer. The march, which fell far short of attracting the million men it advertised, was organized by Farrakhan and by Obama’s then-pastor, the anti-white black nationalist Wright. Obama spoke at length with the Chicago Reader upon his return from the Million Man March. “What I saw was a powerful demonstration of an impulse and need for African-American men to come together to recognize each other and affirm our rightful place in the society," he said. “These are mean, cruel times, exemplified by a ‘lock ’em up, take no prisoners’ mentality that dominates the Republican-led Congress,” Obama said. “Historically, African-Americans have turned inward and towards black nationalism whenever they have a sense, as we do now, that the mainstream has rebuffed us, and that white Americans couldn't care less about the profound problems African-Americans are facing." “Black nationalism” is a current of thought and political action in the African-American community that has been championed by the likes of Farrakhan, Wright, Malcolm X, the Black Panthers and Khalid al-Mansour. Obama discussed his attraction to black nationalism at length in his 1995 memoir “Dreams of My Father.” Obama further parsed his words in a Feb. 25, 2008, presentation to a Jewish community meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, where he insisted that Wright “does not have a close relationship with Louis Farrakhan.” And yet, just months earlier, Wright’s Trumpet magazine gave Farrakhan its Lifetime Achievement Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award, saying that Farrakhan “truly epitomized greatness.” That award was the fruit of a long and deep relationship between the two men, White told Newsmax. In 1984, Wright accompanied Farrakhan on his much-criticized trip to meet Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, at a time when Gadhafi was considered an enemy of the United States. Wright also accompanied Farrakhan and Jackson to Syria in 1986, where they successfully negotiated with Syrian strongman for the release of downed American pilot Robert O. Goodman. In addition to the ideological affinity Obama expressed for the black nationalist movement, White believes that Obama owes much of his success as a public orator to speaking techniques that Farrakhan developed over the years, and exploited for years to great success. “If you listen to the rhetoric and you take away Obama’s political jargon, you hear a religious tenor to it that is very much Nation of Islam-like. I don’t know if anyone has ever touched on it, but Obama’s speaking style is very Malcolm-like, very Farrakhan-like,” White said. Any American who has listened to early radio or television interviews of Obama can hear how dramatically Obama’s speaking style has changed since he became a United States senator. In clips dating from 2001 and even early 2004, Obama speaks haltingly and in long, rambling sentences packed with legalese and dense pseudo-academic rhetoric. But not today. “As a former minister of the Nation of Islam, I know how they speak,” White told Newsmax. “I don’t know who was training Obama. But that style is not a ministerial style like in the Christian church. It’s a Nation of Islam style.” White began in the late 1970s as a foot soldier in the Fruit of Islam, the military branch of Farrakhan’s Black Muslim group, then rose to become a minister of the Nation of Islam and a top deputy to Farrakhan himself. Known initially as Brother Vibert L.X., and later as Minister V.L. Muhammad, he parted ways with Farrakhan not long after the Million Man March, after nearly 25 years within the organization. White’s 2002 book “Inside the Nation of Islam” prompted death threats by Farrakhan loyalists, so he left Illinois and moved to Florida to teach at the University of Central Florida. He told Newsmax that Obama’s remarkable speaking style, even his manner of standing at a podium to appear larger than life, is directly copied from Farrakhan. “If the Nation of Islam can’t do anything else, it can train people how to speak. And nobody can outspeak a Muslim minister,” he said. Earlier this year, a pro-Clinton blog run by former CIA officer Larry Johnson unearthed a 2004 photograph showing Michelle Obama and Farrakahn’s wife, Mother Khadijah Farrakhan, at an event hosted by Jackson’s Citizenship Education Foundation. Newsmax queried Obama’s US Senate office, his Chicago office and his campaign press office about his ties to Farrakhan, but did not receive a reply. Ever since he appeared before the annual policy conference of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee in June, Obama has attempted to convince the Jewish community that he is pro-Israel. But his longstanding ties to Farrakhan, Wright and Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi, among others, have disturbed many Jewish community leaders.
Historian: Conditions Are Ripe for a King of IsraelNov. 3….(IsraelNN.com) The current situation in Israel could have all the necessary ingredients for the appointment of a king, according to biblical scholar and historian David Solomon. Speaking today on Israel National Radio, Solomon said that problems and divisions within Israel today and the threats it faces from outside to its security could be interpreted as the conditions that precede the appointment of a king. "We need a unified leadership, we've got anti-Semitic regimes on our doorstep that want to wipe us out, we have fractures within the population," said Solomon. Drawing a parallel between the current "disastrous absence of genuine political and spiritual and religious leadership" in Israel today and the period leading up to the anointing of Israel's first king, Saul, he said that many people might view a theocratic monarchy as an answer to Israel's troubles today as it was then. Discussing the period of the early chapters of the book of Samuel, dated historically at around 1100 BC, Solomon said that the situation at that time saw a crisis of political and religious leadership based upon corruption, exploitation and the abuse of power. It was as a result of this that the people of Israel turned to the prophet Samuel seeking a different model of leadership, asking instead for a king. But Solomon cautioned against people being too hasty about appointing a king in Israel today. "Every generation that is thinking of adopting a new model of leadership needs to be extremely careful," he said. "Kings can be good but kings can also be very bad." According to Solomon, Jewish History shows that the decision to appoint a king is fraught with problems. While Israel can boast figures like King David and King Hezekiah, it has many more examples of bad kings. "If we had the power to set up a king now, we would have to be extremely careful," he said. Solomon said that it is not simply that one good king could easily be followed by a bad king, but that there is also the problem of how Israel would find the right person to provide the necessary qualities of leadership. "Let's say that we have all the ingredients for a king: how would we go about selecting that king?" he asked. He said the cautionary lesson from the book of Samuel is that people tend to get the king they deserve.
Hizballah Shops for Anti-tank Missiles in MoscowNov. 3….(DEBKA) A Hizballah mission, which arrived in Moscow Tuesday, Oct. 28, was taken around Russian state of the art anti-tank missile factories, including KBP in the town of Tula southwest of Moscow, DEBKAfile’s exclusive military sources report. The Lebanese visitors were treated to a live fire demonstration of various types of missile. They then ordered 3,000 missiles of different types and returned home Saturday, Nov. 1. Tehran is footing the bill. Our sources disclose that the hardware inspected by the Hizballah officers included 9M133 (Nato-coded Spriggan AT-14) which can be launched by helicopter and Kliver, which is an upgraded Kornet-E mounted on vehicles. The Lebanese Shiite terrorist shoppers also placed a large order for RPG-2 rocket-propelled grenades made by Bazalt. In the 2006 Lebanon war, the older RPG-29 used by Hizballah was responsible for most of the hits suffered by Israeli tanks. Last month, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert traveled to Moscow to ask Russian leaders to refrain from selling arms to Syria and Iran, countries at war with Israel. Moscow only promised to reconsider weapons sales capable of upsetting the balance of strength in “sensitive regions” and then went right ahead to sign big arms deals with Damascus and Tehran, and now Hizballah. Sunday, Nov. 2, defense minister Ehud Barak warned Syria that arming Hizballah with new anti-air weapons would force Israel to “consider its position.” Several weeks ago, DEBKAfile reported that Syria had supplied the Shiite group with anti-air missiles supported by radar stations. They are already deployed on two Lebanese peaks, Mt. Sannine and Jebel Barukh, which Hizballah controls.
Obama at Khalidi Bash: Israelis Commit "Genocide," Have "no God-given Right to Occupy Palestine"
Bush to Attend UN Conference on World Religions, CulturesNov. 3….(Fox News) President Bush will join several other world leaders at a General Assembly meeting to promote a global dialogue about religions, cultures and common values, UN and US officials said Friday. The meeting is a follow-up to an interfaith conference in Madrid organized by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and King Juan Carlos of Spain in July which brought together Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and representatives of other religions and sparked hopes of a new relationship among religions. General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann has sent invitations to all 192 UN member states to the high-level meeting on Nov. 12-13 and expects at least 20 or 30 world leaders to attend, his spokesman Enrique Yeves said. Bush will attend on Nov. 13, UN and US officials said. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush "remains committed to fostering interfaith harmony among all religions, both at home and abroad." She said Bush also plans to meet separately with Abdullah. D'Escoto believes the initiative "should be broadened to talking not only about religions but about cultures, about all the common values we have," Yeves said. He would like that we talk not only about dialogue, but about joining forces in order to work together with all these common values to address the major issues that we are facing right now in the world," Yeves said. Abdullah, whose country bans non-Muslims from openly practicing their religion, has called for religious tolerance and said such dialogue is the duty of every human being.
WEEK OF OCTOBER 26 THROUGH NOVEMBER 1
Supreme Court Asked to Halt Tuesday's Vote(Constitutional crisis feared over Obama's 'qualifications') Oct. 31….(WND) The US Supreme Court is being asked to help the nation avoid a constitutional crisis by halting Tuesday's election until Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama documents his eligibility to run for the top office in the nation. Democratic attorney Philip Berg had filed a lawsuit alleging Obama is ineligible to be president because of possible birth in Kenya, but a federal judge dismissed the complaint claiming Berg lacks standing to bring the action. The 34-page memorandum that accompanied the court order from Judge R. Barclay Surrick concluded ordinary citizens can't sue to ensure that a presidential candidate actually meets the constitutional requirements of the office. Instead, Surrick said Congress could determine "that citizens, voters, or party members should police the Constitution's eligibility requirements for the Presidency," but that it would take new laws to grant individual citizens that ability. "Until that time," Surrick says, "voters do not have standing to bring the sort of challenge that Plaintiff attempts to bring." Berg has maintained that uncertainty about how the US does enforce the requirements of presidency may result in a constitutional crisis should an ineligible candidate win the office. In a statement today, Berg said he is applying to Justice David Souter for an "Immediate Injunction to Stay the Presidential Election of November 4, 2008." "I am hopeful that the US Supreme Court will grant the injunction pending a review of this case to avoid a constitutional crisis by insisting that Obama produce certified documentation that he is or is not a "natural born" citizen and if he cannot produce documentation that Obama be removed from the ballot for president," Berg said. "We must legally prevent Obama, the unqualified candidate, from taking the office of the presidency of the United States," Berg said. The issue of Obama's eligibility first got traction among Internet bloggers and later was heightened when Obama’s “live birth” certificate became questionable. The issue gained more attention when Berg informed radio talk show icon Michael Savage that he had obtained the admission of Obama’s grandmother that she was at his birth, in Kenya. "This is a question of who has standing to stand up for our Constitution," Berg asks, "If I don't have standing, if you don't have standing, if your neighbor doesn't have standing to ask whether or not the likely next president of the United States, the most powerful man in the entire world, is eligible to be in that office in the first place, then who does?" Berg filed suit in US District Court in August, alleging Obama is not a natural-born citizen and is thus ineligible to serve as president of the United States. Berg demanded that Obama provide documentation to the court to verify that the candidate was born in Hawaii, as Obama contends, and not in Kenya, as Berg believes.
America's Future is in Our Own Hands(Hal Lindsey quotes founders in arguing for biblically based voting) Oct. 31….(WND) As a "Watchman on the Wall," I believe Election 2008 will permanently determine the future path America will take. I fear that most Americans do not understand the true issues they are voting on. Among other things, this election may determine whether the government will be empowered to forcefully take money earned by some Americans and redistribute it as it chooses to others. As I have taught before for 50 years, there are certain divine institutions God set forth in the Bible. They are intended for the good and welfare of all mankind. To whatever degree a people honors these institutions, they will be blessed, preserved and prospered. First, the institutions of freedom to choose one's own destiny and the "sanctity of life," these were enshrined in the US, Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." We are given by God, not our government, the freedom to choose our own destiny and to pursue a career that brings prosperity and happiness. Our forefathers knew only too well that a government that is powerful enough to confiscate and redistribute wealth is also strong enough to take away your freedom to choose and pursue happiness. Thomas Jefferson clearly warned us about this: "Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have." In this election, we are making a choice, either continue to pursue our own destiny and well-being, or give the government the power to establish a "welfare state" in which it slowly takes over our basic freedoms. James Madison, considered the father of our Constitution, wrote, "We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." John Adams also spoke along these lines, "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." As you prepare to vote, remember what made this country great and what has kept God's protection over her. Another Founding Father and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush, summed it up well: "By removing the Bible from schools we would be wasting so much time and money in punishing criminals. Take the Bible out of our schools and there would be an explosion in crime." Look at what's happening in our country today. We have driven God and the Bible out of our schools. Now, we don't have enough jails to hold the criminals. We kill our children by the millions through abortion. There are those standing in this election who favor the right to destroy babies born alive during an abortion. So much for the sanctity of life! Some call ours a "negative constitution" since its authors devoted more effort to "limiting government" than they did to "empowering" it. The Bible does not teach that governments should have the authority to seize the fruits of one's labor and give it to others. It encourages us in every way to voluntarily give to the poor and give them a hand up, not a hand out. The great patriot Patrick Henry warned of this when he said, "Now what liberty can there be where property is taken away without consent?" There is another issue in this election that will be decided directly in some states through ballot initiatives and constitutional amendments. On the national level, it will be influenced by the beliefs and promises of the next president. Society's sanction of homosexual marriage presents a direct attack on the divine institution of marriage. The Bible teaches that God created woman to be a "compatible companion" and "intimate mate" for man. Woman's very physiology shows that she was created physically to correspond to man in an intimate sexual relation that would result in perpetuation of the human race. This election, at both the state and federal levels, will determine the path America takes. We will choose either to sustain that institution or abandon it. Of course, marriage is critical to the health of the family, which is the most basic foundation of society. In whatever society you find strong families, you will find a strong nation. It's there that children are to be trained in love, honesty, integrity, honor and self-control. When this duty is sabotaged by ungodly unions or is assumed by the government, the society begins to fall apart. Both of these threats to the family are emerging in America. We destroy God's institutions at our peril. As conscientious citizens and Christians, we need to vote for those candidates who most aspire to biblical family values. And we need to vote for those initiatives and amendments that reflect God's intent for our society. I challenge you to vote. Do not be influenced by tricky polls designed to discourage you from voting. And when you vote, vote your conscience and your values. You owe it to God and our forefathers who sacrificed to give us this freedom to vote. God can only use your vote if you cast your vote. Take the time to study the sample ballot and weigh the issues against biblical principles. Weigh the character of the candidates. Heed the exhortations of the godly Founding Fathers of our great country. Patrick Henry wisely said, "Bad men cannot make good citizens. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience are incompatible with freedom." Godly morality is important. Thomas Jefferson also advised, "A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of the laborer the bread he has earned. This is the sum of good government. Government must not be put in the place of God. At best, it is created to enable each citizen to pursue his or her own destiny. By all means, pray for God's guidance and vote your conscience. This election may determine our country's continued blessing or its decline. May God bless America, again.
Israel & America: The End of the Special Relationship? Oct. 30….(By Jonathan Rosenblum/JWR) For those inclined to see the workings of Divine Providence in human history, the special affinity of the American people for Israel provides a happy example. If Israel could have only one consistent ally in the world, it would surely have picked the world's (still) most powerful nation. Without the United States, Israel would be hard pressed to obtain the weapons needed to defend itself. American popular support for Israel has many sources. The first is historical. The Puritan founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony self-consciously modeled themselves on the ancient Hebrews, and styled themselves as the New Israel. The Hebrew Bible provided their guidance. All the early presidents of Yale College were Hebraists, and the College's insignia was patterned on the Urim ve'Tumim (breastplate) worn by the Kohen Gadol (high priest). To this day, Americans remain by far the most religious people in the Western world. Seventy million American evangelicals constitute Israel's most ardent supporters. Americans have always tended to be jealous of their sovereignty and willing to defend against any threat to their liberty. The state motto of New Hampshire, "Live Free or Die," captures that spirit. As such, they admire Israel's doughty self-defense against far more numerous enemies. In Western terms, America is a Center-Right country. A major aspect of the American exceptionalism discussed by historians is its failure to develop a class-based political movement. That too has strengthened the bonds to Israel. Among American liberals, who tend to see the world in terms of victims and oppressors, 59% view the Palestinians more or equally sympathetically (according to a 2002 Gallup poll). Among conservatives, whose focus is on particular values and the determination to defend them, 59% view Israel more favorably. The presence in America of the world's largest Jewish community, a community that is both wealthy and politically active, has also shored up American support for Israel. (That community, however, is diminishing both in numbers and concern with Israel; many of the most active supporters of Israel in Congress come from states with few Jews.) Belief in American Exceptionalism, its chosenness, has always played a major role in American civic religion. The two dominant conceptions of American foreign policy, isolationism and liberal internationalism, are both predicated upon an assumption of American moral superiority. Isolationists fear contamination from the "foreign entanglements," of which President George Washington warned of in his Farewell Address. Liberal internationalists seek to remake the world in America's image. Senator Barack Obama represents a third foreign policy approach, what Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington calls the "cosmopolitan." Far from taking American virtue as its starting point, the cosmopolitan seeks to remake America in Europe's image. Thus Senator Obama presented himself to Europeans last summer as a citizen of the world, one of them. "Mr. Obama," in the words of Fouad Ajami, "proceeds from the notion of American guilt. He accepts the Western European critique of America's aggressiveness, and seeks to restore American "moral standing" in the eyes of the world. He shares the Europeans contempt for the terminology of good and evil: "A lot of evil's been perpetuated based on the claim that we were fighting evil," he says. If his heart thrilled at the sight of Iraqis twice braving suicide bombers to go the polls, he kept it to himself. The war in Iraq, in his view, was nothing more than a "cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors, to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the cost in lives lost and in hardships born." And he expresses understanding of the grievances for the perpetrators of evil, Hamas, Hizbullah, even the perpetrators of 9/11, which he characteristically portrayed as part of "an underlying struggle between worlds of plenty and worlds of want". He voted against a Senate bill to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. Senator Obama's most fervent support has come from the university campuses and cultural elites, where attitudes tend most to resemble those of Western Europeans and where scorn for those who "cling to guns or religion" runs rampant. The campuses also happen to be the redoubts of the greatest hostility to Israel. An America that more closely resembles Western Europe will not be good for Israel. Western Europeans consistently rate Israel the greatest threat to world peace. And they are remarkably cavalier about Israel's defense of its own existence. Recent memory does not include any Israeli response to attack that the Europeans did not deem disproportionate. The Western European countries have done little to prevent the United Nations from degenerating into an anti-Israel debating society, and a number have supported or abstained on UN Human Rights Council resolutions supportive of anti-Israel "resistance," i.e., terrorism. Many commonly-held attitudes predispose Europeans against Israel. Western Europe is far along a project of transferring political legitimacy from nation-states to supranational organizations, like the European Union, the United Nations and the International Criminal Court. Having achieved their nation-state rather late in the day, the Jews of Israel remain proud of it. To the Europeans, however, a non-Moslem state based on national/religious identity appears an atavism. Senator Obama frequently demonstrates a similar reverence for the UN, and has a long list of international treaty obligations to which he is eager to submit the United States. Europe has adopted a stance of appeasement towards both external threats and to Islamic minorities within. (Ironically, the United States, which offers no special dispensation to Moslems, has done a far better job of integrating Moslem immigrants than European countries.) Europeans' abhorrence of any resort to military action causes them to instinctively recoil from Israel, as the superior military power in the region. Having moved beyond simplistic categories of good and evil, Europeans try to take, at best, an even-handed approach to any conflict, invariably warning, for instance, against a "cycle of violence" whenever Israel responds to attack. Obama's immediate call for "mutual restraint" after the Russian invasion of Georgia was a classic example of that tendency. At worse, European sophistication favors whichever party can present itself as the aggrieved underdog, or serves to mask an ugly cynicism, as in the recent multi-billion deals signed by Austrian and Swiss energy companies with Iran. To the extent that Senator Obama's likely election betokens a move towards a more European America, the special ties that have bound the people of America and Israel show signs of fraying under Obama.
