Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

The Qatari Emir Eyes Gaza’s Hamas As His 'A Qods' - Style Militia
Oct 23rd, 2012
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Anti-Israel

The Qatari ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, decided to visit the Gaza Strip this week, becoming the first Arab ruler ever to visit the Palestinian enclave, not merely as a benign patron with a large $245 million dollar check for the beleaguered population. He has big plans for its rulers, the Islamist Hamas, which could have wide-ranging repercussions for Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority headed by Hama’s rival Mahmoud Abbas.

He will no doubt enjoy a warm welcome, not least by making naught of the Israeli sea blockade against the Gaza Strip where Hamas seized power in a coup in 2007, two years after Israel handed the territory over to the Palestinian Authority.
Sheikh Hamad’s plans for Gaza are an extension of his own regional ambitions. Two years ago, he began making his mark on Middle East politics in Libya, where he pressed his security and special forces and cash into the NATO operation for overthrowing Muammar Qaddafi. After Qaddafi was killed, the Qatari emir took a hand in the Syrian conflict, sponsoring some of the factions fighting to rid their country of Bashar Assad.

Both of these Al Thani projects remain unfinished, although they shed some light on his mode of operation and objectives.

Until the early winter of 2011, Qatari political, military and intelligence input and the Obama administration’s goals in Libya went hand in hand, although Washington chose to lead the operation “from behind."

But after Qaddafi was killed exactly a year ago on Oct. 20, their ways parted. The United States threw its support behind one group of former insurrectionists while the emir espoused more radical Islamist factions.

This division of labor evolved into the main obstacle to establishing stable central government in Tripoli. It also provided fertile ground for the radical Muslim Brotherhood and fundamentalist Salafis to flourish.
The exact relationship between radical factions and militias under Qatari patronage and the Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) network branching out across North Africa is hard to pin down with any precision. But it leaves a gray area which was exploited for the murder of US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi on Sept. 11.

To this day, the circumstances of this attack have not been fully established - even after it become a hot potato tossed back and forth between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in their campaigns for the presidency. But Libya’s factional infighting bears strongly on the Qatari emir’s visit to the Gaza Strip because it is reflected in the power politics of the Gaza Strip spilling over into Egyptian Sinai among the ruling Hamas, the Salafi groups and al Qaeda factions.
Since Qaddafi’s downfall, rivers of smuggled arms have underscored the Libyan connection by transforming Sinai and Gaza into the biggest munitions trading store in the Middle East. There is plenty to go around for all and sundry. Islamist terrorists of every stripe, including al Qaeda, have for months been partaking freely of the smuggled hardware.

The Egyptian authorities did not interfere when the one million Bedouin denizens of Sinai, cashing in on Libyan chaos, matured from petty smugglers to rich merchants, local warlords commanding private militias and influence.
For the past three months, the spiraling attacks on Israel which are planned and organized in the Gaza Strip aim equally at keeping Egyptian security forces based in Sinai out of their nefarious transactions.

Hisham Al-Saidni, aka Abu Walid al-Masri, head of the Gaza and Sinai Salafist faction known as Majlis Shura Al-Mujahideen, was not based in Sinai where he kept most of his men. He preferred to work out of Jabaliya north of Gaza City. He counted on Hamas turning a blind eye to his doings.

By killing him in an air strike on Oct. 13, while he was riding a motorcycle in Jabaliya, Israel put its hand in an Islamist hornets’ nest reaching outside the borders of Gaza-Sinai terror and touching a nerve as far away as the Al Thani palace in Doha.
Sheikh Hamad’s visit - most probably Tuesday, Oct. 23 – aims to mark out the Gaza Strip at as an area of Qatari influence. During his brief stay, accompanied by a large entourage including his wife, he will inspect projects he has funded in the past and the new enterprises he is sponsoring, three roads, a hospital and a new town.
The Qatari emir’s overall plan is to shore up the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip, after giving up on Egypt’s government as inept and not up to hauling the country out of its economic morass. He believes it is imperative for the Gaza-based Palestinian regime to gain mastery over the lawless Bedouin and Salafist terrorist groups of Sinai and, above all the arms smuggling hub in the peninsula. If they continue to run riot, Qatar’s influence in Libya will gradually ebb.
To achieve this mastery, Sheik Hamad wants to turn the Hamas Islamist terrorist organization into a disciplined elite fighting force on the Iranian Al Qods Brigades model, to serve as Qatar’s operational arm in the Gaza Strip and the strategic Sinai Peninsula.

This promises Hamas a new lease of life after the loss of its command bases, assets and positions of influence in Damascus as a result of the Syrian conflict.

The Palestinian Islamists will remain faithful to their commitment to fight the Jewish state – only now they will carry on as an instrument of Sheikh Hamad, and Israel will not only be up against the Islamists and jihadis of the Gaza Strip and Sinai, but Qatar’s legions in Libya and Syria.
As a muscle-flexing display for its new patron, Hamas is expected to redouble its attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip and Sinai.

The Armageddon Virus: Experts Fear a Disease That Leaps from Animals to Humans Could Devastate Manki
Oct 23rd, 2012
Daily NewsThedailymail.co.uk
Categories: Today's Headlines;Warning

The symptoms appear suddenly with a headache, high fever, joint pain, stomach pain and vomiting.

As the illness progresses, patients can develop large areas of bruising and uncontrolled bleeding. In at least 30  per cent of cases, Crimean-Congo Viral Hemorrhagic Fever is fatal.

And so it proved this month when a 38-year-old garage owner from Glasgow, who had been to his brother’s wedding in Afghanistan, became the UK’s first confirmed victim of the tick-borne viral illness when he died at the high-security infectious disease unit at London’s Royal Free Hospital.

It is a disease widespread in domestic and wild animals in Africa and Asia — and one that has jumped the species barrier to infect humans with deadly effect.

But the unnamed man’s death was not the only time recently a foreign virus had struck in this country for the first time.

