The Early Today

The USS Abraham Lincoln transits Hormuz. Scene set for US-Iranian talks

2012-01-24T12:27:00.000+04:00

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta aboard the USS Enterprise

Three weeks after Tehran threatened action against any US aircraft carrier entering the Strait of Hormuz, Washington made two moves: US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta disclosed Sunday, Jan. 22, that the USS Enterprise Carrier Strike Group would steam through the strategic strait in March; a few hours later, the US Navy sent the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier through the strategic strait without incident, accompanied by British and French warships.
DEBKAfile: Defusing the Hormuz crisis set the scene for resumed nuclear negotiations leading up to which several messages were exchanged through back channels between the Obama administration and Tehran in recent weeks - amid Israeli preparations to strike Iran's nuclear facilities.
These developments deepened the breach between the US and Israel. Two days earlier, on Friday, Jan. 20, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff, visited Israel and with Israeli leaders emphasized the cooperation between Washington and Jerusalem on the Iranian threat. The Netanyahu government complained that action against Iran had been postponed for years on one pretext on another, and the same thing was happening to effective sanctions against Iran's oil exports and central bank. Israel was therefore compelled to exercise its military option against the mortal peril of a nuclear Iran, said the Israeli prime minister, before it was too late.
Then Sunday, Jan. 22, Defense Secretary Panetta stood in a hangar of the Enterprise clad in the uniform of a ship's crewman and told an audience of 1,700 personnel that the carrier would be sent to Hormuz in March. His statement was a red herring. A few hours later, the Abraham Lincoln was already through.
But what he said on the Enterprise was this: "That's what this carrier is all about. That's the reason we maintain a presence in the Middle East… We want them to know that we are fully prepared to deal with any contingency and it's better for them to try to deal with us through diplomacy."
DEBKAfile's Washington sources note that Panetta was the first high-ranking administration official to give Tehran an ultimatum: Accept the American offer to negotiate terms for halting your nuclear weapon program, or face up to America's mighty fleet of American aircraft carriers. "Our view is that the carriers, because of their presence, because of the power they represent, are a very important part of our ability to maintain power projection both in the Pacific and in the Middle East," said the defense secretary.
However, behind this show of strength, Washington was actively preparing to sit down and talk.
Saturday, Jan. 21, the Washington Post disclosed that Obama had sent a special emissary to Tehran with an oral message proposing that Iran join the United States for resumed nuclear negotiations.
The emissary was not named – although there was some speculation that Turkish Foreign Minister was chosen for the mission - nor was Iran's reply revealed.
According to the WP, its content was as follows: The United States and the international community have a strong interest in the free flow of commerce and freedom of navigation in all international waterways… Since taking office, the president has made it clear that he is willing to engage constructively and seriously with Iran about its nuclear program.
Also on Saturday, Iran's Revolutionary Guards stated it considered the likely return of US warships to the Gulf part of its routine activity. They were not climbing down from their original threat. The statement came only after Tehran saw the USS Stennis, the object of threat, exiting the Gulf Friday, Jan. 20, and decided it was the Americans who had backed down.
Panetta's comments Sunday aimed at correcting that impression and making it very clear to Tehran that although the Stennis was gone, the Abraham Lincoln was there and the Enterprise was coming "fully prepared to deal with any contingency." -source DEBKA

India to pay gold instead of dollars for Iranian oil. Oil and gold markets stunned

