as in the times of Noah..

i felt this was a well written summary of the last week.. it's overwhelming, really. when you stop to think of the constant senseless bloodshed over issues so small, it reminds you that time is short. these are the birth pangs Jesus mentioned in Matthew 24.. and they will increase in frequency and intensity leading up to the rapture of the church.

as a Christian, it's an exciting time to be alive, the promises to generations of people are unfolding before our very eyes. but we are also reminded that we have friends and neighbors who haven't accepted the pardon Christ provides.. and for that, time is short indeed.
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The Days of Noe
Jack Kinsella

I was watching Glenn Beck's program on CNN the other day. He said something that bothered me when I first heard it, and it bothers me even more today. He mentioned how devastated he had been following the Columbine shooting in 1999.

But then he noted that the Virginia Tech massacre didn't seem to have such a devastating effect on him. Or, it seemed, on most of America. Not because it wasn't as terrible as Columbine-- the VT massacre claimed more than twice as many lives -- but because it isn't as shocking as it used to be.

Shortly after the crazy little whack-job in Virginia (I refuse to honor him by repeating his name -- he's gotten enough publicity) murdered thirty-two students at Virginia Tech, some guy at NASA shot his boss because he thought he might lose his job.

Afterwards, the guy shot himself in the head while the police 'closed in'. (I set that off in quotes because it seems the police no longer 'close in' until AFTER the gunfire stops.

There was a murder/suicide in Woodland, California (that you probably didn't hear about) where a 54 year-old guy shot his 52 year-old girlfriend and then killed himself.

Fifteen hundred miles away, another guy shot his girlfriend to death and then killed himself in Houston. There was another three days ago in Portland, Texas. Two more the next day, one in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and one in Murrieta, California.

In Queens, NY, Jimmie Dawkins killed his mother, her boyfriend and his health care attendant before putting the barrel of his .40 cal pistol in his mouth and pulling the trigger.

Another murder suicide in Michigan the same day also claimed four lives. And yet another; a man in Lake Havasu City, Arizone killed his girlfriend, his baby, and then himself.

This morning, I heard of a truck bomb that went off in Baghdad that killed 25 Iraqi policemen and wounded 125 Iraqi bystanders. Twenty-one members of a religious minority in Mosul, Iraq were dragged off a bus and shot dead, execution style.

In Laguna Beach, a woman and her husband were shot dead during a confrontation with police. At press time, the police weren't sure if they killed the couple, or if it were yet another murder-suicide.

One week's time. Rivers and rivers of blood.

Seriously, how did the news that 32 students were murdered at VT affect you? Or the news of the 125 people maimed by an Iraqi car bomb? Or the 21 Iraqis in Mosul pulled from a bus and executed? What about the litany of murder-suicides across the US in the past seven days that you just read about?

That list is by no means a comprehensive one -- those were just the murder suicide cases that popped up on Google's first page when I queried it. Are you shocked?

I wish that I were, but I am not. Not particularly. I thought about what Glenn Beck said about it on his program, and I realized that the calluses on my soul were even thicker than his.

The last time I can remember being truly shocked was the OKC bombing of the Murrah Building back in 1995. And I was less troubled by that event than I was the destruction of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco two years before that.

I was moved by the horror that must have permeated the Waco compound as the flames claimed the lives of 83 men, women and children. By the time of the OKC bombing, the horror was mixed with a sort of clinical detachment.

By the time the Columbine killers went on their rampage, I had already become desensitized to the evil of children murdering children. Eight blood-soaked years later, I realized my first thought at hearing of the VT shootings wasn't horror.

The first thing that came to my mind was the logistics. How did one guy carrying only two pistols manage to kill that many people? It wasn't until I caught Glenn Beck's program that I realized just how scarred my soul has become.

I used to be shocked by evil. My reaction has morphed from, "How could anybody do such a thing?" to "Not again!" to musing about the logistics involved in the commission of mass murder.

When asked of the signs of His return, among the signs Jesus gave was the "sign of Noe." (Noah)
"But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." (Matthew 24:37)
"And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man." (Luke 17:26)
Genesis 6:5-6 give us the Lord's perspective on the 'days of Noah':

"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."

When we aren't confronting actual evil in the form of crazy little gunmen and rivers of blood on our campuses, we seek it out for entertainment. Television and movies can rightly be called "the imagination of thoughts of our hearts" -- indeed, what is a movie if not our imagination brought to life?

And the more violence and sex a movie contains, the more popular it is. No wonder we are so desensitized to evil.

The most popular video games are also the most violent. I confess that enjoy the WWII action games like "Medal of Honor" and "Call of Duty" and even admit to downloading the latest 'blood patch' to make the game even more gory. What in the world is wrong with ME?

"And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold." (Matthew 24:12)

The more acceptable iniquity and sin becomes, the colder our love of righteousness gets.

The Bible teaches that the Tribulation Period is a period set aside for the judgment of a Christ-rejecting world and to effect the national redemption of Israel. But what of the Church?

In the days of Noah, God decided to judge sinful man, but he saved Noah and his family alive out of the flood by making a way of escape via the ark. Jesus said His return would be like the days of Noah. Wickedness, evil and the promise of judgment.

Genesis 6:8 says that "Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." The Bible also says that the Church is the recipient of God's grace.

"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:" (Ephesians 2:8)

"Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:" (Romans 3:22)

Noah was found righteous in the eyes of the Lord and he was spared the judgment that came upon the whole earth. Later, when God purposed to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham pleaded with God not to destroy the cities if even five righteous men could be found within.

Only Lot was found righteous, and a way was made for he and his family to escape the judgment that was reserved for the unrighteous.

Of His return, Jesus also said;
"Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed." (Luke 17:28-30)

The Church, like Noah and Lot, have found grace in the eyes of the Lord and we are clothed in the imputed righteousness of Christ. God views the imputed righteousness of Christ as being no different than that of Noah or Lot. (Romans 3:22)

God didn't judge Noah for the sins of his neighbors. Neither did He judge Lot for the sins of his neighbors. And since the Church is clothed in the righteousness of Christ, it follows that He will not judge the Church for the sins of a Christ-rejecting world.

I can find no other understanding of these passages that makes logical sense, apart from the promise that the Lord will return for His Church BEFORE the judgment of the Tribulation Period.

If the Church goes through the Tribulation Period, then the Lord's references to Noah and Lot are puzzling. Why refer to the only two historical instances in which God saved the righteous from being included in mass judgment in conjunction with the events that lead up to His second coming?

The only logical answer is that provided by the Apostle Paul:

"For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord." (1st Thessalonians 4:16-17)

As we wade through rivers of blood, our souls callused over by a constant barrage of unspeakable evil, it seems only logical that either judgment is due this old world, or God owes an apology to Sodom and Gomorrah.

The Bible promises "there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing." (2nd Timothy 4:8)

If His appearing comes at the conclusion of seven years of judgment and death for the Church, then "loving His appearing" is an act of spiritual perfection that is unfortunately a bit above my paygrade. If that is to be the case, I'd prefer that He'd tarry.

And Paul's final words about the Lord's return for those who are 'alive and remain' would seem to make little sense.

"Wherefore, comfort one another with these words." (1st Thessalonians 4:18)

loser..

a once proud nation reduced by the whims of the pathetic...

guns in the gun free zone..

i'm in favor of sad-free..
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Let's Make America a "Sad-Free Zone"
By Ann Coulter
FrontPageMagazine.com April 19, 2007

From the attacks of 9-11 to Monday's school shooting, after every mass murder there is an overwhelming urge to "do something" to prevent a similar attack.

But since Adam ate the apple and let evil into the world, deranged individuals have existed.
Most of the time they can't be locked up until it's too late. It's not against the law to be crazy – in some jurisdictions it actually makes you more viable as a candidate for public office.

It's certainly not against the law to be an unsociable loner. If it were, Ralph Nader would be behind bars right now, where he belongs. Mass murder is often the first serious crime unbalanced individuals are caught committing – as appears to be in the case of the Virginia Tech shooter.

The best we can do is enact policies that will reduce the death toll when these acts of carnage occur, as they will in a free and open society of 300 million people, most of whom have cable TV.
Only one policy has ever been shown to deter mass murder: concealed-carry laws. In a comprehensive study of all public, multiple-shooting incidents in America between 1977 and 1999, the inestimable economists John Lott and Bill Landes found that concealed-carry laws were the only laws that had any beneficial effect.

And the effect was not insignificant. States that allowed citizens to carry concealed handguns reduced multiple-shooting attacks by 60 percent and reduced the death and injury from these attacks by nearly 80 percent.

Apparently, even crazy people prefer targets that can't shoot back. The reason schools are consistently popular targets for mass murderers is precisely because of all the idiotic "Gun-Free School Zone" laws.

From the people who brought you "zero tolerance," I present the Gun-Free Zone! Yippee! Problem solved! Bam! Bam! Everybody down! Hey, how did that deranged loner get a gun into this Gun-Free Zone?

It isn't the angst of adolescence. Plenty of school shootings have been committed by adults with absolutely no reason to be at the school, such as Laurie Dann, who shot up the Hubbard Woods Elementary School in Winnetka, IL, in 1988; Patrick Purdy, who opened fire on children at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, CA, in 1989; and Charles Carl Roberts, who murdered five schoolgirls at an Amish school in Lancaster County, PA, last year.