Last month, a 49-year-old man entered London’s St Thomas’ hospital with a raging fever, severe cough and desperate difficulty in breathing.

He bore all the hallmarks of the deadly Sars virus that killed nearly 1,000 people in 2003 — but blood tests quickly showed that this terrifyingly virulent infection was not Sars. Nor was it any other virus yet known to medical science.

Worse still, the gasping, sweating patient was rapidly succumbing to kidney failure, a potentially lethal complication that had never before been seen in such a case.

As medical staff quarantined their critically-ill patient, fearful questions began to mount. The stricken man had recently come from Qatar in the Middle East. What on earth had he picked up there? Had he already infected others with it?

Using the latest high-tech gene-scanning technique, scientists at the Health Protection Agency started to piece together clues from tissue samples taken from the Qatari patient, who was now hooked up to a life-support machine.

The results were extraordinary. Yes, the virus is from the same family as Sars. But its make-up is completely new. It has come not from humans, but from animals. Its closest known relatives have been found in Asiatic bats.

The investigators also discovered that the virus has already killed someone. Searches of global medical databases revealed the same mysterious virus lurking in samples taken from a 60-year-old man who had died in Saudi Arabia in July.

When the Health Protection Agency warned the world of this newly- emerging virus last month, it ignited a stark fear among medical experts.

In all these outbreaks, the virus responsible came from an animal. Analysts now believe that the Spanish flu pandemic originated from a wild aquatic bird.

The terrifying fact is that viruses that manage to jump to us from animals — called zoonoses — can wreak havoc because of their astonishing ability to catch us on the hop and spread rapidly through the population when we least expect it.

The virus's power and fatality rates are terrifying One leading British virologist, Professor John Oxford at Queen Mary Hospital, University of London, and a world authority on epidemics, warns that we must expect an animal-originated pandemic to hit the world within the next five years, with potentially cataclysmic effects on the human race.

Such a contagion, he believes, will be a new strain of super-flu, a highly infectious virus that may originate in some far-flung backwater of Asia or Africa, and be contracted by one person from a wild animal or domestic beast, such as a chicken or pig.

By the time the first victim has succumbed to this unknown, unsuspected new illness, they will have spread it by coughs and sneezes to family, friends, and all those gathered anxiously around them.

Thanks to our crowded, hyper-connected world, this doomsday virus will already have begun crossing the globe by air, rail, road and sea before even the best brains in medicine have begun to chisel at its genetic secrets. Before it even has a name, it will have started to cut its lethal swathe through the world’s population.

If this new virus follows the pattern of the pandemic of 1918-1919, it will cruelly reap mass harvests of young and fit people.

They die because of something called a ‘cytokine storm’ — a vast overreaction of their strong and efficient immune systems that is prompted by the virus.

This uncontrolled response burns them with a fever and wracks their bodies with nausea and massive fatigue. The hyper-activated immune system actually kills the person, rather than killing the super-virus.

Professor Oxford bases his prediction on historical patterns.

The past century has certainly provided us with many disturbing precedents. For example, the 2003 global outbreak of Sars, the severe acute respiratory syndrome that killed nearly 1,000 people, was transmitted to humans from Asian civet cats in China.

In November 2002, it first spread among people working at a live animal market in the southern Guangdong province, where civets were being sold.

Nowadays, the threat from such zoonoses is far greater than ever, thanks to modern technology and human population growth. Mass transport such as airliners can quickly fan outbreaks of newly- emerging zoonoses into deadly global wildfires.

The Sars virus was spread when a Chinese professor of respiratory medicine treating people with the syndrome fell ill when he travelled to Hong Kong, carrying the virus with him.

By February 2003, it had covered the world by hitching easy lifts with airline passengers. Between March and July 2003, some 8,400 probable cases of Sars had been reported in 32 countries.

It is a similar story with H1N1 swine flu, the 2009 influenza pandemic that infected hundreds of millions throughout the world. It is now believed to have originated in herds of pigs in Mexico before infecting humans who boarded flights to myriad destinations.

Once these stowaway viruses get off the plane, they don’t have to learn a new language or new local customs.

Genetically, we humans are not very diverse; an epidemic that can kill people in one part of the world can kill them in any other just as easily.

On top of this, our risk of catching such deadly contagions from wild animals is growing massively, thanks to humankind’s relentless encroachment into the world’s jungles and rainforests, where we increasingly come into contact for the first time with unknown viral killers that have been evolving and incubating in wild creatures for millennia.

This month, an international research team announced it had identified an entirely new African virus that killed two teenagers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2009.

The virus induced acute hemorrhagic fever, which causes catastrophic widespread bleeding from the eyes, ears, nose and mouth, and can kill in days.

A 15-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl who attended the same school both fell ill suddenly and succumbed rapidly. A week after the girl’s death, a nurse who cared for her developed similar symptoms. He only narrowly survived.

The new microbe is named Bas-Congo virus (BASV), after the province where its three victims lived. It belongs to a family of viruses known as rhabdoviruses, which includes rabies.

A report in the journal PLoS Pathogens says the virus probably originated in local wildlife and was passed to humans through insect bites or some other as-yet unidentified means.

There are plenty of other new viral candidates waiting in the wings, guts, breath and blood of animals around us. You can, for example, catch leprosy from armadillos, which carry the virus in their shells and are responsible for a third of leprosy cases in the U.S.

Horses can transmit the Hendra virus, which can cause lethal respiratory and neurological disease in people.

In a new book that should give us all pause for thought, award-winning U.S. natural history writer David Quammen points to a host of animal-derived infections that now claim lives with unprecedented regularity. The trend can only get worse, he warns.

Quammen highlights the Ebola fever virus, which first struck in Zaire in 1976. The virus’s power is terrifying, with fatality rates as high as 90 per cent. The latest mass outbreak of the virus, in the Congo last month, is reported to have killed 36 people out of 81 suspected cases.

According to Quammen, Ebola probably originated in bats. The bats then infected African apes, quite probably through the apes coming into contact with bat droppings. The virus then infected local hunters who had eaten the apes as bushmeat.

