Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

What Friday, April 19, 2013 Tells U.S. About Egypt and the World
Apr 20th, 2013
Daily NewsBarry Rubin
Categories: Commentary;Contemporary Issues

Salafist groups have called for a massive demonstration to be staged at noon in front of the High Court building on Ramses Street in Cairo to protest the acquittal of several officials from the Mubarak regime and at Mubarak's release on bail pending a retrial. The retrial was required by the withdrawal of the judge. That retrial was necessitated by the overturn on appeal of a previous life imprisonment verdict against Mubarak.

The Muslim Brotherhood has told members they can participate in the demonstration on a personal basis if they wish. The demonstration's main demand is that the judiciary be restructured. The court system has stood as the last remaining institutional barrier to the Brotherhood's total control of the country. While over time it would inevitably name new judges, many are impatient for the Islamist revolution to roll forward.

Also today, though, anti-Islamist movements are gathering at 1 pm at Tahrir Square, a nearby suburb, and Elqaed Ibrahim Square in Alexandria to demand that the Brotherhood be forced out of power.

At the Alexandria location, however, other Salafist groups have called for a 2 PM protest against the anti-Islamists. Violence is quite possible.

Meanwhile, the economy is continuing to decline steeply and a plan for a massive IMF bail-out is stalled due to wrangling on the Egyptian government side.

This is the chaos into which Egypt is descending. In real terms, a revolution hailed by virtually everyone in the West has turned into a disaster. The choices seem to be either a Sharia state or a civil war, each accompanied by suffering and explosive instability.

Might the West learn something from this story? Lessons could include the idea that another supposed great solution--a revolution in Syria--is about to bring another disaster, while the utopian vision of an instant peace process imposed on Israel would bring a parallel disaster. The Syrian story will happen; the "peace process" one won't and Israel will be blamed for avoiding suicide.

The Tsarnaev Brothers Were Double Agents Who Decoyed U.S. Into Terror Trap
Apr 20th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Commentary

The big questions buzzing over Boston Bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have a single answer: It emerged in the 102 tense hours between the twin Boston Marathon bombings Monday, April 15 – which left three dead, 180 injured and a police officer killed at MIT - and Dzohkhar’s capture Friday, April 19 in Watertown.

The conclusion reached by debkafile’s counterterrorism and intelligence sources is that the brothers were double agents, hired by US and Saudi intelligence to penetrate the Wahhabi jihadist networks which, helped by Saudi financial institutions, had spread across the restive Russian Caucasian.

Instead, the two former Chechens betrayed their mission and went secretly over to the radical Islamist networks.

By this tortuous path, the brothers earned the dubious distinction of being the first terrorist operatives to import al Qaeda terror to the United States through a winding route outside the Middle East – the Caucasus.

This broad region encompasses the autonomous or semi-autonomous Muslim republics of Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Chechnya, North Ossetia and Karachyevo-Cherkesiya, most of which the West has never heard of.

Moscow however keeps these republics on a tight military and intelligence leash, constantly putting down violent resistance by the Wahhabist cells, which draw support from certain Saudi sources and funds from the Riyadh government for building Wahhabist mosques and schools to disseminate the state religion of Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis feared that their convoluted involvement in the Caucasus would come embarrassingly to light when a Saudi student was questioned about his involvement in the bombng attacks while in a Boston hospital with badly burned hands.

They were concerned to enough to send Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saudi al-Faisal to Washington Wednesday, April 17, in the middle of the Boston Marathon bombing crisis, for a private conversation with President Barack Obama and his national security adviser Tom Donilon on how to handle the Saudi angle of the bombing attack.
That day too, official Saudi domestic media launched an extraordinary three-day campaign. National and religious figures stood up and maintained that authentic Saudi Wahhabism does not espouse any form of terrorism or suicide jihadism and the national Saudi religion had nothing to do with the violence in Boston. “No matter what the nationality and religious of the perpetrators, they are terrorists and deviants who represent no one but themselves.”

Prince Saud was on a mission to clear the 30,000 Saudi students in America of suspicion of engaging in terrorism for their country or religion, a taint which still lingers twelve years after 9/11. He was concerned that exposure of the Tsarnaev brothers’ connections with Wahhabist groups in the Caucasus would revive the stigma.

The Tsarnaevs' recruitment by US intelligence as penetration agents against terrorist networks in southern Russia explains some otherwise baffling features of the event:
1. An elite American college in Cambridge admitted younger brother Dzhokhar and granted him a $2,500 scholarship, without subjecting him to the exceptionally stiff standard conditions of admission. This may be explained by his older brother Tamerlan demanding this privilege for his kid brother in part payment for recruitment.
2. When in 2011, a “foreign government” (Russian intelligence) asked the FBI to screen Tamerlan for suspected ties to Caucasian Wahhabist cells during a period in which they had begun pledging allegiance to al Qaeda, the agency, it was officially revealed, found nothing incriminating against him and let him go after a short interview.