Oh, by the way, the other major "Gun-Free Zone" in America is the post office.

But instantly, on the day of the shooting at Virginia Tech, the media were already promoting gun control and pre-emptively denouncing right-wingers who point out that gun control enables murderers rather than stopping them. Liberals get to lobby for gun control, but we're disallowed from arguing back. That's how good their arguments are. They're that good.

Needless to say, Virginia Tech is a Gun-Free School Zone – at least until last Monday. The gunman must not have known. Imagine his embarrassment! Perhaps there should be signs.
Virginia Tech even prohibits students with concealed-carry permits from carrying their guns on campus. Last year, the school disciplined a student for carrying a gun on campus, despite his lawful concealed-carry permit. If only someone like that had been in Norris Hall on Monday, this massacre could have been ended a lot sooner.

But last January, the Virginia General Assembly shot down a bill that would have prevented universities like Virginia Tech from giving sanctuary to mass murderers on college campuses in Virginia by disarming students with concealed-carry permits valid in the rest of the state.

Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker praised the legislature for allowing the school to disarm lawful gun owners on the faculty and student body, thereby surrendering every college campus in the state to deranged mass murderers, saying: "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."

Others disagreed. Writing last year about another dangerous killer who had been loose on the Virginia Tech campus, graduate student Jonathan McGlumphy wrote: "Is it not obvious that all students, faculty and staff would have been safer if (concealed handgun permit) holders were not banned from carrying their weapons on campus?"

If it wasn't obvious then, it is now.

war posturing..

the looming Israeli, iranian showdown is heating up.. it could be that Israel and US forces strike a serious setback to the iranian nuclear plan, killing invested soviet engineers, creating the stage for a larger escalation.. we could certainly see a 2 front war opened up on Israel from the north and south, allowing iran to use it's proxy hizballah and puppet syria to inflict losses on Israel. Israel will more than likely be less inclined to offer a disorganized response as they did last summer, which could result in significant losses for both hizballah and syria.. it would not be out of the question to see syria use chemical/biological weapons on Israel, eliciting a nuclear response.

the summer could be rocky..

Espionage Galore under a Middle East Nuclear Cloud
DEBKAfile Special Analysis
April 17, 2007, 9:19 PM (GMT+02:00)

It sounded like a contest.
On Tuesday, April 17, the Shin Bet intelligence service reported Iranian intelligence had intensified its efforts to recruit Israelis as spies, targeting former Iranians applying for visas to visit their families. One young man had been snared and paid “expenses” for enlisting a friend in security and collecting information. The Shin Bet detained him on landing home, before he did any harm.

Two hours later, in Cairo, a nuclear engineer Mohammed Gaber, was accused by Prosecutor-General Abdul-Maquid Mahmoud of spying on Egypt’s nuclear program on behalf of the Mossad, which was said to have paid him $17,000. An Irishman and Japanese were sought in connection with the affair. Israel dismissed the charge as another of Cairo’s unfounded spy myths, whose dissemination was not conducive to good relations.

Neither case is isolated. Two days earlier, the Israeli-Arab parliamentarian Azmi Beshara admitted from a safe distance to the Qatar-based al Jazeera TV channel that he was under suspicion of spying for Hizballah during its war with Israel and would not be returning home any time soon.

Add on the US defense secretary Robert Gates’ visits to Jordan, Israel and Egypt this week reportedly to coordinate and oversee preparations connected to a potential military operation against Iran and, in the view of DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources, these espionage rumbles denote a far greater upheaval boililng up below ground.

Most can be traced one way or another to the mysterious disappearance of the Iranian general Ali Reza Asgari from Istanbul in February. Tehran’s job description of the missing general – a former deputy defense minister, who also worked with the Lebanese Hizballah in the 1980 - is correct as far as it goes. But the failure to bring it up to date is an attempt to obfuscate the fact that, at the time of his disappearance, he headed Iran’s Middle East spy networks.
The cases disclosed Tuesday may be just the tip of the iceberg, with more spy dramas on the way. But even at this early stage of a potential intelligence earthquake, certain conclusions are indicated.

Firstly, Israeli will soon have no choice but to declare Iran an enemy state and ban Israeli travel to the Islamic Republic for the first time in the 28 years since Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution. Surprisingly, Israelis are still legally permitted to visit Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran.

The Shin Bet did not need to publicize Iran’s intense hunt for Israeli spies in order to stop those visits; there are other ways. The espionage case would not have been brought out in the open without the knowledge of the relevant ministers – certainly not a graphic account of how the Iranian consulate in Istanbul, whence Gen. Asgari vanished, doubles as the distribution center for visas to Iran and a recruiting center for spies. Israelis applying for visas are obliged to deposit their Israeli passports there and issued with travel documents which gain them entry to Tehran. This process is drawn out to enable Iranian intelligence agents to make their first pitch to the targeted Israeli. It is followed up after he enters Iran.

The Shin Bet’s sudden outburst of transparency indicates that the scene is being set for a major diplomatic, military or intelligence step in the summer. This time, the Israeli government will not repeat at least one of the mistakes committed in July 2006, when it refused to declare that Israel was at war and the Hizballah an enemy, even after its forces crossed in to northern Israel, kidnapped two soldiers and let loose with a Katyusha barrage.

Israel is now putting the horse before the cart and declaring Iran an enemy country before the event.

It is therefore vital to deter Israeli nationals from visiting Iran in advance of potential Middle East hostilities. If Iran is involved, even through its allies or the Hizballah, Israelis in the Islamic Republic would be in danger of being taken captive or hostage.

Israel’s latest posture and precautions are likely to have the dual effect of raising Middle East tensions and placing Iran’s ancient Jewish community, reduced now to 25,000, in jeopardy.

“Israeli spy rings” may soon be “uncovered” by Iranian security agents.

Second, the Middle East has embarked on a nuclear arms race. It is no secret that at last month’s Arab summit in Riyadh, the Saudi ruler strongly urged his fellows to unite their national nuclear programs under a single roof. Though played down, this was the summit’s most important decision – not the so-called Saudi peace plan, although it made the most waves. It was a step intended to produce an Arab nuclear option versus the Iranian weapons program.

Every aspect of the unified Arab nuclear program is therefore extraordinarily sensitive and hemmed in with exceptional security measures. Each has become a prime intelligence target - and not only for Israel. Hence the song and dance the Egyptian prosecutor general made Tuesday of an alleged Israeli spy network said to operate out of Hong Kong, with an Irish and a Japanese agent charged with planting Israeli espionage software in Egyptian nuclear program’s computers, together with an Egyptian engineer. Egyptian intelligence was making sure to warn off any Egyptian tempted to work for Israeli intelligence, just as the Shin Bet was cautioning Israelis to beware of falling into Iranian intelligence traps.

The events of a single day brought Iran and its nuclear threat into sharp relief as the most pressing issues for Israel. Relations with the Palestinians and Syria, on which so many words are poured day by day, pale in comparison.

the continuing evolution of the axis among iran, syria and russia falls right in to place with the words of Ezekiel 38.. what a very interesting time to be alive.
_______________________________
Israel's Next War
By P. David Hornik
FrontPageMagazine.com April 17, 2007

Ze’ev Schiff—left-of-center, not a hawk, and considered by many to be Israel’s foremost military analyst—cites security sources as saying those Qassams that Islamic Jihad has been raining on Gaza-bordering communities during the “ceasefire” with Hamas are in fact supplied by Hamas.
Hamas, the sources said, while “maintaining a front of abiding by the ceasefire,” is actually “emerging as the lynchpin of Palestinian terrorist activities against Israel.” That is believed to include providing Islamic Jihad with Russian-made 16-kilometer-range Grad rockets, already used last year to target the town of Ashkelon with its strategic facilities.
An analysis last month already warned that Hamas is “improving its rocket capabilities” while “seeking to build anti-tank and anti-aircraft systems that will neutralize Israel’s current ability to easily penetrate Gaza.”
The deteriorating situation in the south led Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Tzvika Fogel, formerly chief of staff for Southern Command, to warn on Israel’s Channel 10 that Israel faces two choices: to “continue its ostrich-like stance” until the Gaza terror forces mount a surprise attack, or to launch a full-scale preemptive attack of its own.

Meanwhile, shifting the lens to the north, last week the head of Israeli Military Intelligence, Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, reported to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Syria is “purchasing massive amounts of ground-to-ground and anti-tank missiles from Russia”—a country whose name tends to turn up in these contexts—and that, while “there is a low probability that Syria will initiate a war against Israel,” Syria could launch attacks in the Golan Heights even though it could lead to war.

Another report gave an even more ominous picture of an “unprecedented military buildup in Syria,” including the deployment of 300 home-manufactured Scud missiles just north of the Golan Heights, the establishment of new commando units, and a spike in training for urban and guerrilla warfare.

A source in IDF Northern Command said that “Syria saw the difficulty the IDF had during the fighting inside the southern Lebanese villages [last summer] and now . . . wants to draw us—in the event of a war—into battles in built-up areas where they think they will have the upper hand.”