Quammen believes a similar pattern occurred with the HIV virus, which probably originated in a single chimpanzee in Cameroon.

'It is inevitable we will have a global outbreak' Studies of the virus’s genes suggest it may have first evolved as early as 1908. It was not until the Sixties that it appeared in humans, in big African cities. By the Eighties, it was spreading by airlines to America. Since then, Aids has killed around 30 million people and infected another 33 million.

There is one mercy with Ebola and HIV. They cannot be transmitted by coughs and sneezes. ‘Ebola is transmissible from human to human through direct contact with bodily fluids. It can be stopped by preventing such contact,’ Quammen explains.

‘If HIV could be transmitted by air, you and I might already be dead. If the rabies virus — another zoonosis — could be transmitted by air, it would be the most horrific pathogen on the planet.’

Viruses such as Ebola have another limitation, on top of their method of transmission. They kill and incapacitate people too quickly. In order to spread into pandemics, zoonoses need their human hosts to be both infectious and alive for as long as possible, so that the virus can keep casting its deadly tentacles across the world’s population.

But there is one zoonosis that can do all the right (or wrong) things. It is our old adversary, flu. It is easily transmitted through the air, via sneezes and coughs.

Sars can do this, too. But flu has a further advantage. As Quammen points out: ‘With Sars, symptoms tend to appear in a person before, rather than after, that person becomes highly infectious.

‘That allowed many Sars cases to be recognised, hospitalised and placed in isolation before they hit their peak of infectivity. But with influenza and many other diseases, the order is reversed.’

Someone who has an infectious case of a new and potentially lethal strain of flu can be walking about innocently spluttering it over everyone around them for days before they become incapacitated.

Such reasons lead Professor Oxford, a world authority on epidemics, to warn that a new global pandemic of animal-derived flu is inevitable. And, he says, the clock is ticking fast.

Professor Oxford’s warning is as stark as it is certain: ‘I think it is inevitable that we will have another big global outbreak of flu,’ he says. ‘We should plan for one emerging in 2017-2018.’

But are we adequately prepared to cope?

Professor Oxford warns that vigilant surveillance is the only real answer that we have.

‘New flu strains are a day-to-day problem and we have to be very careful to keep on top of them,’ he says.

‘We now have scientific processes enabling us to quickly identify the genome of the virus behind a new illness, so that we know what we are dealing with. The best we can do after that is to develop and stockpile vaccines and antiviral drugs that can fight new strains that we see emerging.’

But the Professor is worried our politicians are not taking this certainty of mass death seriously enough.

Such laxity could come at a human cost so unprecedentedly high that it would amount to criminal negligence. The race against newly-emerging animal-derived diseases is one that we have to win every time. A pandemic virus needs to win only once and it could be the end of humankind.

Report: Obama's White House Hosted Muslim Radicals
Oct 23rd, 2012
Daily NewsINN - Elad Benari
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

A year-long investigation by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) has found that scores of known radical Islamists made hundreds of visits to the Obama White House, meeting with top administration officials.

The organization revealed its findings in a report on its website on Sunday.

Court documents and other records have identified many of these visitors as belonging to groups serving as fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and other terrorist organizations, noted IPT.

The IPT made the discovery combing through millions of White House visitor log entries. IPT compared the visitors' names with lists of known radical Islamists. Among the visitors were officials representing groups which have been designated by the Department of Justice as unindicted co-conspirators in terrorist trials; terrorist groups including Hamas and Hizbullah; groups that have obstructed terrorist investigations by instructing their followers not to cooperate with law enforcement; promoted the incendiary conspiratorial allegation that the United States is engaged in a "war against Islam"; repeatedly claimed that many of the Islamic terrorists convicted since September 11 were framed by the U.S government as part of an anti-Muslim profiling campaign.

Individuals from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) visited the White House at least 20 times starting in 2009, IPT discovered. In 2008, CAIR was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorist money laundering case in U.S. history – the trial of the Holy Land Foundation in which five HLF officials were convicted of funneling money to Hamas.

U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Solis has ruled that, "The Government has produced ample evidence to establish the association" of CAIR to Hamas, upholding their designations as unindicted co-conspirators. In 2008, the FBI formally ended all contact with CAIR because of its ties to Hamas.

In January 2004, Hussam Ayloush, executive director of CAIR's Los Angeles office, publicly defended terror attacks by Palestinian Authority Arabs. He told Muslim students at the University of California - Los Angeles that terrorists were exercising their "legitimate right" to defend themselves against “Israeli occupation.”

The logs show Ayloush met with Paul Monteiro, associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement on July 8, 2011 and Amanda Brown, assistant to the White House director of political affairs Patrick Gaspard, on June 6, 2009.

Reliable sources told IPT that Monteiro was White House liaison for secret contacts with CAIR, especially with Ayloush. IPT learned that the White House logs curiously have omitted Ayloush's three meetings with two other senior White House officials.

Louay Safi, formerly executive director of the Islamic Society of North America, visited the White House twice – meeting in intimate settings with Paul Monteiro on June 29, 2011 and July 8, 2011.

Law enforcement first noticed Safi in 1995 when his voice was captured in an FBI wiretap of now-convicted PA Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian. At the time of his conversation with Al-Arian, Safi served as executive director of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, an organization listed in law-enforcement and in internal Muslim Brotherhood documents as one of the movement's top front groups in North America.

Safi also wrote for the Middle East Affairs Journal, produced by the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR). That group was established by Hamas deputy political leader Mousa Abu Marzook and part of the Hamas-support network called the "Palestine Committee."

Safi has repeatedly expressed understanding for the underlying causes that provoke terrorism: "Terrorism cannot be fought by…ignoring its root causes. The first step…is to examine the conditions that give rise to the anger, frustration, and desperation that fuel all terrorist acts." He also called PA Arab terrorists "freedom" fighters.

Esam Omeish, former head of the Muslim Brotherhood-created Muslim American Society, visited the White House three times, noted IPT.

