Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

Partition Plan for Jerusalem
May 15th, 2013
Daily NewsYnet News - Hagai Segal
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

News of construction freeze in Jerusalem received with apathy by even the most hardline Likudniks

The prime minister gave Jerusalem an odd gift on its holiday: A construction freeze. On the 46th anniversary of the city's liberation by a Labor government, a Likud government is freezing it. Levi Eshkol liberated, Benjamin Netanyahu is freezing. He hardly built any homes in Jerusalem during his previous term, and now he is not building any at all. The new housing minister revealed this week that he is not being authorized to add even one apartment to the capital. The prime minister summoned him a few days ago and handed him a freezing order for all construction beyond the Green Line.

To his credit, Netanyahu did not attend the Jerusalem Day ceremonies this year, so we were spared the traditional dissonance between his tough talk and lack of action. Praising a united Jerusalem while dividing it is extremely hypocritical. Netanyahu is forbidding Jews from building in Pisgat Ze'ev but does nothing to prevent Arabs from building in Shufat, Beit Hanina and the Temple Mount.

Israel's capital can expand only to the east or the north, as the City has run out of land reserves in its western part long ago. It is no coincidence that the most talked about building project in Jerusalem over the past decade has been the Holyland apartment complex. Despite its immense size, the project did not solve the housing shortage in the city or thwart the threats of withdrawal it faces.

When Netanyahu froze Jerusalem during his last term, on the occasion of Biden's visit, it caused an uproar in the Right. This week, even the most hardline Likud members did not say a word. News of the construction freeze was received with shrugs or lip biting. The former Likud rebels have become deputy ministers, and the Likudniks have yet to realize that Netanyahu version 2013 is cruising toward the 1967 lines.

Today, Netanyahu is closer to Zahava Gal-On than to his old self. His diplomatic rhetoric is Tzipi Livni's rhetoric. On Independence Day he delivered a leftist speech to foreign diplomats in which he lauded the tenets of the 1947 Partition Plan (he said something along the lines of 'we said yes to it then, and we say yes to it now').

People still suspect, mistakenly, that he is not serious when he makes such statements, but he means what he says. If his party continues to devote itself to denial rather than protest, he may implement his plans as well.

Let the Headlines Speak
May 15th, 2013
Daily NewsFrom the Internetl
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Homeland Security Funded Exercise Portrayed Homeschoolers as Terrorists
According to the Muskegon Chronicle, the exercise was a simulated “attack by a fictitious radical group called Wackos Against Schools and Education who believe everyone should be homeschooled,” Homeschool World reported in September, 2004. The simulated attack was funded by the Department of Homeland Security.  

Cleta Mitchell to Newsmax: IRS Scandal Reaches to White House
Cleta Mitchell, one of Washington's most respected elections attorneys, told Newsmax she has tangible proof that high-ranking IRS officials in Washington were fully aware of the agency's campaign to target conservative groups for heightened scrutiny, despite their denials. And she thinks the president knew about the practice, too. If proven, she said, it could be an impeachable offense.  

Pope Francis elected after supernatural 'signs' in the Conclave, says Cardinal
“I received at least two strong signs: one I can tell, the other was in the Conclave I can’t speak about – but real signs of the Lord giving me indication ‘he is the one’.”  

British summer kicks off with snow and rain
Sheila Coates, from Princetown, told BBC Radio Devon: "It's crazy. When I went to bed last night I couldn't see out of my front window for the snow. "I've lived here all my life and I've never known weather like it at this time of year." Two inches of snow also fell in Shropshire overnight and up to three inches of rain in places.  

Security Council to Vote on Syria
The United Nations Security Council will vote on Wednesday to condemn Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—and to accept his opposition as a possible political transition if Assad’s regime topples. The resolution is expected to face some push back by Russia, which has remained a close ally of Assad’s...  

Eric Holder defends AP seizure citing major security threat to public
Both Republican and Democratic members of Congress lined up to condemn the move against the AP, as did civil rights organisations and groups representing journalists. At the Department of Justice, Holder said the decision to seize the phone records was connected to a criminal investigation into the leak that led to the AP's story about the Yemeni terror threat.  