Look Who's Rooting for ObamaOct. 30….(Jerusalem Post) What do Iran's ayatollahs, Hamas terrorists, Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson and Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi have in common? They are all pulling for Barack Obama to win the US presidential election. When Israel's disparate foes manage to rally behind a single candidate, it should set off alarm bells for anyone who cares about the Jewish state. If you think this is just Republican scaremongering, consider the following. Last week, Ali Larijani, the hard-line speaker of the Iranian parliament, told a press conference in Bahrain that "we are leaning more in favor of Barack Obama because he is more flexible and rational" (Agence France Presse, October 22). And then there is the October 19 endorsement that Obama received from Hamas spokesman Ahmed Yousef, who told WABC radio host John Batchelor and World Net Daily's Aaron Klein that "we as Palestinians are thinking that we might have better luck with a new administration, if Obama wins the election. I do believe he will change the American foreign policy in the way they are handling the Middle East." There you have it. Two clear expressions of preference for Obama from two of the leading anti-Israel and anti-Western forces in the Middle East. Both the Iranian regime and the Hamas terrorist organization view Obama in a positive light and hope he will be elected. Their enthusiasm for the senator from Illinois is shared by a number of other long-time enemies of the Jewish state on both sides of the Atlantic. On June 11, Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi, in a speech broadcast on Al-Jazeera, spoke glowingly of the Democratic nominee. According to a translation provided by MEMRI, Gaddafi said, "His name is Obama. All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man. They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency." Back in the US, anti-Semitic firebrand Louis Farrakhan earlier this year labeled Obama "the hope of the entire world" and compared him to the founder of the Nation of Islam, the group Farrakhan heads (Associated Press, February 25). Normally, one would expect that such a motley collection of rogues would be enough to send shivers down the spine of even the most spineless of voters. In the end, who wants to be cheering for the same outcome as Gaddafi and Farrakhan? Nonetheless, if two recent polls are to be believed, Obama seems poised to capture a significant majority of the Jewish vote. A survey released last week by Quinnipiac University found that Jews in the battleground state of Florida are backing Obama by a margin of 77 percent to 20%, while a Gallup survey revealed that nationwide, Jews favor him over Sen. John McCain by 74% to 22%. While that is less than the 80% that Democrats Al Gore and Joe Lieberman garnered in the 2000 election, it is similar to the 75% that John Kerry captured four years ago. One can only shake one's head in bewilderment at such a predilection, particularly in light of Obama's flip-flop on Jerusalem back in June, when he told the annual AIPAC policy conference that he supports the city remaining Israel's united capital, only to back-track from that position the following day. If Obama can't stand firm on the campaign trail on such a basic issue of fundamental importance to Israel and its supporters, how can he be counted on to do so if given the keys to the White House? Any pro-Israel Jews and Christians still sitting on the fence, wondering how to cast their ballot on November 4, would therefore do well to bear in mind the revealing comments made recently by Jesse Jackson. Speaking at the World Policy Forum in Evian, France two weeks ago, Jackson promised that the "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades" will lose influence once Obama is in charge, as he will stop "putting Israel's interests first." "Obama is about change," Jackson observed, "and the change that Obama promises is not limited to what we do in America itself. It is a change of the way America looks at the world and its place in it" (New York Post, October 14). The bottom line is that Obama makes Teheran, Tripoli and Gaza convulse with excitement, and that alone should make the rest of us shudder with fear.
LA Times Refuses to Release Tape of Obama Praising PLO TerroristOct. 30….(Fox News) The Los Angeles Times is refusing to release a videotape that it says shows Barack Obama praising a Chicago professor who was an alleged mouthpiece for the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was a designated terrorist group in the 1970s and '80s. According an LA Times article written by Peter Wallsten in April, Obama was a "friend and frequent dinner companion" of Rashid Khalidi, who from 1976 to1982 was reportedly a director of the official Palestinian press agency, WAFA, which was operating in exile from Beirut with the PLO. In the article -- based on the videotape obtained by the Times, Wallsten said Obama addressed an audience during a 2003 farewell dinner for Khalidi, who was Obama's colleague at the University of Chicago, before his departure for Columbia University in New York. Obama said his many talks with Khalidi and his wife Mona stood as "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases." On Wednesday, John McCain's campaign accused the newspaper of deliberately suppressing information that could establish the link between the Democratic presidential candidate and the former PLO spokesman. "Khalidi was a frequent dinner guest at the Obama's home and at his farewell dinner in 2003 Obama joined the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers in giving testimonials on Khalidi's role in the community," McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb said in a written statement. "The election is one week away, and it's unfortunate that the press so obviously favors Barack Obama that this campaign must publicly request that the Los Angeles Times do its job, make information public." Khalidi is currently the Edward Said professor of Arab Studies at Columbia. A pro-Palestinian activist, he has been a fierce critic of American foreign policy and of Israel, which he has accused of establishing an "apartheid system" of government. The PLO advocate helped facilitate negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in the early '90s, but he has denied he was ever an employee of the group, contradicting accounts in the New York Times and Washington Times. The LA Times told FOXNews.com that it won't reveal how it obtained the tape of Khalidi's farewell party, nor will the newspaper release it. Spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan said the paper is not interested in revisiting the story. "As far as we're concerned, the story speaks for itself," she said. The newspaper reported Tuesday evening in a story on its Web site that the tape was from a confidential source. In recent months Obama has distanced himself from the man the Times says he once called a friend. "He is not one of my advisers. He's not one of my foreign policy people," Obama said at a campaign event in May. "He is a respected scholar, although he vehemently disagrees with a lot of Israel's policy." But on the tape, according to the Times, Obama said in his toast that he hoped his relationship with Khalidi would continue even after the professor left Chicago. A number of Web sites have accused the Times of purposely suppressing the tape of the event, which former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn reportedly attended. Sullivan said she would not give details of what else may be on the tape, adding that anyone interested in the video should read the newspaper's report, which was its final account. "This is a story that we reported on six months ago, so any suggestion that we're suppressing the tape is absurd, we're the ones that brought the existence of the tape to light," Sullivan said. The Los Angeles Times endorsed Obama for president on October 19.
Saudi King Invites Israel to New York Interfaith Conference(Peres, Livni consider attending interfaith dialogue
conference in UN; first time Israel invited to event organized by Saudi Arabia.
'Nothing can purify Islam's reputation except for the extension of Muslims'
hands to their brothers in other religions,' says King Abdullah) 'World is criticizing Islam'During a recent meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Sharm el-Sheik, Peres said Israel welcomed the Arab peace plan. "Peace has never been more possible than it is now. It would be a mistake to miss out on this opportunity," he said. On Saturday King Abdullah, whose country bans non-Muslims from openly practicing their religion, called for religious tolerance and said such dialogue is the duty of every human being. The king also urged fellow Muslims to reach out to non-Muslims as a way to show that Islam is not a violent religion. "I will go to America for the dialogue of followers of religions," the king said at a meeting with Information Minister Ayad Madani and newspaper editors. "The dialogue comes a time when the world is criticizing Islam." "It is regrettable that some of our sons have been tempted by Satan or brothers of Satan," the king added, referring to Muslim militants who have carried out attacks around the world. "Nothing can purify (Islam's reputation) except for the extension of Muslims' hands to their brothers in other religions."
Obama Must Stand Up Now or Step AsideOct. 30….(By Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D.) America is facing potentially the gravest constitutional crisis in her history. Barack Obama must either stand up in a public forum and prove, with conclusive documentary evidence, that he is “a natural born Citizen” of the United States who has not renounced his American citizenship, or he must step down as the Democratic Party’s candidate for President of the United States, preferably before the election is held, and in any event before the Electoral College meets. Because, pursuant to the Constitution, only “a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States at the time of the Adoption of the Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President” (Article II, Section 1, Clause 4). And Obama clearly was not “a Citizen of the United States at the time of the Adoption of the Constitution.” Whether the evidence will show that Obama is, or is not, “a natural born Citizen” who has never renounced his American citizenship is an open question. The arguments on both sides are as yet speculative. But Obama’s stubborn refusal to provide what he claims is “his own” country with conclusive proof on that score compels the presumption that he knows, or at least strongly suspects, that no sufficient evidence in his favor exists. After all, he is not being pressed to solve a problem in quantum physics that is “above his pay grade,” but only asked to provide the public with the original copy of some official record that establishes his citizenship. The vast majority of Americans could easily do so. Why will Obama not dispel the doubts about his eligibility, unless he can not? Now that Obama’s citizenship has been seriously questioned, the burden of proof rests squarely on his shoulders. The “burden of establishing a delegation of power to the United States is upon those making the claim.” Bute v. Illinois, 333 U.S. 640, 653 (1948). And if each of the General Government’s powers must be proven (not simply presumed) to exist, then every requirement that the Constitution sets for any individual’s exercise of those powers must also be proven (not simply presumed) to be fully satisfied before that individual may exercise any of those powers. The Constitution’s command that “no Person except a natural born Citizen shall be eligible to the Office of President” is an absolute prohibition against the exercise of each and every Presidential power by certain unqualified individuals. Actually (not simply presumptively or speculatively) being “a natural born Citizen” is the condition precedent sine qua non for avoiding this prohibition. Therefore, anyone who claims eligibility for “the Office of President” must, when credibly challenged, establish his qualifications in this regard with sufficient evidence. In disposing of the lawsuit Berg v. Obama, which squarely presents the question of Obama’s true citizenship, the presiding judge complained that Berg “would have us derail the democratic process by invalidating a candidate for whom millions of people voted and who underwent excessive vetting during what was one of the most hotly contested presidential primary in living memory.” This is exceptionally thin hogwash. A proper judicial inquiry into Obama’s eligibility for “the Office of President” will not deny his supporters a “right” to vote for him, rather, it will determine whether they have any such “right” at all. For, just as Obama’s “right” to stand for election to “the Office of President” is contingent upon his being “a natural born Citizen,” so too are the “rights” of his partisans to vote for him contingent upon whether he is even eligible for that “Office.” If Obama is ineligible, then no one can claim any “right” to vote for him. Indeed, in that case every American who does vote has a constitutional duty to vote against him. The judge in Berg v. Obama dismissed the case, not because Obama has actually proven that he is eligible for “the Office of President,” but instead because, simply as a voter, Berg supposedly lacks “standing” to challenge Obama’s eligibility: regardless of questions of causation, the grievance remains too generalized to establish the existence of an injury in fact. A candidate’s ineligibility under the Natural Born Citizen Clause does not result in an injury in fact to voters. By extension, the theoretical constitutional harm experienced by voters does not change as the candidacy of an allegedly ineligible candidate progresses from the primaries to the general election. This pronouncement does not rise to the level of hogwash. First, the Constitution mandates that “the judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution” (Article III, Section 2, Clause 1). Berg’s suit plainly “arises under the Constitution,” in the sense of raising a critical constitutional issue. So the only question is whether his suit is a constitutional “Case.” The present judicial test for whether a litigant’s claim constitutes a constitutional “Case” comes under the rubric of “standing, a litigant with “standing” may proceed; one without “standing” may not. “Standing,” however, is not a term found anywhere in the Constitution. Neither are the specifics of the doctrine of “standing,” as they have been elaborated in judicial decision after judicial decision, to be found there. Rather, the test for “standing” is almost entirely a judicial invention. True enough, the test for “standing” is not as ridiculous as the judiciary’s so-called “compelling governmental interest test,” which licenses public officials to abridge individuals’ constitutional rights and thereby exercise powers the Constitution withholds from those officials, which has no basis whatsoever in the Constitution, and which is actually anti-constitutional. Neither is the doctrine of “standing” as abusive as the “immunities” judges have cut from whole cloth for public officials who violate their constitutional “Oaths or Affirmations, to support this Constitution” (Article VI, Clause 3) in the face of the Constitution’s explicit limitation on official immunities (Article I, Section 6, Clause 1). For the Constitution does require that a litigant must present a true “Case.” Yet, because the test for “standing” is largely a contrivance of all-too-fallible men and women, its specifics can be changed as easily as they were adopted, when they are found to be faulty. And they must be changed if the consequences of judicial ignorance, inertia, and inaction are not to endanger America’s constitutional form of government. Which is precisely the situation here, inasmuch as the purported “election” of Obama as President, notwithstanding his ineligibility for that office, not only will render illegitimate the Executive Branch of the General Government, but also will render impotent its Legislative Branch (as explained below). Second, the notion upon which the judge in Berg v. Obama fastened, namely, that Berg’s “grievance remains too generalized to establish the existence of an injury in fact,” i.e., if everyone is injured or potentially injured then no one has “standing, is absurd on its face. To be sure, no one has yet voted for Obama in the general election. But does that mean that no one in any group smaller than the general pool of America’s voters in its entirety has suffered specific harm from Obama’s participation in the electoral process to date? Or will suffer such harm from his continuing participation? What about the Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton as their party’s nominee, but were saddled with Obama because other Democrats voted for him even though they could not legally have done so if his lack of eligibility for “the Office of President” had been judicially determined before the Democratic primaries or convention? What about the States that have registered Obama as a legitimate candidate for President, but will have been deceived, perhaps even defrauded, if he is proven not to be “a natural born Citizen”? And as far as the general election is concerned, what about the voters among erstwhile Republicans and Independents who do not want John McCain as President, and therefore will vote for Obama (or any Democrat, for that matter) as “the lesser of two evils,” but who later on may have their votes effectively thrown out, and may have to suffer McCain’s being declared the winner of the election, if Obama’s ineligibility is established? Or what about those voters who made monetary contributions to Obama’s campaign, but may at length discover that their funds went, not only to an ineligible candidate, but to one who knew he was ineligible? These obvious harms pale into insignificance, however, compared to the national disaster of having an outright usurper purportedly “elected” as “President.” In this situation, it is downright idiocy to claim, as did the judge in Berg v. Obama, that a “generalized” injury somehow constitutes no judicially cognizable injury at all. Self-evidently, to claim that a “generalized” grievance negates “the existence of an injury in fact” is patently illogical, for if everyone in any group can complain of the same harm of which any one of them can complain, then the existence of some harm cannot be denied; and the more people who can complain of that harm, the greater the aggregate or cumulative seriousness of the injury. The whole may not be greater than the sum of its parts; but it is at least equal to that sum! Moreover, for a judge to rule that no injury redressable in a court of law exists, precisely because everyone in America will be subjected to an individual posing as “the President” but who constitutionally cannot be (and therefore is not) the President, sets America on the course of judicially assisted political suicide. If Obama turns out to be nothing more than an usurper who has fraudulently seized control of the Presidency, not only will the Constitution have been egregiously flouted, but also this whole country could be, likely will be, destroyed as a consequence. And if this country is even credibly threatened with destruction, every American will be harmed, irretrievably, should the threat become actuality—including those who voted or intend to vote for Obama, who are also part of We the People. Therefore, in this situation, any and every American must have “standing” to demand, and must demand, both in judicial fora and in the fora of public opinion, that Obama immediately and conclusively prove himself eligible for “the Office of President.” Utterly imbecilic as an alternative is the judge’s prescription in Berg v. Obama that, if, through the political process, Congress determines that citizens, voters, or party members should police the Constitution’s eligibility requirements for the Presidency, then it is free to pass laws conferring standing on individuals like Berg. Until that time, voters do not have standing to bring the sort of challenge that Berg attempts to bring. Recall that this selfsame judge held that Berg has no constitutional “Case” because he has no “standing,” and that he has no “standing” because he has no “injury in fact,” only a “generalized” “grievance.” This purports to be a finding of constitutional law: namely, that constitutionally no “Case” exists. How, then, can Congress constitutionally grant “standing” to individuals such as Berg, when the courts (assuming the Berg decision is upheld on appeal) have ruled that those individuals have no “standing”? If “standing” is a constitutional conception, and the courts deny that “standing” exists in a situation such as this, and the courts have the final say as to what the Constitution means, then Congress lacks any power to contradict them. Congress cannot instruct the courts to exercise jurisdiction beyond what the Constitution includes within “the judicial Power.” Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 173-180 (1803). In fact, though, a Congressional instruction is entirely unnecessary. Every American has what lawyers call “an implied cause of action”—directly under Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 of the Constitution—to require that anyone standing for “the Office of President” must verify his eligibility for that position, at least when serious allegations have been put forward that he is not eligible, and he has otherwise refused to refute those allegations with evidence that should be readily available if he is eligible. That “Case” is one the Constitution itself defines. And the Constitution must be enforceable in such a “Case” in a timely manner, by anyone who cares to seek enforcement, because of the horrendous consequences that will ensue if it is flouted. What are some of those consequences? First, if Obama is not “a natural born Citizen” or has renounced such citizenship, he is simply not eligible for “the Office of President” (Article II, Section 1, Clause 4). That being so, he cannot be “elected” by the voters, by the Electoral College, or by the House of Representatives (see Amendment XII). For neither the voters, nor the Electors, nor Members of the House can change the constitutional requirement, even by unanimous vote inter sese (see Article V). If, nonetheless, the voters, the Electors, or the Members of the House purport to “elect” Obama, he will be nothing but an usurper, because the Constitution defines him as such. And he can never become anything else, because an usurper cannot gain legitimacy if even all of the country aid, abets, accedes to, or acquiesces in his usurpation. Second, if Obama dares to take the Presidential “Oath or Affirmation” of office, knowing that he is not “a natural born Citizen,” he will commit the crime of perjury or false swearing (see Article II, Section 1, Clause 7). For, being ineligible for “the Office of President, he cannot “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States,” or even execute it at all, to any degree. Thus, his very act of taking the “Oath or Affirmation” will be a violation thereof! So, even if the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court himself looks the other way and administers the “Oath or Affirmation,” Obama will derive no authority whatsoever from it. Third, his purported “Oath or Affirmation” being perjured from the beginning, Obama’s every subsequent act in the usurped “Office of President” will be a criminal offense under Title 18, United States Code, Section 242, which provides that: whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States shall be fined or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death. Plainly enough, every supposedly “official” act performed by an usurper in the President’s chair will be an act “under color of law” that necessarily and unavoidably “subjects some person to the deprivation of [some] rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution of the United States”—in the most general case, of the constitutional “right” to an eligible and duly elected individual serving as President, and the corresponding constitutional “immunity” from subjection to an usurper pretending to be “the President.” Fourth, if he turns out to be nothing but an usurper acting in the guise of “the President,” Obama will not constitutionally be the “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States” (see Article II, Section 2, Clause 1). Therefore, he will be entitled to no obedience whatsoever from anyone in those forces. Indeed, for officers or men to follow any of his purported “orders” will constitute a serious breach of military discipline, and in extreme circumstances perhaps even “war crimes.” Fifth, as nothing but an usurper (if he becomes one), Obama will have no conceivable authority “to make Treaties”, or to “nominate, and appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not otherwise provided for in the Constitution” (Article II, Section 2, Clause 2). Sixth, and perhaps most importantly, Congress can pass no law while an usurper pretends to occupy “the Office of President.” The Constitution provides that “every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States” (Article I, Section 7, Clause 2). Not to an usurper posturing as “the President of the United States,” but to the true and rightful President. If no such true and rightful President occupies the White House, no “Bill” will or can, “before it become a Law, be presented to him.” Thus, if Obama deceitfully “enters office” as an usurper, Congress will be rendered effectively impotent for as long as it acquiesces in his pretenses as “President.” Seventh, if Obama does become an usurper posturing as “the President,” Congress cannot even impeach him because, not being the actual President, he cannot be “removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” (see Article II, Section 4). In that case, some other public officials would have to arrest him, with physical force, if he would not go along quietly, in order to prevent him from continuing his imposture. Obviously, this could possibly lead to armed conflicts within the General Government itself, or among the States and the people. Eighth, even did something approaching civil war not eventuate from Obama’s hypothetical usurpation, if the Establishment allowed Obama to pretend to be “the President,” and the people acquiesced in that charade, just about everything that was done during his faux “tenure in office” by anyone connected with the Executive Branch of the General Government, and quite a bit done by the Legislative Branch and perhaps the Judicial Branch as well, would be arguably illegitimate and subject to being overturned when a constitutional President was finally installed in office. The potential for chaos, both domestically and internationally, arising out of this systemic uncertainty is breathtaking. The underlying problem will not be obviated if Obama, his partisans in the Democratic Party, and his cheerleaders and cover-up artists in the big media simply stonewall the issue of his (non)citizenship and contrive for him to win the Presidential election. The cat is already out of the bag and running all over the Internet. If he continues to dodge the issue, Obama will be dogged with this question every day of his purported “Presidency.” And inevitably the truth will out. For the issue is too simple, the evidence (or lack of it) too accessible. Either Obama can prove that he is “a natural born Citizen” who has not renounced his citizenship; or he cannot. And he will not be allowed to slip through with some doctored “birth certificate” generated long after the alleged fact. On a matter this important, Americans will demand that, before its authenticity is accepted, any supposed documentary evidence of that sort be subjected to reproducible forensic analyses conducted by reputable, independent investigators and laboratories above any suspicion of being influenced by or colluding with any public official, bureaucracy, political party, or other special-interest organization whatsoever. Berg v. Obama may very well end up in the Supreme Court. Yet that ought to be unnecessary. For Obama’s moral duty is to produce the evidence of his citizenship. Otherwise, he will be personally responsible for all the consequences of his refusal to do so. Of course, if Obama knows that he is not “a natural born Citizen” who never renounced his American citizenship, then he also knows that he and his henchmen have perpetrated numerous election-related frauds throughout the country, the latest, still-ongoing one a colossal swindle targeting the American people as a whole. If that is the case, his refusal “to be a witness against himself” is perfectly explicable and even defensible on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment. Howsoever justified as a matter of criminal law, though, Obama’s silence and inaction will not obviate the necessity for him to prove his eligibility for “the Office of President.” The Constitution may permit him to “take the Fifth;” but it will not suffer him to employ that evasion as a means to usurp the Presidency of the United States.