Omeish publicly mourned the Israeli airstrike that killed Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin at an April 10, 2004, MAS conference.

Last month, noted IPT, Omeish attended a reception for Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi during Morsi's United Nations visit. Omeish posted a picture of the event on his Facebook page and noted, "His Excellency provided great insights and we share important perspectives."

Despite the President's public proclamations that he is standing strong against terrorism, the White House logs demonstrate that he has legitimized the very same groups that espouse radical Islamic terrorism.

The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) has secured the closest working relationship with the Obama White House despite a record of anti-Semitism, whitewashing the terrorist threat and hostility toward law enforcement, IPT found.

No less than fifteen MPAC officials have been welcomed by the White House, the organization has found. Executive Director Salam al-Marayati enjoyed at least six White House visits between September 2009 and July 2011, mostly involving meetings with Monteiro. Alejandro Beutel, who was MPAC's government liaison until July 2012, had ten White House visits between July 2010 and May 2012.

MPAC's Washington director Haris Tarin made 24 trips to the White House between December 2009 and March 2012. Those meetings often were intimate in nature, involving a handful of people at most.

Edina Lekovic, an MPAC spokeswoman, visited the White House twice in July 2010. IPT noted that as a UCLA student, Lekovic served as an editor of a Muslim magazine called Al-Talib, which in 1999 ran an editorial calling Osama bin Laden "a great mujahid" and saying when bin Laden is called a terrorist, "we should defend our brother and refer to him as a freedom fighter, someone who has forsaken wealth and power to fight in Allah's cause and speak out against oppressors. We take these stances only to please Allah." That issue identified Lekovic as a managing editor.

MPAC defended Hizbullah’s 1983 attack on a U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon which killed 241 Americans and questioned U.S.-terror designations for Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The White House, noted IPT, turned to MPAC officials as it prepared two papers on combating what it calls violent extremism in America.

White House logs show Islamists visiting the White House who may have lower profiles, but who also defended terrorists and terrorist groups, and repeatedly castigated law enforcement, especially in counter-terror sting operations, noted IPT.

New Poll: Egyptians Turning Toward Iran, Want Nuclear Weapons
Oct 23rd, 2012
Daily Newsthecable.foreignpolicy.com
Categories: Today's Headlines;Commentary

A poll of Egyptians conducted last month shows that they have increasingly positive views of Iran, believe that both Iran and Egypt should obtain nuclear weapons, and still trust their own military more than any other institution in Egypt.

The poll of 812 Egyptians, half of them women, was conducted in a series of in-person interviews by the firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and sponsored by the Israel Project, a pro-Israel advocacy organization with offices in Washington and Jerusalem.

According to the poll, Iran is viewed favorably in Egypt, with 65 percent of those surveyed expressing support of the decision to renew Egypt-Iran relations and 61 percent expressing support of the Iranian nuclear project, versus 41 percent in August 2009.

Sixty-two percent of those polled agreed that "Iran and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are friends of Egypt," though 68 percent held unfavorable views of Shiite Muslims.

Iran's deputy defense minister said recently that the Iranian regime is seeking more military cooperation with Egypt. "We are ready to help Egypt to build nuclear reactors and satellites," he said on the occasion or Egyptian President Mohammed Morsy's meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last month. Morsy's office has said the two didn't discuss military cooperation.

Eighty-seven percent of respondents want Egypt to have its own nuclear bomb.

Israel Project CEO Josh Block told The Cable that the statistics show the effect of Morsy's outreach to Iran and the danger of regional proliferation of nuclear weapons if Iran is successful in obtaining a nuclear bomb.

"Very scary to people opposed to proliferation of nuclear weapons, let alone to unstable countries in the world's most turbulent part of the world, is the 87 percent who want Egypt to build nuclear weapons," he said.

"Morsy's dangerous embrace of Iran is leading a surprising shift in favor support for Tehran, which has for decades been seen by Egyptians as their top threat, as well as for their work on nuclear weapons."

Egyptians are overwhelmingly focused on the dire state of their domestic economy. Only 2 percent of those polled said that "strengthening relations with other Muslim countries" should be one of Morsy's top two priorities, and 45 percent agreed with the statement that "Egypt needs to focus on things at home and should be less involved in regional politics."

Nevertheless, 74 percent of those polled said that disapprove of Egypt having diplomatic relations with Israel -- an increase from 26 percent in August 2009 -- and support for a two-state solution to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at only 30 percent. Seventy-seven percent agreed that "The peace treaty with Israel is no longer useful and should be dissolved."

Block blamed that result at least partially on the stance of leading Egyptian politicians like President Morsy, who has indicated recently he does not plan to abrogate the Israel-Egypt peace treaty but whose Muslim Brotherhood party identifies Israel as a racist and expansionist state.

"The fact that Morsy and other leading politicians in Egypt regularly express disdain for the peace treaty leads to such decay in public attitudes," Block said. "Then again, nearly half the public voted for a presidential candidate who openly declared his intent to travel to Israel and support for the Camp David accords."

Block was referring to retired Air Force general Ahmed Shafiq, who served as prime minister under Hosni Mubarak and was defeated narrowly in a runoff election earlier this year.

The poll found that 64 percent of Egyptians still feel warmly about the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which ran Egypt in the interim period before Morsy was elected, and 81 percent approve of the job they are doing. Forty-nine percent of Egyptians polled felt warmly about Morsi, and 43 percent felt warmly about the Muslim Brotherhood.

Forty percent felt warmly about the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, but only 11 percent felt warmly about the Salafist Nour Party, a hard-line Islamist party that fared well in the parliamentary elections.

American politicians fared poorly in the poll, but among them Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the most popular at 25 percent favorability. President Barack Obama scored 16 percent and Republican nominee Mitt Romney only 8 percent, although only half of Egyptians polled knew who Romney was. (Ahmadinejad's favorability rating? Forty-three percent.)

Most Egyptians don't seem to buy Romney's line that Obama has "thrown Israel under the bus," but they're not too happy about his handling of the region, either.