Putin, Netanyahu Meet in Russia to Discuss Iran and Syria Threats
"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu landed in Sochi, Russia on Tuesday and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin," Haaretz reports. "Netanyahu said ahead of the meeting with Putin that the Middle East is unstable and volatile and therefore he is interested in discussing with Putin ways to 'make it more secure and stable.'"  

ANOTHER X-FLARE ON MAY 15
When the week began, the sun hadn't unleashed an X-flare all year long. In only two days, sunspot AR1748 has produced four. The latest X-flare from this active sunspot occured on May 15th at 0152 UT. 

Germany can't stop euro zone from sinking into longest recession
- Germany's economy crept back into growth at the start of the year but not by enough to stop the euro zone from contracting for a sixth straight quarter, and France slid into recession. Falling output across the bloc meant the 17-nation economy is in its longest recession since records began in 1995

One Dead As Strong Earthquake Hits Iran's South
...an earthquake in southern Iran has killed a child and caused major damage, as well as numerous injuries. The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake's epicenter was 85 kilometers southeast of the town of Minab. The Red Crescent told state media that at least 400 homes were heavily damaged in five villages, injuring at least 16 people.  

Earthquake: 3.1 quake strikes near Cobb, Calif.
A shallow magnitude 3.1 earthquake was reported Tuesday evening three miles from Cobb, Calif., according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The temblor occurred at 11:11 p.m. Pacific time at a depth of 1.9 miles.  

Alaska volcano threatens to blow
Another volcano in Alaska is heating up, with seismic instruments signalling a possible eruption. The Alaska Volcano Observatory says tremors were detected Monday at Pavlof Volcano, 1 000km southwest of Anchorage.  

Pelosi: IRS Scandal 'Opportunity' to Overturn Citizens United
Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) suggested Monday that Democrats use the IRS to overturn Citizens United by passing the DISCLOSE Act or amending the Constitution to restrict political speech. In an appearance on MSNBC, Pelosi said, after conceding the IRS's targeting of conservatives was wrong, that she thought the scandal could be an "opportunity" to put a spotlight on 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organizations that are formed to promote "social well being." 

Gov't probe obtains wide swath of AP phone records
The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news. The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters...  

China Conducts Test of New Anti-Satellite Missile
China’s military on Monday conducted the first test of a new ground-launched anti-satellite missile that was fired into space and disguised as a space-exploration rocket, according to U.S. officials. The test was carried out early Monday from the Xichang Space Launch center and was identified by officials as the new Dong Ning-2 ASAT missile.  

Progressive Group: IRS Gave Us Conservative Groups' Confidential Docs
The progressive-leaning investigative journalism group ProPublica says the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) office...gave the progressive group nine confidential applications of conservative groups whose tax-exempt status was pending. The...evidence to the lengths the IRS went during an election cycle to silence tea party and limited government voices.  

Cyclone Mahasen: Bangladesh orders coastal evacuation
Hundreds of thousands of people are being evacuated from coastal areas of Bangladesh threatened by Cyclone Mahasen. The Bangladeshi authorities have raised the danger level to seven out of 10 for low-lying areas around Chittagong and the coastal district of Cox's Bazar. The cyclone, heading north-east through the Bay of Bengal, is estimated to reach land on Thursday.  

Nigeria: Goodluck Jonathan declares emergency in states
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has declared a state of emergency in three states after a series of deadly attacks by Islamist militant groups. The military will take "all necessary action" to "put an end to the impunity of insurgents and terrorists" in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe, he said. Mr Jonathan also ordered more troops to be sent to the north-eastern states.  

Brazil judicial decision paves way for gay marriage
The authorities in Brazil have ruled that marriage licences should not be denied to same-sex couples. The council that oversees the country's judiciary said it was wrong for some offices just to issue civil union documents when the couple wanted full marriage certificates. Correspondents say the decision in effect authorises gay marriage.  

Judge Goes Off Deep End to Shut Up Christians
May 15th, 2013
Daily NewsWND
Categories: Today's Headlines;Warning

A federal judge has issued a startling ruling that suppressing Christian speech is allowed when Muslims threaten violence because they’re upset over the message.