And over in Lebanon itself, the fallout from last summer’s war is just as negative and the prognosis no better. In his same testimony to the Knesset committee last week, Maj.-Gen. Yadlin noted that up to several hundred Al Qaeda members have arrived in Lebanon with the aim of attacking UNIFIL and other Western targets; and that Hezbollah remains entrenched in southern Lebanon and keeps amassing large quantities of arms from Syria and Iran.

Rounding out the circle by returning to the south, Yadlin also said some Al Qaeda operatives have infiltrated Gaza as well, and that Hamas is gaining financial and political strength while its members receive training in Syria and Iran.

Overall, “the MI chief stressed that Iran continues to provide funding and weapons to Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and has close military and intelligence coordination with Syria.” Add Russia to the mix and the picture is complete: a Shiite-Sunni-Russian terror-military axis seeking to surround, pressure, and harass Israel and ultimately eradicate it.

Tragically, this is happening at a time when Israel has a government hobbled by incompetence, unpopularity, scandals, infighting, and delusory dovishness, and that, apart from stepped-up training for some IDF units, is essentially doing nothing about the growing threats. It does not help that Israel’s U.S. ally keeps obsessively choreographing diplomatic dances with the likes of PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas, the Saudis, and the Arab League with which Israel dutifully complies—achieving nothing except to further project weakness to Israel’s enemies and lull the parts of the Israeli public that are eager to be lulled.

As Schiff points out in another analysis, it was the reluctance to enter a two-front war that led Israel to allow Hezbollah’s major military buildup in southern Lebanon in the first place. After Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon in 2000 against the advice of most of the IDF top brass, Prime Minister Ehud Barak and then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon found themselves facing a Palestinian terror onslaught mounted from the West Bank and Gaza and did not want to further complicate matters by doing something about Hezbollah in Lebanon.

So Israel, Schiff notes, “never once struck at the convoys transferring the missiles to Lebanon, and never struck even one Hezbollah missile warehouse, or even the short-range rockets near the border.” The end result was that Israel found itself at war on two fronts anyway—when Hamas attacked from Gaza and kidnapped a soldier last June, and Hezbollah followed suit the next month with an attack and kidnapping from Lebanon; and now faces the prospect of a further two-front war against enemies with enhanced capabilities.

Hope resides mainly in the interim report later this month of the Winograd Committee, set up to investigate the failures in last summer’s war and also expected to address the whole period of 2000-2006. Sufficiently harsh conclusions against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could lead him to resign or cause other political ferment leading to new elections. As time goes on and Israel, aside from antiterror policing work in the West Bank, remains almost entirely passive against the growing threats, it does not appear that Olmert’s government has the will or ability to do anything about them, and its continued tenure appears to spell disaster.

If there is a chance—apart from a strike on Iran that would alter the region’s strategic balance—for Israel to avoid another two-front entanglement, it lies mainly in regaining its deterrence by making an effective move in Gaza. A hard-enough blow to Hamas and its friends there could make Hezbollah and Syria think twice about starting more trouble in the north. But there may be little time left, and such an outcome requires a functioning government in Jerusalem. It also calls for a Washington able to look past short-term diplomatic concerns and give Israel the backing it needs.

imus(t) post this..

another well written piece on the imus fiasco..

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Imus go down to the idiocy again
April 15, 2007
MARK STEYN

I was at LaGuardia the other day. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just the usual four-hour delay brought on by yet another of these April snowstorms Al Gore has arranged as a savvy marketing gimmick for his global warming documentary. Anyway, as always when you're at the gate for hours on end, there's nothing to do but watch CNN. I gather air traffic delays now account for 87 percent of CNN's audience. If it's just a routine holdup of two or three hours because the gate agent hasn't shown up, you know you'll be out of there before Wolf Blitzer's said goodnight. But, if it's something serious, like a light breeze at O'Hare, you know you'll be watching Larry King right through to the plug for tomorrow night's full hour with Tina Louise.

So I had the pleasure of sampling a typical evening's lineup of Don Imus coverage, from Wolf bringing us up to speed on the various networks that have fired him to Paula Zahn hosting a balanced panel of three African Americans and a guilt-ridden honky. It would have been a bad day for Ahmadinejad to drop the big one because nothing was going to prize CNN from their Imus-In-the-Morning-Noon-and-Night coverage.

Pundits are supposed to have opinions on everything, but to be honest I had no strong views on the scandal roiling the nation. I've never listened to the Imus show. The closest I get is if I happen to be driving around of an afternoon listening to WXZO from Burlington, Vt., and I hear one of their promos for the show, usually consisting of a 60-second highlight. In all the years of that condensed acquaintanceship with Imus, no "highlight" has ever struck me as funny or insightful. But I assumed that was simply because I'd left it too late: As with "Days of Our Lives" or "As the World Turns," if you've missed the first seven or eight decades it's hard to get into it.

So I don't know whether calling the Rutgers basketball ladies "nappy-headed hos" is a mean old white guy's racist slur or an artful parodic jest on the way black women are talked about by black men -- or at least by the ones on the record charts. After all, the only way mean old white folks know the expressions "nappy" or "ho" is because they heard 'em from hip young black folks. Indeed, one could argue it's a tribute to how non-racist America is that an elderly Caucasian would wish to talk like a gangsta rapper. What was it Martin Luther King dreamed of? A nation where men would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their characterizations?

Alas, it's not that simple. Apparently, when two hip-hoppers are up on stage doing their "Who was that ho I saw you with last night?"/"That was no ho, that was my bitch" shtick, they're just keepin' it real. When a white guy does it, he's just keepin' it real unlikely he'll find gainful employment again. Unless, of course, the networks are now proposing to apply the Imus standard to all performers, in which case the Grammy Awards will last 10 minutes (Best Liner Notes on a Polka Album and Best Tony Bennett Celebrity Duets CD of the Last Two Months).

It's a good rule of thumb in American scandals that, no matter how big an idiot someone is, the outrage over him will always be more idiotic. Let us take the easiest ones first. "I've received hundreds, if not thousands of e-mails, both internal and external, from people with very strong views about what should happen," said Steve Capus, president of NBC News. "And many of them are people who have worked at NBC News for decades, people who put their lives on the line covering wars and things like that." Is that a lobby group yet? War Correspondents Against Racism? Capus was taking no chances. "This decision was made after listening to the people who work for NBC News, who have placed a trust and respect the trust that America has given us."

Is it written somewhere in the Media Code of Ethics that you're not allowed to fire anyone without sounding like a pompous self-regarding bore? Playing catch-up and terminating Imus 24 hours after MSNBC, CBS chairman Les Moonves left NBC's "trust" and "respect" and "respect for the trust" in the dust: "We are now presented with a significant opportunity to expand on our record on issues of diversity, race and gender. We intend to seize that opportunity as we move forward together." That sounds like a helluva morning show you're developing there, Mr. Chairman. Unless it's just off-the-peg meaningless pap to be forgotten as soon as the press release is shoved in the filing cabinet.

Needless to say, Moonves fired Imus after first meeting with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton. I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where a white guy can be fired for racist remarks without his employers having to prostrate themselves before clapped out professional grievance mongers and shakedown artists. But dream on. Two men who slandered the Duke lacrosse players not just as racists but as rapists (by the way, has the Rev. Jackson come through on his promise to pay for the "victim" to go to college?) are the go-to guys when it comes to judging rhetorical excess in respect of varsity sports teams. Surely even a network president isn't such a craven squish he can go through a meeting like that with a straight face?

And saddest of all were the Rutgers basketball gals themselves. Almost a century and a half after the abolition of slavery, 40 years after the civil rights era, a group of young black women who've achieved great success went on TV and teared up because of a cheap crack by an over-the-hill shock jock. As a female correspondent to the Powerline Web site commented:
"Here are these tough women on top of the world and they are so fragile that a remark knocks them down. Hey, why wouldn't they have said 'F--- you? Who the heck is this fool Imus? We are queens of national basketball and there is no stopping us now. We can be and do anything we choose to be or do. . . . We don't need Al Sharpton to protect us. . . . ' But no, they look devastated and say they are damaged irreparably.''