Obama Praised PLO ActivistOct. 30….(IsraelNN.com) Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is demanding that the Los Angeles Times release a videotape which could prove embarrassing for his Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama. The tape reportedly shows Obama speaking of his friendship with former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi. The LA Times reported in April 2008 that Sen. Obama attended a farewell party in 2003 honoring Khalidi. According to the report, Obama gave a speech at the event and spoke warmly of Khalidi. Khalidi was active on behalf of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) at a time when the PLO was a US-designated terrorist group with a goal of destroying Israel. Despite reporting on the event, the Times has refused to allow the public to see the videotape on which the report was based. In addition to Obama's speech praising Khalidi, the tape allegedly provides evidence that William Ayers attended the event. Obama has faced criticism for his ties to Ayers, who along with others founded the Weather Underground, a group that carried out bombings and jailbreaks in the US in the 1960s and 70s. The demands that the LA Times release the tape began circulating in conservative weblogs and quickly reached the McCain campaign. “A major news organization is intentionally suppressing information that could provide a clearer link between Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi," said McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb. The refusal to hand over the tape is evidence of a pro-Obama media bias, he said. McCain criticized the Times in an interview on La Kalle radio, saying, "I guarantee you, if there was a tape with me and Sarah Palin and some neo-Nazi or one of those, you think that that tape wouldn't be made public?” Americans have the right to know about Obama's ties to the PLO and to Ayers, McCain said.
Obama Affinity to Marxists Dates Back to College Days
Oct. 29….(Fox News) Barack Obama laughs off charges of socialism. Joe Biden scoffs at references to Marxism. Both men shrug off accusations of liberalism. But Obama himself acknowledges that he was drawn to socialists and even Marxists as a college student. He continued to associate with Marxists later in life, even choosing to launch his political career in the living room of a self-described Marxist, William Ayers, in 1995, when Obama was 34. Obama's affinity for Marxists began when he attended Occidental College in Los Angeles. "To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully," the Democratic presidential candidate wrote in his memoir, "Dreams From My Father." "The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists." Obama's interest in leftist politics continued after he transferred to Columbia University in New York. He lived on Manhattan's Upper East Side, venturing to the East Village for what he called "the socialist conferences I sometimes attended at Cooper Union." After graduating from Columbia in 1983, Obama spent a year working for a consulting firm and then went to work for what he described as "a Ralph Nader offshoot" in Harlem. "In search of some inspiration, I went to hear Kwame Toure, formerly Stokely Carmichael of Black Panther fame, speak at Columbia," Obama wrote in "Dreams," which he published in 1995. "At the entrance to the auditorium, two women, one black, one Asian, were selling Marxist literature." Obama supporters point out that plenty of Americans flirt with radical ideologies in college, only to join the political mainstream later in life. But Obama, who made a point of noting how "carefully" he chose his friends in college, also chose to launch his political career in the Chicago living room of Ayers, a domestic terrorist who in 2002 proclaimed: "I am a Marxist." Also present at that meeting was Ayers' wife, fellow terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, who once gave a speech extolling socialism, communism and "Marxism-Leninism." Obama has been widely criticized for choosing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, an anti-American firebrand, as his pastor. Wright is a purveyor of black liberation theology, which analysts say is based in part on Marxist ideas. Few political observers go so far as to accuse Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, of being a Marxist. But Republican John McCain has been accusing Obama of espousing socialism ever since the Democrat told an Ohio plumber named Joe earlier this month that he wanted to "spread the wealth around." Obama's running mate, Biden, recently contradicted his boss, saying: "He is not spreading the wealth around." The remark came as Biden was answering a question from a TV anchor who asked: "How is Senator Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?" "Are you joking? Is this a joke? Or is that a real question?" an incredulous Biden shot back. "It's a ridiculous comparison." But the debate intensified Monday with the surfacing of a 2001 radio interview in which Obama lamented the Supreme Court's inability to enact "redistribution of wealth." a key tenet of socialism. On Tuesday, McCain said Obama aspires to become "Redistributionist-in-Chief." Obama has managed to cultivate the image of a political moderate in spite of his consistently liberal voting record. In 2006, he published a second memoir, "The Audacity of Hope," that leaves little doubt about his adherence to the left. "The arguments of liberals are more often grounded in reason and fact," Obama wrote in "Audacity." "Much of what I absorbed from the sixties was filtered through my mother, who to the end of her life would proudly proclaim herself an unreconstructed liberal."
US Calls Raid into Syria a Warning“The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.” (Isaiah 17:1) Oct. 29….(In The Days) US troops in helicopters flew four miles into Syrian territory over the weekend to target the leader of a network that channels foreign fighters from Syria into Iraq, killing or wounding him and shooting dead several armed men, US officials said Monday. US officials have long complained that the Syrian government has allowed Arab fighters to pass through the country to enter Iraq, but since last year, top military leaders have praised Syrian efforts to curb the flow. In recent months, officials have estimated that as few as 20 fighters a month have been crossing into Iraq, down from more than a hundred a month in 2006. But officials said the raid Sunday, apparently the first acknowledged instance of US ground forces operating in Syria, was intended to send a warning to the Syrian government. “You have to clean up the global threat that is in your back yard, and if you won’t do that, we are left with no choice but to take these matters into our hands,” said a senior US official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the cross-border strike. The United States has offered similar justifications for recent cross-border strikes in Pakistan, where it has launched missile attacks and at least one air assault against suspected members of Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgency. The office of French President Nicolas Sarkozy issued a statement expressing “serious concerns” about the raid and the loss of Syrian lives. Syria has lately embarked on policies that France and other Western governments have viewed favorably, including indirect peace talks with Israel. Russia also voiced concern about the operation. In the raid, four helicopters carrying US troops flew into an isolated area of scattered residences and buildings in search of an Iraqi insurgent whom the US Treasury designated in February as a key facilitator of the transfer of weapons, money and fighters into Iraq. Treasury officials gave his full name as Badran Turki Hishan al-Mazidih and his nickname as Abu Ghadiyah, and said that the founder of the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had named him the organization’s commander for Syrian logistics in 2004. On the ground, US troops disembarked and opened fire to kill “several armed males who posed a threat to US forces,” according to the senior official. The official declined to say whether Mazidih was killed or injured in the fighting. Other unnamed US officials were quoted in news media accounts Monday as saying he had been killed. The network run by Mazidih has smuggled hundreds of foreign fighters into Iraq, including many who became suicide bombers, officials and analysts said. “He ran one of the largest and most productive foreign fighter networks out of Syria” and was “directly responsible for hundreds of foreign fighters who killed thousands” of Iraqis, the senior official said. The US military has shown patience, the official said, but “eventually you can’t wait for guys like that to come back across the border and kill scores of Iraqis or, worse, your own forces.” A summer 2007 US military raid on a suspected al-Qaeda in Iraq house in the Iraqi town of Sinjar, near Syria, yielded a wealth of information about alleged Syrian smuggling networks used to move foreign fighters into Iraq. The documents included al-Qaeda in Iraq records of more than 500 foreign fighters who had entered from Syria, according to the Combating Terrorism Center at the US Military Academy at West Point, NY, where civilian analysts are examining the documents. A July report made public their latest findings. The documents indicated that at least 95 Syrian “coordinators” were involved in moving the foreign fighters. Many of the coordinators were from smuggling families in Bedouin clans and other Syrian tribes. A number of them appeared to be cooperating with al-Qaeda in Iraq for pay rather than out of ideological sympathy. Many recruits reported to their handlers in Iraq that they had passed through Damascus, Syria’s capital, and then an area near the Iraqi border called Abu Kamal. Sunday’s raid occurred in Abu Kamal. US officers long have called the Syrian smuggling routes “ratlines.” American forces in western Anbar province sustained some of the highest losses of the war in 2006 and 2007, as US troops fought to drive out al-Qaeda in Iraq from border towns and shut down the smuggling of fighters, weapons and money. The Syrian government has willingly ignored, and in some cases may have assisted, foreign fighters headed to Iraq, according to the report of the Combating Terrorism Center. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a member of the Alawite religious minority, ruling over a majority-Sunni country. The government varies between trying to crack down on the smuggling networks, and their Sunni al-Qaeda in Iraq partners, and simply trying to monitor them, some experts say. “Over the long run I think it’s clear an Alawite government and an al-Qaeda-style network are not on the same side of history,” Fishman said. “They’re playing with fire to a certain extent.” Syria says it too has been targeted by al-Qaeda, citing a deadly bombing in Damascus this summer. “When you are dealing with states that do not maintain their sovereignty and become a de facto sanctuary, the only way you have to deal with them is this kind of operation,” one analyst said.
IAEA Says Evidence Warrants Follow-up Nuke Probe in SyriaOct. 29….(DEBKA) Diplomats in Vienna said Tuesday, Oct. 28, that freshly evaluated soil and air samples provide enough evidence to warrant a follow-up probe by the UN nuclear watchdog at the suspected Syrian nuclear site at El Kibar bombed by Israel in September 2007. IAEA experts want to revisit the site and also follow up on US, Israeli and other intelligence allegations that North Korea had been helping Syria build a plutonium reactor there. Damascus has denied running a covert program. DEBKAfile’s military sources reported exclusively on Oct. 4 that Syria had resumed its nuclear program at installations scattered across the country and that North Korean nuclear experts were back. According to recent American reports, a Syrian military delegation visited Pyongyang to find out whether their arms deals and nuclear collaboration were at risk as a result of Kim Jong-il’s ill health. Our sources also disclosed that IAEA director Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei and his deputy Dr. Olli Heinonen have been at odds for months over whether the UN watchdog should push ahead with its probe against Syria. (El Baradei is an Egyptian Muslim) ElBaradai argued there was no evidence to support US and Israel claims that Syria had been building a reactor, but Heinonen, who led an agency inspection in Syria last June differed and wants to go on with the investigation. According to our sources, Heinonen has demanded access to the west bank of the Euphrates River opposite the El Kibar site, where Syria is believed to have cleared the ground of the debris left by the Israeli bombardment. He also wants to question named army officers, engineers and technicians alleged to have been engaged in the program. Heinonen submitted to the government in Damascus a list of Syrian officials with dates on which they are suspected of having met secretly with North Korean nuclear physicists. He has asked for clarifications on the subject of those encounters. On Oct. 3, Damascus offered to continue to cooperate with the IAEA but stated that no more inspections would be allowed because the locations requested were restricted military areas. The deputy director’s dossier will be submitted to the agency’s board meeting next month. If further probes are recommended and Syria stalls, the way will be opened for a complaint to the UN Security Council and possible sanctions against Damascus.
Obama Redefines Christianity and Socialism As Election Nears Oct. 28….(By Bill Wilson, KIN Senior Analyst) A recent poll of voters indicated that Christians were about evenly split between supporting Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Hussein Obama for President. It seems that McCain has convinced most Christians that he is a Christian, but not necessarily a strong enough Christian. Obama has convinced many that he is a Christian, however, his commitment to his faith by his actions is sorely lacking. Hence, its about 50/50 among Christians, who essentially determined the last two presidencies by their strong vote en masse for George W. Bush. McCain tried to solidify the conservative Christian base by choosing Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate. While this solidified some of the most conservative Christians, it appears McCain still has not closed the deal. Meanwhile, there are many Christians who are voting for change no matter what. Obama represents that change. But Christians are warned in Philippians 2:12-13 to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” If Christians are to do of God’s good pleasure, then they had better be forewarned of the ramifications of voting for Obama. First off, Obama is not a Christian. Obama explained his Christianity in a March 27, 2004 interview with Cathleen Falsani, author of "The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People." Obama told Falsani, "I am rooted in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are a connected people." Then he used a more traditional Muslim description of Jesus, saying he was a "historical figure," a “bridge between God and man," and "a wonderful teacher." Christians believe the words of Jesus when he says in John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth and the life: no man comes unto the Father, but by me.” So if Obama is not a Christian, what is he? He was once a Muslim and his campaign has declared that he is not a practicing Muslim. But more recently, it has been revealed that in 2001 Obama said that the US Constitution was flawed and that the Founding Fathers were wrong by not writing into it a means for wealth redistribution. This is consistent with his October 13th declaration to Joe the Plumber, “I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." This is Marxism. Obama was mentored by Communist Party USA leader Frank Marshall Davis and was a member of the socialist New Party in Chicago dedicated to electing socialists as Democrats. Marxism is the replacement of God with government.
Global Financial Crisis Brings Israelis Home(Economic distress prompts thousands of Israelis living abroad to return to Jewish state. Immigrant Absorption Ministry foresees 15,000 homecomings by end of 2009) Oct. 28….(YNET) The global financial crisis hitting world markets seems to have one favorable effect as far as Israel is concerned, as thousands of Israelis who have been living abroad for the past few years head back to their homeland. According to the Immigrant Absorption Ministry, some 15,000 Israelis are expected to return to the Jewish state by the end of 2009. The ministry launcheda campaign encouraging Israelis living abroad to do just that in August of 2007, as part of the nation's 60th anniversary celebrations, offering a NIS 100 million (about $24 million) incentives package. "The last few weeks have been crazy," Tali Naveh, who heads New York's Israel House, which tends to New York-based Israelis who wish to return, told Yedioth Ahronoth. "The phone has been ringing off the hook, and not just here, in all of out 10 centers on North America. People here have their American dream shattered." Some 2,000 Israelis have returned home between August and mid October alone, a 50% rise from the same time last year. According to Immigrant Absorption Ministry data, 64% of the returnees come from the US, 24% from Europe and 12% from other counties, such as the Bahamas, Japan, Honk Kong, Finland and the Caribbean's. The ministry, along with the Israel Tax Authority, intends on launching a second homecoming campaign in November, aimed at convincing Israelis who may still be undecided to return to Israel. The Immigrant Absorption Ministry has even called on Israeli banks which have worldwide branches to market the campaign and assist those returning in transferring their assets to Israel expeditiously. "Despite the unfortunate circumstances, we are happy to see so many Israelis come home," said Erez Halphon, director-general of the Immigrant Absorption Ministry. Eli Cohen, head of the Jewish Agency's Department of Aliyah and Absorption added that the JA has been negotiating with various Israeli employers, in an attempt to help those returning to secure new jobs.
Global Financial Regulatory Body Coming?Oct. 28….(In The Days) With the European Union leading the way, the internationalists are preparing to exploit the recent global financial turmoil to hold a “second Bretton Woods” and radically restructure the world’s entire international financial system. The first Bretton Woods international conference in 1944, lest we forget, ended up saddling the world with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank (known formally as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development), and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). New World Order “After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.” (Daniel 7:7) This last was replaced in the mid-1990s by the WTO, a full-fledged global trade ministry, what the organizers of Bretton Woods wanted back in 1944, but found to be politically unfeasible. The Bretton Woods organizers, especially the British and American delegations, also wanted a single global monetary unit (John Maynard Keynes proposed calling it the bancor, and the Americans countered with the unitas). But what they got instead was the dollar as a de facto international currency to which all other currencies were convertible. It’s likely that a Bretton Woods II will generate proposals for an international financial regulatory body, a counterpart to the WTO. A single world currency issued by a global central bank is another likely project, especially given that those agitating most forcefully for the conference, the EU leaders, have already successfully created the world’s first transnational central bank (the Frankfurt-based European Central Bank) and the world’s first transnational currency (the euro). “The world must change,” French president Nicolas Sarkozy proclaimed shortly before arriving at Camp David along with EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso to confer with President Bush. The president is offering to host the proposed international conference, although, according to an AP report, he “warned against reforms that threaten capitalism.” As to a location for the conference, the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, where the 1944 conference was held, does not appear to be on the short list. “Insofar as the crisis began in New York, then the global solution must be found to this crisis in New York,” Sarkozy said. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, unsurprisingly, wants to hold the conference at the UN headquarters in early December. This would “lend universal legitimacy to this endeavor and demonstrate a collective will to face this serious global challenge.” As for possible agenda items, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in a surprisingly candid October 17 editorial in the Washington Post, called for the “boldest of global cooperation” in confronting the crisis: This week, European leaders came together to propose the guiding principles that we believe should underpin this new Bretton Woods: transparency, sound banking, responsibility, integrity and global governance. To do this, we need cross-border supervision of financial institutions; shared global standards for accounting and regulation; a more responsible approach to executive remuneration that rewards hard work, effort and enterprise but not irresponsible risk-taking; and the renewal of our international institutions to make them effective early-warning systems for the world economy. There are no Britain-only or Europe-only or America-only solutions to today’s problems. We are all in this together, and we can only resolve this crisis together. If we do this, 2008 will be remembered not just as a year of financial crisis but as the year we started to build the world anew. In short, world leaders are preparing to take care of unfinished business left over from Bretton Woods. A true international financial regulatory body, until now an elusive goal, is obviously going to be a top agenda item. Such an organization would effectively strip America of her financial independence, as the WTO has already done for trade. While a single global currency and world central bank may not be feasible right away, look for a treaty to emerge from the upcoming conference that will lay the foundation for such an organization down the road by committing the parties to further negotiations. This was how the euro was brought about in Europe, beginning with the Maastricht Accord that paved the way for a gradual phase-in of the international currency and the establishment of the European Central Bank. Wherever and whenever the upcoming financial conference is held, it will be used to wage war on America’s (and the rest of the world’s) financial sovereignty, to bring to fruition the long-cherished schemes of Keynes and others for a utopian new world financial order.
PLO Qureia: Jerusalem the Key to Resolving Mideast ConflictChief Palestinian negotiator says 'if Israelis elect Netanyahu, we will accept it, but there will not be peace without Jerusalem. Oct. 28….(YNET) The top negotiator for the Palestinian Authority, Ahmed Qureia, said on Monday that he "has great respect for the way (Kadima Chairwoman) Tzipi Livni works." Speaking at a conference organized by the Council for Peace and Security, Qureia said that Livni "is trustworthy enough to say yes or no, 'this you can have and this you can't.' She didn't say she would give Jerusalem, but she said it would be on the table. And why shouldn't it be? How will the Palestinians agree on a deal without Jerusalem? No one can imagine this happening. Jerusalem is the key to peace." Qureia added that he did not believe a peace agreement was attainable by the end of the year. "In any case, the efforts will continue during the talks with Livni and Prime Minister Olmert. It is vital that we carry on with the process," he said. Responding to Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu's speech Sunday at the opening of the Knesset's winter session, in which he said that "we will not return to the 1967 borders" and that the issue of Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees was "nonnegotiable", Qureia said "people tend to say one thing when they are in the opposition and something else when they're in office." "If the Israeli nation elects Netanyahu, we will accept it," the Palestinian negotiator said. "There will not be peace without Jerusalem. Those who strive for peace must put Jerusalem on the table." Qureia stressed the importance of the Arab peace initiative as a "strategic change."
Most in the UN Hope for an Obama Win in USOct. 27….(Washington Post) There are no "Obama 2008" buttons, banners or T-shirts visible here at UN headquarters, but it might be difficult to find a sliver of territory in the United States more enthusiastic over the prospect of the Illinois senator winning the White House. An informal survey of more than two dozen UN staff members and foreign delegates showed that the overwhelming majority would prefer that Senator Barack Obama win the presidency, saying they think that the Democrat would usher in a new agenda of multilateralism after an era marked by Republican disdain for the world body. Obama supporters hail from Russia, Canada, France, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Indonesia and elsewhere. One American employee here seemed puzzled that he was being asked whether Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) was even a consideration. "Obama was and is unstoppable," the official said. "Please, God, let him win," he added. "It would be hard to find anybody, I think, at the UN who would not believe that Obama would be a considerable improvement over any other alternative," said William H. Luers, executive director of the United Nations Association. "It's been a bad eight years, and there is a lot of bad feeling over it." Conservatives who are skeptical of the United Nations said they are not surprised by the political tilt. "The fact is that most conservatives, most Republicans don't worship at the altar in New York, and I think that aggravates them more than anything else," said John Bolton, a former US ambassador to the United Nations. "What they want is the bending of the knee by the US, and they'll get it from an Obama administration." The candidates have said little about their plans for the United Nations, but Obama has highlighted his desire to pursue diplomacy more assertively than the Bush administration, whereas McCain has called for the establishment of a league of democracies, which many here fear is code for sidelining the United Nations. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has avoided showing a public preference about the presidential campaign, although he has hinted at a soft spot for Obama in private gatherings, according to UN officials. "The secretary general and the Secretariat of the United Nations take no position on the US election," said Ban's chief spokeswoman, Michele Montas. "The secretary general deeply respects the democratic process, and he looks forward to working with whomever the American people choose." Many UN rank and file are less circumspect, saying they see in Obama's multicultural background, a Kenyan father, an Indonesian stepfather and a mother and grandparents from Kansas, a reflection of themselves. "We do not consider him an African American," said Congo's UN ambassador, Atoki Ileka. "We consider him an African. "I have not heard a single person who will support McCain; if they do, they are in hiding," said another UN Obama booster from an African country. "The majority of people here believe in multilateralism," he said. "The Republicans were constantly questioning the relevance of the United Nations." Some Americans here are planning to move to Washington," in search of jobs in an Obama administration. "It will be devastating if Obama loses," the official said. "There has been such an amount of faith placed on the outcome." Kofi Anan, the first black UN secretary general, said the prospect of an Obama presidency would be "phenomenal."