The ruling from Judge Patrick J. Duggan in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan granted Wayne County’s motion for summary judgment of a lawsuit brought by a team of Christians who were badgered, bullied and targeted with garbage thrown by Muslims who disliked their message at last year’s Arab Fest in Dearborn, Mich.

Officials with American Freedom Law Center, who have been arguing the case on behalf of the Christians, also said the judge denied AFLC’s motion requesting that the court issue an order preventing the Wayne County Sheriff and his deputies from restricting the Christian evangelists from displaying their banners and signs on the public sidewalks outside of this year’s Arab Festival.

It is scheduled for June.

In his ruling, Duggan said, “The court finds that the actual demonstration of violence here provided the requisite justification for [the Wayne County sheriffs'] intervention, even if the officials acted as they did because of the effect the speech had on the crowd.”

The case had been filed by the AFLC after several Christian evangelists were violently assaulted by a hostile Muslim mob while preaching at the festival last year in Dearborn, which has the largest concentration of Muslims in the United States.

The lawsuit, which will be appealed to a higher court, alleged the county, sheriff and deputies refused to protect the Christians from the attack, and they threatened to arrest the Christians for disorderly conduct if they did not halt their speech activity and immediately leave the festival area.

Robert Muise, AFLC co-founder and senior counsel, said, “The First Amendment was dealt a severe blow today as a result of this ruling. Indeed, this ruling effectively empowers Muslims to silence Christian speech that they deem offensive by engaging in violence. And pursuant to this ruling, the Christian speakers are now subject to arrest for engaging in disorderly conduct on account of the Muslim hecklers’ violent response to their speech. In short, this ruling turns the First Amendment on its head.”

David Yerushalmi, AFLC co-founder and senior counsel, added: “This fight for our fundamental right to freedom of speech does not stop here. We have filed an immediate appeal of this ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. While Judge Duggan may have been the first judge to rule on this issue, he won’t be the last. Indeed, we are prepared to take this case to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary because it is imperative that our free speech rights not be subject to mob rule. This is the United States, not Benghazi.”

Jordan Moves to Scrap Peace Treaty Over Arrest of Jerusalem Mufti
May 15th, 2013
Daily Newsjewishpress.com
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

The arrest of the Jerusalem Mufti on Tuesday for throwing chairs at Jews on the Temple Mount prompted the Jordanian parliament on Wednesday to demand that King Abdullah expel the Israeli envoy. The legislators also called to start a draft for a law to scrap the peace treaty with Israel.

Police arrested an Arab from entering the Temple Mount, and an enraged Grand Mufti and other Arabs began throwing plastic chairs at five Jews who entered the Temple Mount under police escort. Arab media said they prostrated themselves, an act of prayer that the Waqf prohibits, except for Muslims.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told The Washington Post the group did not carry out any act of prayer. As usual, Palestinian Authority media exaggerated the entire scene. Arab media always report that Jews “stormed” the Temple Mount. The Bethlehem-based Ma’an news agency reported that 50, and not five, Jews prostrated themselves.

Israeli police stepped in to end the clash before it could get out of hand and arrested the Mufti, a rare action.

It did not take much time for Jordan to hear of the altercation, and the country’s parliament unanimously agreed that the kingdom should expel the Israeli ambassador and recall its own ambassador from Tel Aviv. The parliament added its own imagination to the facts and claimed that Israel is trying to build a bridge between the Al Aqsa mosque and Jerusalem “settlements.” The parliament also called for drafting legislation to scrap the peace treaty with Israel.

Several hours later, Israel released the Mufti, which probably was not related to the Jordanian parliament’s move. The government knows full well that the Arab world will not sit passive with the Jerusalem Mufti being taken from his home for interrogation.

The U.S. State Department was asked by reporters to comment on the fuss, and assistant spokesman Patrick Ventrell told them, “We urge all sides to respect the status quo of this holy site and to exercise restraint and refrain from provocative actions.

As usual, the State Dept. does not what it is talking about.

Status quo? From when? From 1967?

The Israeli government passed the Protection of Holy Places Law on June 27, 1967.

It states:

“The Holy Places shall be protected from desecration and any other violation and from anything likely to violate the freedom of access of the members of the different religions to the places sacred to them or their feelings with regard to those places.”