He was not placed under surveillance. Neither was there any attempt to hide the fact that he paid a long visit to Russia last year and on his return began promoting radical Islam on social media.
Yet even after the Boston marathon bombings, when law enforcement agencies, heavily reinforced by federal and state personnel, desperately hunted the perpetrators, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was never mentioned as a possible suspect

3. Friday, four days after the twin explosions at the marathon finishing line, the FBI released footage of Suspect No. 1 in a black hat and Suspect No. 2 in a white hat walking briskly away from the crime scene, and appealed to the public to help the authorities identify the pair.
We now know this was a charade. The authorities knew exactly who they were. Suddenly, during the police pursuit of their getaway car from the MIT campus on Friday, they were fully identified. The brother who was killed in the chase was named Tamerlan, aged 26, and the one who escaped, only to be hunted down Saturday night hiding in a boat, was 19-year old Dzhokhar.

Our intelligence sources say that we may never know more than we do today about the Boston terrorist outrage which shook America – and most strikingly, Washington - this week. We may not have the full story of when and how the Chechen brothers were recruited by US intelligence as penetration agents – any more than we have got to the bottom of tales of other American double agents who turned coat and bit their recruiters.

Here is just a short list of some of the Chechen brothers’ two-faced predecessors:

In the 1980s, an Egyptian called Ali Abdul Saoud Mohamed offered his services as a spy to the CIA residence in Cairo. He was hired, even though he was at the time the official interpreter of Ayman al-Zuwahiri, then Osama bin Laden’s senior lieutenant and currently his successor.

He accounted for this by posing as a defector. But then, he turned out to be feeding al Qaeda US military secrets. Later, he was charged with Al Qaeda’s 1998 bombings of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es-Salaam.
On Dec. 30, 2009, the Jordanian physician Humam Khalil al-Balawi, having gained the trust of US intelligence in Afghanistan as an agent capable of penetrating al Qaeda’s top ranks, detonated a bomb at a prearranged rendezvous in Kost, killing the four top CIA agents in the country.
Then, there was the French Muslim Mohamed Merah. He was recruited by French intelligence to penetrate Islamist terror cells in at least eight countries, including the Caucasus. At the end of last year, he revealed his true spots in deadly attacks on a Jewish school in Toulouse and a group of French military commandoes.

The debate has begun over the interrogation of the captured Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarmayev when he is fit for questioning after surgery for two bullet wounds and loss of blood. The first was inflicted during the police chase in which his brother Tamerlan was killed.

An ordinary suspect would be read his rights (Miranda) and be permitted a lawyer. In his case, the “public safety exemption” option may be invoked, permitting him to be questioned without those rights, provided the interrogation is restricted to immediate public safety concerns. President Barack Obama is also entitled to rule him an “enemy combatant” and so refer him to a military tribunal and unrestricted grilling.

According to debkafile’s counter terror sources, four questions should top the interrogators' agenda:

a) At what date did the Tsarnaev brothers turn coat and decide to work for Caucasian Wahhabi networks?

b) Did they round up recruits for those networks in the United States - particularly, among the Caucasian and Saudi communities?
c) What was the exact purpose of the Boston Marathon bombings and their aftermath at MIT in Watertown?
d) Are any more terrorist attacks in the works in other American cities?

The Goal is to Destroy all Culture and the Constitution
Apr 20th, 2013
Daily NewsBrandon Smith
Categories: Today's Headlines;Warning

In America, our cultural method of debate tends to divide individual issues into carefully separated spheres of discussion. This hyperfocus on single issues, from gun rights to illegal wars to invasion of privacy, draws us away from looking at the bigger interconnected picture.... Each social or political conflict is compartmentalized by the mainstream, the dots are left isolated and the overwhelming overall threat to our foundational principles is marginalized.

 ...there is a process in motion, an overarching plan that is eating away at the edges of our liberty from every angle...

 The power elites and the people who blindly follow them are not interested in being on the right side. They are interested only in being on the winning side, and the two are certainly not the same. In the end, the result they covet most is ... to achieve total and unequivocal destruction of those ideals. They seek to erase our heritage from history, along with those of us who value it. They want to annihilate Constitutional culture....