2012-01-24T12:25:00.000+04:00

Iranian oil for India

India is the first buyer of Iranian oil to agree to pay for its purchases in gold instead of the US dollar, DEBKAfile's intelligence and Iranian sources report exclusively. Those sources expect China to follow suit. India and China take about one million barrels per day, or 40 percent of Iran's total exports of 2.5 million bpd. Both are superpowers in terms of gold assets.
By trading in gold, New Delhi and Beijing enable Tehran to bypass the upcoming freeze on its central bank's assets and the oil embargo which the European Union's foreign ministers agreed to impose Monday, Jan. 23. The EU currently buys around 20 percent of Iran's oil exports.
The vast sums involved in these transactions are expected, furthermore, to boost the price of gold and depress the value of the dollar on world markets.
Iran's second largest customer after China, India purchases around $12 billion a year's worth of Iranian crude, or about 12 percent of its consumption. Delhi is to execute its transactions, according to our sources, through two state-owned banks: the Calcutta-based UCO Bank, whose board of directors is made up of Indian government and Reserve Bank of India representatives; and Halk Bankasi (Peoples Bank), Turkey's seventh largest bank which is owned by the government.
An Indian delegation visited Tehran last week to discuss payment options in view of the new sanctions. The two sides were reported to have agreed that payment for the oil purchased would be partly in yen and partly in rupees. The switch to gold was kept dark.
India thus joins China in opting out of the US-led European sanctions against Iran's international oil and financial business. Turkey announced publicly last week that it would not adhere to any sanctions against Iran's nuclear program unless they were imposed by the United Nations Security Council.
The EU decision of Monday banned the signing of new oil contracts with Iran at once, while phasing out existing transactions by July 1, 2012, when the European embargo, like the measure enforced by the United States, becomes total. The European foreign ministers also approved a freeze on the assets of the Central Bank of Iran which handles all the country's oil transactions.
However, the damage those sanctions cause the Iranian economy will be substantially cushioned by the oil deals to be channeled through Turkish and Indian state banks. China for its part has declared its opposition to sanctions against Iran.

DEBKAfile's intelligence sources disclose that Tehran has set up alternative financial mechanisms with China and Russia for getting paid for its oil in currencies other than US dollars. Both Beijing and Moscow are keeping the workings of those mechanisms top secret. source DEBKA

Iran plans one-kiloton underground nuclear test in 2012

2012-01-24T12:20:00.000+04:00

An underground nuclear test

According to debkafile’s Iranian sources, Tehran is preparing an underground test of a one-kiloton nuclear device during 2012, much like the test carried out by North Korea in 2006. Underground facilities are under construction in great secrecy behind the noise and fury raised by the start of advanced uranium enrichment at Iran’s fortified, subterranean Fordo site near Qom.
All the sanctions imposed so far for halting Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon have had the reverse effect, stimulating rather than cooling its eagerness to acquire a bomb.

Yet, according to a scenario prepared by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University for the day after an Iranian nuclear weapons test, Israel was resigned to a nuclear Iran and the US would offer Israel a defense pact while urging Israel not to retaliate.

As quoted by the London Times Monday, Jan. 1, INSS experts, headed by Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel’s National Security Council, deduced from a simulation study they staged last week that. Their conclusion is that neither the US nor Israel will use force to stop Iran’s first nuclear test which they predicted would take place in January 2013.

Our Iranian sources stress, however, that Tehran does not intend to wait for the next swearing-in of a US president in January 2013, whether Barack Obama is returned for a second term or replaced by a Republican figure, before moving on to a nuclear test.

Iran’s Islamist rulers have come to the conclusion from the Bush and Obama presidencies that America is a paper tiger and sure to shrink from attacking their nuclear program – especially while the West is sunk in profound economic distress.

debkafile’s sources stress that both Tehran and the INSS are wrong: The Tel Aviv scenario is the work of a faction of retired Israeli security and intelligence bigwigs who, anxious to pull the Netanyahu government back from direct action against the Islamic Republic, have been lobbying for the proposition that Israel can live with a nuclear-armed Iran.
Our Washington sources confirm, however, that President Obama considers the risk of permitting a nuclear-armed Iran to be greater than the risks of military action.

Monday, Jan. 9, top administration officials said that developing a nuclear weapon would cross a red line and precipitate a US strike. US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta: “If Iran takes the step to develop a nuclear weapon or blocking the Strait of Hormuz, they’re going to be stopped.” He was repeating the warnings of the past month made by himself and Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff. Gen. Martin Dempsey.