The wise State Dept. does not also know much about the Mufti, Muhammad Ahmad Hussein.

In 2006, he stated that suicide bombings of Israelis were “legitimate, of course, as long as it plays a role in the resistance.”

On the other hand, one could say he simply was maintaining the status quo, which the Oslo Accords and the peace treaty with Jordan changed.

Jordan controlled the Temple Mount until the Six-Day War in 1967. Before then, Amman did not let Jews visit holy sites in the Old City of Jerusalem. It also prohibited Christians from most churches and holy sites in the Old City, Judea and Samaria, except for few and far between visiting foreign dignitaries.

After Jerusalem was restored to Israel in 1967, the Israeli government didn’t want to have much to do with the Temple Mount for many reasons, not the least of which was the concern of a religious war with Muslims as well as the complicated and complex issue in Jewish law of whether it is even permitted for a Jew to ascend to the site of the destroyed First and Second Temples.

The government left authority for the Temple Mount site in the hands of the Muslim Waqf site, with the stipulation that Israeli police could patrol the site and enter the mosque area, if necessary.

The “status quo” ended in 1969, when an Australian evangelical Christian tried to burn down the mosque to hasten the Second Coming, if not World War III.

Insect Invasion: Israel Battles Plague of Locusts
May 15th, 2013
Daily NewsTrunews
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Israel’s Negev Desert is alive – with locusts.

Huge swarms of the newly hatched critters have begun marching across the sand, devouring everything in their path.

With the help of high-tech irrigation methods, much of Israel’s desert has been transformed into lush farmland that supplies supermarkets across the country with fresh produce. But the swarm of locusts, which locals say is the worst infestation in decades, is threatening crops and farms.

Israel’s Agriculture Ministry has deployed pickup trucks, planes and helicopters to spray pesticides on the locusts before they can inflict more damage.

“They are easy targets now, but in two or three days when their wings develop, it will be a disaster,” said Lior Katari, one of the Agriculture Ministry’s coordinators.

Adult locusts arrived in the area in March. Scientists say they likely originated in Sudan and crossed from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula into Israel. Then they mated and laid billions of eggs in the sand which are now hatching.

Teams of exterminators are working from sunrise to sunset, spraying the millions of young locusts as they move across the ground.

Homeland Security Funded Exercise Portrayed Homeschoolers As Terrorists
May 15th, 2013
Daily Newsinfowars.com
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Taken on its own, the KOMO 4 News report out of Seattle paints a stark and frightening picture of police battling “angry parents” in a simulated shooting at a school. The practice of police training to take on everything from homeschoolers to patriots and constitutionalists – “rightwing extremists” in government parlance – is anything but a rarity. Such exercises are now a prominent feature of the expanding police state.

In 2002, Alex Jones covered school shooting police exercises targeting homeschoolers, a topic included in his film, Police State Trilogy. Since that time, the effort to malign homeschooling parents as extremists and terrorists has only increased.

In 2004, cops in Muskegon, Michigan conducted a “mock attack” on a school bus as part of a terrorism response exercise. The terrorists portrayed in the exercise were not fanatical Muslims or even phantom rightwing extremists – they were said to be fanatical homeschoolers.

According to the Muskegon Chronicle, the exercise was a simulated “attack by a fictitious radical group called Wackos Against Schools and Education who believe everyone should be homeschooled,” Homeschool World reported in September, 2004.

The simulated attack was funded by the Department of Homeland Security.

The mock attack was funded by a Homeland Security grant and required the participation of students to act bloody and injured, also involving hospitals, morgues and mannequins painted up to look like dead children, as parents were ordered to dash to emergency rooms frantic in the belief that their child had perished.

The Muskegon Area Intermediate School District later had to apologize for characterizing homeschoolers as terrorists after hundreds of complaints poured in.

Stereotypes consistently propped-up by the media demonize homeschoolers as hicks, retards and extremists, despite the fact the local and national spelling bees are routinely won by homeschooled children.

The ceaseless attack on homeschooling is an attempt to neutralize any alternatives parents have to placing their children in the state run re-education gulags known as the “public school system.”