Obama's Birth Certificate Sealed by Hawaii Governor(Says Democratic senator must make request to obtain original document) Oct. 27….(WND) Although the legitimacy of Sen. Barack Obama's birth certificate has become a focus of intense speculation, and even several lawsuits, WND has learned that Hawaii's Governor Linda Lingle has placed the candidate's birth certificate under seal and instructed the state's Department of Health to make sure no one in the press obtains access to the original document under any circumstances. The governor's office officially declined a request made in writing by WND in Hawaii to obtain a copy of the hospital-generated original birth certificate of Barack Obama. "It does not appear that Dr. Corsi is within any of these categories of persons with a direct and tangible interest in the birth certificate he seeks," wrote Roz Makuala, manager of constituent services in the governor's office, in an e-mailed response to a WND request seeking the information. Those listed as entitled to obtain a copy of an original birth certificate include the person born, or "registrant" according to the legal description from the governor's office, the spouse or parent of the registrant, a descendant of the registrant, a person having a common ancestor with the registrant, a legal guardian of the registrant, or a person or agency acting on behalf of the registrant. WND was told the official reason for denial of access to Obama's birth certificate would be authority granted pursuant to Section 338-18 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes, a provision the anonymous source claimed was designed to prevent identity theft. Still, the source told WND confidentially the motivation for withholding the original birth certificate was political, although the source refused to disclose whether there was any information on the original birth certificate that would prove politically embarrassing to Obama.
Poll: Israel Votes McCain in US Election(Survey finds 46% of Israelis would vote for Republican nominee if given chance to elect US president; Democrat Barack Obama receives 34% of votes. Almost half of those polled believe McCain would better impact Jewish state) Oct. 27….(YNET) Israel would choose John McCain over Barack Obama in the US presidential elections, a survey conducted by the TNS Teleseker polling agency found. The Republican nominee defeated his Democratic opponent by a margin of over 12% among the adult Jewish population in the State. Ynet obtained the results of the poll, ordered by the Rabin Center for Israel Studies and conducted among 500 Israelis aged 18-65, in preparation for a special debate on the US elections and their repercussions on the country's foreign policy in the Middle East, to take place Monday. The survey found that given the right to vote in the US, 46.4% of Israelis would vote for the Republican nominee, John McCain. Thirty-four percent would vote for Democratic nominee Barack Obama, and 18.6% remain undecided. Almost half of those polled (48.6%) believe McCain would better impact Israel, while 31.5% thought the country would better benefit from Obama's leadership. Just over 5% believe the candidates would have the same effect on Israel, while 14.2% remain undecided. The poll found McCain to be Israel's best bet concerning Iran as well. Over half (52.5%) believe he possesses the skills needed to deal with the security threat the country poses to Israel, more so than Obama, who has gained the confidence of just 27.6% of those polled. Alon Pinkas, the former consul general of Israel in New York who currently heads the Rabin Center's institute for Israel-US relations, explained the results of the poll. "What we see here is a significant difference in positions between Jews in the US and Jews in Israel," he said. "Israel is one of just three countries that prefer McCain over Obama. The other two are Georgia and the Philippines," Pinkas added. Another trend indicated by the poll is the growing concern over Israel's relations with the European Union. When asked about the importance of the State's relationships with countries worldwide the US was ranked most important, with a 98.2% rating.
US Special Forces Launch Raid Inside Syria
US Military Official Confirms Helicopter Raid on Syrian Soil Oct. 27….(Jerusalem Post) US military helicopters bombed targets in a Syrian border town near Iraq on Sunday, after global jihad operatives allegedly crossed the border into Syria. The attack, which was not confirmed by the US military, was the first-ever reported American strike on Syria, which called it a "serious aggression." Israeli defense officials said the incident was not connected to Israel and that the American troops had been chasing global jihad suspects in Iraq. The helicopters then crossed into Syria in pursuit of the terrorists. A US official, in confirming the raid, said the attack targeted elements of a robust foreign fighter logistics network and that due to Syrian inaction the US was now "taking matters into our own hands." The US military official said the special forces raid targeted elements of a network that sends fighters from North Africa and elsewhere in the Middle East to Syria, where elements of the Syrian military are in league with al-Qaida and other fighters. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of cross-border raids. Syria's Foreign Ministry said it summoned the charges d'affaires of the United States and Iraq to protest the strike. A resident of the nearby village of Hwijeh, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said the aircraft flew along the Euphrates River into the area of farms and several brick factories. On September 6, 2007, the IAF destroyed a purported nuclear reactor Syria was building in its northeast, along the Euphrates River. The area bombed Sunday is near the Iraqi border city of Qaim, which had been a major crossing point for gunmen, weapons and money coming into Iraq to fuel the Sunni insurgency. Iraqi insurgents seized Qaim in April 2005, forcing US Marines to recapture the town the following month in heavy fighting. The area became secure only after Sunni tribes in Anbar province turned against al-Qaida in late 2006 and joined forces with the Americans. FOJ Note: Previous US strikes on Syrian soil in 2004 and 2005 targeted al Qaeda exit points into and from Iraq. These attacks were discontinued for three years. Yesterday’s operation was an extension of the US-Iraqi offensive to purge the northern Iraqi town of Mosul and their northern Syria havens of al Qaeda elements, the last two strong bastions the jihadists still retain in the region. Al Qaeda fighters captured by the US military in and around Mosul in recent days revealed that the flow of arms, fighters, cash and explosives from Syria to Iraq continues unabated. This, notwithstanding Syrian foreign minister Walid Muallem’s assurance to US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice that Damascus had halted this traffic when they met in New York in September. The US military struck after catching Syria back at the game in breach of its pledge.
Israeli PM-Designate Tzipi Livni Forced to Call for Early Elections Oct. 27….(Fox News) Prime Minister-designate Tzipi Livni on Sunday abandoned her efforts to form a government, putting Israel on course for new elections that could endanger fragile progress to end decades of Arab-Israeli conflict. Palestinians worried that the decision could put a year's worth of peace talks in limbo for months, until the elections are held. The balloting could also clear the way for opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who rejects sweeping territorial concessions to the Arabs, to reclaim the premiership. Livni has been trying to cobble together a government since she replaced the corruption-tainted Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as head of the ruling Kadima Party in September. But partners in the current coalition, which took power in May 2006, used the changing of the guard to press new demands. In a statement, Livni said she was willing to make concessions but had to draw the line at "impossible" demands. "When it became clear that everyone and every party was exploiting the opportunity to make demands that were economically and diplomatically illegitimate, I decided to call off (talks) and go to elections," she said. Elections for the 120-seat parliament, scheduled for November 2010, are now likely to be moved up to February or March. In his ceremonial role, Peres makes the final decision on whether and when to hold elections. Peres technically could ask another politician to try to form a government before elections are forced. However, as leader of the largest party in parliament, Livni was the only candidate with a realistic chance of piecing together a coalition. Early elections had appeared likely since Friday, when the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party announced it would not join a Livni-led government. Livni resisted Shas' demands that she refuse to negotiate a power-sharing arrangement with the Palestinians for Jerusalem, whose eastern sector the Palestinians claim as capital of their hoped-for state. Livni could have ruled with a narrow parliamentary majority, but such a government would not have had the broad mandate or stability needed to shepherd through a peace accord with the Palestinians that would require painful Israeli concessions. Livni has been serving as Israel's chief peace negotiator with the Palestinians since talks were formally relaunched last November at a US-hosted summit. The sides had hoped to reach a final peace accord by the end of the year, though both Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have said that target is unrealistic. An aide to Abbas warned that the Israeli political turmoil would threaten peacemaking, especially if Netanyahu emerges. Before Livni's coalition-building efforts faltered, opinion polls had given her and Netanyahu even odds on taking power. Peacemaking foundered during Netanyahu's 3-year tenure as prime minister in the 1990s, and his positions have not softened since. He quit Ariel Sharon's government because he opposed Israel's 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. He also opposes ceding sovereignty over any part of east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. The move to elections could propel Abbas and Olmert, who is stepping down to combat multiple corruption allegations, to redouble their efforts to achieve a peacemaking breakthrough. In an interview last month, Olmert said Israel would have to give up nearly all of the West Bank and east Jerusalem if it wants peace with the Palestinians. He also said Israel would have to relinquish the Golan Heights, likewise captured in 1967, to obtain peace with Syria.
Syrian Troops Enclose Lebanon, US Corresponds With HamasOct. 27….(DEBKA) As part of the incipient thaw in US relations with Damascus, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has relayed a friendly message to Hamas political leader Khalid Meshaal through Syrian foreign minister Walid Muallem’s aides. The message, described by Moussa Abu Marzouk, one of the heads of Hamas’ Damascus headquarters, as a “verbal communication.” was received as four Syrian divisions completed their deployment on Lebanon’s borders last week. In the message, Rice praised the Palestinian terrorist group for halting its missile fire into Israel. A complete Syrian encirclement of Lebanon has occurred, from the Syrian 4th Division along Lebanon’s northern border and the 10th, 12th and 14th Divisions on Lebanon’s eastern frontier opposite the Hermil mountains and the Beqaa Valley, and down to the Hermon Mountains facing South Lebanon and northern Israel. Neither the Americans nor the Israelis had expected Damascus to round off this troop concentration so fast. It was taken for granted that Damascus would wait to the spring of 2009, after the rainy season. However, president Bashar Assad saw two advantages in going ahead before the Nov. 4 US presidential election: First, Israel would be unlikely to strike in the days leading up to the US election and, second, Damascus would present the new man in the White House with a fait accompli. The first concentration of 6-8,000 Syrian 4th Mechanized Division took up positions along 2 km of the El Kebir River which marks that sector of the border, opposite northern Lebanon and its largest town of Tripoli. Then, last week, Damascus consigned the 12th Mechanized Division to the border of the Lebanese Beqaa Valley and its central mountains, so completing the encirclement. Syrian military positions now range from points opposite the northern Lebanese town of Al Qaa on Mt. Hermil to points further south up to the Massena border crossing 50 km north of Beirut. The Syrian 4th and 12th Divisions abut on the 10th Division ranged opposite South Lebanon and the disputed Shebaa Farms enclave. The military chain continues with the 14th commando division positioned on the Syrian slopes of Mt Hermon opposite Israeli military positions. Not only are Lebanon’s borders enclosed, but Syria, in conjunction with Iran, has also established a military presence inside Lebanon. In the summer, they emplaced radar stations on the tall Lebanese peaks of Mt. Sannine and Barukh of the central mountain range, giving them a detailed view of every move on Lebanese territory, in northern Israel and on the eastern Mediterranean. All these movements were performed with a nod and a wink from Washington. Three years after forcing Syria to quit Lebanon, the Bush administration was ready to okay Syria’s massed troop concentration on Lebanese borders. Permission was granted in an apparently cursory meeting between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Syrian foreign minister Walid Muallem on Sept. 27 at UN Center in New York. Damascus counted this as validation of its drive for restored domination of Lebanon by dint of its military. Washington also satisfied itself that the deal promised major profits: 1. The Assad government sounded willing for the first time to obstruct Hizballah and hold up its supplies of military hardware. Syria’s 4th and 12 Divisions are in position for blocking Hizballah’s primary smuggling routes. 2. It was inferred that Damascus was at last beginning, albeit two years late, to honor UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which banned arms supplies to Hizballah as part of the ceasefire which ended the Israel-Lebanon war. Syria and Iran mocked that resolution for two years by smuggling weapons in bulk to the Shiite terrorists. 3. Damascus’ implied willingness to go against Hizballah was taken by Washington as a measure of Assad’s readiness to stand up to Iran at present - and break away in the future. Syrian troops have been allowed to openly close in on Lebanon without even the slightest a demurral from the Bush administration, and Washington has been caught out communicating with Bashar Assad’s extremist Palestinian guest, Hamas, for the first time. The outcome of these preliminaries, milestone in themselves, will no doubt come to light only when a new president sits in the White House, and Israel has a new government after a general election early next year.
Obama Refuses to Answer Birth Certificate LawsuitOct.
27….(Kenneth R. Timmerman) A Pennsylvania
lawsuit alleging that Barack Obama is not a “natural-born citizen” of the United
States took an unusual twist this week, after a federally mandated deadline
requiring Obama’s lawyers to produce a “vault” copy of his birth certificate
expired with no response from Obama or his lawyers. The lawsuit, filed by former
Pennsylvania Deputy Attorney General Philip J. Berg, a self-avowed supporter of
Hillary Clinton, alleges that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is thus
“ineligible” to run for president of the United States. It demands that Obama’s
lawyers produce a copy of his original birth certificate to prove that he is a
natural-born US citizen. Berg's suit and allegations have set off a wave of
Internet buzz and rumors, though Obama could easily have put the matter to rest
by providing the federal court with the basic documentation proving he is
eligible to take the oath of a president. But Obama has apparently decided to
deny the court and the public that documentation. The Constitution provides that
any U.S. citizen is eligible to become president if the person is 35 years of
age or older and is a natural-born citizen; that is, born in the territorial
United States. By failing to respond to the Request for Admissions and Request
for the Production of Documents within 30 days, Obama has “admitted” that he was
born in Kenya, Berg stated this week in new court filings. Berg released a long
list of “admissions” he submitted to Obama’s lawyers on Sept. 15, and asked that
they produce documents relating to Obama’s place of birth and citizenship.
Instead of responding, lawyers for Obama and the DNC asked the court to dismiss
the case. And yesterday, Judge R. Barclay Surrick of the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania indeed dismissed the case.
(Democrat's campaign denied allegations, but new evidence
indicates membership) Oct. 25….(WND)
Evidence has emerged that Sen. Barack Obama belonged to a socialist
political party that sought to elect members to public office with the aim of
moving the Democratic Party far leftward to ultimately form a new political
party with a socialist agenda. Several blogs previously documented that while
running for the Illinois state Senate in 1996 as a Democrat, Obama actively
sought and received the endorsement of the socialist-oriented New Party, with
some blogs claiming Obama was a member of the controversial party. The New
Party, formed by members of the Democratic Socialists for America and leaders of
an offshoot of the Community Party USA, was an electoral alliance that worked
alongside the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.
The New Party's aim was to help elect politicians to office who espouse its
policies. Among New Party members was linguist and radical activist Noam
Chomsky. Obama's campaign has responded to the allegations, denying the
presidential candidate was ever a member of the New Party. But copies of the New
Party News, the party's official newspaper, shows Obama posing with New Party
leaders, listing him as a New Party member and include quotes from him. The
party's Spring 1996 newspaper boasted: "New Party members won three other
primaries this Spring in Chicago: Barack Obama (State Senate), Michael Chandler
(Democratic Party Committee) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary). The
paper quoted Obama saying "these victories prove that small 'd' democracy can
work." The newspaper lists other politicians it endorsed who were not members
but specifies Obama as a New Party member.
New Ground, the
newsletter of Chicago's Democratic Socialists for America, reported in its
July/August 1996 edition that Obama attended a New Party membership meeting
April 11, 1996, in which he expressed his gratitude for the group's support and
"encouraged NPers (New Party members) to join in his task forces on Voter
Education and Voter Registration." Becoming a New Party member requires some
effort on behalf of the politician. Candidates must be approved by the party's
political committee and, once approved, must sign a contract mandating they will
have a "visible and active relationship" with the party. The New Party,
established in 1992, took advantage of what was known as electoral "fusion,"
which enabled candidates to run on two tickets simultaneously, attracting voters
from both parties. But the New Party went defunct in 1998, one year after fusion
was halted by the Supreme Court. Following the initial reports of Obama's
purported membership in the New Party, Obama associate and former Chicago New
Party activist Carl Davidson posted a statement on several blogs claiming his
former party was not socialist, but he admitted it worked with ACORN. "The New
Party was a pragmatic party of 'small democracy' mainly promoting economic
reforms like the living wage and testing the fusion tactic, common in many
countries but only operational in New York in the US. The main trend within it
was ACORN, an Alinskyist outfit, which is hardly Marxist," wrote Davidson. But
the socialist goals of the New Party were enumerated on its old website. Among
the New Party's stated objectives were "full employment, a shorter work week,
and a guaranteed minimum income for all adults; a universal 'social wage' to
include such basic benefits as health care, child care, vacation time, and
lifelong access to education and training; a systematic phase-in of comparable
worth and like programs to ensure gender equity." The New Party stated it also
sought "the democratization of our banking and financial system, including
popular election of those charged with public stewardship of our banking system,
worker-owner control over their pension assets, community-controlled alternative
financial institutions." Many of the New Party's founding members were
Democratic Socialists for America leaders and members of Committees of
Correspondence, a breakaway of the Communist Party USA. Obama attended
several DSA events and meetings, including a DSA-sponsored town hall meeting
Feb. 25, 1996, entitled "Employment and Survival in Urban America." He sought
and received an endorsement from the DSA. According to DSA documents, the New
Party worked with ACORN to promote its candidates. ACORN, convicted in massive,
nationwide voter fraud cases, has been a point of controversy for Obama over the
presidential candidate's ties to the group. In 1995, the DSA's New Ground
newsletter stated, "In Chicago, the New Party's biggest asset and biggest
liability is ACORN. "Like most organizations, ACORN is a mixed bag. On one hand,
in Chicago, ACORN is a group that attempts to organize some of the most
depressed communities in the city. Chicago organizers for ACORN and organizers
for SEIU Local 880 have been given modest monthly recruitment quotas for new New
Party members. On the other hand, like most groups that depend on canvassing for
fundraising, it's easy enough to find burned out and disgruntled former
employees. And ACORN has not had the reputation for being interested in
coalition politics, until recently and, happily, not just within the New Party." Oct. 24….(By
Daniel Pipes) With Colin Powell now repeating the lie that Barack Obama has
"always been a Christian," despite new information further confirming Obama's
Muslim childhood, one watches with dismay as the Democratic candidate manages to
hide the truth on this issue. Instead, then, let us review a related subject,
Obama's connections and even indebtedness, throughout his career, to extremist
Islam. Specifically, he has longstanding, if indirect ties to two institutions,
the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), listed by the US government in
2007 as an un-indicted coconspirator in a Hamas-funding trial; and the Nation of
Islam (NoI), condemned by the Ant-Defamation League for its "consistent record
of racism and anti-Semitism." First, Obama's ties to Islamists: The Khalid al-Mansour
connection: According to former Manhattan Borough president Percy Sutton, Al-Mansour
"was raising money for" Obama's expenses at Harvard Law School. Al-Mansour, a
black American (Don Warden), became advisor to Saudi prince Al-Walid bin Talald,
CAIR's largest individual donor. Al-Mansour holds standard Islamist views: he
absolves the Islamist government in Sudan of sponsoring slavery, he denies a
Jewish tie to Jerusalem, and he wrote a booklet titled "Americans beware." The
Kenny Gamble (also known as Luqman Abdul-Haqq) connection: Gamble, a
once-prominent pop music producer, cut the ribbon to the Obama campaign
headquarters housed in a south Philadelphia building he owns. Gamble is an
Islamist who buys large swaths of real estate in Philadelphia to create a Muslim
only residential area. Also, as the self-styled "amir" of the United Muslim
Movement, he has many links to Islamist organizations, including
CAIR and the Muslim Alliance of North America. (MANA's
"amir" is Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade
Center bombing.) The Mazen-Asbahi connection: The
Obama campaign's first Muslim outreach coordinator resigned after it came to
light that he had served on the board of a subsidiary of the Saudi-sponsored
North American Islamic trust, with Jamal Said, another unindicted co-conspirator
in the 2007 Hamas funding trial. Asbahi has ties to CAIR's Chicago and Detroit
offices, to the Islamic Society of North America, yet another unindicted
co-conspirator in the Hamas funding trial. The campaign's second Muslim outreach
coordinator has an Islamist background, having served as an intern in the Muslim
Public Service Network. Immediately upon her appointment by Obama, she met with
a group of about thirty Muslims including such notorious figures as CAIR's Nihad
Awad; the Muslim American Society's Mahdi Bray, who has publicly supported the
Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups, Second, Obama's ties to the Nation of
Islam:
Obama's long-time
donor and ally Antoin "Tony" Rezko partnered for nearly three decades with Jabir
Herbert Muhammad, a son of NoI leader Elijah Muhammad, and says he gave Jabir
and his family "millions of dollars over the years." Rezko also served as
executive director of the Muhammad Ali Foundation, a rogue organization that
exploited the name of this CAIR awardee. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's esteemed
pastor for twenty years, came out of a NOI background, recently he accepted
protection from an NOI security detail, and has praised Louis Farrakhan, the
NoI's leader, as one of the "giants of the African American religious
experience." Wright's church celebrated Farrakhan for his having "truly
epitomized greatness." Farrakhan himself endorsed Obama, calling him "the hope
of the entire world," "one who can lift America from her fall," and even "the
Messiah." That Obama's biography touches so frequently on such unsavory
organizations as CAIR and the Nation of Islam should give pause. How many of
politicians have a single tie to either group, much less seven of them? John
McCain charitably calls Obama "a person you do not have to be scared of as
president of the United States," but Obama's multiple links to anti-Americans
and subversives mean he would fail the standard security clearance process for
Federal employees. Islamic aggression represents America's strategic enemy;
Obama's many insalubrious connections raise grave doubts about his fitness to
serve as America's commander-in-chief. Oct. 24….(Townhall)
Christians cannot sit on the political sidelines any longer. There is too much
at stake, for ourselves and for our children. Unfortunately, many of us have
forgotten our history, a history that is rich in serving the public good. It is
time for Christians to take the lead in the public sphere, knowing that we can
put our Biblical values to good use. We cannot rely on Big Brother government to
do the heavy lifting for us. If we place our fate in the hands of bureaucrats,
we could see our way of life slowly slipping away. 2008 is destined to be a
historic year. I firmly believe that our children and grandchildren will look
upon this year as a milestone moment, a turning point in the national timeline.