As for Israel, Dennis Ross, until recently senior adviser to President Obama, reiterated in a Bloomberg interview on Jan. 10: “No one should doubt that President Barack Obama is prepared to use military force to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon if sanctions and diplomacy fail.”
As for Israel, Ross said: “I wouldn’t discount the possibility that the Israelis would act if they came to the conclusion that basically the world was prepared to live with Iran with nuclear weapons,” he said. “They certainly have the capability by themselves to set back the Iranian nuclear program.”

Israel’s media screens and front pages are dominated these days by short-lived, parochial political sensations and devote few words to serious discourse on such weighty issues as Iran’s nuclear threat.
This is a luxury that the US president cannot afford in an election year. Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear bomb and conduct of a nuclear test would hurt his chances of a second term. The race is therefore on for an American strike to beat Iran’s nuclear end game before the November 2012 presidential vote.

The INSS have also wrongly assessed Russia’s response to an Iranian nuclear test as “to seek an alliance with the US to prevent nuclear proliferation in the region.”
This fails to take into account that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, running himself for a third term as president in March, has already committed Moscow to a new Middle East policy which hinges on support for a nuclear Iran and any other Middle East nation seeking a nuclear program. This is part of Russia’s determined plan to trump America’s Arab Spring card. source – DEBKA

Hamas chief on 9/11 mosque: 'Islam must build everywhere'

2010-08-17T13:41:00.001+04:00

Terror-group leader: Muslims in U.S., around world united in common cause

Two days after President Obama came out in support of a plan to build an Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero, the controversial project has received yet another high-profile endorsement – this one from the chief of the terror group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

"We have to build the mosque, as you are allowed to build the church and Israelis are building their holy places," stated Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas who is regarded as the chief of the group in Gaza.

Zahar said that as Muslims, "We have to build everywhere."

"In every area we have, [as Muslims] we have to pray, and this mosque is the only site of prayer, especially for the people when they are looking [to be] in the group, not an individual," he said.

Zahar was speaking in a radio interview today with Aaron Klein, WND's Jerusalem bureau chief and host of investigative show on New York's WABC Radio.

Zahar told Klein he was speaking on the mosque issue with authority, claiming Hamas "is representing the vast majority of the Arabic and Islamic world, especially the Islamic side."

Zahar said that Muslims around the world, including those in the U.S., are united in a common cause.

Stated the Hamas chieftain: "First of all, we have to address that we are different as people, as a nation totally different. We already are living under the tradition of Islam. ... Islam is controlling every source of our life as regard to marriage, divorce, our commercial relationships. ... Even the Islamic people or the Muslims in your country, they are living now in the tradition of Islam. They are fasting, they are praying."

New York Islamic leader Faisal Abdul Rauf, president of the Cordoba Initiative, has caused a stir with his proposed 13-story, $100 million Islamic cultural center and mosque near the corner of Park Place and West Broadway – about two blocks from the site of the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

Rauf sparked controversy last month when he refused during a live interview on Klein's WABC show to condemn violent jihad groups as terrorists. Rauf repeatedly refused on the air to affirm the U.S. designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization or call the Muslim Brotherhood extremists.

The Brotherhood openly seeks to spread Islam around the world, while Hamas is committed to Israel's destruction and is responsible for scores of suicide bombings, shootings and rocket attacks aimed at Jewish civilian population centers.

During the interview, Klein also asked Rauf who he believes was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.

"There's no doubt," stated Rauf. "The general perception all over the world was it was created by people who were sympathetic to Osama bin Laden. Whether they were part of the killer group or not, these are details that need to be left to the law-enforcement experts."

Rauf has been on record several times blaming U.S. policies for the Sept. 11 attacks. He has been quoted refusing to admit Muslims carried out the attacks.

Referring to the Sept. 11 attacks, Rauf told CNN, "U.S. policies were an accessory to the crime that happened. We (the U.S.) have been an accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. Osama bin Laden was made in the USA."

Unknown Obama stepsister dies

2010-08-12T13:48:00.001+04:00

WND

Raises question of whether president adopted by Indonesian stepfather

By Jerome R. Corsi

A previously unknown stepsister of Barack Obama died unexpectedly earlier this year.