“Michigan is the epicenter of the agenda to mould all schools into youth internment centers, indoctrinating all children to accept the presence of surveillance cameras, biometric scanning to access buildings and buy food, ID tracking cards and men in uniforms pointing guns at them as normal,” Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones wrote on November 6, 2008. 

“Allied to this is the openly stated agenda not to educate but to dumb down students and brainwash them with bizarre humanist rhetoric about the evils of the family, all in preparation for their smooth acquiescence into enslaved adulthood as a downtrodden worker bee under the control matrix of the elite.”

But it is not simply homeschoolers who are portrayed as terrorists in government school exercises.

In 2011, Pottawatamie County, Iowa, and Homeland Security conducted an exercise simulating a school shooting. The shooter was portrayed as a “white teen boy, whose family is involved in anti-illegal immigration rallies” and supports the Second Amendment. The father of the shooter was portrayed as a member of an “underground white supremacist group,” according to an email sent to Infowars.com.

School children are now routinely subjected to unannounced exercises. In a Michigan school in 2006, militarized cops took students “from the classroom into the halls, patted down by officers and asked what they had in their pockets.” The Associated Press reported that some of the children “were so scared, they just about wet their pants.”

“In the years since 9/11 and the Columbine school shootings, there has been a concerted effort to make school emergency drills much more ‘realistic’ and much more intense,” writes Michael Snyder. “Unfortunately, the fact that many of these drills are deeply traumatizing many children does not seem to bother too many people. Do we really need to have ‘active shooter’ drills where men point guns at our kids and fire blanks at them?”

Snyder documents numerous instances where school officials, in coordination with local militarized police often operating with Department of Homeland Security grants, have relocated children during mock terror drills and active shooter scenarios. Schools also routinely engage in lockdown drills, an activity that naturally acclimates young minds to accept an ever-encroaching police state.

“Schools have become hi-tech prisons,” Steve Watson wrote in 2007. “Children all across America and the UK are being conditioned to accept that they are not free and that they must submit to draconian laws and measures for their own safety… Everyday we post reports from mainstream news sources documenting this disturbing trend.”

The demonization of Americans who are opposed to interning their children in public reeducation facilities predates the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the attacks of September 11, 2001.

According to Time Magazine, the rhetoric that supposedly contributed to the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City came from “well known-elements of far-right thought: tax protesters, Christian homeschoolers, conspiracy theorists… and self-reliant types” in opposition to the federal government.

Lew Finch, the superintendent of schools in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, went further and directly placed the blame for the bombing on homeschoolers. “There is a dedicated, very well organized, very well financed movement in America that is very anti-public schools, very anti-government,” he told the Des Moines Register on May 4, 1995. “The ultimate example of that sentiment is the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.”

“We will continue to see armed men terrorize our children, aim guns at their head and indoctrinate them to accept living under tyranny unless parents and teacher organizations band together to file huge lawsuits against those responsible and we vehemently denounce the insidious Sovietization of the public school system,” Watson and Jones noted.

Homeschool parents and organizations, as well, would be wise to combat insidious government propaganda that likens them to terrorists. Left unopposed, this massive brainwashing effort will convert an entire generation into believing that homeschooling is not only evil and socially harmful, but it breeds terrorists.

The goal is to completely eradicate parent directed education and the threat it poses to public indoctrination mills that train children to passively participate in their own destruction while simultaneously worshipping government.

Hizballah and Israel Spar As Syria’s Conflict Threatens to Spin Out of Control
May 15th, 2013
Daily NewsYahoo.com
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

A dangerous game of brinkmanship is unfolding in the Middle East pitting Israel against Syria and its militant Shi‘ite ally Hizballah in what threatens to expand the two-year Syrian civil war into a full-blown regional conflict.

On three separate occasions since January — two of them within 48 hours of each other last Friday and Sunday — Israeli jets have attacked Syrian military bases, targeting consignments of advanced weaponry supplied allegedly by Iran that were pending transfer to Hizballah across the nearby border with Lebanon. The air raids were unprecedented. Israel has never before risked striking at Hizballah’s Iranian-supplied weapons inside Syria.

For now though, Israel’s gamble seems to have paid off. Other than some initial huffing and puffing from Damascus, no immediate retaliation was forthcoming. 