Threats, fearmongering and mob mentality are all used by State teachers all across the country daily to manipulate and terrorize children into submitting to the program. As a nostalgic refresher, re-examine the incident in a North Carolina school in which a teacher screamed down a student who criticized Obama, claiming that people “could be arrested” for speaking ill of the President.

Secondly, if the teacher in Duvall County was looking to encourage students to “think critically” about their Constitutional rights, then perhaps it would have been helpful to educate them on what those rights are. Unfortunately, the children had not been given practical lessons on their rights before being asked to abandon them for “safety.” This is a perfect example of the indoctrination process in action. ... The real target is all Constitutional thought.

Perhaps this is why the methodology of home-schooling has been so demonized by the mainstream, and why Ron Paul’s latest home-schooling initiative is already being attacked as “Christian fundamentalism.” ... The erasure of Constitutional culture has spread far beyond schooling, however....

Throughout history, when conquerors wished to fully dominate a population, they would seek to slowly subsume the people’s ... principles. They would attempt to co-opt cultural ideas and values, twisting them into something completely different or wiping them from memory altogether. When the people lose their traditions and heritage, they become easier to mold and rule. This is exactly what is happening in the United States today: an ideological colonization that views Constitutional life as a mortal enemy and hopes to obliterate it from the pages of time.

Making Iraq the Hub for Worldwide Shiite Revolution
Apr 20th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

The Western media are tireless in dissecting the thought patterns of the radical Islamists who rule Iran. Their insights are colored by their own Western perceptions.
Now, the Al Qods Brigades chief, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a died-in-the-wool Shiite radical, tells it as it is seen in Tehran. In a rare appearance last week in Kerman, he talked candidly at an Iran-Iraq War commemoration ceremony, about Syria, Pakistan, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Iran’s forthcoming presidential election – but not Iran’s nuclear program.
The closest he came to the subject was in his remark that the Americans and Europeans are in no condition for more wars, confirming the overriding belief in Tehran that the Obama administration will not launch a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities or allow Israel to do so.
His dominant themes are interesting given that he is an important military-intelligence operations figure in daily contact with Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Here, we summarize some of the high points of his speech.

Solemeini: All Shiites are united behind Iran

For the Al Qods chief, a key topic of interest is the antagonism faced by Shiite communities in Muslim lands and the reasons behind the killings of Shiites in Pakistan, Syria and other places.
This must be brought to public attention, he stressed. The ulama (the Shi’a nation) are concerned.
After spending more time in Damascus and Beirut than Tehran lately, Soleimani, omitting any mention of the Syrian rebels, asserted that the majority of the Syrian people are behind Bashar Assad.
This support is shared by all the world’s Muslims, he claimed, because the Shiites have been transformed into a single community with a single leader (Iran).
There may be problems with this trend, but they are not widespread. “The Shia regard Iran as the leader of the Muslim world.”
The key issue from Iran’s perspective, said the Al Qods leader, is Iraq.
“With stability, Iraq will have a positive influence on the Arab world. Exporting revolution, which sometimes requires cultural work and sometimes institutionalization, is very effective.”
When Soleimani talked about “cultural work” and “institutionalization,” he was referring to the hard work he put in over the past decade - since the US invasion of Iraq - for turning Iraq into an Iranian instead of an American sphere of influence.

Iraq will carry “the revolution” across the Arab world

Now that the revolution has been exported to Iraq, he said, “the cultural and institutional work that has been done there will help create conditions for exporting revolution to other parts of the Arab world.”
In other words, Iraq - and not Syria - has moved to the center of Tehran’s expansionist ambitions as the primary vehicle for attaining its goals - not just in the Gulf but throughout the Arab world.
Commenting that some Arab countries are trying to turn Iraq’s clock back, Soleimani stressed:
“The current status of Iraq continues and reversing this new course is not possible. The US and some regional countries advanced 90% along their path in Iraq. They chose to achieve their ends through the legal means and elections, but were not successful.”
The Iranian official went on to boast that no country had championed Sunni interests more faithfully than Iran. “No Arab country has had the courage to give a single cartridge to the Palestinians,” he said, whereas the Supreme Leader alone pledged his support for the Palestinian people.
Turning to the Afghanistan War, Soleimani said “The Americans completely failed in Afghanistan and will not stay there. Of course, they will keep their bases, but they will not go to war. The Americans and the Europeans are currently running away from Afghanistan.”