Whether 2008 is remembered as a year of triumph or a year of missed opportunity
all depends on the behavior of Christians in the public square. As of late, the
Church has abandoned its role of helping and supporting the leaders, the poor,
the sick within society and then placing the responsibility upon the government.
This is wrong. Governments and states come and go and the Church endures.
Scripture clearly shows that the Church and its people are “to go out and make
disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18-20). Teach others to make Godly
decisions in all areas of life. Christian values are the solid foundation upon
which America was founded. Charity and civic involvement stemmed from tales of
the early church in Jerusalem, and how those early Christians rallied together
to ensure the welfare of those less fortunate than they were. As the years have
passed, other virtues have led to: The founding of
hospitals The elevation of
the status of women in society Contributions to
science The abolition of
slavery The establishment
of broad-based education The creation of
the free enterprise system. We are called by
God to be salt and light -- to transform our surroundings in service to His
kingdom. Obedience to His will requires nothing less. Selecting the
Right Leaders Just as the Bible
lays out standards of behavior for life, it also offers qualifications for
leadership in the church and in civil affairs. There are three principles that
are the key to strong moral leadership: accountability, destiny, dependency. Accountability Our civil leaders
are “ministers of God” (Romans 13:3-4). A leader’s role
is to enable government to fulfill God’s purposes. Civil leaders
should carry out God’s will in establishing justice and maintaining order.
These leaders are
held personally responsible by God for their choices. Destiny Governmental
leaders serve at God’s pleasure. God places people
in leadership for His purposes, not theirs. “[God] sets up kings and deposes
them…” (Daniel 2:21) Dependency Leaders are
called on to make tough decisions (1 Kings 3:16-27). Human wisdom and
courage is not enough to lead a vast number of people well. “Trust in the Lord
with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). It
is hard to know what is right; it is even harder to do what is right. The
only hope is an intimate relationship with God. If each day is lived fully
dependent upon Him for wisdom, He will show what is right and give the courage
to follow through. Why Does the Bible Have So Much to
Say About Government? The answer is
pretty simple: government is ordained by God. Humankind was
created in a state of innocence, where no government other than God’s direction
was needed. Through mankind’s sinning and the breaking of that direct connection
to God, the need for some kind of government arose. Thus, God chose leaders from
among His people to rule according to His will and purpose. Civil government
is God’s institution, begun by His creative act. Furthermore, God is in
control of government. "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord; he directs
it like a watercourse wherever he pleases." (Proverbs 21:1) God’s view of
government dictates that it carries out a specified and limited role in human
affairs. The church and civil government are made necessary by the same thing
(sin), but do not have identical responsibilities (Matthew 22:15-21).
* The humanist
view of the role of government is to perfect mankind. * The Scriptural
view of the role of government is to protect mankind. Throughout
Scripture, God is clear that civil government is charged with a limited
responsibility and that good leaders decide to take a Scriptural view of
government’s role. We also see in Scripture that God has a welfare plan—people
are to look to the family, then the church, then the community (1 Timothy
5:3-16, Leviticus 19:9, 10, 23:22). * The humanistic
plan is publicly funded, coercive, and creates cycles of dependency. * God’s plan is
community-oriented, voluntary, and empowers people. Oct. 24….(Jnewswire)
The Land of Israel is the biblical, historic and exclusive homeland of the
Jewish people. It is Israel’s country. Although swallowed and made part of other
empires through the ages, it has never been the national homeland of any other
people. At the heart of the Land of Israel lie the mountains of Israel, known
since ancient days as Samaria and Judea. Today all who reject Jewish ownership
of, and sovereignty over, these lands call them the “West Bank” or, more
particularly, the “Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” In all of history the
land has only been known as “the West Bank” for 19 brief years. But the name
has stuck, and has been successfully employed to deaden awareness and resistance
from Bible-believing people. This land constitutes the bulk of what the world
wants to give to the Arabs for the creation of a Palestinian state. For decades,
the small nation of Israel has been under relentless international pressure to
surrender it. Today, as 2008 and the second Bush administration are coming to a
close, it increasingly looks like this land will indeed be taken from the Jews
to appease the Arabs. And this as Jews and Christians look largely
disinterestedly on. Jewish and Christian readers, let me tell you a little about
this “Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” The “Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank” is
the very cradle of Jewish civilization. In the “Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank”
Israel’s founding fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, lie buried. Their wives
lie with them or, as in the case of Jacob’s wife Rachel, in Bethlehem, in the
“Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” Rachel’s Joseph is also buried in the
“Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank,” in Shechem. It was on the “Israeli-occupied
Arab West Bank” that Abraham stood when God told him to look to the north, to
the south, to the east and to the west, promising that all the land he could see
would be given to his descendants, “forever.” Jacob was traveling through the
“Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank” when he lay down to sleep, and dreamed of a
staircase reaching into heaven, with angels descending and ascending as God
spoke from on high saying: Jacob, the land on which you are lying is the land I
am giving to you and your descendants after you as an everlasting possession.
That place is called Bethel, or Beit El. It is in the “Israeli-occupied Arab
West Bank.” Joshua, Moses’ successor and that great Israeli conqueror is buried
in the Mountains of Ephraim, in the “Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” For close
on 400 years the nation of Israel worshiped God in the Tabernacle at Shiloh, in
the “Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” Gideon was threshing wheat in Ophrah, in
the “Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank” when the Angel of the Lord called him to
judge the Israelites. Other judges, including the famous Deborah, lived in the
“Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” Ruth met Boaz, who wooed and married her in
the “Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” Their grandson, the Shepherd King David,
was born in Bethlehem, in the “Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” For the first
seven-and-a-half years of his reign he ruled in Hevron, or Hebron, in the
“Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” Ancient Jerusalem, which David then
established as the capital of his kingdom, is in the heart of the
“Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” The heart of Jerusalem is the Temple Mount.
Site of Solomon’s splendid first Temple and the Exiles-rebuilt second Temple, it
is in the “Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” And here, in the “Israeli-occupied
Arab West Bank” God’s shekinah glory rested visibly on the only place
the Almighty calls “holy.” Is it clear yet? Can it possibly be any more so?
Indeed it is clear. Those who do not see it simply don’t want to. I want to tell
you something, dear Christians and Jews. The roots of Am Yisrael (the nation of
Israel) are planted deeply and irremovably in the “Israeli-occupied Arab West
Bank.” Judea and Samaria is the cradle of Jewish nationhood. Permitting these
territories to be given to another people (who, as every historian must testify,
have never had a national homeland there or anywhere else) is to allow the Jews’
roots to be cut off. This nation, which has survived two millennia of dispersion
precisely because its roots have been in these lands, and because their hope
never died of one day returning to that land as their ancient prophets
repeatedly reminded them they would, will not survive the severing of those
roots. Cut the Jewish people off from the place where they began and they will
be left withering, then rendered extinct. No nation can live without its roots.
Neither can any faith. Christianity cannot survive without Israel. The gentiles
nations have rejected the Jews’ claim to these lands; have rejected their
historic ties and and insist on treating Israel as a modern-day, 60-year-old
democracy, and nothing more. In so doing, they have rejected Israel’s God. All
who worship the God of Israel must oppose them, or join them in opposing Him.
Oct. 22….(DEBKA) US intelligence’s amended estimate, that Iran will be ready to
build its first bomb just one month after the next US president is sworn in, is
disclosed by DEBKAfile’s Washington sources as having been relayed as a
guideline to the Middle East teams of both presidential candidates, Senators
John McCain and Barack Obama. The information prompted the assertion by
Democratic vice presidential nominee Joseph Biden in Seattle Sunday, Oct. 19:
“It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did
John Kennedy.” McCain retorted Tuesday, Oct. 21: “America does not need a
president that needs to be tested. I’ve been tested. I was aboard the Enterprise
off the coast of Cuba. I’ve been there.”) DEBKAfile’s military sources
cite the new US timeline: By late January, 2009, Iran will have accumulated
enough low-grade enriched uranium (up to 5%) for its “break-out” to weapons
grade (90%) material within a short time. For this, the Iranians have achieved
the necessary technology. In February, they can move on to start building their
first nuclear bomb. US intelligence believes Tehran has the personnel, plans and
diagrams for a bomb and has been running experiments to this end for the past
two years. The UN International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna last week asked
Tehran to clarify recent complex experiments they conducted in detonating
nuclear materials for a weapon, but received no answer. The same US evaluation
adds that the Iranian leadership is holding off its go-ahead to start building
the bomb until the last minute so as to ward off international pressure to stop
at the red line. This development together with the galloping global economic
crisis will force the incoming US president to go straight into decision-making
without pause on Day One in the Oval Office. He will have to determine which
urgent measures can serve best for keeping a nuclear bomb out of the Islamic
republic’s hands, diplomatic or military, and how to proceed if those measures
fail. His knowledge of the challenge colored Sen. Biden’s additional words in
Seattle: “Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I
said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to
test the mettle of this guy.” Israel’s political and military leaders also face
a tough dilemma that can no longer be put off of whether to strike Iran’s
nuclear installations militarily in the next three months between US
presidencies before the last window closes, or take a chance on coordination
with the next president. Waiting for the “international community” to do the job
of stopping Iran, as urged by governments headed by Ariel Sharon and Ehud
Olmert, and strongly advocated Tzipi Livni, foreign minister and would-be prime
minister, has been a washout. Iran stands defiantly on the threshold of a
nuclear weapon. (Intel agents uncover plot for worldwide disaster) Oct. 22….(WND) Documents recovered from a remote area
along the Pakistan border have revealed that Osama bin Laden wants al-Qaida to
launch a "global fireball" by lighting forest fires in Europe, the United
States, Australia and South America. The documents, uncovered during an
operation led by the British intelligence service MI6, have been described by
experts in that agency as "the most worrying plot that the world is facing." The
catastrophic wildfires would not only produce an environmental disaster but
would stretch emergency services often beyond their limit and leave insurance
companies facing multi-billion-dollar claims for damages that could effectively
destroy the already shattered economies of a number of countries. The
instructions for a "global fireball" were among documents recovered in the
Pakistan border raid on an al-Qaida safe house. The author was Abu Musab al-Suri,
who wrote the terrorist textbook, "The Global Islamic Resistance Call." The
50-year-old Syrian-born terrorist was seized by US Special Forces in Quetta,
Pakistan, in 2005. There are reports that he was flown to Egypt for
interrogation by CIA officers and remains in one of Egypt's secret prisons. But
other reports suggest that, in a deal with Syria, al-Suri has been released and
is now in Baghdad planning attacks against Israel. “Then shall they deliver you up to be
afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my
name’s sake.” (Matthew 24:9) Oct. 21….(In The Days) Even
Americans unschooled in the history of the Middle East know that Iraq comprises
Sunni, Shia and Kurdish Muslims, thanks to the Bush administration’s
much-publicized effort to promote reconciliation among those groups. Often
overlooked is the fact that Iraq has an ancient Christian population that has
suffered grievously from the instability that followed the US invasion. More
than 1,300 Christians recently fled the city of Mosul after 14 were killed,
perhaps by Al Qaeda in Iraq, following a protest about an election law that
didn’t provide Christians with fair representation on provincial councils. But
that is only the latest exodus of Christians from Mosul, which served as a
refuge for those driven out of Baghdad, and from Iraq as a whole. A Chaldean
Catholic archbishop has warned that Christians in his country face
“liquidation.” In opposing the invasion of Iraq, the late Pope John Paul II was
motivated primarily by a concern about the carnage on all sides that a war would
produce; but he also had reason to worry about the fate of Iraqi Christians once
Saddam Hussein was deposed. Despite his crimes, Hussein offered protection for
Christians against militant Muslims. The religious cleansing of Christians in
Iraq is part of a larger pattern in which a faith with origins in the Middle
East is being driven out of its native region. From Iraq to Lebanon, which once
claimed a Christian majority, to Bethlehem, the West Bank town revered as the
birthplace of Jesus, intra-Muslim violence and the Arab-Israeli struggle have
combined to persuade (and in some cases force) Christians to relocate to Europe
or North America. This is a tragedy not only for Christianity but also for the
long-term goal of ensuring Middle Eastern societies that are pluralist as well
as democratic. Christians in the Middle East haven’t always promoted such
virtues. Maronite Catholics in Lebanon sought to deny Muslims a proportionate
role in the governance of that country, and some Arab Christian leaders have
been outspokenly anti-Israel. That attitude was reflected in the opposition of
Arab bishops to a Vatican Council declaration absolving Jews of collective
responsibility for the death of Jesus. In general, however, a vibrant Christian
population has benefited predominantly Islamic countries, not least by building
cultural, educational and political bridges to the West. Likewise, a thriving
Christian community validates Israel’s claim to be a state that, despite its
Jewish character, respects the freedom and autonomy of other faiths. Reversing
the exodus of Christians from the Middle East will not be easy; it will require
international pressure on Muslim-dominated regimes, including Iraq’s, to deal
justly with their Christian citizens. IAEA chief says Tehran yet to obtain
necessary raw unenriched uranium to build even single nuclear weapon. Meanwhile
another round of talks amongst UN Security Council members on the Islamic
Republic's nuclear program fails to yield results Oct. 21….(YNET)
Even if Iran were to withdraw from the non-proliferation treaty today, the
likelihood of the Islamic Republic assembling even a single nuclear weapon in
the near future is low, director-general of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, Mohammed ElBaradei, said on Monday. "They do not have even the nuclear
material, the raw unenriched uranium to develop one nuclear weapon if they
decide to do so," ElBaradei told the Associated Press. "Even if you decide to
walk out tomorrow from the non-proliferation treaty and you go into a lot of
scenarios, we're still not going to see Iran tomorrow having nuclear weapons."
Meanwhile on Monday, senior diplomats from six world powers discussed the
possibility of imposing new sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, but they
failed anew to reach a consensus on how or whether to proceed, US officials
said. The high-level talks among the five permanent members of the UN Security
Council - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, along with
Germany, came after the Chinese dropped objections to the consultations, the
officials said. China had blocked the discussion for nearly two weeks,
apparently in retaliation for US arms sales to Taiwan. The United States had
been trying to organize the telephone conference call since the beginning of the
month after the Security Council, in late September, passed a new resolution
reaffirming three previous rounds of sanctions on Iran but imposing no new
penalties that the US and its European allies had sought. On the call, the
diplomats said "they remain committed to the dual-track strategy and will remain
in close contact on developments over the coming days and weeks," said deputy US
State Department spokesman Robert Wood. He declined to discuss details of the
conversation. The dual-track strategy is the main element of a slow-moving
pressure campaign to persuade Iran to give up objectionable parts of its nuclear
program. It calls for offering Iran incentives to stop enriching uranium but
imposing sanctions if Tehran refuses, which it has thus far done. Russia and
China have continually balked at additional sanctions. Oct. 21….(DEBKA)
The Russian-Syrian discussions in progress in both their capitals cover the
disposition of air defense S-300PMU-2 and Iskander-E missiles, to be deployed
initially around Syria’s Mediterranean ports where Moscow is building naval
bases. DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources reveal that these
two high-powered items have not been excluded from the big Russian-Syrian arms
deal under discussion, despite appeals from Washington and Israeli prime
minister Ehud Olmert, who made a special trip to Moscow for this purpose earlier
this month. As soon as he flew home, the foreign ministry spokesman in Moscow
maintained ambiguously on Oct. 9 that Russia would not supply air defense
systems to “volatile regions.” He said such decisions are based on regional
security issues and “the need to maintain a balance of forces” in the region.
This was taken to mean that if weapons delivered to Israel were seen by Moscow
as upsetting “the balance of forces,” Moscow would think again about withholding
the S-300 and Iskander-E missiles. Our Moscow sources disclose that the Russians
now view the supply of the advanced American FBX-T anti-missile radar system to
Israel in September and its deployment in the Negev base of Nevatim as a
balance-breaker. In the broader context of its contest with Washington, the
Kremlin regards the US radar system installed in the Negev to be an integral
part of the US missile shield deployed in the face of Russian protests in Poland
and the Czech Republic. Moscow has already indicated it may hit back by moving
nuclear-armed Iskander-E missiles to the Baltic opposite the US batteries
deployed in East Europe. Positioning missile systems at Syrian ports would be
part of Russia’s overall military payback for the array of US missile and radar
installations in Europe and the Middle East. Therefore, DEBKAfile’s
military sources report, the Kremlin may decide against handing the missiles to
the Syrian army but prefer to install them to guard the Mediterranean naval
bases Russians are building at the Syrian ports of Tartus and Latakia. Another
option would be to outfit the Russian warships to be anchored in Syria ports
with S-300 missiles, which are already part of the weapons array of the Peter
the Greatt missile cruiser, which carried out maneuvers in the Mediterranean
last week. In either case, Russian fingers would be on the controls of these
batteries in the early stages of delivery. At the same time, the big Russian
arms deal in negotiation would substantially boost and upgrade Damascus’ war
armory with some pretty impressive hardware, all paid for by Tehran: 1. Mig-29 M2
fighter-bombers 2. Mig-31
fighter-bombers. 3. Su-30 Flanker
bombers. 4. Mobile Tor-M1
air defense missiles, like the ones sold to Iran. Iran and Syria are obviously
integrating their air and missile defense systems with Russian hardware, further
facilitating Moscow’s military expansion in the Middle East. 5. Pantsir-C air
defense missiles. 6. Extensive
Russian upgrades of Syria’s antiquated T-62, T-72 and T-80 tanks. 7. Upgrades of
Syrian SA-5 Gammon, S-125 and Pechora-2A missiles. 8. Advanced ATM
anti-tank missiles. Last year, too,
Iran forked out for Syria’s Russian arms acquisitions. While some Israeli
leaders, including president Shimon Peres, predicted that falling oil prices
would inhibit the two radical allies’ arms shopping plans, our military sources
note this paradox: Iran has scarcely been affected by the international
financial crisis because international sanctions have long isolated its
financial system from international banking and taught the Islamic republic to
live with an economy on the ropes. (Says Arab
world campaign contributions 'may enable him to win US presidency')
Oct. 20….(WND)
Sen. Barack Obama is a Muslim of Kenyan origins who studied in Islamic schools
and whose campaign may have been financed by people in the Islamic and African
worlds, Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi said during a recent televised national
rally. "There are elections in America now. Along came a black citizen of Kenyan
African origins, a Muslim, who had studied in an Islamic school in Indonesia.