But rather than acting as a deterrence, the air strikes appear to have galvanized Syria to promise even greater amounts of sophisticated weaponry to Hizballah and also to announce the launch of a popular resistance campaign to liberate the Golan Heights, the strategic volcanic plateau in the south west corner of the country that has been occupied by Israel since 1967.

Israel’s intervention into the grueling Syrian civil war comes amid faint glimmers of a diplomatic breakthrough with the U.S. and Russia agreeing to an international conference to help end a conflict that has left more than 70,000 people dead. But the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has gained some tactical military successes of late, launching mini-offensives to retake territory previously lost to opposition rebels. 

The rebel setbacks may have strengthened the Assad regime’s grim resolve to win the conflict, especially given its confidence in the continued support of regional allies, Iran and Hizballah.

Certainly, the Syrian offer to supply more advanced weaponry to Hizballah has been warmly received. “This is a critical strategic decision,” said Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hizballah’s leader, in a televised speech Thursday evening. 

“We, the resistance in Lebanon, announce that we are ready to receive any sort of physical weaponry, even if it is going to disturb the [military] balance [in the Middle East],” Nasrallah added. “We are ready to receive these weapons and we are competent enough to possess them. We will use these weapons to defend our people and our country.”

Syria’s embattled government has additionally served notice that any further air strikes by Israel will incur an immediate – albeit unspecified – retaliation. 

“The instruction has been made to respond immediately to any new Israeli attack without [additional] instruction from any higher leadership and our retaliation will be strong and painful against Israel,” Faisal Miqdad, Syria’s deputy foreign minister, told Agence France Presse in an interview Thursday. His comments echo previous reports this week in Syrian media loyal to the regime of Bashar Assad that missile batteries will be able to respond to another Israeli air attack.

And Hizballah sources say that they too have received similar instructions. “From that night [Sunday] to this day we haven’t slept a wink. If there’s another air strike, if the Israelis hit Lebanon or Syria, we’ll retaliate immediately,” Abu Khalil, a veteran Hizballah combatant told TIME, giving his nom de guerre as he was not authorized to talk to the media. “We are ready and the Syrians are ready,” he added, speaking Wednesday before Nasrallah’s speech. 

Abu Khalil’s colleague Haj Hassan, another combat veteran, doubted that Israel would risk another air strike in the near future. “They can’t do it. Can you hold four watermelons in one hand?” he asked, meaning that a fourth air strike would prove too much of a burden for Israel because of the backlash.

Nevertheless, there are no indications that Israel intends to suspend the air strikes against weapons systems it considers “game changers” in the context of the Israel-Hizballah conflict. Israel appears to calculate that the Assad regime cannot afford to retaliate while fighting for its survival against opposition rebel forces. 

Similarly, Hizballah is busy deploying fighters into Syria to help the Assad regime crush the rebel factions in what has fast turned into a brutal sectarian war. Hizballah has shown no interest in resuming direct hostilities with Israel since the end of a month-long war in July-August 2006 when the group’s crack fighters fought the Israeli army to a standstill in the battlefields of south Lebanon.

The sophistication of the weaponry allegedly being transferred to Hizballah today underlines not only Israeli concerns but also the huge expansion of the group‘s military capabilities over the past two decades. Twenty years ago, the largest rocket facing Israel from Lebanon was the 122mm Katyusha with a range of about 12 miles, just far enough to cross Israel’s then-occupied border strip in south Lebanon and threaten a narrow ribbon of northern Israel. 

Since then, the Israelis have watched as Hizballah’s rocket arsenal has grown in size and quality: first came Iranian 240mm Fajr-3 and 333mm Fajr-5 rockets which placed Haifa, 25 miles south of the Lebanese border, within range for the first time. Then came Syrian 220mm and 302mm rockets followed by the Iranian 600mm Zelzal-1 and Zelzal-2s, the latter possessing a range of some 125 miles.

Israeli officials wrung their hands amid the build-up, unwilling to risk a war by attacking the arms depots in Syria or convoys moving into Lebanon. Instead, they called for international pressure to check the flow of arms and regularly aired their assessments of Hizballah’s latest rocket tallies — 8,000 in 2000, rising to 10,000 two years later and 13,000 on the eve of war in 2006.