Everyone obeys the Supreme Leader

“In Syria, some Arab countries (Saudia Arabia, Qatar, UAE) have spent billions of dollars in order to negatively impact the situation, but the government and nation of Syria has resisted."
Referring to the Islamic Awakening, he said, “In Lebanon’s previous election, they (Gulf countries) spent $1.2 billion to prevent Hizbollah wining, but they failed.”
He said in conclusion, “The Supreme Leader has emphasized the people’s presence in the upcoming election. This is a component of the Islamic Republic’s power and is more effective than a military maneuver.
“The people do not pay much attention to political currents, they serve and listen to the commands of the velayat ( the Supreme Leader). It has been proved to the people that the velayat is the basis of the Islamic Republic’s system of government. We are the pioneers of war with complete belief in the velayat and obedience to the Leader. It is on this basis that the power of Iran is unbreakable

Let the Headlines Speak
Apr 20th, 2013
Daily NewsFrom the Internet
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Serbia and Kosovo reach EU-brokered landmark accord
Serbia and its former province of Kosovo have reached an EU-brokered accord aimed at normalising relations between the Balkan neighbours. Under the new deal, Serbs in northern Kosovo will have their own police and appeal court. Both sides also agreed to not block each other's efforts to seek EU membership.

China quake kills scores in rural Sichuan
A powerful earthquake has killed more than 150 people and injured several thousand in China's rural south west, officials say. The 6.6-magnitude tremor sent people fleeing from buildings across Sichuan province, which was devastated by a massive quake five years ago. Villages close to the epicentre in Lushan county were left in ruins.

Boston marathon bombs suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev captured
A teenager suspected of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombings is in custody after a local resident found him hiding in a boat in his backyard. Police said they exchanged gunfire with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, after cornering him in Watertown, near Boston. He had escaped on foot early on Friday, apparently wounded, after a police shootout that claimed the life of his elder brother, an alleged accomplice.

Behind the Lines: Hezbollah turns eastwards
This week saw a sharp escalation in the emerging confrontation between the Syrian Sunni rebels and the Lebanese Hezbollah organization. This conflict is the result of Hezbollah’s increasingly visible engagement in Syria on behalf of the Assad regime. Syrian rebels for the first time this week fired rockets into the Hezbollah controlled Hermel region, adjoining the Syrian border.

Boston bombs: Obama lulled America into false confidence over terror threat
In his State of the Union address to the American people earlier this year, Barack Obama declared that he was "confident" of achieving "our objective of defeating the core of al-Qaeda". Although he acknowledged the need to pursue the "remnants" of the terrorist group and its affiliates, the overall message was clear – al-Qaeda was badly degraded, the tides of war were receding and the US was winning this fight that was no longer even officially a war.

North Korea reiterates it will not give up nuclear arms
North Korea reiterated on Saturday that it would not give up its nuclear weapons, rejecting a U.S. condition for talks although it said it was willing to discuss disarmament.

Strong quake hits southwestern China, killing more than 100
A strong earthquake struck the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan on Saturday, killing more than 100 people and injuring thousands of others in a region that suffered a catastrophic quake five years ago, authorities said.

Ties between Islamic extremist groups and Chechnya well-documented
Reports that the suspects in the Boston bombing are believed to be from the region near Chechnya may have caught some by surprise -- rebels in Chechnya are known for their violent and long-running campaign to break away from Russia, but not for exporting terror to America.

UN powers say N Korea, Iran 'serious' nuke threats
Ahead of a round of major nuclear talks, five major powers labeled North Korea and Iran as "serious challenges" to the world's nuclear security Friday, citing their repeated defiance of international obligations.

Christian persecution 'downplayed' by UK Government report
The UK head of an international Catholic charity has attacked a government report on human rights violations, saying it "glosses over" the growing problem of persecution against Christians. Neville Kyrke-Smith, national director of Aid to the Church in Need (UK), said the Foreign and Commonwealth Office 2012 Report on Human Rights and Democracy published this week "downplays the scale of Christian persecution".

As Manhunt ends, new questions emerge in Boston bombings    The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing remained hospitalized with serious injuries this morning as the hunt for answers goes full tilt to discover why the alleged terrorists turned against a country they once embraced. Police captured Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Friday night, ending a tense, five-day drama that gripped Massachusetts with fear and rekindled the specter of terror across the nation. He and his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, killed in an earlier gun battle with police, are Chechens who came to the U.S. and - for a time - seemed to want to succeed in America

Is Pope Francis Laying the Groundwork for a One World Religion?
Apr 20th, 2013
Daily NewsMichael Snyder (Excerpts)
Categories: Today's Headlines;Commentary

Does Pope Francis intend to help the global elite achieve their goal of uniting all of the religions of the world under a single banner? Will he be instrumental in establishing a single global religion for the glorious “new age” that the global elite believe is coming?