Only in America: a team of champions who think they're victims, an old white fool who talks like a gangsta rapper and multi-millionaires grown rich on race-baiting who promote themselves as guardians of civility. Good thing there are no real problems to worry about.

afraid of the truth..

a great read.. absolutely spot on.
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Imus isn’t the real bad guy
Instead of wasting time on irrelevant shock jock, black leaders need to be fighting a growing gangster culture.
JASON WHITLOCK

Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.
You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.
You’ve given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor.
Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.
The bigots win again.
While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’s or Young Jeezy’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos.
I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don’t have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.
It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.
Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and wait for someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves.
It’s embarrassing. Dave Chappelle was offered $50 million to make racially insensitive jokes about black and white people on TV. He was hailed as a genius. Black comedians routinely crack jokes about white and black people, and we all laugh out loud.
I’m no Don Imus apologist. He and his tiny companion Mike Lupica blasted me after I fell out with ESPN. Imus is a hack.
But, in my view, he didn’t do anything outside the norm for shock jocks and comedians. He also offered an apology. That should’ve been the end of this whole affair. Instead, it’s only the beginning. It’s an opportunity for Stringer, Jackson and Sharpton to step on victim platforms and elevate themselves and their agenda$.
I watched the Rutgers news conference and was ashamed.
Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for eight minutes in 1963 at the March on Washington. At the time, black people could be lynched and denied fundamental rights with little thought. With the comments of a talk-show host most of her players had never heard of before last week serving as her excuse, Vivian Stringer rambled on for 30 minutes about the amazing season her team had.
Somehow, we’re supposed to believe that the comments of a man with virtually no connection to the sports world ruined Rutgers’ wonderful season. Had a broadcaster with credibility and a platform in the sports world uttered the words Imus did, I could understand a level of outrage.
But an hourlong press conference over a man who has already apologized, already been suspended and is already insignificant is just plain intellectually dishonest. This is opportunism. This is a distraction.
In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no threat to black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so destructive and must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about the idiot rappers on BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the country who use words much more powerful and much more destructive?
I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?
When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim.
No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.

a world without America?

the frogs are starting to realize it's not the utopia they hoped for.. (at least some of them)

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France's Pro-America Turn
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
FrontPageMagazine.com January 26, 2007


(St. Tropez, France) – Not only in America did a presidential election cycle kick off this past week, but also in our alter-ego, France.

There were no grand debates about war and peace, however. No questions raised about this candidate trying to disguise his Muslim upbringing by joining a mainstream Christian church. No huge gambles over the fate of the free world.

This is France, after all. So the biggest “news” of the presidential campaign – just three months from the first round! – was the grammatical error Socialist Segolene Royal made during a trip to China. Or again, an offhand comment she made in Paris this week in support of a visiting separatist leader from Quebec.

France has become a profoundly frivolous nation, dedicated to pleasure, and that suits many French men and women very well.

In St. Tropez this week, the movie stars and the sun-bathers have gone home. Now as the mistral whips the port into a chilly froth, the local clothing boutiques are well into their annual half-price sale, and nearly everyone one of them is staffed by wannabe teenage beauty queens or by ever-tanned women in the 50s who can still wear skin-tight jeans and boots and look stunning..

Disco Volante of James Bond fame looked positively tiny parked down the quai from two 135 foot Mangousta yachts registered in Nassau and the Cayman Islands (one of them called, appropriately, Don’t Touch!). How many of you have ever seen a 135 foot yacht? It’s the maritime equivalent of a ten carat diamond. – and about as expensive.

The biggest gripe among locals this week was the outrageous price of fresh truffles. Alas, they’ve quadrupled from last year and are going for 1,000 euros a kilo – that’s $650 a pound. What is the world coming to?

Nicholas Sarkozy is widely touted as the front-runner for president, and that is good news for America. He is smart, he is conservative, and he understands that the protector of French prosperity is in Washington, not Brussels.

No French president is going to increase French defense spending to the level where the French could actually deploy an army overseas any time in the near future. Unlike the other candidates, however, Sarkozy doesn’t just know this, he says it openly with realism and clarity.

He came to Washington this past autumn – none of the locals there noticed him much, but his visit was widely commented upon here in France. Sarkozy the pro-American, his enemies call him. And to his credit, he finds that title just fine.

Sarkozy began his political career three decades ago as the protégé of Jacques Chirac. At one point, he was even dating Chirac’s daughter. He fell out first with one, then the other, and became a fierce critic of Chirac’s silly (and at times, dangerous) anti-Americanism during the Iraq war.

Two years ago, Chirac was hoping to put an end to Sarkozy’s career once and for all, as allegations floated in the media that he had a secret (and illegal) overseas bank account. This perfidious deed came to light when a list of these secret accounts, held with Clearstream in Luxembourg, surfaced in the French press.

To Chirac’s surprise, Sarkozy didn’t just bow down and surrender; he fought back, filing a civil lawsuit for defamation. That turned the matter over to a French investigative magistrate, who bit by bit began interrogating witnesses under oath until – mince, alors! – he discovered that the whole business appeared to have begun in 2004 in the private office of Dominique Galouzeau de Villepin, Chirac’s swashbuckling foreign minister.

Sarkozy came out the winner, and it was Villepin’s career that took a fatal tumble. Instead of rushing to battle on his white charger, a fanion with Napolean’s eagle waving in the breeze, the overwrought Prime Minister plunged to his political death at under 20% in the polls. He recently pledged fealty to Sarkozy, for the few centimes his support is still worth.

A very pleasant man named François Bayrou has also joined the presidential steeple chase, and the press is falling over themselves to push him forward. He hails from the centrist party of former president Valery Giscard d’Estaign, and is a very sensible, honorable professional politician.

But French politics can get serious, and it can get ugly. And it can have a decided negative impact on the United States, as the 2002 election showed. Faced with neo-fascist leader Jean-Marie LePen in the second round, Chirac rallied the left and won the run-off with a resounding 82% of the vote. That led him to believe – mistakenly – that he had a mandate to transform France into America’s strategic adversary and save the Middle East for French banks, oil companies and arms merchants.

The press would love Mr. François Bayrou to become the spoiler, and knock out Sarkozy in the first round so their real favorite, the Socialist Segolene Royal, will face the ageing LePen in the run-off.

That’s the scenario, folks. And unlike America’s elections, we’ll know how it plays out soon enough.

Meanwhile, the French have begun to see the downside of a weakened George W. Bush. Just last week, political commentator Bernard Guetta was reviewing the Latin American tour of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, where he was squired around by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

The two of them pledged to try to convince OPEC to lower production quotos, so oil prices would return to record highs. Ah, but why didn’t America do anything about all this, Monsieur Guetta wondered. What did this mean? He knew the answer (after all, he is French).

“It means we are seeing the weakening of America,” he moaned.

When America is too strong, too self-confident, and too rich, the French worry they will become insignificant and do everything they can to hold us in check (as Chirac did in Iraq).

But when America becomes weak, the French start to fear for their own safety.

America is still the guarantor of freedom in this fallen, imperfect world of ours. And we should never forget it.

the boy love of the taliban

maybe this tells us all we really need to know about radical islam..

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Boys of the Taliban
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com December 29, 2006

Just recently, the Taliban issued a new set of 30 rules to its fighters.
Many of the instructions were to be expected: rule No. 25 commands the murder of teachers if a warning and a beating does not dissuade them from teaching. No. 26 outlines the exquisite delicacy of burning schools and destroying anything that aid organizations might undertake -- such as the building of a new road, school or clinic. The essence of the other rules are easily left to the imagination, basically involving what militant Islam is about: vile hate, death and destruction.

But there is a curious rule that the Western media has typically ignored. Rule No. 19 instructs that Taliban fighters must not take young boys without facial hair into their private quarters.

Right.

(Cough and clearing of the throat).

Aside from the question of what is permitted if a young boy does happen to have facial hair, this new Taliban commandment brings light to a taboo pathology that underlies the structures of militant Islam. And it is crucial to deconstruct the meaning of this rule -- and the horrid reality that it represents -- because it serves as a gateway to understanding the primary causes of Islamic rage and terror.

Rule No. 19 obviously indicates that the sexual abuse of young boys is a prevalent and institutionalized phenomenon among the Taliban and that, for one reason or another, its widespread practice has become a problem.

The fact that Taliban militants’ spare time involves sodomizing young boys should by no means be any kind of surprise or eyebrow raiser. That a mass pathology such as this occurs in a culture which demonizes the female and her sexuality -- and puts her out of mind and sight -- is only to be expected. To be sure, it is a simple given that the religious male fanatic who flies into a violent rage even at the thought of an exposed woman’s ankle will also be, in some other dysfunctional and dark secret compartment of his fractured life, the person who leads some poor helpless young boy into his private chambers.

The key issue here is that the demented sickness that underlies Rule No. 19 is by no means exclusive to the Taliban; it is a widespread phenomenon throughout Islamic-Arab culture and it lies, among other factors, at the root of that culture’s addiction to rage and its lust for violence, terror and suicide.

There is a basic and common sense empirical human reality: wherever humans construct and perpetuate an environment in which females and their sexuality are demonized and are pushed into invisibility, homosexual behaviour among men and the sexual abuse of young boys by older men always increases. Islamic-Arab culture serves as a perfect example of this paradigm, seeing that gender apartheid, fear of female sexuality and a vicious misogyny are the structures on which the whole society functions.