Hizballah’s military clout has helped ensure that the party remains the dominant political and military force in Lebanon. It insists that its formidable military might is necessary to defend Lebanon against future Israeli aggression, a justification that wins little sympathy from Hizballah’s critics who fear the influence the party’s weapons bring to bear on the domestic scene.

Hizballah typically refuses to disclose details of its arsenal. But the organization does not disguise the fact that it has amassed a significant stockpile of advanced weapons and today its leaders boast that no place in Israel is beyond its reach. “We don’t fight our enemies with swords of wood,” quipped Nasrallah in 2007.

Since the 2006 war, Hizballah’s armaments have expanded even further in quantity and sophistication. Israeli officials claim the Shi’ite party has acquired anything between 60,000 to 80,000 rockets. In 2009, reports emerged that Hizballah had received M600 missiles, a Syrian engineered version of Iran’s Fateh-110 with a guidance system that allowed it to strike within 500 yards of its target at its maximum range of around 150 miles. 

A few months later in 2010, Western and Israeli intelligence sources were alleging that Scud ballistic missiles had been transferred to Hizballah’s care, although it was unclear whether the missiles had been smuggled into Lebanon or remained housed in Syrian military bases close to the Lebanese border.

The target of Israeli air strikes on Friday and Sunday appears to have included upgraded versions of Iran’s Fateh-110s with slightly longer range and improved accuracy over the Syrian M600s.

Smuggling rockets nudging 30 feet in length across Syria’s closely scrutinized border with Lebanon is a skill in itself. The arms convoys tend to follow dirt tracks that snake across the remote rugged mountains marking the border. They roll in at night and when possible use poor weather to mask their movements. According to sources close to Hizballah, the party’s engineers sometimes cut the local electricity supply and jam cell phone and radio signals when the convoys are on the move.

Israel is so concerned at Hizballah’s acquisition of advanced arms that the rate of Israeli reconnaissance flights above Lebanon since the beginning of the year is roughly double that of the same time in 2012, according to sources with the United Nations peacekeeping force in south Lebanon which uses ground and ship-borne radars to track the overflights. The rumble of Israeli jets can be heard above Beirut on a near daily basis, their white contrails criss-crossing the blue skies.

Hizballah proved in the 2006 war that it possesses top range Russian anti-tank missiles which were employed to deadly effect against Israel’s fleet of Merkava tanks and in one instance to bring down a troop-transport helicopter as it was taking off, killing the five-man crew. The group also came close to sinking an Israeli naval vessel with an Iranian anti-ship missile. But its air defense capabilities remain something of a mystery – for now. 

Some analysts speculate that Nasrallah’s frequent reference to military “surprises” in store for Israel in the next conflict will be the unveiling of advanced anti-aircraft capabilities to dent Israel’s vital aerial dominance over Lebanon. “In the [2006] war, we showed the Israelis that they cannot use the sea. 

They used their helicopters and we took them out. They used their best tanks and we slaughtered them,” said Abu Khalil. “We have orders to keep the skies open for them for now. But when that order changes, you will see what is our next surprise.”

The Israeli jets that attacked the Syrian military bases on the past three occasions launched their long-range missiles from high altitude in Lebanese airspace 10 miles or more from their targets to lower the risk posed by Syria’s dense array of anti-aircraft batteries in the Damascus area. But if the attacks against Hizballah’s arms caches in Syria continue, the Israeli air crews could suddenly find that Lebanese airspace has become equally as dangerous.

Evangelicals for Hamas!
May 15th, 2013
Daily NewsWND - Walid Shoebat
Categories: Commentary;Anti-Israel

Jesus at the Check Point is a “Christian” organization with a liberal socialist twist – and will soon be speaking at a church near you.

The group is touring to muster support to alleviate “Christian Persecution,” or so they claim.

The organization’s motto is “non-violent resistance against the Israeli Zionist occupation.” “Zionism is the obstacle to peace,” they write, and they want to “educate evangelical Christians” to “understand the Bible from a Palestinian Christian perspective,” which openly supports a “divided state” as the solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The main dynamo and sponsoring agent of these tours is Bethlehem Bible College in Bethlehem, Israel. Its Second International Conference was led by a Palestinian family, the Awads, including Sami Awad, Bishara Awad and Alex Awad. Claiming to be evangelical Baptists, the Awads were able to muster some influential figures. Several American evangelicals they recruited had taken action to bring them into American churches.