Asked, "Do you think that President Barack Obama is more on the side of Arabs or more on the side of Israel?," 68 percent of Egyptians said Israel, and 60 percent said that Obama's presidency had been "a negative thing" for the Arab world.

39% of the Egyptians polled expressed interest in learning more about Israel, especially it's political system. The Israel Project runs an outreach program to the Arab world, focusing on social media. Its Facebook page is called "Israel Uncensored."

Negotiations With Iran: Obama’s 'October Surprise' to Help Win Election?
Oct 23rd, 2012
Daily NewsRubin Reports
Categories: Today's Headlines;Warning

Are supposed negotiations with Iran the “October Surprise” intended to win the election for President Barack Obama, an Iranian trick for buying time, or both? The answer is both. It’s an incredibly transparent ploy though with the cooperation of the mass media such a gimmick might well have some effect.

Here’s the scenario we are supposed to believe: Obama’s sanctions (the tough Obama) have severely damaged Iran and so Tehran is looking for a way out. At the same time, though, Obama’s flexibility in dealing with possible enemies wins them over (the empathetic Obama). Thus, Obama’s greatness as a statesman might solve this problem of Iran’s nuclear drive short of war.

Let’s note some of the evidence that this ploy meets the needs of both sides in the conflict. For Obama, it is a potential electoral gain at the last minute in a hard fought election in which his foreign policy has come under severe questioning. For the Iranian regime the development buys even more time as it continues to go full-steam ahead with its nuclear drive.

If the Iranians are really sophisticated about American politics they understand the advantages for themselves:

--There will be pressure against new sanctions for the next six months or more since it could be said in the United States that these would damage a promising initiative.

--It might help re-elect Obama who is significantly softer on Iran. If the Iranians believe that a President Mitt Romney might launch a U.S. attack or support an Israel one—I don’t believe this but probably they do—that makes helping Obama win a top priority.

--Since the talks wouldn’t be until next year, Iran has to give up nothing to make the initiative. Note, too, that during the last five years Iran has repeatedly proposed different diplomatic formulae both in terms of meetings and potential compromises only to retract them or make clear that Tehran’s terms are going to be unacceptable.

According to the Times the agreement is “a result of intense, secret exchanges between American and Iranian officials that date almost to the beginning of President Obama’s term.” In other words, nothing has happened for four years and suddenly we have a deal. Sound suspicious?

All this involves then is an Iranian offer to start talks, talks which could break down in a few hours or go on for years without result. Of course, the first Iranian demand will be for easing the sanctions.

Note, too, that the Obama Administration officially denied the report—hey, we’re not playing politics with foreign policy!—and then leaked that it was true to its friends in the media.

The new situation can also be used to paint Republican candidate Mitt Romney as a potential war-monger. In the words of the New York Times:

“It is also far from clear that Mr. Obama’s opponent, Mitt Romney, would go through with the negotiation should he win election. Mr. Romney has repeatedly criticized the president as showing weakness on Iran and failing to stand firmly with Israel against the Iranian nuclear threat….

“Moreover, the prospect of one-on-one negotiations could put Mr. Romney in an awkward spot, since he has opposed allowing Iran to enrich uranium to any level — a concession that experts say will probably figure in any deal on the nuclear program.”

One key issue is the difference between the U.S. and Israeli positions. The Obama Administration says that Iran can have all the fixings of a bomb as long as it doesn’t build one or that Tehran must be stopped short of having everything in place. The problem with the first option, of course, is that Iran could secretly or quickly assemble bombs (including those that might be delivered by terrorists); the second option is tougher to enforce, less likely to be negotiated, and more likely to bring military action.

As the Times rightly points out, for Romney, “The danger of opposing such a diplomatic initiative is that it could make him look as if he is willing to risk another American war in the Middle East without exhausting alternatives.”

The story continues:

“It would be unconscionable to go to war if we haven’t had such discussions,” said R. Nicholas Burns, who led negotiations with Iran as Under Secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration.”

So in other words, the U.S. government is under pressure to talk as long as Iran wants, even if Iran is moving ahead on its nuclear program at every moment during the long, drawn-out, and inconclusive chatting.
There is, of course, no solution. Sanctions--as a new Congressional Research Service study points out--aren’t stopping Iran from building nuclear weapons and long-range missiles able to deliver them onto targets. Diplomacy won’t work, except possibly for the fig leaf of having Iran own all the pieces for those weapons and simply promising not to assemble them. War is unattractive for the United States and, despite all you’ve heard, Israel, too. Does a scenario of the next U.S. president launching a major, long-term military operation against Iran seem likely, whether or not you'd like to see that happen, especially immediately after the end of two controversial, costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?
What’s most likely is that Iran will get nuclear weapons. And that makes it more important that whoever is conducting the containment and conflict strategy better be tough and credible to Tehran. The irony is that this Iranian ploy might well result in re-electing the man least likely to do that.

Let the Headlines Speak
Oct 23rd, 2012
Daily NewsFrom the Internet
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Hillary 'talking to famous dead American'
Did U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton communicate with the dead spirit of former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt just this week? If you believe her husband, Bill Clinton, the answer would be yes. On Wednesday, Mr. Clinton appeared in New York City at a dedication ceremony for the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park. In his remarks, the former president said his wife “was known to commune” with Eleanor Roosevelt, who died in November 1962, and that Roosevelt gave Hillary a message for him this week. Democrats are far more in touch with the dead than Republicans, and they also visit fortunetellers more often.

TSA Pulls Use Of Controversial Full Body Scanners At JFK, LaGuardia Airports
The controversial full body airport scanners are being removed from LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy International, the Transportation Security Administration announced Sunday. The Backscatter machines were first used at JFK exactly two years ago amid a flurry of controversy.

Earthquake strikes near New Caledonia
A 6-magnitude earthquake rumbled about 24 miles west-northwest of Ile Hunter, New Caledonia, Tuesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The quake, about 79 miles deep, was about 300 miles east-southeast of We, 326 miles east of Mont-Dore, 334 miles east of Noumea, the capital, and 334 miles east of Dumbea.