It is no surprise that John Racy, a psychiatrist with much experience in Arab societies, has noted that homosexuality is “extremely common” in many parts of the Arab world. [1] Indeed, even though homosexuality is officially despised in this culture and strictly prohibited and punishable by imprisonment, incarceration and/or death, having sex with boys or effeminate men is actually a social norm. Males serve as available substitutes for unavailable women. The key is this: the male who does the penetrating is not considered to be homosexual or emasculated any more than if he were to have sex with his wife, while the male who is penetrated is emasculated. The boy, however, is not considered to be emasculated since he is not yet considered to be a man. A man who has sex with boys is simply doing what many men (especially unmarried ones) do. [2] And this reality is connected to the fact that, as scholar Bruce Dunne has demonstrated, sex in Islamic-Arab societies is not about mutuality between partners, but about the adult male's achievement of pleasure through violent domination. [3]

While secrecy and taboo surround this phenomenon, some courageous Arabs have dared to discuss and expose it. Walid Shoebat, for instance, a former Palestinian terrorist, has openly related the abuse of young boys in Palestinian Muslim society. He himself witnessed a line of shepherd boys waiting for their turn to sodomize a five-year-old boy. [4] Amnesty International has also reported that Afghan warlords routinely sexually victimize young boys and film the orgies. [5] (The sexual abuse of young girls in this environment is also obviously widespread). [6]

While she was in Afghanistan in 1961, author and scholar Phyllis Chesler saw homosexuals roaming the streets, holding hands in broad daylight and gazing into each other’s eyes. “One of the pair,” she writes, “might sport a flower behind his ear; another might be wearing lipstick or have rouged cheeks.” At the same time, Chesler observed that everyone, including her Arab husband, was in denial about this common social reality, refusing to admit that this widespread behaviour was, in fact, homosexuality. [7]

In the dysfunctional and morbid paradigms of this culture, the idea of love is, obviously, completely absent from men's understanding of sexuality. Like the essence of Arab masculinity, it is reduced to a form of prison sex: hurting others with violence. A gigantic rupture inevitably develops between men and women, where no harmony, affection or equality is allowed to exist. [8]

The sexual confusion, humiliation, and repression that develop in the mindset of many males in this culture are excruciating. And it is no surprise that many of them find the only avenue for personal gratification in the act of sexually abusing young boys and, of course, in humiliating the foreign "enemy," whose masculinity must be violated at all costs -- just as theirs once was.

Islamist terror, therefore, is, in part, very much a release of the terrorists’ bottled-up sexual rage in connection to sexual frustration and desperation -- and to the humiliation connected to feelings of emasculation, which culminates in the act of striking out against “the enemy” and violating his masculinity. The inner workings of this mindset explain why Islamic terrorists consistently engage in sexual mutilation of their victims. Psychiatrist David Gutmann notes this phenomenon in the context of Arab Jew-hatred:

The Israelis perform in this Arab psychodrama of gender as a potent, destabilizing threat: to begin with, as a people they broke out of the deprecated but tolerated status of Dhimmi - a kind of submissive "woman" - to the "masculine" status of pioneer, rebel, warrior and nation builder. In retaliation, in their wars and Intifadas the Arabs strive to castrate the uppity masculinizing Jew -- and this project is carried out quite literally on the battlefield, where the bodies of fallen Jews have been mutilated in the most obscene ways. [9]

This lust for violence against “the enemy” and the accompanying yearning to die in the process are fuelled by the morbid earthly existence that is engendered by militant Islam. Indeed, there exists very few reasons for males to value their time on earth; their freedom of action and ability to experience joy and pleasure are extremely limited in terms of what is allowed. To be sure, most young men have absolutely no experience in love, sex, affection or friendship with females, and they have no outlet for their libido, which, to further pathologize the mindset, they regard as evil temptation. Killing and dying, therefore, become the only areas where free will can be exercised.

This lust for death is further compounded by the theological underpinnings of Islam itself, which promises the Muslim male sexual treats in the afterlife which are forbidden to him on earth. Indeed, if a Muslim male dies in the cause of jihad, he will enjoy a blissful union with virgins in paradise (Suras 78:31, 37:40-48, 44:51-55). And for those Muslim warriors for whom women are not of interest, there will be young pre-pubescent boys at their service -- and they will be like “scattered pearls” of “perpetual freshness” (Suras 52:24, 56:17, 76:19).

Thus, for the Taliban fighters who are frustrated with the new obstacles posed by Rule No. 19, there now exists an even greater incentive to get to paradise a little faster.

In essence, suicide through jihad represents a form of perverted liberty through which an individual can express himself. In so doing, the Islamic radical strikes out at what tempts him, avenges his own emasculation and, through the act of suicide, cleanses himself of his own temptation by ridding himself of his earthly existence.

Theodore Dalrymple offers a profound analysis of this phenomenon in the context of the Muslim fundamentalist’s agonizing hate and self-hate inside a Western society. Analyzing the motivations of the Pakistani suicide bombers who struck in London in June 2005, he demonstrates that they saw no way out of their confrontation with freedom and modernity except death:

What more convincing evidence of faith could there be than to die for its sake? How can a person be really attached or attracted to rap music and cricket and Mercedes cars if he is prepared to blow himself up as a means of destroying the society that produces them? Death will be the end of the illicit attachment that he cannot entirely eliminate from his heart. The two forms of jihad, the inner and the outer, the greater and the lesser, thus coalesce in one apocalyptic action. By means of suicide bombing, the bombers overcome moral impurities and religious doubts within themselves and, supposedly, strike an external blow for the propagation of the faith. [10]

All of these inter-related phenomena serve as windows of understanding for us, through which we become able to grasp the demented and psychopathic psychology that creates the need for a rule such as the Taliban’s No. 19. It is a rule that exposes a fanatic mindset that holds the sight and reality of an unveiled woman to be a horrific nightmare and the greatest sin, yet simultaneously considers the forced rape of a young prepubescent boy to be in the normal swing of things.

It is on this eerie and putrid plateau that we come to see the factors that spawn the yearning for death and suicide inside militant Islam. Circumscribed in the most vicious and sadistic of ways, the men imprisoned in these cages long to regain a masculinity and humanity that was violently robbed from them as children. In a setting where healing through contact with feminine affection is denied and considered evil, self-extinction through hurting the “enemy” -- and the tempter -- becomes the only way out.

Notes:

[1] David Pryce-Jones, The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs (Chicago: Irvin R. Dee, 2002), p.131.

[2] Bruce Dunne, “Power and Sexuality in the Middle East,” Middle East Report, Spring 1998. For a further discussion on the widespread homosexuality among men in Muslim societies in North Africa and South Asia, and how married men having sex with boys and other men is considered a social norm, and not “homosexual,” see Arno Schmitt and Jehoeda Sofer (eds.), Sexuality and Eroticism Among Males in Muslim Societies (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1992).

[3] Dunne.

[4] Chesler, The Death of Feminism, (Macmillan: New York , 2005), p.144.

[5] Chesler, p.144.

[6] Author Nawal El Saadawi, gives an account of the horrifying and widespread sexual abuse of young girls in the Muslim-Arab world, a crime for which the perpetrators are exonerated. See Sadawwi, The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World, pp.12-24. While it is obvious that this abuse, as with the abuse of young boys, is connected to the unavailability of women for men in the culture at large, Chesler notes that the widespread sexual abuse of female children in the Muslim world “is one of the main ways of traumatizing and shaming girls into obedience and rendering them less capable of rebellion or resistance when they grow up.” (Chesler, p.145)

[7] Chesler, p.88 and p.144.

[8] Dunne.

[9] David Gutmann, “Symposium: Purifying Allah's Soil,” FrontPageMagazine.com, January 27, 2006.

[10] Theodore Dalrymple, “The Suicide Bombers Among Us,” City Journal, Autumn 2005.

attacking iran?

sounds like the new year could be complete with some serious fireworks..

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Showdown
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
FrontPageMagazine.com December 27, 2006

The nuclear crisis boiling away under the surface for the past three years with Iran has finally erupted.
Over the next three to six months, expect things to get much worse, with a very real possibility of a war that could spread far beyond the confines of the Persian Gulf.
How we got here was entirely predictable – and avoidable. So is the path to a violent future.

We got to this point because the White House essentially caved in to intense pressure from the CIA and the foreign policy establishment, and refused to do the one thing that could have headed off this crisis: that is, to support the rights of the Iranian people and their struggle for freedom against this clerical tyranny. And now, it is almost – almost – too late.

The immediate trigger for the crisis occurred on Saturday, just two days before Christmas, when the UN Security Council finally quit dithering and passed a binding resolution to impose sanctions on Iran because of its illegal nuclear program.

While far from perfect (remember: this is the UN), UNSC Resolution 1737 bans nuclear and missile-related trade with Iran, and includes a short list of Iranian government entities and individuals whose assets could be subject to seizure and who could be banned from international travel.

(The United States had wanted both to be mandatory measures in this resolution, but gave in to a Russian demand to again give Iran more leash).

The UN Security Council passed a similar, binding resolution on July 31 giving Iran one month to suspend its nuclear programs in a verifiable manner, or else…It’s taken all this time since that the earlier deadline expired for China and Russia to exhaust their formidable bag of diplomatic tricks. Now even they have come to acknowledge the obvious, that Iran is using the IAEA as a foil for acquiring all the technologies it needs to make the bomb.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad responded typically to the news from Turtle Bay in New York. “This resolution will not harm Iran and those who backed it will soon regret their superficial act,” he said on Christmas Eve.

“Iranians are neither worried nor uncomfortable with the resolution...we will celebrate our atomic achievements in February,” he added.

In earlier statements, he has claimed Iran would have a big nuclear “surprise” to unveil to the world by the end of the Persian year, which ends on March 20. So unless he is just blowing smoke (and I will explain shortly why I don’t believe that he is), then we will be facing very bleak choices in very short order.