Internet researchers made the link between the president and his previously undisclosed stepsister, Holiyah "Lia" Soetoro Sobah, after translating from obituaries published in Indonesia. She died Feb. 26.

The obituaries identified Lia as having been adopted by Lolo Soetoro, Obama's stepfather, and Ann Dunham Obama Soetoro, the president's mother.

The surfacing of Lia as an adopted child of Lolo Soetoro and Dunham raises the question of whether Barack Obama himself might have been adopted officially as Lolo Soetoro's stepson while in Indonesia from 1967-1971.

Even though Obama makes no mention in "Dreams from My Father" of having had an Indonesian stepsister, the Indonesian obituaries make clear that Obama slept in the same room as his stepsister while the two of them grew up together in the Soetoro home in Jakarta.

According to the Indonesian obituaries, Barry Soetoro and Lia Soetoro were always together, playing, traveling on family vacations and even bathing.

Obama was in Indonesia from ages 6 to 10.

There is nothing on the public record to indicate that he sent any condolences or even acknowledged the death of his stepsister in February.

The Indonesian obituaries also state Lia was born in 1957 and that she had three children with her husband, Edi Sobah, with whom she lived in West Java, Indonesia.

A photograph of Lia shows her holding a monkey doll and wearing clothes given her by Madelyn Dunham, Obama's maternal grandmother, when Lia visited Hawaii for three months. The visit apparently was in 1971, the year Obama left Indonesia permanently.

Obama also does not discuss in his autobiography "Dreams from My Father" any visits to Hawaii after he left Indonesia permanently in 1971 that were made by Lolo Soetoro or a Soetoro stepsister from Indonesia.

While Obama has not acknowledged having had a stepsister in Indonesia, he discussed at length in his autobiography his half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, who was born in Indonesia to Lolo Soetoro and Ann Dunham on Aug. 15, 1970.

WND has reported that in a passport amendment submitted Aug. 13, 1968, Obama's mother identified her son with an Indonesian surname as Barack Obama II Soebarkah, and asked the State Department to drop him from her U.S. passport.

The transaction could have been part of an effort by Dunham to obtain Indonesian citizenship for her son.

WND also reported in August 2008 that the Associated Press published a photograph purportedly of Obama's registration card at Indonesia's Francis Assisi school. The card showed he was enrolled as "Barry Soetoro" and listed as an Indonesian citizen whose official religious identification was Muslim. An AP spokesman affirmed to WND that the photograph was authentic.

Iran ready to 'support' Lebanese army

2010-08-12T13:45:00.001+04:00

Follows WND report of Tehran's infiltration

By Aaron Klein

Iran yesterday offered support to Lebanon's army a week after Beirut forces engaged in a deadly cross-border clash with Israel that prompted U.S. lawmakers to block funding to the Lebanese military.

Last week, WND quoted Egyptian and other Middle Eastern security officials stating Western, Israeli and Arab intelligence services have identified a growing penetration of Iranian Revolutionary Guard units into the Lebanese army.

Iran's ambassador to Lebanon met yesterday with Lebanese army chief Jean Kahwaji, stating Tehran was ready to "cooperate with the Lebanese army in any area that would help the military in performing its national role in defending Lebanon."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is expected to visit Beirut next month.

Earlier this week, two U.S. Democratic lawmakers said they were holding up a $100 million aid package that was approved for Lebanon's army but not yet spent. A senior House Republican, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, said future funding should be stopped, too, pending an inquiry into the clash.

Cantor said the lines between Hezbollah, the Lebanese military and the government had become "blurred."

But U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said President Obama was not planning to re-evaluate its military cooperation with Lebanon.

"It allows the government of Lebanon to expand its sovereignty. We think that is in the interest of both of our countries and regional stability as a whole," he said Monday.

Last week, WND quoted Egyptian and other Middle Eastern security officials who pointed specifically to the Division 9 Lebanese army border patrol as being heavily infiltrated by Iran and Hezbollah. That unit is suspected of carrying out last week's attack on Israeli troop positions that resulted in the deaths of three Lebanese soldiers, one Lebanese reporter and an Israeli soldier.