But what many in the West do not know is that this group has nothing to do with being Baptists, nor are involved in any way shape or form with Christian persecution. There is no mention whatsoever by this group of any persecution by Islamists against Christians in the Middle East. The persecution against Christians, they say, emanates from the Jewish presence in all of biblical Judea, Jews they claim confiscated Arab lands.

According to them, it’s the Zionists, not Hamas, that persecute Christians. In fact they promote Hamas’ legitimacy and fully support terrorism, but not as their tactic. To them, terrorism is legitimate as a tactic for other Palestinian groups so long that these are resisting what they term as “Israeli occupation.”

I captured their TV interview before the evidence was removed, after contacting mega-church pastor Wayne Cordeiro of Foursquare Gospel Church in Honolulu, Hawaii. Seven years ago, Cordeiro invited this group and was persuaded to call Israel “an occupation.”

California Assembly Passes Transgender Bill Allowing Student Choice on Bathroom, Sports Team
May 15th, 2013
Daily NewsTrunews
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Sponsored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) Assembly Bill 1266 is aimed at prohibiting “discrimination against transgender students” in the state’s school districts, Ammiano said.

Several school districts, including in Los Angeles and San Francisco, already have policies that allow students to participate in activities and use facilities for the gender they identify with, according to local news reports. Should the bill also pass in the state’s Senate and signed by the governor, it would ensure that all students have equal access, according to Ammiano.

“I do not believe that by allowing individuals of opposite sex to use the same restrooms makes any sense at all, and I think the vast majority of Californians deeply oppose this,” said Assemblyman Tim Donnelly (R-Twin Peaks) as reported by The Sacramento Bee.

Curt Hagman (R-Chino Hills) said the bill doesn’t make practical sense, especially in consideration of middle and high school students changing and showering in a locker room, the Bee stated in its article.

10 Scenes from the Economic Collapse That is Sweeping Across the Planet
May 15th, 2013
Daily NewsTrunews
Categories: Today's Headlines;Warning

When is the economic collapse going to happen?  Just open up your eyes and take a look around the globe.  The next wave of the economic collapse may not have reached Wall Street yet, but it is already deeply affecting billions of lives all over the planet.  Much of Europe has already descended into a deep economic depression, very disturbing economic data is coming out of the second and third largest economies on the globe (China and Japan), and in most of the world economic inequality is growing even though 80 percent of the global population already lives on less than $10 a day.

Just because the Dow has been setting brand new all-time records lately does not mean that everything is okay.  Remember, a bubble is always the biggest right before it bursts.

The next major wave of the economic collapse is already sweeping across Europe and Asia and it is going to devastate the United States as well.  I hope that you are ready

'Hamas, Fatah to Form Unity Gov't Within 3 Months'
May 15th, 2013
Daily NewsJpost
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Hamas official tells Palestinian news agency the two parties held positive talks in Cairo, agreed on timeline for reconciliation.

Fatah and Hamas agreed on Tuesday to form a unity government within three months, a senior Hamas official told Palestinian news agency Ma'an. 

Moussa Abu Marzouq, deputy chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau, told Ma'an that Hamas and Fatah held positive talks in Cairo and that the parties agreed to a timeline to implement reconciliation by July.

Marzouq said that no names were discussed for the new government in the Tuesday talks.

Last year, Hamas and Fatah reached an agreement in Doha, Qatar, to form a unity government that would pave the way for new presidential and parliamentary elections. The agreement stipulates that Abbas would serve as prime minister in addition to his job as PA president. 

Amal Hamad, a member of the Fatah Central Committee from Gaza, said on Monday that Hamas was not serious about achieving reconciliation with Fatah.

“Hamas is interested in maintaining its Islamic emirate in the Gaza Strip,” she charged.

“Hamas does not want to end the conflict with Fatah.”

Hamad also accused the Islamist organization of cracking down on Fatah supporters in the Gaza Strip, noting that more than 30 activists have been summoned for interrogation in the past 24 hours.