Remember, just a few weeks ago, Ahmadinejad announced to the world that Iran had completed its uranium enrichment experiments and was now preparing to install 3,000 production centrifuges at its now-declared enrichment plant in Natanz, in central Iran.

His announcement fell exactly within the timeline that Israeli nuclear experts have derived from Iran’s public declarations to the IAEA, and the on-site inspections by IAEA experts in Iran.

As I wrote after interviews in Israel this past June, the Israelis projected that Iran would complete work on two 164-centrifuge experimental enrichment cascades within six months, and that installation of the 3,000 centrifuge pilot plant would take another nine months. From then, it would take Iran twelve months more to make its first bomb’s-worth of nuclear fuel.

So far, Iran is right on schedule. This will give it nuclear weapons capability by September 2008 – just in time for the U.S. presidential elections. (And remember: this timeline is not speculative. It is based on information, not intelligence.)

Once the UN Security Council resolution was passed, Ahmadinejad’s top nuclear advisor, Ali Larijani, said the regime now planned to accelerate the installation of the production centrifuges.

“From Sunday morning [December 24] , we will begin activities at Natanz – the site of 3,000-centrifuge machines – and we will drive it with full speed. It will be our immediate response to the resolution,” Iran’s Kayhan paper quoted him as saying.

How is this possible? Well, for one thing, it is likely that Iran has been producing centrifuges in factories and workshops it has not declared to the IAEA. Worse, it may be operating a clandestine enrichment facility buried deep underground already, as many in Israel and U.S. intelligence have long believed.

The Israelis told me this summer this was their “worst-worst case” scenario. But a senior Israeli intelligence official I saw recently said the likelihood of that “worst-worst case” now appeared to be far greater than he or others had previously believed. “There can be no doubt they have a clandestine program,” he said.

And because it’s clandestine, we don’t know the size or shape of it, and therefore can’t make estimates of Iran’s nuclear timeline based on speculation and fear. But now the Israelis, the Americans and the British are beginning to understand – finally – that what they don’t know about Iran could be fatal.

After all, they are facing a president in Iran who has said that the Holocaust never really occurred under Hitler, but that he intended to carry it out himself, by accomplishing Ayatollah Khomeini’s goal of “wiping Israel off the map.”

On December 21 – just two days before the UN Security Council resolution – British Prime Minister Tony Blair gave the bleakest assessment of his entire tenure at 10 Downing Street of the threat posed to the West by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Speaking in Dubai, he gave an unusually blunt speech that warned of a monumental struggle between Islamic moderates and Islamic extremists, and that labeled Iran as “the main obstacle” to hopes for peace.

For the first time, a key world leader actually uttered parts of the laundry list of Iranian regime misdeeds that people like myself and Michael Ledeen and Iranian dissidents such as Rouzbeh Farahanipour and Reza Pahlavi have been warning about for years.

Blair said there were "elements of the government of Iran, openly supporting terrorism in Iraq to stop a fledgling democratic process; trying to turn out a democratic government in Lebanon; floutting the international community's desire for peace in Palestine - at the same time as denying the Holocaust and trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability.”

Blair expressed surprise that despite these overt deeds, “a large part of world opinion is frankly almost indifferent. It would be bizarre if it weren't deadly serious.”

"We must recognize the strategic challenge the government of Iran poses," Blair added. "Not its people, possibly not all its ruling elements, but those presently in charge of its policy."

While all of this is developing, the United States and Britain have begun a quiet buildup of their naval forces in the Persian Gulf, with the goal of keeping the Strait of Hormuz open to international shipping.

The spark point of open military confrontation could occur in many different ways.

The Iranians, for example, might choose to get directly involved should the U.S. military aid the Iraqi government in a crackdown on the Iranian-backed Mahdi Army and the Badr brigade, two Shiite militias fueling the sectarian violence in Iraq. (A clear sign that Iran is contemplating just such a move was revealed on Christmas day, when the U.S. Acknowledged it was holding four Iranians captured during a raid on the Headquarters of Abdulaziz al-Hakim in Baghdad just three weeks after he met with President Bush in the Oval Office).

Should Iran send troops, or escalate its current level of military involvement in Iraq, the U.S. might choose to take the war into Iran, say by attacking Revolutionary Guards bases near the Iraqi border that were involved in aiding the Iraqi Shi'ite militias.

Should the United States bomb a Rev. Guards base here or there, the Iranians might choose to respond by launching “swarming” attacks against U.S. warships in the Persian gulf, or by attacking a foreign-flagged oil tanker carrying Iraqi or Kuwaiti oil, or by increasing rocket and missile supplies to Hezbollah in Lebanon to spark another diversionary war against Israel.

There are scores of ways this could happen. But where it gets us is to a direct military confrontation with Iran – an Iran which could be a nuclear power, and certainly will be a suspected nuclear power, in a matter of months, if not weeks.

And there is no easy way of walking this back. Even the insane Baker-Hamilton proposal of a direct dialogue with Iran will not get them to abandon their nuclear program, which this regime in Tehran has clearly identified as a strategic asset it is willing to make great sacrifices to develop and protect.

So fasten your seat belts. We are in for a rough ride.

throwing Israel to the wolves..

sweeping in to positions of prominence are ghosts of past administrations.. administrations without regard for Israel's security and a disinterest of its continued existence.

james baker, a long time Jew hater is now suggesting that the best method to resolve our issues in the middle east is to force our sole ally in to a smaller box with indefensible borders. the fact that robert gates would come out and explicitly label Israel as a nuclear power is inexcusable. the fact that this man is now our secretary of defense should concern us greatly.

i think that george bush is a man of great faith, however, i am concerned by his judgment since re-election. the united states has been blessed more than any country in the history of the world. these blessings are from God because of our foundation in his values and in his Son's name. We have also been the lone voice of support for Israel. if we back off our support for Israel, if we force them in to giving up land granted to them by God, then i fear for the country.

it is clearly stated in Genesis 12:3, "And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed." we abandon Israel at our own peril. we are already legislation and litigating God out of our day to day lives, so i suppose it only makes sense that we would finally abandon God's chosen people. unfortunately, we will be judged for our actions as a nation who claims 'in God we trust'.

it is sad that when pressed, a once great people who stood for something now choose to negotiate with terrorist and murderers rather than stand and do what is right. but anymore, doing what is right is far to difficult for some and impossible for others. for those 'others' have no sense of right and wrong, just what is convenient.
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DEBKAfile: Robert GatesÂ’ reference to an Israeli nuclear weapon was synchronized with BakerÂ’s exclusion of Israel from a Mid East conference. The Senate confirms Gates in defense by 95-2 vote
December 7, 2006, 5:10 PM (GMT+02:00)
The pair is pursuing a new policy line which sacrifices the traditional US-Israeli alliance for the sake of wooing Iran, Syria and Iraq’s neighbors for help in Iraq. During his senate hearings, Gates confirmed - and indirectly justified - Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapon by declaring that the Islamic Republic Iran wants the power of deterrence against “the nuclear countries surrounding them – Pakistan in the east, Russia in the north, Israel in the west and the United States in the Persian Gulf.”
Israeli vice premier Shimon Peres said Israel, backed by the US, has for decades pursued a policy of nuclear ambiguity as a powerful deterrence “against enemies bent on its destruction, while threatening no other country itself.”
DEBKAfile: The designated US defense secretary did not consult – or even inform - Israel before a disclosure that violates a confidence long-held between the two governments.
Gates also said that “If Iran obtains nuclear weapons no one can promise it would not use them against Israel.”
He was then confirmed as defense secretary Wednesday by an overwhelming 95-2 Senate vote. The only two opposing votes were cast by two Bush allies, Sens. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., and Jim Bunning, R-Ky. They cited his criticism of the war and his view that the U.S. should engage Iran as part of a solution.
The Pentagon, which has warned against granting a role to Iran and Syria at IsraelÂ’s expense, has a new master, Robert Gates. He has already applied the broom to his predecessor Donald RumsfeldÂ’s senior aides.
Some Washington pundits accused the co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, James Baker, as forcing President George W. Bush to resort to dealing with the Iraqi Shiite-led government for the sake of an orderly US exit from Iraq. The price offered is acceptance that Iran could go nuclear within two years at IsraelÂ’s expense.
The group’s recommendation of a Madrid-2 peace conference for a Middle East peace would pander to the Arabs and their European backers by pushing for a full Israeli withdrawal from territories captured in the 1967 war. Israel and its supporters in the United States would have no say – “…a unique opportunity for the US to strike a deal without Jewish pressure,” as one Washington observer put it.
This sort of crude language has not been heard in WashingtonÂ’s top circles since George Bush the elder was president and James Baker his secretary of state.
The new-old gang has also revived the threat of an imposed “peace.” It is barely veiled in the Baker-Hamilton report’s statement: “The US cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it embarks on a renewed and sustained commitment to a comprehensive peace plan on all fronts.”
The prime minister’s office in Jerusalem still clings to the now-meaningless statement that there is “no fear of a change in US policy towards Israel.” The statement released Thursday, Dec. 7, asserted that Ehud Olmert was assured during his Washington visit two weeks ago that “there was no linkage between the Iraq issue and Israel.”
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Christian fall, muslim rise..