Lebanon army deploys in Beirut and Tripoli
The Lebanese army has deployed on the streets of Beirut and Tripoli in a bid to calm deadly tensions. Several people were killed in gunfights between pro- and anti-Syrian factions in Tripoli on Monday after the death of a senior security official on Friday. European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has been in Beirut for talks with President Michel Suleiman about the murder of Wissam al-Hassan.

Qatar ruler begins landmark visit to Gaza
The emir of Qatar has become the first head of state to visit the Gaza Strip since the Islamist group Hamas came to power there in 2007. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani crossed into Gaza by car from Egypt amid tight security, and was greeted by Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya. He is set to launch a $254m (£158m) construction project for the territory.

FDA says 5 deaths, heart attack reportedy linked to Monster Energy Drink
The highly caffeinated Monster Energy Drink has been cited in five deaths and one non-fatal heart attack, according to reports that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is investigating.

Anti-Putin opposition elected in Russian online poll
Voters opposed to Russia's President Vladimir Putin have chosen a new opposition leadership to fight for election reform. Popular anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny won the most votes in the three-day online poll. Some 81,801 voters took part in the internet poll, electoral committee head Leonid Volkov said.

Sunspot Groups Pose Threat For Earth-Directed Flares Over Next Ten Days
Solar cameras have spotted two groups that pose a developing risk of Earth-directed flares, which will have a threat to communications and the sensitive should one go off. Nothing Earth-directed has struck yet, but it is being monitored through this week for them. Both groups have developing magnetic fields that will harbor the energy from X-class solar flares.

Tornado Touches Down In Northern California, San Francisco Storms Tonight
A Tornado hit after 3:15pm PDT on Monday afternoon in Northern California, striking near Yuba City, or 40 miles north of Sacramento. No injuries have been reported with the tornado. "We've had reports of power lines down and some outbuildings damaged," the weather service said. "Some kind of a small outbuilding was lifted about 200 feet from where it was located." The storms came with a tornado warning as the tornado hit and several other funnel clouds were seen. The tornado (in the image above) was likely no stronger than an EF0-1.

Jordanian security concerned over rising terrorism
Amman’s concerns over the rise of Salafist-Jihadist extremism grew on Monday, after a Jordanian soldier was killed in clashes with eight armed militants illegally attempting to cross the border with Syria. ...“Another armed Takfiri group using Kalashnikov rifles and guns tried to cross the border at midnight local time and clashed with the Jordanian forces but all of the group was arrested and one of them was critically injured,” according to Jordan’s Petra News Agency.

Rare Star Explosion Reveals Hidden Black Hole in Our Galaxy
Astronomers have spotted a rare X-ray star explosion near the center of our Milky Way galaxy, revealing a previously unknown black hole munching on gas from a neighboring sun-like star.

Strong 6.2-magnitude earthquake rattles Vanuatu
A strong 6.2-magnitude earthquake rattled the South Pacific island of Vanuatu Sunday, seismologists said, but there were no immediate reports of damage and no tsunami warning was issued. The quake struck at 10:00 am (2300 GMT Saturday) 500 kilometres (310 miles) northwest of the capital Port Vila at a depth of 35 kilometres, the United States Geological Survey said. The USGS had earlier put the magnitude at 6.6.

Northern Iceland shaken by moderate earthquakes and tremors
A 4.8 and 5.7 earthquake struck north of Iceland near Siglufjörður, which is home to a thriving community built along the inner coastline. The quakes struck along the northern end of the divergent rift or Mid-Atlantic Ridge that runs through the center of Iceland. The quakes ignited a swarm of hundreds of tremors.

Panic as quakes rattle the UAE
A senior officer at Masafi Police Station told 7DAYS one person had suffered minor injuries when a crescent from a mosque collapsed on him as the tremors shook the wall of the building.

John the Revelator Saw the Father on His Throne
Oct 23rd, 2012
CommentaryJoseph Chambers
Categories: Exhortation

Woe to the man or woman that rejects the literal futuristic vision that God our Father gave to the Apostle John. He saw one great scene after another, each, so perfectly visible that he could paint a picture with words. As the future section of this Masterpiece opened before the Revelator, he saw the Father on His Throne. In the first verse of this Book, the Holy Spirit said, “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto Him…” (Revelation 1:1) The Father gave this vision to His Son and the Son gave it to the Apostle John. I’m saying to all that read and warning you, “Woe to the person that would dare call the Father‘s Revelation to His Son anything less than literal and glorious.” The Father is the author of this, “Masterpiece and I tremble before this Infallible truth”.

Heaven is for Real But are Near - Death Experiences
Oct 23rd, 2012
Daily Newschristianpost.com
Categories: Commentary;Exhortation

I just read the Newsweek magazine article "Heaven is Real" which was written from the perspective of a neurosurgeon who claims to have taken a trip to heaven while in a coma for seven days. He says that the part of his brain that drives brain function was turned off while he was under, so there was no way that he could have imagined it.

What was heaven like according to Dr. Eban Alexander? A beautiful young woman was his guide into this heavenly experience of giant butterflies and angelic like creatures who streaked across the sky. God was an inky darkness which was emanating love.

Interesting.

It reminds me of the great fervor that spilled out a few years ago when the book "Heaven is for Real." This book written by Todd Burpo was a father's recounting of his four year old boy's story when he supposedly died, went to heaven and witnessed his version of the afterlife.

So what are we as Christians to think of the doctor and the preschooler? Do we automatically stand up and say, "Amen! See, I told you!" to all of our atheist or agnostic friends? Do we theologically take them apart and prove they are wrong? Do we just leave it all alone, afraid to get on what could be an Ozzy-less crazy train?