His name is Obama," said Gadhafi in little-noticed remarks he made at a rally
marking the anniversary of the 1986 U.S. air raid on his country. "All the
people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man,"
continued Gadhafi. "They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success,
and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to
enable him to win the American presidency. "We are hoping that this black man
will take pride in his African and Islamic identity, and in his faith, and that
he will know that he has rights in America, and that he will change America from
evil to good, and that America will establish relations that will serve it well
with other peoples, especially the Arabs," Gadhafi said. Gadhafi went on to
lament statements Obama made at a June 4 address to the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee in which the presidential candidate stated if he is elected
president, "Jerusalem would remain the capital of Israel and it must remain
undivided." But it seems Gadhafi was not aware that the next day, during a CNN
appearance, Obama explained he meant Jerusalem shouldn't be physically divided
with a partition and was not referring to the city remaining in exclusively
Jewish hands. Stated Gadhafi: "But we were taken by surprise when our African
Kenyan brother Obama, who is an American national, made statements about
Jerusalem that shocked all his supporters in the Arab world, in Africa, and in
the Islamic world. "We hope that this is merely an elections 'clearance sale,'
as they say in Egypt, in other words, merely an elections lie. As you know, this
is the farce of elections, a person lies and lies to people, just so that they
will vote for him. "Allah willing, it will turn out that this was merely
elections propaganda. Obama said he would turn Jerusalem into the eternal
capital of the Israelis. This indicates that our brother Obama is ignorant of
international politics, and is not familiar with the Middle East conflict,"
Gadhafi said. Gadhafi went on to express his hope if elected Obama will
implement a "one state solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, meaning
Israel would be flooded with millions of Palestinian Arabs who would terminate
the country's Jewish nationality. He said he was worried Obama may have a "black
inferiority complex" whereby he may enact "white men" policies to prove he is no
different from "white" America. "The thing we fear most is that the black man
suffers from an inferiority complex. This is dangerous. If our brother Obama
feels that because he is black he doesn't have the right to rule America, this
would be a disaster, because such a feeling would make him act whiter than the
white, and go to an extreme in his persecution and degradation of the blacks.
"We say to him: Brother, the whites and blacks in America are equal. They are
all immigrants. America belongs neither to the whites nor to the blacks. America
belongs to its original inhabitants, the Indians. Both the whites and the blacks
immigrated to America, and so they are equal, and Obama has the right to hold
his head high, and say: 'I am a partner in America. This is my land as much as
it is yours. If it is not my land, it is not yours either. It is the land of the
Indians. You are immigrants, and so are we.'" Obama was
'quite religious in Islam' Obama repeatedly
has denied he is a Muslim. His campaign site states: "Senator Obama has never
been a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim, and is a committed Christian." But
public records in Indonesia listed Obama as a Muslim during his early years, and
a number of childhood friends claimed to the media Obama was once a
mosque-attending Muslim. Obama's campaign several times has wavered in response
to reporters queries regarding the senator's childhood faith. Commenting on a
recent Los Angeles Times report quoting a childhood friend stating Obama prayed
in a mosque "something the presidential candidate said he never did," Obama's
campaign released a statement explaining the senator "has never been a
practicing Muslim." Widely distributed reports have noted that in January 1968,
Obama was registered as a Muslim at Jakarta's Roman Catholic Franciscus Assisi
Primary School under the name Barry Soetoro. He was listed as an Indonesian
citizen whose stepfather, listed on school documents as "L Soetoro Ma," worked
for the topography department of the Indonesian Army. Catholic schools in
Indonesia routinely accept non-Catholic students but exempt them from studying
religion. Obama's school documents, though, list him as being Indonesian. After
attending the Assisi Primary School, Obama was enrolled "also as a Muslim,
according to documents" in the Besuki Primary School, a public school in
Jakarta. All Indonesian students are required to study religion at school, and a
young 'Barry Soetoro,' being a Muslim, would have been required to study Islam
daily in school. He was taught to read and write Arabic, to recite his prayers
properly, to read and recite from the Quran and to study the laws of Islam.
Indeed, in Obama's autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," he acknowledged
studying the Quran and describes the public school as "a Muslim school." The
Indonesian media have been flooded with accounts of Obama's childhood Islamic
studies, some describing him as a religious Muslim. Speaking to the country's
Kaltim Post, Tine Hahiyary, who was principal of Obama's school while he was
enrolled there, said she recalls he studied the Quran in Arabic. "At that time,
I was not Barry's teacher, but he is still in my memory" claimed Tine, who is 80
years old. Mengaji, or the act of reading the Quran with its correct Arabic
punctuation, is usually taught to more religious pupils and is not known as a
secular study. Obama's official
campaign site has a page titled "Obama has never been a Muslim, and is a
committed Christian." In a free-ranging interview with the New York Times, Obama
described the Muslim call to prayer as "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at
sunset." The Times' Nicholos Kristof wrote Obama recited, "with a first-class
Arabic accent," the opening lines of the Muslim call to prayer. The first few
lines of the call to prayer state: Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme!
Allah is Supreme! I witness that
there is no god but Allah I witness that
there is no god but Allah I witness that
Muhammad is his prophet ... WEEK OF OCTOBER 12 THROUGH OCTOBER 18 Oct.
18….(Chuck Missler) The United States' economic troubles continue to spread,
prompting many economists and world leaders to demand that action be taken on a
global level. Some have even proposed revamping the entire global financial
system. World leaders are planning to hold a global summit on the economic
crisis, but some economists say that what is needed is a second "Bretton Woods"
conference in order to devise a new doctrine of international finance. On Monday
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for international financial reform
saying: "Around us we must build a new Bretton Woods. A new financial
architecture for the years ahead. Sometimes it does take a crisis for people to
agree that what is obvious and should have been done years ago can no longer be
postponed. But we must now create the right new financial architecture for the
global age." His comments were echoed by other global leaders, including Pascal
Lamy the head of the World Trade Organization. In 1944, near the end of World
War II, representatives from all 44 allied nations gathered in Bretton Woods in
New Hampshire to set up a system of rules, institutions, and procedures to
regulate the global monetary system. They even considered the idea of creating a
global currency. The agreement at Bretton Woods laid the foundation for the
International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and other international
institutions. It also established policies that have enabled the US dollar to
become the world's reserve currency. The Bretton Woods conference set the
standards that have directed the global economy for the past 60 years. However
some economists say that a new set of rules are needed - especially in light of
the current economic crisis. We live in the era of globalization, and the way we
do business is changing. The Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Bahrain,
Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, made headlines recently when it
announced plans for a new common currency and central bank. The groundwork for
the new system will be laid at the GCC summit in November. The council hopes to
have the new monetary union in place by the year 2010. The rise in power of such
institutions represents a key strategic trend that began in the latter half of
the 20th century. Economies are growing, government is expanding, and borders
are disappearing. In the past 60 years we have witnessed the establishment of
the United Nations, the European Union, the Mediterranean Union, the African
Union, and the new Union of South America as well as the International Criminal
Court, the International Monetary Fund, etc. This trend has picked up steam in
more recent years, as political sovereignty and economic control has shifted bit
by bit from individual nation-states to supranational globalist organizations. Bush to Assad:
Sever Ties with Iran and Take the Golan Heights (Kuwaiti newspaper al-Jarida says
Palestinian leader Abbas delivered secret letter from US president to Syrian
counterpart Assad, offering 'a quick and satisfactory solution' to Golan Heights
issue in return for complete disbandment of Syrian-Iranian alliance)
Thousands of Christians from around the world
joined Israelis for the annual Jerusalem March. (Russian naval forces can deter or
disrupt Israeli naval or air assets deployed in wartime against Syria or
Hezbollah in Lebanon)
Oct. 17….(IsraelNN.com)
Thousands of Kohanim, Jewish men descended from members
of the priestly class in the People of Israel, gathered at the Kotel (Western
Wall) in Jerusalem on Thursday morning for the traditional Birkat HaKohanim.
Holiday festivities also are being held in Hevron, where the Jewish community is
offering activities for children and live Chassidic vocal entertainment. The
Kotel ceremony featured some two thousand Kohanim who blessed all those present
with three verses from the Torah (Numbers 6:23-27) that were recited by Jewish
priests in the First and Second Holy Temples. The Western Wall plaza was packed
with some 50,000 Jewish worshippers who streamed into Jerusalem from all over
the country and around the world especially for the event. During the recitation
of the blessing, the Kohanim gathered into groups spread their prayer shawls
over their own heads, spreading out their arms over the congregation to form a
small enclosure that prevented congregants from seeing them during the actual
blessing. There is a custom for the congregants who are being blessed to avoid
looking at the Kohanim during the blessing as well. Kohanim have the tradition
of being direct descendants of the first High Priest of the Jewish People,
Aharon (Aaron), the brother of Moshe (Moses), and as such have a separate status
in Judaism. All Kohenim are members of the Tribe of Levi by direct patrilineal
descent, although not all members of that tribe are Kohanim. The Levites who
were not Kohenim served as Temple assistants and provided the music and songs to
accompany ceremonies, among other tasks. “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.”
Revelation
13:17 Oct. 15….(In the News) A complex
sequence of meetings addressing the international financial crisis took place
this weekend. The weekend began with meetings among the finance ministers of the
G-7 leading industrialized nations. It was followed by a meeting of finance
ministers from the G-20, the group of industrial and emerging powers that
together constitute 90 percent of the world’s economy. There were also meetings
with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. The meetings
concluded on Sunday with a summit of the eurozone, those European Union
countries that use the euro as their currency. The weekend was essentially
about this: the global political system is seeking to utilize the assets of the
global economy (by taxing or printing money) in order to take control of the
global financial system. The premise is that the chaos in the financial
system is such that the markets cannot correct the situation themselves, and
certainly not in an acceptable period of time; and that if the situation were to
go on, the net result would be not just financial chaos but potentially economic
disaster. Therefore, governments decided to use the resources of the economy to
solve the problem. Put somewhat more simply, the various governments of the
world were going to nationalize portions of the global financial system in order
to stave off disaster. The assumption was that the resources of the economy,
mobilized by the state, could manage, and ultimately repair, the imbalances of
the financial system. That is the simple version of what is going on in the
United States and Europe, and it is only the United States and Europe that
really matter right now. Japan and China, while involved in the talks, are
really in different places structurally. The United States and Europe face
liquidity issues, but the Asian economies are a different beast, predicated upon
the concept of a flood of liquidity at all times. Damage to them will be from
reduced export demand, and that will take a few weeks or months to manifest
in a damning way. It will happen, but for now the crisis is a Euro-American
issue. The actual version of what happened this weekend in the financial talks
is, of course, somewhat more complex. The United States and the Europeans agreed
that something dramatic had to be done, but could not agree on precisely what
they were going to do. The problem both are trying to solve is not technically a
liquidity problem, in the sense of a lack of money in the system, the US Federal
Reserve, the European Central Bank and their smaller cousins have been pumping
money into the system for weeks. Rather, the problem has been the reluctance of
financial institutions to lend, particularly to other financial institutions.
The money is there, it is just not getting to borrowers. Until that situation is
rectified, economic growth is pretty much impossible. Indeed, economic
contraction is inevitable. After the failures of so many financial institutions,
many unexpected or seemingly so, financial institutions with cash were loath to
lend money out of fear that invisible balance-sheet problems would suddenly
destroy their borrowers, leaving lenders with worthless paper. All lending is
driven by some appetite for risk, but the level of distrust, certainly after
many were trapped in the Lehman Brothers meltdown has meant that there is no
appetite for risk whatsoever. There is an interesting subtext to this
discussion. Accounting rules have required that assets be “marked to market,”
that is, evaluated according to their current market value which in the current
environment is not very generous, to say the least. Many want to abolish “mark
to market” valuation and replace it with something based on the underlying value
of the asset, which would be more generous. The problem with this theory is
that, while it might create healthier balance sheets, financial institutions
don’t trust anyone’s balance sheet at the moment. Revaluing assets on paper will
not comfort anyone. Trust is in very short supply, and there are no bookkeeping
tricks to get people to lend to borrowers they don’t trust. No one is going to
say once the balance sheet is revalued, “well, you sure are better off than
yesterday, here is a hundred million dollars.” The question therefore is how to
get financial institutions to trust each other again when they feel they have no
reason to do so. The solution is to have someone trustworthy guarantee the loan.
The eurozone solution announced Oct. 12 was straightforward. They intended to
have governments directly guarantee loans between financial institutions. Given
the sovereign power to tax and to print money, the assumption was reasonable in
our mind that it would take risk out of lending, and motivate financial
institutions to make loans. The problem with this, of course, is that there are
a lot of institutions who will want to borrow a lot of money. With the
government guaranteeing the loans, financial institutions will be insensitive to
the risk of the borrower. If there is no risk in the loan whatsoever, then banks
will lend to anyone, knowing full well that they cannot lose a loan. Under these
circumstances, the market would go completely haywire and the opportunities for
corruption would be unprecedented. Therefore, as part of the eurozone plan,
there has to be a government process for the approval and disapproval of loans.
Since the market is no longer functioning, the decision on who gets to borrow
how much at what rate, with a government guarantee becomes a government
decision. There are two problems with this. First, governments are terrible at
allocating capital. Politics will rapidly intrude to shape decisions. Even if
the government could be trusted to make every decision with maximum efficiency,
no government has the administrative ability to manage the entire financial
sector so directly. Second, having taken control of interbank finance, how do
you maintain a free market in the rest of the financial system? Will the
government jump into guaranteeing non-interbank loans to ensure that banks
actually lend money to those who need it? Otherwise the banking system could be
liquid, but the rest of the economy might remain in crisis. Once the foundation
of the financial system is nationalized, the entire edifice rests on the
nationalized system. The prime virtue of this plan is that it ought to work, at
least in the short run. Financial institutions should start lending to each
other, at whatever rate and in whatever amounts the government dictates and the
gridlock should dissolve. The government will have to dive in to regulate the
system for a while but hopefully, and this is the bet, in due course the
government can unwind its involvement and ease the system back to some sort of
market. The tentative date for that unwinding is the end of 2009. The risk is
that the distortions of the system could become so intense after a few months
that unwinding would become impossible. But that is a problem for later; the
crisis needs to be addressed now. The United States seems to dislike the
eurozone approach, at least for the moment. It will be interesting to see if
Washington stays with this position. US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who
appears to be making the decisions for the United States, did not want to
obliterate the market completely, preferring a more indirect approach that would
leave the essence of the financial markets intact. Paulson’s approach was
threefold. First, Washington would provide indirect aid to the interbank market
by buying distressed mortgage-related assets from financial institutions; this
would free up the lenders’ assets in a way that also provided cash, and would
reduce their fears of hidden nightmares in each others’ balance sheets. Second,
it would allow the Treasury to buy a limited stake in financial institutions
that would be healthy if not for the fact that their assets are currently
undervalued by the market; the idea being that the government takes a temporary
share, in exchange for cash that will recapitalize the bank and reduce its need
for access to the interbank market. Finally, and this emerged at 2 am on Monday,
the government would jump into the interbank market directly. The Federal
Reserve promised to lend any amount of dollars to any bank so long as the
borrower has some collateral that the Fed will accept (and these days the Fed
accepts just about anything). The major central banks of Europe have already
agreed to act as the Fed’s proxies in this regard. The United States did not
want to wind up in the position of micromanaging transactions between financial
institutions. Washington felt that an intrusive but still indirect approach
would keep the market functioning even as the government intervened. The
Europeans feared that the indirect approach wouldn’t work fast enough and had
too much risk attached to it (although the Fed’s 2 am decision may take the air
out of that belief). They also believed Washington’s attempt to preserve the
market was an illusion. With the government buying distressed paper and
investing in banks, they felt, what was left of the market wasn’t worth the risk
or the time. There is also an ideological dimension. The United States is
committed to free-market economics as a cultural matter. Recent events have
shown, if a demonstration was needed, that reality trumps ideology, but Paulson
still retains a visceral commitment to the market for its own sake. The
Europeans don’t. For them, the state is the center of society, not the market.
Thus, the Europeans were ready to abandon the market much faster than the
Americans. Yet the Europeans and the Americans both had to intervene in some
way, and now they face exactly the same problem: having decided to make the pig
fly, there remains the small matter of how to build a flying pig. The problem is
administrative. It is all very well to say that the government will buy paper or
stock in companies, or that it will guarantee loans between banks. The problem
is that no institutions exist to do this. There are no offices filled with
officials empowered to do any of these things, no rules on how these things are
to be done, no bank accounts on which to draw, not even a decision on who has to
sign the checks. The faster they try to set up these institutions, the more
inefficient, error-prone and even corrupt they will turn out to be. We can
assure you that some bright lads are already thinking dreamily of ways to scam
the system, and the faster it is set up, the fewer controls there will be. But
even if all of that is thrown aside, and it is determined that failure, error
and corruption are an acceptable price to pay to avoid economic crisis, it will
still take weeks to set up either plan (with the possible exception of the Fed’s
announcement to jump into the interbank market directly). Some symbolic
transactions can take place within days, and they will undoubtedly be important.
But the infrastructure for processing tens of thousands of transactions simply
takes time to build. This, of course, is known to the eurozone finance
ministers. Indeed, the Europeans will hold an EU-wide summit on the topic this
week, while the Americans are going to be working very hard to clarify their own
processes in the next few days. The financial institutions will need to have
guarantees to start lending, or some sort of retroactive guarantee, but the bet
is that the stock markets will stop falling long enough to give the finance
ministries time to get organized. It might work. We need to add to this another
dimension we find very interesting. We have discussed elsewhere the axes on
which this decision will be made: one is the degree of government intervention,
the other is the degree of international collaboration. Clearly, governments are
going to play the pivotal role. What is interesting is the degree to which
genuine international collaboration is missing. Certainly there is voluntary
collaboration, but there is not an integrated global strategy, there is not an
integrated global institution administering the strategy, nor is there an
irrevocable commitment on the part of governments to subordinate their
sovereignty to relevant global institutions. The Americans and Europeans seem to
be diverging in their approaches, with Paulson delivering a warning about the
consequences of protectionism. But the European Union is also now being split
between members of the eurozone and EU members who have their own currencies
(primarily the United Kingdom). Indeed, even within the eurozone, the solutions
will be national. Germany, France, Italy and the rest are all pursuing their own
bailouts of their own institutions. They have pledged to operate on certain
principles and to coordinate, as have the United States and Europe, but the fact
is that each state is going to execute a national policy through national
institutions with its own money and bureaucracies. What is most interesting in
the long run is the fact the Europeans, even in the eurozone, have not attempted
a European solution. Nationalism is very much alive in Europe and has emerged,
as one would expect, in a time of crisis. And this raises a crucial question.
Some countries have greater exposure and fewer resources than others. Will the
stronger members of the eurozone help the weaker? At present it seems any such
help would be simply coincidental. This is a global question as well. The
Europeans have pointed out that the contagion started in the United States. It
is true that the Americans sold the paper. But it is also true that the
Europeans bought it readily. If ever there was a systemic failure it was this
one. However, it has always been our view that the state ultimately trumps the
economy and the nation trumps multinational institutions. We are strong
believers in the durability of the nation-state. It seems to us that we are
seeing here the failure of multinational institutions and the re-emergence of
national power. The IMF, the World Bank, the Bank for International Settlements,
the European Union and the rest have all failed to function either to prevent
the crisis or to contain it. The reason is not their inadequacy. Rather it is
that, when push comes to shove, nation-states are not prepared to surrender
their sovereignty to multinational entities or to other countries if they don’t
have to. What we saw this weekend was the devolution of power to the state.
All the summits notwithstanding, Berlin, Rome, Paris and London are looking out
for the Germans, Italians, French and British. Globalism and the idea of
“Europe” became a lot less applicable to the real world this weekend. It is
difficult to say that this weekend became a defining moment, simply because
there is so much left unknown and undone. Above all it is unclear whether the
equity markets will give governments the time they need to organize the
nationalization (temporary we assume) of the financial system. No matter what
happens this week, we simply don’t yet know the answer. The markets have not
fallen enough yet to pose an overwhelming danger to the system, but at the
moment, that is the biggest threat. If the governments do not have enough
credibility to cause the market to believe that a solution is at hand, the
government will either have to throw in the towel or begin thinking even more
radically. And things have already gotten pretty radical Oct. 14….(Stan
Goodenough) The Land of Israel is the biblical, historic and exclusive
homeland of the Jewish people. It is Israel’s country. Although swallowed and
made part of other empires through the ages, it has never been the national
homeland of any other people. At the heart of the Land of Israel lie the
mountains of Israel, known since ancient days as Samaria and Judea. Today all
who reject Jewish ownership of, and sovereignty over, these lands call them the
“West Bank” or, more particularly, the “Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” In all
of history the land has only been known as “the West Bank” for 19 brief years.
But the name has stuck - and has been successfully employed to deaden awareness
and resistance from Bible-believing people. This land constitutes the bulk of
what the world wants to give to the Arabs for the creation of a Palestinian
state. For decades, the small nation of Israel has been under relentless
international pressure to surrender it. Today, as 2008 and the second Bush
administration are coming to a close, it increasingly looks like this land will
indeed be taken from the Jews to appease the Arabs. And this as Jews and
Christians look largely disinterestedly on. Jewish and Christian readers, let me
tell you a little about this “Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” The
“Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank” is the very cradle of Jewish civilization. In the
“Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank” Israel’s founding fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, lie buried. Their wives lie
with them or, as in the case of Jacob’s wife Rachel, in Bethlehem, in the
“Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” Rachel’s Joseph is also buried in the
“Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank” - in Shechem. It was on the “Israeli-occupied
Arab West Bank” that Abraham stood when God told him to look to the north, to
the south, to the east and to the west, promising that all the land he could see
would be given to his descendants, “forever.” Jacob was traveling through the
“Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank” when he lay down to sleep, and dreamed of a
staircase reaching into heaven, with angels descending and ascending as God
spoke from on high saying: Jacob, the land on which you are lying is the land I
am giving to you and your descendants after you as an everlasting possession.