After he was elected, the cover of Time Magazine declared Pope Francis to be the “New World Pope“, and since his election Pope Francis has made it abundantly clear that he is going to make ecumenical outreach a top priority. He has spoken of his “determination to continue on the path of ecumenical dialogue“, and he has already held a number of very high profile ecumenical meetings.

Not only has he worked hard to reach out to leaders from various Christian traditions, he has also made it a point to try to acknowledge the mutual bonds that he feels with all other religions. For example, in one recent address he made it a point to say that he believes that Muslims worship and pray to the “one God” that he also worships.

This “all roads lead to the same God” philosophy is a hallmark of the one world religion that the global elite have been slowly building toward for decades. The global elite know that even with a one world economy and a one world government, humanity will never be truly united until there is a single global religion. Unfortunately, this one world religion that they are seeking to establish is diametrically opposed to the Christianity that we find in the Bible.

By throwing out Biblical truth for the sake of “friendship between men and women of different religious traditions“, is Pope Francis fundamentally betraying the faith that he claims to represent?

If there is going to be a one world religion, there will have to be a bond formed between Roman Catholicism and Islam. They are the two largest religious traditions on the planet, and so any truly “global religion” would definitely require the participation of both of them.

That is one reason why what Pope Francis has already had to say about Islam is so noteworthy. The following comes from remarks that he made during his very first ecumenical meeting…

"I then greet and cordially thank you all, dear friends belonging to other religious traditions; first of all the Muslims, who worship the one God, living and merciful, and call upon Him in prayer, and all of you. I really appreciate your presence: in it I see a tangible sign of the will to grow in mutual esteem and cooperation for the common good of humanity.

"The Catholic Church is aware of the importance of promoting friendship and respect between men and women of different religious traditions – I wish to repeat this: promoting friendship and respect between men and women of different religious traditions – it also attests the valuable work that the Pontifical Council for interreligious dialogue performs."

But are “Allah” and the God of the Bible the same thing?

Of course not. For example, Christians believe that Jesus Christ is God. Muslims deny this vehemently. For much more on why “Allah” and the God of the Bible are not the same, please see this article.

So either Pope Francis is denying the divinity of Jesus Christ, or he is exhibiting a frightening ignorance of basic Christian theology, or there is some other agenda at work here.

During that same ecumenical meeting, Pope Francis also made it a point to state that he feels “close” to those that belong “to any religious tradition”…

"In this, we feel close even to all those men and women who, whilst not recognizing themselves belonging to any religious tradition, feel themselves nevertheless to be in search of truth, goodness and beauty, this truth, goodness and beauty of God, and who are our precious allies in efforts to defend the dignity of man, in building a peaceful coexistence among peoples and in guarding Creation carefully."

It is one thing to love people and to seek to build friendships with them, but it is another thing entirely to throw out the most basic beliefs of the faith that you supposedly represent in order to promote a specific agenda.

And Pope Francis definitely appears to have an agenda. On another occasion, Pope Francis declared that it was time “to intensify dialogue” with other religions, and that he was “thinking particularly of dialogue with Islam.”

But this affinity for Islam did not just begin recently. The truth is that Pope Francis was working hard to build bridges with Islam even when he was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires…

“'His humility drew my attention,' Sheik Mohsen Ali, an important Islamic leader in Argentina, told the Buenos Aires Herald. He 'always showed himself a friend of the Islamic community.'”

And Pope Francis has a reputation for being a cleric that really “knows Islam“…

"Sumer Noufouri, secretary-general of the Islamic Center of the Republic of Argentina, told the Buenos Aires Herald that the new pope is a 'respectful, pro-dialogue person who knows Islam.'”

But of course Pope Francis is not just reaching out to the Islamic world.

He has also been working hard to “intensify dialogue” with other Christian traditions.

In particular, he seems quite interested in improving relations with the Orthodox churches of the east…

"Before his address, the pope had a private meeting with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew from Istanbul, who attended Francis’s inaugural Mass on Tuesday. It was the first time the spiritual head of Orthodox Christians had attended a Roman pope’s inaugural Mass since the Great Schism between western and eastern Christianity in 1054.

"At Wednesday’s meeting, Francis called Bartholomew 'my brother Andrew,' a reference to the apostle who was the brother of St. Peter and was the first bishop of the Church of Byzantium. Francis also held a private session with Metropolitan Hilarion, the foreign minister of the Russian Orthodox Church, the largest in the Orthodox world."

Chinese Sichuan Province Struck By 7 Magnitude Quake
Apr 20th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Hundreds are dead or wounded and buildings leveled inside a 15 kilometer radius, according to first reports of the earthquake reaching the Chinese media.