The security officials said Iran has penetrated Lebanese army positions along the Israeli border, replacing Hezbollah inside the first lines of the Lebanese army.

The security officials said a committee of the Arab League that publicly asked Lebanon to inspect its army for Israeli agents was really mostly concerned about the growing role of Iran in the Lebanese army.

Egyptian security officials, meanwhile, have told WND they suspect last week's rocket attacks on Eilat and the Jordanian port city of Aqaba were coordinated by Iranian agents, in particular an axis of the Iranian-backed Hamas and Hezbollah that works from the Egyptian Sinai desert.

The attack itself may have been carried out by cutouts, specifically Islamist organizations that operate under the umbrella of al-Qaida ideology, the officials said.

In the last two weeks, a series of border attacks have struck Israel. Two weeks ago rockets were launched from Gaza into nearby Jewish communities. One of the rockets smashed into a children's hydrotherapy center in the populated town of Sderot. The center, normally bustling with more than 100 workers and children during working hours, was closed at the time of the strike.

One week ago, Grad-style rockets hit the Sinai, Aqaba and Eilat in coordinated attacks.

Last week also saw a series of deadly clashes along Israel's northern border.

"Iran is sending a message that they are able also to bring any war into the Israeli land and not only in the Iranian field," said a Middle Eastern security official. "The message is also intended for Egypt and Jordan, which is accused of helping Israel train for a war with Iran."

"Iran is leading a huge campaign in the Middle East to counter military signs that Israel may strike. Iran is worried about what they view as an agreement that the Arab countries will remain silent if Israel attacks Iran," the security official said.

Seven Global Cyber-Guardians Now Hold Keys to the Internet

2010-07-31T19:02:00.001+04:00

The Keys to the Internet Each smart card contains a portions of the DNSSEC root key, which would be necessary to reboot the Internet as we know it if connections were severed to stem a cyber attack.

By Clay Dillow

You may have heard the rumor that swirled briefly last month about an Internet “kill switch” that could power down the Web in the case of a critical cyber attack. Those rumors turned out to be largely overblown, but it turns out there are now seven individuals out there holding keys to the Internet. In the aftermath of a cataclysmic cyber attack, these members of a “chain of trust” will be responsible for rebooting the Web.

The seven members of this holy order of cyber security hail from around the world and recently received their keys while locked deep in a U.S. bunker. But the team isn’t military in nature. The Internet safety program is overseen by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit watchdog group that has access to a security system designed to protect users from cyber fraud and cyber attacks.

Part of ICANN’s security scheme is the Domain Name System Security, a security protocol that ensures Web sites are registered and “signed” (this is the security measure built into the Web that ensures when you go to a URL you arrive at a real site and not an identical pirate site). Most major servers are a part of DNSSEC, as it's known, and during a major international attack, the system might sever connections between important servers to contain the damage.

A minimum of five of the seven keyholders – one each from Britain, the U.S., Burkina Faso, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, China, and the Czech Republic – would have to converge at a U.S. base with their keys to restart the system and connect eveything once again. We’re imagining a large medieval chamber filled with techno-religious imagery where these knights cyber must simultaneously turn hybrid thumb drive/skeleton keys in a massive router, filling the room with the blinking light of connectivity.

In reality, it’s not so dramatic. The keys are actually smartcards that each contain parts of the DNSSEC root key, which could be thought of as the master key to the whole scheme. But it is interesting to know that there is a group of individuals out there that hold actual, physical keys that would reboot the Internet as we know it. Find out more about these cryptographic keys and how/why they’re made here.

http://bit.ly/aKWGes

BISHOP BEHEADED IN TURKEY

2010-07-29T20:01:00.001+04:00

BISHOP BEHEADED BY JIHADISTS IN TURKEY BECOMES 8th MARTYR THERE IN FOUR YEARS

Bishop Luigi Padovese, stabbed to death last month, is the latest victim of Turkey’s growing hostility to Christians

John F. Cullinan

For all the attention Turkey has gotten lately, very few Americans are aware that the Roman Catholic bishop serving as apostolic vicar of Anatolia was stabbed to death and decapitated last month by an assailant shouting, “Allahu Akbar! I have killed the great Satan!”