Here are 3 things I do when approached with stories like this:

1. I'm initially suspect.

Don't get me wrong. I fully believe in heaven (and hell for that matter!) I'm convinced that heaven will be more amazing than we could ever imagine. How do I know? The great apostle John gives a firsthand account in the book of Revelation of the glory, immensity, power and beauty of heaven.

There are times when he has trouble putting what he's describing into words which measure up, but it's obvious that his vision of heaven is overwhelming to him. It's also interesting that the apostle John did not have a "near-death" experience. He had a clear vision while he was alive and well and stuck on the Island of Patmos as a prisoner of the Romans.

So why do I tend to be suspect of firsthand accounts of those who say they died and then came back? Because the Bible has two clear promises which seem to contradict this:

"For we live by faith, not by sight"(2 Corinthians 5:7).

"Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment…" (Hebrews 9:27).

I'm not saying that God can't make exceptions to the rules he has written (after all he is God and can do whatever he wants), but these two passages loom large in front of me as a yellow light about to turn red when someone claims to have died, gone to heaven and come back.

For those (like the good doctor) who claim to have gone to heaven while still technically alive I am still suspect…at first. Bold claims must be backed up with bold evidence.

2. I weigh their description of heaven against the Bible's.

When "Heaven is for Real" came out it was interesting to me how many Christians flocked to accept this preschooler's description of heaven without thinking or blinking. Many of these same Christians, I assume, had not studied the Bible thoroughly on the subject of heaven and measured it against what the little boy said.

Christians, it seemed, would rather accept the testimony of a four year old boy (who I assume is a very sweet kid) over prophets like Ezekiel, apostles like John and Jesus Christ himself.

So how does the Bible describe heaven?

-Jesus describes it as big. In John 14 Jesus said, "In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so I would have told you."

-John describes the capitol city of heaven (aka "The New Jerusalem") as big, brilliant and beautiful. According to Revelation 21:17 it is 1,400 miles long, high, wide and deep. If it landed on America it would extend from the Canadian border to the Mexican border and from Chicago to Salt Lake City. It would extend 1,300 miles into space.

-In heaven there are streets of gold (Revelation 21:21), walls of twelve precious stones (Revelation 21:19), gates made from giant pearls (Revelation 21:21) and a tree that bears twelve kinds of fruit (Revelation 22:2).

-There is no sickness, sadness, disease or death (Revelation 21:4).

-The Father dwells there in an unapproachable light (1 Timothy 6:16).

-Jesus is in the center of this city (Revelation 7:17), seated on a throne (Revelation 7:11-12) on what looks like a sea of glass (Revelation 4:6).

-Seraphim flutter around his throne singing "Holy, Holy, Holy" (Isaiah 6:3).

And on and on and on the descriptions go in Scripture. What is common to most of these descriptions is a glorious, heart-rending, mind-blowing description of Jesus being central. So, any book that comes out that doesn't drive the same theme or has a different physical description of heaven I move to the fiction side of my library.

3. I use it as an opportunity to talk to people about Jesus.

There have been several times when I heard somebody talking about "the amazing story in 'Heaven is for Real.'" I didn't challenge them theologically or tell them that it could be "a bunch of malarkey."

No, I used this book and these types of books as conversation starters to whether or not they know for sure they are going to heaven. I've had great evangelistic witnessing experiences as a result.

These kinds of books, whether true or not, get read by the general public. And the general public needs Jesus.

Whether you choose to believe the Newsweek article entitled "Heaven is Real" or the book written a few years ago entitled "Heaven is for Real" is up to you. Measure it against Scripture and make your decision. But use it as a conversation starter with those who don't know Jesus. Why?

Because heaven IS for real!

Destroy - Israel Conference Comes to Illinois
Oct 23rd, 2012
Daily Newsfrontpagemag.com
Categories: Today's Headlines;Anti-Israel

On November 22-25, activists with links to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas will come together at the Oak Brook Hills Marriott Resort in Illinois for American Muslims for Palestine’s (AMP) Conference for Palestine in the U.S.: A Movement United.

The event also highlights the Islamists’ success in forging interfaith partnerships with Reverend Donald Wagner of Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding as one of the speakers.

American Muslims for Palestine isn’t just about Palestinian statehood. It’s about the elimination of Israel. Michael Rubin points out that “Its home page depicts the conference logo—a map of Palestine made from birds showing the Palestinian state encompassing all of Israel. So much for the two-state solution.”

AMP conferences promote Islamist thought. In 2004, its chairman, Hatem Bazian, praised the “uprising in Iraq” (which was against U.S. soldiers) and the “intifada in Palestine” and said an American intifada is needed to “change fundamentally the political dynamics here.”

He boasted, “They’re gonna say some Palestinian [is] being too radical – well, you haven’t seen radicalism yet.”

In June, Bazian described the U.S. as a racist country that tries to get “darker people [to] fight our war.” He teaches that the “military-industrial complex” is promoting “Islamophobia” and is persecuting Muslim leadership in the U.S. in order to build support for wars against Muslims overseas.

AMP board member Osama Abu Irshaid, another speaker at the conference, describes the firing of rockets into Israel by Hamas as a form of “legitimate resistance.”

He used to be the editor of an Arabic publication made by the now-defunct Islamic Association for Palestine, which the American Muslim Brotherhood’s internal documents identify as having been one of its fronts set up to support Hamas.

Another board member is Salah Sarsour. His brother was arrested by Israel in 1998 and informed his interrogators that Salah was financing Hamas through the Islamic Association for Palestine and the Holy Land Foundation.

The latter was shut down by the U.S. government and five of its officials were convicting of funding terrorism. He even said that Sarsour transferred funds to a Hamas military commander.

The conference, which has Turkish Airlines as a sponsor, features some of the top Brotherhood-linked speakers.

Nihad Awad is the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The federal government named CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land trial, listing it among “individuals/entities who are and/or were members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee.” Awad declared his support for Hamas in 1994.

In 2004, he refused to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah, instead choosing to call them “liberation movements.”

Safaa Zarzour is the Secretary-General of the Islamic Society of North America. Like CAIR, it was designated an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land trial and was listed by the government as a Muslim Brotherhood entity.