That place is called Bethel, or Beit El. It is in the “Israeli-occupied Arab
West Bank.” Joshua, Moses’ successor and that great Israeli conqueror is buried
in the Mountains of Ephraim, in the “Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” For close
on 400 years the nation of Israel worshiped God in the Tabernacle at Shiloh, in
the “Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” Gideon was threshing wheat in Ophrah, in
the “Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank” when the Angel of the Lord called him to
judge the Israelites. Other judges, including the famous Deborah, lived in the
“Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” Ruth met Boaz, who wooed and married her in
the “Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” Their grandson, the Shepherd King David,
was born in Bethlehem, in the “Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” For the first
seven-and-a-half years of his reign he ruled in Hevron - or Hebron - in the
“Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” Ancient
Jerusalem, which David then established as the capital of his kingdom, is in the
heart of the “Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” The heart of Jerusalem is the
Temple Mount. Site of Solomon’s splendid first Temple and the Exiles-rebuilt
second Temple, it is in the “Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank.” And here, in the
“Israeli-occupied Arab West Bank” God’s shekinah glory rested visibly
on the only place the Almighty calls “holy.” Is it clear yet?
Can it possibly be any more so? Indeed it is clear. Those who do not see it
simply don’t want to. I want to tell
you something, dear Christians and Jews. The roots of Am Yisrael (the nation of
Israel) are planted deeply and irremovably in the “Israeli-occupied Arab West
Bank.” Judea and Samaria is the cradle of Jewish nationhood. Permitting these
territories to be given to another people (who, as every historian must testify,
have never had a national homeland there or anywhere else) is to allow the Jews’
roots to be cut off. This nation - which has survived two millennia of
dispersion precisely because its roots have been in these lands, and because
their hope never died of one day returning to that land as their ancient
prophets repeatedly reminded them they would - will not survive the severing of
those roots. Cut the Jewish people off from the place where they began and they
will be left withering, then rendered extinct. No nation can live without its
roots. Neither can any faith. Christianity cannot survive without Israel. The
gentiles nations have rejected the Jews’ claim to these lands; have rejected
their historic ties and and insist on treating Israel as a modern-day,
60-year-old democracy, and nothing more. In so doing, they have rejected
Israel’s God. All who worship the God of Israel must oppose them, or join them
in opposing Him. Haniyeh: American Empire is Collapsing
Oct.
13….(Israel Today) Israeli opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu last week in
an interview with London's Financial Times outlined an alternative
peace plan that would shelf the idea of creating an independent Palestinian
state in favor of helping the Arabs of Judea and Samaria improve their quality
of life. Netanyahu said the international community has gotten it wrong with the
assumption that a peace agreement based on Israel's surrender of land will bring
prosperity. "It is not so much that peace brings prosperity - it is that
prosperity brings peace," the man who all polls show will win Israel's next
general election told the newspaper. So far, the 15-year land-for-peace process
has not brought any degree of prosperity to the Palestinians. In fact, it has
sharply decreased living standards in Palestinian Arab towns, as increased
autonomy has led to an explosion of terrorist violence that has resulted in
stifling Israeli restrictions. Instead of completing the process of granting the
Palestinians total sovereignty, which he believes will only result in the
formation of a terrorist state like that in Gaza, Netanyahu wants to give the
Palestinians partial autonomy coupled with aggressive and dynamic business
projects tailored to their strengths and assets. For instance, Netanyahu noted
that the town of Jericho could experience an economic boom by better
capitalizing on its Christian tourist attractions, such as the site where Jesus
is believed to have been tempted by Satan and the portion of the Jordan River
where John the Baptist ministered. Helping the Palestinians reap the financial
rewards of such business projects, and thereby significantly improving living
standards in the so-called "West Bank," will be far more beneficial than
creating what will effectively be a welfare state where armed terrorist bullies
rule the streets. Despite Netanyahu's focus on improving the lives of individual
Palestinians, the Financial Times chose to characterize his plan as
extremist for not falling in line with the accepted narrative that peace will
only be possible when Israel meets demands that Yasser Arafat once admitted are
a prelude to the Jewish state's demise. Netanyahu hopes to regain the prime
minister's chair in time to actually put his plan into practice. Meanwhile,
the international community is working to make sure that even the most tentative
offers by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert are enshrined as the basis for any future
peace talks. Are These
Men Forming A New World Order?
Oct.
13….(YNET) Eight months after he was assassinated in a meticulously-planned
car bombing in Damascus, Hizbullah arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh has been
succeeded by a senior Iranian intelligence official, indicating an Iranian
determination to consoildate its control over the Lebanese group. According to
the report in an Italian daily, Hizbullah's new chief military commander is
Muhammad Riza Zahdi, aka Hassan Mahdawi, who in the late 1980s served in the
Iranian Embassy in Beirut. According to the report, Zahdi will be in charge of
coordinating weapons smuggling to Hizbullah from Syria as well as the
construction of military positions in southern Lebanon. The paper said that the
appointment was part of an Iranian plan to restructure Hizbullah in the wake of
the Second Lebanon War. Mughniyeh, who had been one of the world's most wanted
men for decades, met his demise last February. Since his assassination,
Hizbullah had entrusted his duties - including international operations as well
as relations with Iran and Syria - to a council of several officials. In
September, The Jerusalem Post reported how Iran was solidifying its
control over Hizbullah and had instituted a number of structural changes to the
group under which Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah no longer enjoyed exclusive command
over the military wing. According to Israeli officials, following the Second
Lebanon War Iran decided to step up its involvement in Hizbullah's
decision-making process and instituted changes to the guerrilla group's
hierarchy under which Nasrallah now has to get Iranian permission prior to
certain operations. "There is a real Iranian command now over Hizbullah," a top
IDF officer said at the time. "This doesn't mean that Nasrallah is a puppet, but
it does mean that whenever he pops his head out of his bunker he sees an Iranian
official standing over him." Reports of Iranian discontent with Nasrallah began
to surface following the 2006 war, which Teheran reportedly was not interested
in seeing erupt at that time. Several reports in the Arab press claimed that
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had ousted Nasrallah from his post
as Hizbullah secretary-general and replaced him with the Naim Qassem,
Hizbullah's second in command. Iran has denied the reports. Iran's consolidation
of its control over Hizbullah is seen as an attempt to gain the ability to fully
direct its military forces in the event of a conflict in the Middle East. If
Iran is attacked by the US or Israel, it may now be able to order Hizbullah to
retaliate on its behalf. In the past, the IDF's Military Intelligence has
speculated on what Nasrallah would do in such a scenario and had even raised the
possibility that Hizbullah wouldn't necessarily attack Israel.
WEEK OF OCTOBER 5 THROUGH OCTOBER 11 Oct. 9….(USA Today) In a challenge
to 60 years of US leadership in Europe, Russia's president said Wednesday that
America's financial crisis had diminished its power and called for a new
security pact to rival NATO. President Dmitry Medvedev told European leaders
that Washington had abused its superpower status by invading Iraq, expanding
NATO to Russia's doorstep, and espousing an "economic egotism" that led markets
to collapse worldwide. "A desire by the United States to consolidate its global
domination led to it missing an historical chance" after the Sept. 11 attacks
"to build a truly democratic world order," he said at a conference in Evian,
France. Medvedev proposed that European countries work with Russia to form a new
trans-Atlantic organization in which the United States was no longer the
dominant power. His statements came as Russia takes a more aggressive stance
against the West, especially following this summer's war in Georgia. Medvedev
has dismissed any talk of a new Cold War, but analysts say Russia envisions
itself as a rising power and may sense now is the time to challenge American
hegemony. FOJ Note:
Russia already has built an alliance with China to counter US hegemony. The
Shanghai Cooperation Council, established to push the US out of Central Asia and
the Far East also includes Iran. Oct. 8….(IsraelNN.com)
American security demands that the government waive Congressional
restrictions against direct financial aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA),
United States President George W. Bush wrote the State Department Monday.
However, Arab sources report that the PA is receiving aid from Iran. The
president ordered the direct aid the same day that the Middle East Newsline reported that Iran
is assisting Fatah, whose leader Mahmoud Abbas heads the PA. "We have seen how
Iranian support has helped Hamas everywhere in the Arab and Islamic world. Fatah
wants the same thing," Arab sources told the news service, quoted by
Israeli-American journalist David Bedein in the Philadelphia Bulletin.
Iran has been underwriting the cost for more than 150 Fatah "fighters," and Arab
sources said that several PA military commanders asked PA Chairman Abbas for
closer cooperation with Iran. In a message to the State Department, President
Bush declared, "I hereby certify that it is important to the national security
interests of the United States to waive" the restrictions. The move will allow
up to $75 million to be pumped directly to the cash-strapped PA, which has
become increasingly dependent on international help to the point that it has
been labeled a welfare state by some European leaders. Congress added the waiver
clause in its stipulation that most aid be directed through non-PA organizations
to prevent the money from going into PA leaders' pockets or to terrorists.
Direct American financing to the PA is supposed to be contingent upon the PA
showing that it has ceased incitement against Israel and has disarmed
terrorists. The government has tried to showcase the deployment of
American-trained and armed PA policemen in Jenin and Shechem as proof that the
Fatah-led PA is controlling terrorism. However, they do not work in the middle
of the night, when Israel Defense Forces stage nightly counter-terrorist arrest
operations to arrest terrorists. American military officers at a base in Jordan
also have begun preparing an additional 150 PA security forces, and they will be
deployed in Hevron, where Hamas is popular. Most military officers have said
that the PA would collapse and fall into the hands of Hamas if it were not for
the presence of the IDF in Judea and Samaria. The American government has not
commented on recent PA television programs and school textbooks that continue to
show the entire land of Israel, including all of Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv
area, as Arab land. Oct. 7….(Newsmax)
Federal officials notified law enforcement agencies Monday of a potential
al-Qaida terrorist attack in which public buildings are targeted by suicide
bombers. According to NBC News, the analysis by the FBI and the Department of
Homeland Security describes a scenario where a dozen attackers each carrying 20
kilograms of explosives storm a building, "seal off escape and access points,
and occupy it long enough to set and detonate their explosive packages." In the
al-Qaida plan, according to the analysis, suicide terrorists "would be able to
enter many publicly accessible buildings easily with little or no resistance
from often poorly trained and lightly armed or unarmed security guards, and that
an explosion from inside the building would be particularly effective." The
FBI/DHS analysis states that a "recently discovered audio recording of al-Qaida
training sessions conducted several years ago" provided detailed instructions on
how to carry out such an attack. The US Office of Intelligence and Analysis told
NBC that it has "no credible or specific information that terrorists are
planning operations against public buildings in the United States." But the FBI
and DHS analysts said they were releasing the note because "it is important for
local authorities and building owners and operators to be aware of potential
attack tactics." Oct. 7….(DEBKA)
Russian military experts calculate that the window for an Israeli attack on
Iran’s nuclear facilities will shrink to 3-6 months if Moscow sells Iran (and
Syria) the sophisticated S-300 system for guarding those sites against air,
missile or cruise missile attack. DEBKAfile’s Moscow sources
report that Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert failed in the key missions of his
Moscow trip to persuade Russian leaders to discuss Tehran’s nuclear weapons
program and to refrain from selling this advanced weapon to Iran and Syria.
President Dmitiry Medvedev’s bureau issued a noncommittal statement Tuesday,
Oct. 7, saying that his talks with Olmert were “an exchange of opinion on
threats, including terrorism and nonproliferation.” The word “nuclear” was
avoided. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, who the prime minister met
Monday, trotted out the standard Russia claim that Moscow had no definite
information that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon and is against tougher
sanctions. Prime minister Vladimir Putin was unable to see him. Moscow’s
mainstream media came out Tuesday with a rerun of the statement made on Sept. 17
by Anatoly Isaikin, director of the Russian arms exports agency Rosoboronexport,
that his firm is in advanced negotiations with Tehran for the sale of the S-300
missiles. However, on Monday, the same firm disowned knowledge of these missiles
having been shipped to Iran, although negotiations for their sale were not
mentioned. Konstantin Makiyenko, from the center for strategic and technological
analysis think tank in the Russian capital, said these utterances put Israel on
notice to stop selling arms to Georgia and training its army. Moscow does not
conceal its intention of selling S-300 missiles to Syria. A Russian military
expert commented: “Our warships if based in Syrian ports will need to be
encircled by missile batteries capable of guarding them against air and missile
attack.” According to Russian experts, the system is capable of pinpointing 100
targets and simultaneously intercepting 12 at a distance of 120 km. Our Russian
sources made a point of stressing that Moscow is not subject to embargoes on its
foreign arms sales or any international restrictions on supplying defensive
weapons to other nations.
(Channel seen as way to bypass United Nations sanctions)
Oct. 7….(WND)
Those worried about Iran's nuclear capabilities and intentions perhaps should be
watching Syria more closely, as that nation may be acting as a covert channel
for Iran's program, and it may be getting help from North Korea and elements of
Paksitan's A.Q. Khan nuclear network. Syria also is being eyed as a storage area
for North Korea's nuclear weapons development program as the government there
tries to bypass requirements that its components are dismantled in order to
qualify for increased US economic aid. Until now, nuclear experts thought Syria
was developing its own nuclear weapons program with North Korea's help. In fact,
Israel in September 2007 launched an air raid on what was thought to be the
beginning of construction of a nuclear reactor at al-Kibar in the northeast part
of Syria to extract uranium from phosphates. There had been Israeli intelligence
suggesting that North Korean technicians were at the facility. In addition, the
U.S. claims that it had intelligence and photographic evidence that the site was
a nuclear facility built with North Korean help and due to become operational in
the near future. The bombing also was the subject of criticism by Mohamed El-Baradei,
chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA. He said that the IAEA
should have been notified of the attack and given information on the al-Kibar
facility beforehand. Syria, which like Iran is a member of the nuclear
Non-proliferation Treaty, denies that it has a covert nuclear weapons
development program. As a member of the NPT, a country such as Iran and Syria
can develop a nuclear program so long as it is under IAEA supervision. While
Iran has allowed IAEA inspections over some facilities, it has barred IAEA from
other sites. In turn, this refusal to visit all nuclear sites scattered around
Iran has prompted concerns that Iran is embarked on a nuclear weapons
development program. Despite severe criticism, a recent US National Intelligence
Estimate claimed that Iran had halted such a program three years earlier. Yet,
Israel as well as policymakers in Washington insist that Iran has not given up
on such a program. This has prompted fears that Iran's nuclear facilities could
be subject to similar attacks in the near future.
“Hizballah Brigades of Palestine”: New Gaza-West Bank Terror GroupOct. 6….(Jerusalem Post) Local undercover officers of the Iranian-sponsored Hizballah established and funded this “new” Palestinian terrorist organization for “operations” under their orders, DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report. It described itself in a statement issued Saturday, Oct. 4, as a “Sunni jihad group which has nothing to do with politics”, and whose members are “former members of Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jhad and leftist parties.” Their goals are to “carry out Jihad for the sake of Allah and resist enemies of Islam.” Our sources note that the Lebanese Hizballah’s current practice is to hire members of all the Palestinian terrorist groups on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for ad hoc operations for which they are paid. The “new members” are in fact rent-a-terrorist mercenaries. Hizballah also enlists Israeli Arabs for gathering intelligence. The Israeli high military command and counter-terror chiefs estimate that Hizballah’s issued its statement to counter the stern warning from the IDF Northern Command chief, Brig. Gaby Eisenkott, that a new Hizballah rocket blitz against Israel would bring forth the destruction of Shiite villages in southern Lebanon. They would see a “second Dahya,” he said (referring to the Shiite district of Beirut which the Israeli Air Force flattened in the 2006 Lebanon war). Hizballah’s replied Sunday that Israel was too weak to make war on Lebanon and if it did, would face the same defeat as before.
Hamas West Bank Takeover by Hamas Predicted(Israel expected to retreat from strategic territory as result of US-backed talks) Oct. 6….(WND) Security forces associated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization are on alert for a possible Hamas takeover of the West Bank, a pan-Arab newspaper reported today. Israeli security officials stated there was specific information Hamas was planning an eventual West Bank takeover. Now the London-based daily al-Sharq al-Awsat quoted Fatah security sources stating Hamas may assassinate Fatah officials as part of a larger plan to takeover the West Bank just as it seized control of the Gaza Strip in a violent coup last summer. It also quoted unnamed Hamas members in the West Bank as saying a West Bank takeover is in the works. Israel is currently negotiating a retreat from the West Bank as part of talks initiated at last November's US-backed Annapolis Summit, which sought to create a Fatah-led Palestinian state before January. While Al-Sharq al-Awsat quoted unnamed Hamas sources, WND recently reported that Mahmoud Al-Zahar, the Hamas chief in Gaza, who said Hamas are the rightful representatives of the Palestinian people and should control the entire West Bank just as they rule the Gaza Strip. "According to our rights, we are the elected majority, and a majority in a democracy should control all the Palestinian areas, whether in the West Bank or in the Gaza Strip. This is not an extraordinary issue," said Al-Zahar, who is considered the second most powerful Hamas leader following the group's overall chief, Khaled Meshaal, who resides in exile in Damascus. "Do you respect democracy? If you respect democracy, the elections in January '06 indicated Hamas is the majority and it should run the administration in Gaza and the West Bank," said al-Zahar, speaking from Gaza. Al-Zahar was referring to Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 in which Hamas was victorious by a large margin. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas unilaterally disbanded the Hamas-led Palestinian government after Hamas seized control of Gaza last summer. The Hamas chief's comments to WND came amid fears in the Israeli intelligence community Hamas eventually may attempt to take over the strategic West Bank just as it seized Gaza, particularly if Israel withdraws from the territory. In a dramatic statement last month, Olmert declared at a Knesset meeting that "Greater Israel" is over. "Greater Israel is over. There is no such thing. Anyone who talks that way is deluding themselves," Olmert stated. Greater Israel is a reference to territories captured by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War, including the Gaza Strip, West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem. Security officials in Jerusalem are warning if Israel withdraws, Abbas' forces may not be strong enough to contend with controlling the West Bank without the aid of the Israel Defense Forces. Yuval Diskin, head of Israel's Shin Bet Security Services, estimated during a Knesset meeting last November that if control of the West Bank were handed over to Abbas, Israel would suffer a "significant threat to its security." Palestinian security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, admitted to WND they would have trouble controlling the West Bank without Israeli intervention. According to the officials, Fatah's intelligence apparatus routinely hands the IDF lists of Hamas militants that threaten Fatah rule, requesting that Israel make arrests, although Fatah has been stepping up direct arrests of Hamas gunmen in recent weeks. Perhaps foreshadowing coming tensions, Hamas' so-called military wing yesterday urged its gunmen in the West Bank to use force if security men loyal to Fatah try to arrest them. Meanwhile, Israeli and Palestinian security officials told WND they have specific information Hamas is quietly setting the stages for a possible West Bank takeover attempt. The officials said that among other things, Hamas has been acquiring weaponry in the West Bank and has set up a sophisticated system of communication between cells for a seizure attempt. In what is considered the most threatening Hamas move, according to the officials, the terror group is thought to have heavily infiltrated major Fatah forces in the West Bank and has been attempting to buy off Fatah militia members, many times successfully. The issue of Hamas infiltration of Fatah was thought to have been the Achilles heel that led to the terror group's takeover last summer of the entire Gaza Strip, including dozens of major, US-backed Fatah security compounds there. Hamas' seizure is thought to be a partial consequence of Israel evacuating Gaza in 2005. Hamas' infiltration of Fatah was so extensive, according to top Palestinian intelligence sources speaking to WND, it included the chiefs of several prominent Fatah security forces, including Yussef Issa, director of the Preventative Security Services, the main Fatah police force. Issa regularly coordinated security with the US and Israel. In a bid to strengthen Fatah, the US has been providing the group's militias with weapons, financial aid and advanced training conducted an American-run bases in the West Bank and Jordan.