There are fewer than 60 Catholic priests in all of Turkey, and yet Bishop Luigi Padovese was the fifth of them to be shot or stabbed in the last four years, starting with the murder of Fr. Andrea Santoro in 2006, also by an assailant shouting, “Allahu Akbar!” (An Armenian journalist and three Protestants working at a Christian publishing house — one of them German, the other two Turkish converts — were also killed during this period.)

What’s going on? Why has traditionally secularist Turkey, with its minuscule Christian community (less than 0.2 percent of the population), lately become nearly as dangerous for Christians as neighboring Iraq? And why has this disturbing pattern of events so far escaped notice in the West?

In a nutshell, all these violent acts reflect a popular culture increasingly shaped by Turkish media accounts deliberately promoting hatred of Christians and Jews.

As it happens, Bishop Padovese was murdered on the same day (June 3) that the Wall Street Journal published an eye-opening report on how Turkey’s press and film industry have increasingly blurred the distinction between fact and fantasy, especially since the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) took power in 2002.

“To follow Turkish discourse in recent years has been to follow a national decline into madness.” That’s how Robert L. Pollock, editorial-features editor of the Journal, summed up the trajectory of the daily fare that shapes Turks’ attitudes toward the outside world — and toward non-Muslims in their midst. Indeed, much of what passes for fact in Turkish public discourse would be comical if not for the deadly consequences.

Take, for instance, the wildly popular 2006 film Valley of the Wolves, later serialized for television. An earlier Journal piece summing up the plot as “a cross between American Psycho in uniform and theProtocols of the Elders of Zion” hardly does it justice. The plot turns on blood-crazed American soldiers committing war crimes for fun and profit in Iraq. These include the harvesting of body parts from murdered Iraqi civilians on an industrial scale (overseen by a Jewish doctor, of course) for shipment in crates clearly labeled New York and Tel Aviv.

Valley of the Wolves is the most expensive and most commercially successful Turkish feature film ever. Worse yet, it comes with the endorsement of leading AKP figures, such as the speaker of the parliament (“absolutely magnificent”) and the mayor of Istanbul (“a great screenplay”). Mr. Pollock’s judgment? “It is no exaggeration to say that such anti-Semitic fare had not been played to mass audiences in Europesince the Third Reich.”

Unfortunately, this film — with its poisonous blood libel against Christians and Jews — falls well within what is now mainstream Turkish public discourse.

Consider only some of the wilder rumors given credence by the Turkish press — for example, how the United States intends to colonize theMiddle East because of an impending asteroid strike on North America, or how the 2004 Asian tsunami was really caused by secret U.S. nuclear testing. The latter claim was so prevalent in the Turkish media that theU.S. ambassador at the time, Eric Edelman, actually organized a conference call with Turkish journalists to refute the calumny.

This is the overall context in which incendiary published accusations are made that Catholic priests, sometimes identified by name, are engaging in proselytism — that is, seeking to convert Muslims, often with cash payments. I happen to know just how implausible these claims are, based on my own experience as a Catholic seminarian living and working in theMiddle East a decade ago. I found that pastors of the historic Middle Eastern churches almost always go out of their way to discourageprospective converts, rightly fearing agents provocateurs from the security services or Islamist groups. In the rare case where a conversion does occur, the person is generally baptized outside his home country, in a place where apostasy is not criminalized or barred by powerful social norms, such as preservation of family honor.

What local Christian clergy actually do is to tend shrinking flocks without seeking to add to their numbers. (These little congregations increasingly include migrants like the Filipina nurses and domestic workers who are ubiquitous throughout the Middle East.) Some also provide public goods such as education and health care for Muslims and Christians alike on a non-sectarian basis. Others serve the pastoral needs of pilgrims visiting places (like Turkey) where Christianity once flourished. Nearly all see themselves as silent witnesses for Gospel values in places where prudence now bars the Gospel’s open proclamation.