FBI investigators identified ISNA as a Brotherhood front as far back as 1987. A 1991 American Muslim Brotherhood document also lists it as one of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.”

Jamal Badawi is listed in an American Muslim Brotherhood directory from 1992 and is a listed unindicted co-conspirator for his fundraising on behalf of the Holy Land Foundation.

He is a founder of the Muslim American Society, a Brotherhood front. In 1999, he justified suicide bombings, saying, “So when an act of heroism like that is required to save others, it is self-sacrifice, you cannot really call it suicide.” In February 2009, he criticized the West for describing “martyrs” from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip as terrorists.

In March 2010, he said Islam justifies the “combative jihad” of Palestinians.

Jamal Said is the imam of the Mosque Foundation. He was also designated an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land trial and is listed as a member of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee.

In 2000, he asked attendees at an Islamic Association for Palestine event to “pay for the family of a martyr.” In 2009, he said, “We need to raise our children to know the martyrs of Gaza.”

Amin al-Ali is the imam of the Islamic Community Center of Illinois. Its website promotes books by Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood; Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi, a powerful pro-Hamas Brotherhood cleric; and Abul Ala Maududi, the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami.

Tellingly, these books are listed under the section of suggested texts about “Islamic movement and training.”

Othman Atta is the executive director of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee. He criticizes the labeling of Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist groups and an FBI memo from November 2001 states that some members of his mosque were fundraising for the Holy Land Foundation.

He condemns Palestinian attacks on “innocent civilians” but says “it’s within the right of an occupied people to resist their occupiers.”

Shaker Elsayed is the imam of Dar al-Hijrah, a mosque with a long history of extremism. In 2004, he said that the teachings of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Brotherhood, are the “closest reflection of how Islam should be in this life.”

In 2002, he said that suicide bombers are “unfairly named” and that jihad requires Muslims to fight “with every tool that they can get in their hand.” A 2002 Customs and Border Patrol document said the mosque is “operating as a front for Hamas operatives in the U.S.”

Muslims aren’t the only ones that AMP seeks to influence. Reverend Donald Wagner of Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding will be speaking. On October 13, AMP took part in an event called “Jews in Solidarity with Palestinians.”

The 2010 conference featured Archbishop Atallah Hanna of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, who blasted the “racist Occupation” and praised Palestinians held in Israeli prisons “because they resisted, because they struggled, because they waged jihad…”

On November 22-25, the Prairie State will be home to an event designed to serve the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas agenda. And it will be done with the help of an evangelical activist and sponsors like Turkish Airlines contributing as much as $15,000.

This is what the Brotherhood was talking about when its documents called for “sabotaging” the West by “their hands and the hands of the believers.”

David C. Pack
Oct 23rd, 2012
Weekly CommentaryArt Sadlier
Categories: Commentary;False Doctrine;Warning

David Pack states that he began to listen to The World Tomorrow radio program, sponsored by the Radio Church of God (later renamed the Worldwide Church of God), and heard Herbert W. Armstrong teach.

Pack was attracted to Armstrong’s strange theology. (Armstrong was dubbed Mr. Confusion by many who heard him). As a result he attended Ambassador College, entered the Worldwide Church of God ministry in 1971, he was personally trained by Herbert W. Armstrong.

Upon Mr. Armstrong’s death in January 1986, many of his teachings was rejected by the elders of the church. Mr. Pack left the Worldwide Church of God in 1993, and sought to re-establish the teachings of Armstrong.

He started the Restored Church of God. Today the ministry of Herbert W. Armstrong is carried on by David C. Pack through “The Real Truth” magazine and “The World to Come” program.

The following are excerpts from Pack’s statement of beliefs.

[We in the Church of God Restored do not embrace the doctrine of the trinity.

We believe that salvation is a process that culminates with entrance into God's Kingdom.

We believe the doctrine of "once saved, always saved" is not taught anywhere in scripture. Furthermore, we believe that God's word instructs us to let no man take our crown and to not look back. We also believe the scriptures warn that the faith can be lost and that names can be removed from God's Book of Life.

We believe the Sabbath was practiced by God's people in the Old Testament, by Jesus and His apostles in the New Testament, by Paul and the first century church, and remains in effect to this day.

We believe that God has created seven annual Holy Days and has instructed His children to assemble on these days as well as on His weekly Sabbath.

The second resurrection is for all those who have not been called in this life. This resurrection, which will take place at the conclusion of the Millennium, will enable the billions of people who have never heard God's word to be taught God's way and to make a decision concerning it. This is a physical resurrection in which those who are in the graves shall be made mortal comprised of flesh and blood and bone.

We believe that God designed certain plants and animals to be consumed by man while others are to be avoided. We believe that God's laws concerning clean and unclean meats were given before the flood, were restored to the congregation in the wilderness, were honored by God's people in the Old Testament, and were kept by Jesus Christ and His apostles and all of the New Testament churches. The Church of God Restored honors God's instruction concerning clean and unclean meats.]

These are just a few of the unscriptural beliefs of David C. Pack and they indicate that he is as confused as Herbert W. Armstrong was, and is living under the law. These men cannot distinguish between Israel and the church which leaves them in total confusion.

We are instructed to, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). For Pack to attribute his beliefs to Jesus, the disciples and Paul does not confirm his positions. If we rightly divide the Word of God we find Pack’s assertions are wrong and they misrepresent Jesus and the apostles.

Joseph Farah of World Net Daily is apparently a disciple of David C. Pack. He is actively involved in promoting him through WND. Through WND Farah has promoted the idea that Christians ought to worship on Saturday. In a recent article published on WND, Farah stated that he keeps the Jewish feasts.

Today we are bombarded by an increasing number of false teachers. There have always been false teachers around but we are warned of their increase in the last days. We need to be vigilant during these days of deception and apostasy.

We need to be like the Bereans; “These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts 17:11). The believer has the Word of God and the Spirit of God to guide him into all truth.