Islamic Takeover of US Already Under Way (Expert warns 'mainstream media' providing 'talking points' of Arab countries) Oct. 6….(WND) An expert on terrorism is warning the United States should be fighting Islamization, which she believes already is under way. And author Brigitte Gabriel should know: She watched it happen in her native Lebanon. "Lebanon used to be the only majority Christian country in the Middle East," Gabriel recalls. "Most people today do not know that. We were the majority, the Muslims were the minority, but as the years went by, the Muslims became the majority because of their birth rate, but also because of our open-border policy. "We welcomed everyone into our country," Gabriel said, and people didn't realize that the "minority," the Muslims in the society, "was not tolerant" and "did not believe all people were equal." "They tried to impose their way of thinking on us, and they succeeded," she said. The result, Gabriel said, was that a radical terrorist organization tied to Islam, Hezbollah, now rules in Lebanon. WND reported that Gabriel is fearful that terrorists believe now is the time to strike at America, while it is distracted by financial tension and election turmoil. She noted it's been seven years since the Sept. 11, 2001, act of war on US soil by Islamists, but America is falling to Islam's attack, and the battle already is far advanced. "They do not need to fire a single bullet to destroy us," she said. "They are taking over our country culturally, just like they have taken over Europe."She said Islam is being taught across the US as part of world history courses for seventh graders. "A three-week course is teaching students to memorize and recite Islamic prayers and verses from the Quran," she said. "Students have to adopt Islamic names, fast for a day to experience Ramadan, the holiest of Islamic religious holidays, and write about their experience as a Muslim at the end of the program. The exercises during the class include encouraging students to incorporate Arabic phrases such as Allahu Akbar in their speeches, and for students to imagine they were meeting disciples on a pilgrimage to Mecca. This is a state-approved curriculum, using state-adopted textbooks that have been part of the instructional program in California for over a decade."A new study shows US textbooks provide "information" such as that Jesus was a Palestinian and the nation of Israel imposes terrorism on others but is not a victim a terrorism. "Now it is being rolled out nationwide. One book I discuss in particular is 'Across the Centuries,' published by Houghton Mifflin. The Muslim Council on Education has been busy working with the State Department of Education and America's top three publishers who are literally rewriting history," Gabriel said. "'Across the Centuries' is a staple in the State of California. This textbook is at best, a well of misinformation. It is 558 pages long and covers the 1500 years from the fall of the Roman Empire and the French Revolution. The text includes 55 pages devoted to Islam, seven pages noting the Middle Ages in Europe, and six pages of Christian history. The chapter on the Byzantine Empire received only six pages. The chapter on Islam accounts for 10 percent of the text, while Christianity and Judaism are almost entirely absent," she said. "This is public education approved by the State Board of Education nationwide! Our students are being indoctrinated into Islam in our public schools and we don't even have a clue! How can this be allowed to be taught in public schools in America? Most people do not know about it because it is flying under the radar!" she said. At the university level it's worse, she said. "What's been happening for the last 16 years, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states ... because of the money coming from the oil, they have been pumping millions of dollars into our universities appointing Arab professors who are anti-American, anti-Israel, who have been basically brain-washing our students into believe we are the problem," she said. "The children, who have been educated in American universities for the last 16 years, have graduated and are now working, not influenced, by our patriotic education as Americans, but they have been influenced by Arab thinking and hatred based on revenge," she said. The writing is on the wall. Who would have thought that Shariah would come to Harvard University with regulated women-only gym hours? That an imam in Des Moines, Iowa, gave an opening prayer at the 2007 Iowa Legislature's opening session in which he called on Allah to give victory over those who disbelieve? Muslim taxi drivers in Minnesota who refuse to pick up passengers carrying alcohol? The first Islamic public school, the Kahlil Gibran Academy, that opened in 2007, funded by tax dollars! American colleges designating Islamic prayer rooms on campus for use by Muslims only!" Gabriel said. "Those of us who come from the Middle East and see what's happening in the US shake our heads in amazement," she said, calling her book a warning. "We are coming up to a very important election. This is the time we need to understand what is at stake, why our voice counts, why we need to go out and vote. This is the time to make a difference before it is too late," she said. "I have two guests staying with me, also from Lebanon, who ran to Israel for their lives when Israel withdrew out of Lebanon. And this is their first trip to America. I took them to New York and to Washington, DC, last week and we were walking around and they were stunned at the gullibility of Americans. I took them to an air show this past week and they saw Muslims in our military. They looked at me in utter shock and said, 'Do Americans know these same Muslims would turn their guns against their fellow Americans, military men and women in the same tents, and kill them in the name of Islam? What is America thinking?'" Gabriel said. "We are not only fighting a military jihad, we are fighting a cultural jihad and we need to wake up. We are as much at war with the cultural jihad as we are with the military jihad," Gabriel said. "Islam is coming to America while we are asleep at the wheel and only focusing on al-Qaida attacking us militarily. The Muslims are taking us over culturally and remember, they don't even have to fire one bullet," she said. Gabriel said al-Qaida already is inside the US, as is Hezbollah. "We estimate thousands have already been smuggled into America. Hamas is here. They have cells in over 40 states.
|
Nov.
3….(Israel Insider)
Award-winning blogger Doug Ross reports that a reliable source has provided an
eyewitness account of what he saw on the videotape of the Rashid Khalidi
farewell bash that the LA Times is suppressing. The paper used the tape as the
basis for its watered down story about the Obama event and has been suppressing
ever since, despite massive appeals, including an official request by the McCain
campaign to release indisputably newsworthy evidence that could inform voters
about where Barack Hussein Obama really stands. The eyewitness source, who Ross
calls "a person who has provided useful, accurate and unique data from LA
before" writes: Saw a clip from the tape. Reason we can't release it is because
statements Obama said to rile audience up during toast.
Oct. 30….(YNET)
Saudi King Abdullah has green-lighted Israel’s participation in
a meeting at the United Nations next month to discuss his initiative to promote
interfaith dialogue, marking the first time the Jewish state has been invited to
a conference held under the auspices of the kingdom. Official Israeli
representatives were not invited to the previous interfaith dialogue conference
in Spain, but rabbis were on hand for the event. President Shimon Peres and
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni were reportedly considering attending the
conference, scheduled for November 12. Saudi Arabia's Mideast peace initiative
was attached to the invitation, which was extended to 192 countries. 
Oct. 27….(Breitbart) US military
helicopters launched an extremely rare attack Sunday on Syrian territory close
to the border with Iraq, killing eight people in a strike the government in
Damascus condemned as “serious aggression.” A US military official said the raid
by Special Forces targeted the foreign fighter network that travels through
Syria into Iraq. The Americans have been unable to shut the network down in the
area because Syria was out of the military’s reach. “We are taking matters into
our own hands,” the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity
because of the political sensitivity of cross-border raids. The attack came just
days after the commander of US forces in western Iraq said American troops were
redoubling efforts to secure the Syrian border, which he called an
“uncontrolled” gateway for fighters entering Iraq. A Syrian government statement
said the helicopters attacked the Sukkariyeh Farm near the town of Abu Kamal,
five miles inside the Syrian border. Four helicopters attacked a civilian
building under construction shortly before sundown and fired on workers inside,
the statement said. The government said civilians were among the dead, including
four children. A resident of the nearby village of Hwijeh said some of the
helicopters landed and troops exited the aircraft and fired on a building. He
said the aircraft flew along the Euphrates River into the area of farms and
several brick factories. The witness spoke on condition of anonymity because of
the sensitivity of the information, Syria’s Foreign Ministry said it summoned
the charges d’affaires of the United States and Iraq to protest against the
strike. “Syria condemns this aggression and holds the American forces
responsible for this aggression and all its repercussions. Syria also calls on
the Iraqi government to shoulder its responsibilities and launch and immediate
investigation into this serious violation and prevent the use of Iraqi territory
for aggression against Syria,” the government statement said. The area targeted
is near the Iraqi border city of Qaim, which had been a major crossing point for
fighters, weapons and money coming into Iraq to fuel the Sunni insurgency. Iraqi
travelers making their way home across the border reported hearing many
explosions, said Farhan al-Mahalawi, mayor of Qaim. On Thursday, US Maj. Gen.
John Kelly said Iraq’s western borders with Saudi Arabia and Jordan were fairly
tight as a result of good policing by security forces in those countries but
that Syria was a “different story.” “The Syrian side is, I guess, uncontrolled
by their side,” Kelly said. “We still have a certain level of foreign fighter
movement.” He added that the US was helping construct a sand berm and ditches
along the border. “There hasn’t been much, in the way of a physical barrier,
along that border for years,” Kelly said. The foreign fighters network sends
militants from North Africa and elsewhere in the Middle East to Syria, where
elements of the Syrian military are in league with al-Qaida and loyalists of
Saddam Hussein’s Baath party, the US military official said. He said that while
American forces have had considerable success, with Iraqi help, in shutting down
the “rat lines” in Iraq, and with foreign government help in North Africa, the
Syrian node has been out of reach. “The one piece of the puzzle we have not been
showing success on is the nexus in Syria,” the official said. The White House in
August approved similar special forces raids from Afghanistan across the border
of Pakistan to target al-Qaida and Taliban operatives. At least one has been
carried out. The flow of foreign fighters into Iraq has been cut to an estimated
20 a month, a senior US military intelligence official told the Associated Press
in July. That’s a 50 percent decline from six months ago, and just a fifth of
the estimated 100 foreign fighters who were infiltrating Iraq a year ago,
according to the official. Ninety percent of the foreign fighters enter through
Syria, according to US intelligence. Foreigners are some of the most deadly
fighters in Iraq, trained in bombmaking and with small-arms expertise and more
likely to be willing suicide bombers than Iraqis. Foreign fighters toting cash
have been al-Qaida in Iraq’s chief source of income. They contributed more than
70 percent of operating budgets in one sector in Iraq, according to documents
captured in September 2007 on the Syrian border. Most of the fighters were
conveyed through professional smuggling networks, according to the report. Iraqi
insurgents seized Qaim in April 2005, forcing US Marines to recapture the town
the following month in heavy fighting. The area became secure only after Sunni
tribes in Anbar turned against al-Qaida in late 2006 and joined forces with the
Americans
Oct.
17….(YNET) US President George W. Bush suggested to Syrian President Bashar
Assad that Israel would withdraw from the Golan Heights in exchange for a
complete disbandment of the Syrian-Iranian alliance, Kuwaiti newspaper al-Jarida
reported Friday. According to the report, the offer was made in a secret letter
from Bush delivered to Assad by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during his
recent visit to Damascus. The letter included an American proposal to reach "a
quick and satisfactory solution" to the Golan issue in return for defined moves
and a declaration that the Syria would abandon its alliance with Iran once and
for all. A Palestinian source close to Abbas told the paper that the offer was
included "in a secret letter sent personally by President Bush. "In the letter,
Bush suggested finalizing the agreement within several weeks, before the US
presidential elections, in order to push the Middle East peace process, an
achievement the president will be able to proudly present before leaving the
White House in January." The same source added that the delegation accompanying
Abbas on his visit to Syria "was unaware of the letter or its details, and the
US insisted that this be carried out secretly and far away from the official
channels." The newspaper went on to report that the American ambassador to
Damascus was not informed about the issue as well. The source added that the
real objective of Abbas' arrival in Damascus was to deliver the letter from Bush
to Assad. 
Oct.
17….(Ariel Kohen) Until Russia can revitalize its naval forces to a much
larger degree, its deployments to the Mediterranean contribute more to symbolic
and diplomatic activity than being a viable military counterweight to NATO in
the region. Yet the Black Sea Fleet in the Med is a significant show of force
and a diplomatic irritant and a potential threat to shipping in the Suez Canal
and to America's ally Israel. The increased Russian naval presence in the region
means that the Kremlin is seeking to cultivate Syria as a close regional ally,
and is looking to secure additional bases for the Black Sea Fleet besides its
current base in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol. In addition, Russia would also
be able to deploy electronic intelligence-gathering ships that could then
improve its monitoring capabilities against NATO forces and Syria's ability to
monitor NATO and Israeli transmissions, expanding the previous naval
intelligence engagement during the Balkan wars. Finally, Russian naval forces
could deter or disrupt Israeli naval or air assets deployed in wartime against
Syria or Hezbollah in Lebanon. Syria is pursuing new arms deals with Russia,
including the purchase of the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-29 M2, MiG-31, the latest
Sukhoi Su-30 version -- Flanker, Tor-M1 air defense systems, AT-14 antitank
missiles, upgrades for Syria's aging T-62, T-72 and T-80 Main Battle Tanks, SA-5
Gammon anti-aircraft missile systems, and upgrading Syria's existing S-125 Air
Defense systems to the Pechora-2A. Iran is also involved in supporting Damascus.
In 2007 alone Iran reportedly financed Syrian purchases of Russian arms to the
tune of $1 billion. Iran and Syria, which have had a mutual defense treaty since
2004, train and equip Hezbollah, the biggest terrorist organization in the
Middle East. Russia is cultivating both states as allies and as customers for
Russian arms. What is particularly disturbing is that the Russian layered air
defenses, both short-range TOR and long-range S-300 anti-aircraft systems, are
capable of providing the defensive envelope to the mysterious Syrian nuclear
research activities, as well as to the significant chemical weapons arsenal
deliverable by Damascus' short-range ballistic missiles, such as Syrian-produced
SCUD-C and SCUD-D and, potentially, Russian-made Iskander-E, NATO designation
SS-X-26. Damascus has also acquired Pantsir-C1 air defense systems, which
represent the current state of the art in Russian military air defense
technology, but no deal has yet been reached. According to sources in Moscow,
Russia is likely to equip Syria's Tartus naval base with S-300PMU-2 Favorit
ballistic missiles and a radar system more sophisticated than Syria's current
capabilities. During the Cold War era, the Soviet Union boasted a global naval
power projection capability with yearly naval maneuvers in the Caribbean and the
North Fleet naval brigade in Conakry, Guinea, and Luanda, Angola. The 8th
Operational Squadron of the Pacific Fleet had supply bases in Aden and Socotra
in Yemen and Dahlak in Eritrea, and in Berbera in Somalia. After the five-day
Aug. 8-Aug. 12 war in the former Soviet republic of Georgia in the Caucasus, the
Russian Black Sea Fleet is planning to deploy in Abkhazia, at the ports of
Ochamchira and Sukhumi. For Moscow today, Tartus is only the first step in the
long road to a renewed global naval presence.
Oct. 17….(IsraelNN.com)
Despite the intermittently heavy rains, close to 10,000
people showed up for the traditional Sukkot holiday march in Jerusalem. An
unprecedented 400 people were allowed onto the Temple Mount this morning, though
only in separate groups, and the police allowed them, for the first time in
memory, to read Biblical verses aloud. Another group is scheduled to visit
Judaism's holiest site for 12:30 PM. All the visitors followed the precautions
prescribed by those rabbis who allow ascent to the Temple Mount, including
immersing in a mikveh (ritual bath), prior to and during their visit. Rabbi
Chaim Richman of the Temple Institute explained the significance of the
unveiling of the laver at this point in time: "The kiyor is the first
thing used by the Priests in the Temple every morning, when they sanctify their
hands and feet before beginning their daily service. Essentially, they are
washing their hands of the misconceptions of G-d and of life that they had
yesterday, and are beginning the new day with a new slate. The laver is thus all
about looking forward. We ourselves must do the same thing; in this generation,
we have to cleanse ourselves of mistaken conceptions regarding the Temple, such
as that we need to stand by passively as it is brought down from Heaven. We must
be proactive, constantly working, praying and thinking towards the rebuilding of
the Temple and its restoration to its proper place as the central pillar of
Jewish society."
Oct. 13….(AP) America's opponents
in the Middle East are gloating at the financial meltdown in the United States,
describing it as the divinely inspired collapse of an over-stretched empire.
Hardline clerics across the region as well as representatives of US opponents
like Hamas and al-Qaeda have described the plummeting stocks and frozen credit
markets in the United States as a kind of retribution for American misdeeds. "We
are witnessing the collapse of the American Empire," Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas
Prime Minister in the Gaza Strip, told worshippers during Friday prayers.
"What's going on in America is a result of the violation of the rights of people
in Palestine, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Muslims around the world."
Haniyeh's comments followed those made by other regional leaders who have long
had an antagonistic relationship with the US and appear to be enjoying the
country's troubles. However, the financial meltdown has not left the region
unscathed, with stock markets across the Middle East dropping more than 10% in
the past week. In an interview on Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
described America's problems as a matter of chickens coming home to roost after
years of exporting inflation and deficits to the rest of the world. "Now the
world capacity is full and these problems have returned to the US" he said. "And
finally they are oppressors, and systems based on oppression and unrighteous
positions will not endure." Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a high level Iranian
cleric, was more blunt when he addressed worshippers on Oct. 3, describing the
situation as God's punishment. "We are happy that the US Economy is in anarchy
and the anarchy is reaching Europe," said Jannati. "They are seeing the result
of their own ugly doings and God is punishing them." The Iranian government has
said the financial crisis is not hurting Iran's economy. But the turmoil has
helped drive the price of oil down more than 40 percent since record highs in
July. The Iranian government relies on oil revenue for 80 percent of its budget.
Al-Qaeda, America's arch-nemesis in the region, was one of the first to express
satisfaction over the financial crisis in a half hour video message early in the
month. "The enemies of Islam are facing a crushing defeat, which is beginning to
manifest itself in the expanding crisis their economy is experiencing," said
American al-Qaeda member Ahmed Gadahn. Gadahn blamed the crisis on the US-led
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Americans "turning their backs on Allah's
revealed laws, which forbid interest-bearing transactions, exploitation, greed
and injustice in all its forms." This sentiment was even heard in US-ally
Lebanon, where a hardline Sunni cleric saw the financial collapse as God
answering the prayers of the Muslims. "God has responded to the supplications of
the oppressed people," Mufti of Mount Lebanon Sheik Mohammed Ali al-Jouzo told
the state-run news agency Thursday. "It is the curse that hits every arrogant
power.
Oct. 13….(In
The Days) President Bush makes a statement in the Rose Garden of the White
House after meeting with G7 finance ministers about the financial crisis,
Saturday, Oct. 11, 2008, in Washington. Pictured from left to right: Italy’s
central bank governor Mario Draghi; IMF Managing Director Dominique
Strauss-Kahn; Eurogroup’s Chairman Jean-Claude Juncker; Japan’s Finance Minister
Shoichi Nakagawa; Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson; France finance minister
Christine Lagarde; Canada finance minister James M. Flaherty; Britain’s
Chancellor of the Exchequer Alastair Darling, Italy finance minister Giulio
Tremonti; Germany’s Minister of Finance Peer Steinbrueck; and World Bank
President Robert Zoellick. President Bush emerged from a meeting with foreign
financial officials on Saturday and pledged a global response to the credit
crisis that will lead toward a “path of stability and long-term growth.” Bush
announced no new strategies to attack the economic woes circling the globe,
stressing instead, “We will do what it takes to resolve the crisis and the
world’s economy will emerge stronger as a result.” The president spoke in the
Rose Garden outside the White House, joined there in a show of solidarity not
long after daybreak by finance officials from the G-7 - Japan, Germany, Britain,
France, Italy and Canada, in addition to the United States. Treasury Secretary
Henry Paulson and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also attended. “The United
States has a special role to play in leading the response to this crisis,” the
president said. “That is why I convened this morning’s meeting here at the White
House and it is why our government will continue using all the tools at our
disposal to resolve this crisis.” He added, “As our nations carry out this plan,
we must ensure that the actions of one country do not contradict or undermine
the actions of another. In an interconnected world, no nation will gain by
driving down the fortunes of another. We are in this together. We will come
through it together.” Bush’s comments were aimed at avoiding the mistakes that
worsened economic conditions during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Then,
some nations pursued go-it-alone strategies such as erecting protectionist trade
barriers to shield their domestic industries. Those trade barriers ended up only
worsening the global downturn. In the current crisis, Ireland moved to guarantee
all bank deposits, a decision that triggered similar actions in Germany and
other nations which were concerned that nervous depositors would move their bank
accounts to Ireland. The White House meeting lasted about a half-hour, less than
scheduled. Officials from the Group of 20 countries - which include the
wealthiest and the world’s biggest developing nations such as China, Brazil and
India - planned to attend a meeting Saturday evening that Paulson requested to
explain the actions that U.S. and other wealthy nations have taken. For Bush, it
was the 22nd time in 27 days that he has spoken publicly about the financial
crisis. Congress heard testimony last week that the retirement accounts of
Americans have lost $2 trillion in the past 15 months, and the New York Stock
Exchange Dow Jones industrials average plummeted more than 18 percent last week
alone, the largest ever in a week. A wave of selling sent markets lower in
several Asian and European nations on Friday, while other exchanges were closed
to prevent the same fate. The stock selloffs stem from fears that banking
systems have essentially frozen up around the world - a credit crisis that took
hold sharply three weeks ago in the United States and has led to an escalating
series of interventions by the administration and Federal Reserve. Officials
have also spoken openly of concerns that the United States may be headed for a
potentially deep recession. It was only eight days ago that Congress approved a
$700 billion bailout for the financial industry, and the Fed has pumped billions
of dollars into the economic system hoping to provide greater access to credit
for potential borrowers. On Friday, Paulson announced the Treasury would begin
buying part ownership in American banks, an effort similar to a program tried
beginning in the Great Depression of the 1930s.