TAS Live
Christian Fall, Muslim Rise
By Tom Bethell
Published 10/24/2006 12:03:03 AM

FOR A LONG TIME I TRIED TO AVOID thinking about Lebanon. It seemed too marginal, not to mention too complicated. Its government, more notional than real, enjoys little more than the "trappings of sovereignty," as Fouad Ajami recently wrote. A territory more than a nation, it is a land of private militias, checkpoints, autonomous regions, and assassinations. Somehow, it degenerated into a place where the most ruthless could prevail by force, and maybe govern after a fashion. But that has long been a hallmark of government in the Arab world. Whoever seizes power can never relax the use or threat of force, lest he be overthrown by superior force.Lebanon is a microcosm, and an object lesson. It is a country where Christianity is on the wane. By one estimate, it was once over 70 percent Christian; today it is less than half that. Shi'ite Muslims alone probably outnumber Lebanese Christians (mostly Maronite). The decline may be greater than that. The Washington Post reported a few years ago that Lebanon has not conducted a census for about 50 years "out of concern that the evidence of Christian decline and Shi'ite Muslim advancement might fuel sectarian tension." A similar pattern holds across the Middle East, where the Christian downfall has been dramatic. The Catholic Archbishop of Algeria, interviewed recently by the New York Times, described "the ebbing of Christianity from North Africa's shores as Islam spreads across Europe." In 1958, there were more than 700 churches in the country where St. Augustine was born and died. Now there are about 20, and they are mostly empty. "The rest have been converted into mosques or cultural centers or have been abandoned." The archbishop says Mass for a remnant of 20 people.In The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam (1997) Bat Ye'Or wrote that 13 percent of the Middle East was Christian a century ago. Today that figure may be as low as 2 percent.Something similar is happening, although more slowly, in Europe.The English writer G.K. Chesterton feared that if Christianity ever began to disappear, "superstition would drown out all your old rationalism and skepticism." He is often quoted as saying that when people stop believing in God "they don't believe in nothing, but in anything." But no one has been able to find that famous remark in all his copious writings. He did write something similar-that your "hard-shelled materialists [are] all balanced on the very edge of belief-of belief in almost anything."Writing after the suicide attacks on the London Underground last year, the British historian Niall Ferguson drew attention to Chesterton's comment (and misquotation) and added that the "moral vacuum" left by de-Christianization seemed to be creating a "soft target for the religious fanaticism of others." Plainly, the rise of Islam in Europe is directly related to the fall of Christianity."Into the void are coming Islam and Muslims," Daniel Pipes wrote in the New York Sun two years ago. "As Christianity falters, Islam is robust, assertive and ambitious." He foresaw a time when Europe's "grand cathedrals will appear as vestiges of a prior civilization." Until they are transformed into mosques, that is.A RECENT STUDY SHOWED that the Catholic Church in Britain is facing its greatest threat since the Reformation. Its membership is in "terminal decline," much of it recent. What Henry VIII persecuted the modern world simply ignores. The faith is withering away. Meanwhile, the Church of England has devolved into a museum. Those old cathedrals are still maintained-even admired as works of art. Increasingly, however, they are venues for music festivals. As for the Church of England's Episcopalian equivalent in the U.S., it suggests nothing so much as a wounded animal beset by carnivores.How to explain this decline? Nothing less than a book-length response would suffice. But here are a few thoughts. Enfeebled bishops, selected precisely for their feebleness, preside over dwindling flocks. Bishops have lost all authority and few listen to their public comments, which almost always deal with material (not spiritual) concerns. Rome slumbers on, imagining that English Catholics must above all repair the breach with Canterbury, and that the way to do so is to stand for as little as possible. Diplomacy triumphs over conviction. There is no sign that the old pope, John Paul II, paid attention to the problem. Benedict XVI understands that Catholicism is in trouble in Europe, but has not yet shown that he has the courage to do anything about it.Christianity has been under constant attack since the time of the Enlightenment and the attacks have come from within. In recent decades, mullahs and imams have hardly needed to say a word against Christianity. All the work was being done for them by critics, reformers, apostates, defectors. In some ways Muslims are actually more respectful of Christianity than the Church's internal foes. And Islam's spiritual leaders have not lost the faith, defective though it is in key areas.Friedrich Nietzsche, the son of a Lutheran pastor, composed his nonsensical but influential work The Antichrist (better translated as "The Anti-Christian," as Walter Kaufmann noted), and proclaimed the death of God in a country still nominally Christian. His diatribes were influential not because they were cogent but because they were daring. He was thought profound merely because he had disturbed the peace. (In earlier centuries such exercises in egotism were smothered at birth.) In droves, Western intellectuals wanted to believe that they could safely defy the parson-ignore a creator perceived as more tyrannical than loving. So they disparaged the "wishful thinking" of believers, and in so doing imputed their own mindset to the faithful remnant.The Jesuits turned to liberation theology, and many have also fallen under the homosexual spell. A succession of popes has failed to mount any effective response.A likely ingredient in the Christian decline is increased material prosperity, which turns minds and hearts toward the things of this world. One could say that wealth makes materialists of us all. (But why hasn't there been an equivalent decline in the United States?) The Muslims of the Arab world, in contrast, have been unable to achieve anything beyond rudimentary levels of development. A material advance in the Middle East comparable to that of Western Europe possibly would undermine Islam. But why has it not already happened? The Muslims seem unable to achieve one of the most basic features of Western civilization-the rule of law. And they have remained largely frozen in a pre-medieval past. The strong rule by fear, force, and power replace law and consent, and property is insecure.THE MOST COMMON SECULAR RESPONSE to all this is to say: What was so great about Christianity? One blogger responded to Niall Ferguson: "I don't get it. What's wrong with, say, secular humanism filling the moral vacuum? Why does he think the Christian doctrine is irreplaceable?"It's an important question, deserving a full response. Just at the most basic level of demography, however, the secular-humanist option is not working. Sustaining a population requires each woman on average to bear 2.1 children. In the European Union, Daniel Pipes wrote, "the overall rate is one-third short, at 1.5 and falling." Should current population trends continue and immigration cease, the EU population of 375 million could fall to 275 million by 2075. Furthermore, birth rates are not lower than they already are (in France and Britain, for example, they are noticeably above the EU average) because Muslim immigrants to those countries are having more children than fallen-away Christians.As for those who imagine that the Christian legacy is one of imperialism, racism, and inquisition, and we are better off without it-legions on the left do believe that-they will have to start thinking about what will replace it. Some are already doing so. Whittaker Chambers is worth reading on these issues, even though Islam was still dormant when he wrote Witness. The attempt to reconstruct faith without God produced Communism, he wrote. And the attempt to live without any faith at all is, I believe, impossible. If faith collapses, civilization goes with it.

bbc bias..

BBC admits: We are biased on religion and politics
Internal corporation memo on ‘impartiality’ summit leaked to British media exposes truth on BBC bias
Hagit Klaiman
Published:
10.23.06, 16:10

LONDON – The British Broadcasting Corporation has been struggling for several years against criticisms and claims of biased reporting concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and distorted coverage of the global fight against terror.
Following a diplomatic incident with Israel, the BBC appointed an editor known for his objective reporting, however, the true stance of the corporation’s editors remained the same.
An internal memo, recently discovered by the British media, revealed what the BBC has been trying to hide. Senior figures admitted in a recent 'impartiality' summit that the BBC was guilty of promoting Left-wing views and anti-Christian sentiment.
Most executives admitted that the corporation’s representation of homosexuals and ethnic minorities was unbalanced and disproportionate, and that it leaned too strongly towards political correctness, the overt promotion of multiculturalism, anti-Americanism and discrimination against the countryside.

Okay to trash Bible, not Quran
A truly shocking revelation to come out of the summit was expected to invoke a storm in Britain, which has already reached the boiling point with regards to the treatment of Muslims and the issue of the veil.
For the purpose of illustration, the executives were given a scenario in which Jewish Comedian Sasha Baron Cohen would participate in a program titled ‘Room 101’, a studio program where guests would be asked for their opinions on different issues, and allowed to symbolically throw things they hated in a garbage bin.

The executives were asked what they would do if Cohen decided to throw ‘Kosher food’, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bible, and the Quran in the garbage bin.

The executives said they would allow everything to be thrown in the garbage bin, save the Quran, for fear of offending the British Muslim community.
According to the ‘Washington Times’, the BBC also reportedly revealed that its executives favored interviewing terrorist leader Osama bin Laden if the opportunity arose.

Among other issues raised in the summit was the question of whether or not veiled women should be allowed to read the news. The BBC’s diversity editor said that since news anchors were allowed to wear crosses, any news anchor should be permitted to wear anything they wished, including the veil.

One senior BBC executive admitted to the ‘Daily Express’, "There was a widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness. Unfortunately, much of it is so deeply embedded in the BBC's culture, that it is very hard to change it."

GLOBAL WARMING !!!!!!!!

russian troops stationed in lebanon..

DEBKA Exclusive: Moscow posts two Chechen platoons in S. Lebanon, one headed by an ex-rebel commander, “to improve Russia’s image in the Arab world”

The Muslim commandoes of the Vostok (East) and Zapad (West) battalions of the Russian Army’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) (picture) are being sent to guard the 150 Russian military engineers. They arrived in Beirut this week to restore the roads in Lebanon damaged by Israeli bombing.

DEBKAfile reports: Moscow did not consult Israel before stationing Muslim Chechen troops on its border for the first time.

Russian defense minister Sergei Ivanov said openly to Russian media that the deployment of former rebel Chechen troops in Lebanon aimed at “improving Moscow’s image in the Arab and Muslim world.”

DEBKAfile’s military sources: The Russian units are operating independently of the largely-European UN peacekeeping force. Their vehicles fly Russian and Lebanese flags. UNIFIL too was taken by surprise by the posting of Chechen troops to Lebanon. Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora was informed but omitted to notify Washington, Paris, Berlin, Rome or the UN.
The Kremlin’s rationale for making Russia the first nation to deploy a Muslim contingent in South Lebanon - albeit outside the UN force – is part of a hard-hitting foreign and domestic policy initiative, which is summed up by DEBKAfile’s sources:

1. The Putin administration wants to demonstrate to Russia’s teeming Muslim community its willingness to step into Middle East conflicts – on behalf of the Muslim-Arab interest. This straw in the wind indicates the Kremlin’s orientation on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
2. Moscow is building another bridge to Tehran through a joint, potentially interactive presence in Lebanon.
3. As a step to promote cooperation with Hizballah, with whom the Chechens, with their long record of extremist Muslim terrorist action against the Russian army, have much in common – in contrast to the European contingents of UNIFIL.
4. The Russian Chechen unit’s cooperation with Hizballah in the parts of Lebanon under its control will pave the way for a Russian Muslim military presence north of Israel which is independent of the UN and not bound by accords to which Israel is a party.

According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, the Israeli government and IDF high command were taken aback by the Russian step, which lends a different and inimical aspect to the international deployment on its northern border. When it signed off onto UN Security Council resolution 1701, Israel never envisaged the measure would open the door for Russian military intelligence to step in and camp on its border, using former Muslim terrorists involved in organized crime.
The Chechen Vostok and Zapad battalions are part of the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division that is permanently deployed in Chechnya, in charge of the eastern and western regions. The Zapad battalion is led by Major Said-Magomed Kakiev, the Vostok’s commander is the former rebel Sulim Yamadaev.

This same Yamadaev, the former Chechen rebel commander who won an amnesty and the Hero of Russia award in 2004, is alleged by the Russian media with leading the robbery of the Samson-K meat-processing plant in St. Petersburg on September 15. He and up to 40 of his armed men stayed in the city’s Nevsky Palace Hotel, one of the most opulent in Europe, where he was seen embracing the leader of the local organized crime gang, Vladimir Kumarin.

syria to invade israel ??

DEBKAfile’s sources: Tehran and Damascus are gearing up for a pre-emptive attack on Israel to ward off a US strike on Iran’s nuclear sites

Our military and Washington sources read as preparatory justification the Syrian ruler Bashar Asad’s statement Saturday, Oct. 7, that he expects an Israeli attack.
He was speaking in an interview to Kuwaiti paper al-Anba.

Asad’s Iranian-backed war plan would serve the purpose of forcing the Americans to divide their military assets between a strike against Iran and the defense of their allies in the Persia Gulf, Israel and US forces in Iraq. Both are seriously looking at a Syrian attack on the Golan which would escalate into a full-blown Syrian-Israeli war and a second Hizballah assault from Lebanon.

Asad’s remark that during the Lebanon hostilities, he was under pressure from the Syrian population to go to war against Israel and liberate the Golan is the most direct threat of belligerency of all his four Golan statements in the last month. He is implying that he stood up to the pressure once but may not do so again. And for the benefit of the Americans, the Europeans, the Saudis and the Egyptians - all of whom are pretty fed up with him – Asad is posing as the picture of self-restraint; anyone else in his place, he implies, would have taken advantage of the Lebanon war and made a grab for the Golan. Therefore, he is saying, he deserves to be treated with the respect due to a strategic asset by Western and moderate Arab powers instead of being targeted for an ouster.

The Syrian ruler would not threaten war without guarantees from Iran. According to DEBKAfile’s sources, Asad and Iran’s supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are prompted by the following motives:

1. Tehran is not prepared to wait passively for the Americans to build up their assault force in the Gulf and strike its nuclear facilities. A pre-emptive attack would suit them better.
2. Tehran and Damascus have not missed the debilitating crisis in which Israel’s political and military leadership are sunk since the Lebanon war. They do not propose to wait until the IDF pulls itself together enough to handle fresh aggression.

3. Both accept Israel’s deputy prime minister Shimon Peres’ assessment that Israel’s cities are not prepared for missile attack. Iran and Syria take it for granted that Israeli leaders understand they cannot afford to launch missiles against either one of them for fear of reprisal in kind.

4. Syria believes that if Hizballah could stand up to the Israeli army in Lebanon, its commandoes can capture sections of the Golan and walk off with an easy victory.

5. Tehran figures that the Bush administration is coming to the end of its patience in Iraq and preparing for a major review of its position there. The influential U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman, John Warner, said Friday that Iraq's government had 60 to 90 days to control the violence that threatens civil war or the United States would have to reconsider its options. This gives the Maliki government in Baghdad up to December or January to de-escalate if not halt the sectarian war engulfing the country.

Iran, Syria and Hizballah would not be averse to disrupting the American Iraq timeline by attacking Israel and putting the Bush administration on the spot, forced to address three warfronts simultaneously.

more mahdi madness..

just because we think it's silly doesn't mean that millions of other people do..
---------------------
Waiting for the imam's return to Earth
THE followers of Moqtada al-Sadr believe that the US in
vaded Iraq to prevent the return to Earth of their sect’s messiah-like figure, the Mahdi, or 12th imam.

Hojatoleslam al-Sadr claims that his militia is preparing for the day when the Mahdi, the last direct descendent of the revered Shia figure Ali, reappears. Shia believe that the Mahdi, who disappeared in 868, will bring justice to Earth.

At a prayer service in the central Iraqi city of Kufa on September 15, the cleric told a crowd of thousands that the Americans were collecting a dossier on the Mahdi to prevent his return. “Did you ever ask yourself about why all of this, the bloodshed and the prisons? Why are the brothers fighting each other for a political game planned by the Americans? This all happened because they (the Americans) are waiting for the Mahdi. This planning started ten years ago. They have a big file for Imam Mahdi and they just need his picture to complete it.”

Hojatoleslam al-Sadr and his advisers are convinced that the Americans want to destroy Islam and stop the Mahdi. “The Americans are trying to hijack Islamic movements. They think that these are serving the Mahdi’s interests. Whatever they did in Afghanistan and Iraq are all attempts to hijack the Mahdi’s return.”

a prayer?

"Dear Friends and Colleagues, From the beginning of time, humanity has
longed for the day when justice, peace, equality and compassion envelop the
world. All of us can contribute to the establishment of such a world. When that
day comes, the ultimate promise of all Divine religions will be fulfilled with
the emergence of a perfect human being who is heir to all prophets and pious
men. He will lead the world to justice and absolute peace."

"O mighty Lord, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last
repository, the promised one, that perfect and pure human being, the one that
will fill this world with justice and peace. "

for people who had a chance to read the text of mahmoud ahmadinejad's speech to the un, this should not be surprising. for those who haven't read or listened to his speech, you would be wise to pay attention to the way he closed it..

let's remember, iran's president believes in an apocolyptic view for himself. he believes he is the one to usher in the return of the 12th imam or mahdi who will bring islam to rule on earth and harken in a time of islamic ruled peace. this mahdi cannot come until there is a last great battle with the western infidels.. and ahmadinejad feels he is the one to pick this fight.

he has provided warning after warning to the world and the united states specifically.. he has asked george bush to convert to islam, which is required prior to war. and he has left the un with the prayer above.. a clear invitation to convert to islam and a call for the mahdi to come.

a prayer?

"Dear Friends and Colleagues, From the beginning of time, humanity has
longed for the day when justice, peace, equality and compassion envelop the
world. All of us can contribute to the establishment of such a world. When that
day comes, the ultimate promise of all Divine religions will be fulfilled with
the emergence of a perfect human being who is heir to all prophets and pious
men. He will lead the world to justice and absolute peace."

"O mighty Lord, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last
repository, the promised one, that perfect and pure human being, the one that
will fill this world with justice and peace. "

for people who had a chance to read the text of mahmoud ahmadinejad's speech to the un, this should not be surprising. for those who haven't read or listened to his speech, you would be wise to pay attention to the way he closed it..

let's remember, iran's president believes in an apocolyptic view for himself. he believes he is the one to usher in the return of the 12th imam or mahdi who will bring islam to rule on earth and harken in a time of islamic ruled peace. this mahdi cannot come until there is a last great battle with the western infidels.. and ahmadinejad feels he is the one to pick this fight.

he has provided warning after warning to the world and the united states specifically.. he has asked george bush to convert to islam, which is required prior to war. and he has left the un with the prayer above.. a clear invitation to convert to islam and a call for the mahdi to come.