There are vanishingly few Christians and Jews in Turkey. So the numbers of non-Muslims in the country cannot begin to explain the mounting popular hostility — not simply toward Americans, Europeans, and Israelis, but toward Christians and Jews as such. Turkey’s population (roughly 77 million) is more than 99.8 percent Muslim, with its tiny Jewish and Christian populations (perhaps 25,000 and 150,000, respectively) looking like a rounding error. Yet more than two-thirds of all Turks (68 percent) expressed a negative view of Christians in the 2009 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, as opposed to the results in nearby Muslim-majority states with much larger Christian minorities, like Jordan(44 percent negative) and Egypt (49 percent). Hostility toward Jews, moreover, has spiked recently, with those self-identified as “very unfavorable” jumping from 32 percent in 2004 to 73 percent in 2009.

The short answer to the question why Christians keep getting attacked inTurkey is that ideas have consequences, with bad ones often leading to deadly consequences. In the current issue of Commentary, Michael Rubin offers a masterly step-by-step analysis of the way in whichTurkey’s current Islamist rulers have systematically undermined and dismantled Atatürk’s secular legacy and have put in place an embryonic Islamist state. Ideas once expressed on the fringes of Turkish society have now become mainstream and respectable.

It is precisely this darkening climate of public opinion that provides the essential context for the spate of attacks against Catholic priests. Here it’s worth noting that, historically, Catholics were not regarded as enemies of modern Turkey in the way that Greeks and Armenians were. The Holy See was one of the first states to exchange ambassadors with the newly formed Turkish Republic in 1923; and one of its first ambassadors (from 1933 to 1944), still fondly remembered, was Angelo Roncalli, better known today as Blessed John XXIII.

So too is it a fact that Catholic clergy serving in trouble spots like Turkeyhave sometimes (though not always) enjoyed a certain immunity from violence or arbitrary arrest. That’s because the Vatican is widely perceived as a powerful entity that can command diplomatic and media attention (especially as compared to Christian evangelicals, who lack similar institutional support). That several Catholic priests have now been attacked in Turkey is a troubling new development that may reflect political Islam’s implacable hostility toward Pope Benedict XVI. Recall that what angered Islamists most about Benedict’s 2006 Regensburglecture was not an injudicious quotation from a 14th-century Byzantine emperor. It was Benedict’s observation that while reason without faith leads to nihilism (Europe’s problem), faith without reason leads to fanaticism and violence (Islam’s problem).

But it’s also a fact that the killing of Catholic clerics in Muslim-majority states tends nowadays in the West to be passed over in silence or treated as business as usual. Imagine for a moment what would happen if — God forbid! — a very senior, foreign-born Muslim cleric were murdered in the U.S. in circumstances amounting to a hate crime. It is not difficult to imagine the likely aftermath: wall-to-wall media coverage, repeated international condemnations, and multiple presidential apologies.

In the case of Bishop Padovese, one close observer makes explicit the connection between pervasive media vilification and violence against Catholic clergy. Fr. Bernardo Cervellera, whose Asia News broke the story of the true facts surrounding the bishop’s murder, maintains that “there’s a campaign against Christian priests in Turkey. The government says it’s not true, the Turks say they don’t believe it, but it’s quite enough to watch television or read the newspapers to realize that indeed it is true.”

These facts — and their necessary implications — are a long way from the Islam-is-a-religion-of-peace happy talk peddled by both the Bush and Obama administrations. Little wonder that there’s practically no understanding in the U.S. that Turkey’s beleaguered religious minorities — and their co-religionists elsewhere in the region — serve as canaries in the coal mine, bellwethers for major policy shifts that our foreign-policy establishment is slow to grasp. Or indeed that the plight of these minorities mirrors, at least roughly, the state of U.S. interests and ideals in the region.
It wasn’t always the case that Americans paid no attention to the plight of Middle Eastern Christians.

In the wake of World War I, the New York Times could safely assume a lively interest (and some Biblical literacy) among readers when editorializing in 1922 about the mass expulsion of ethnic Greek Christians from the new Turkish state: “Is this to be the end of the Christian minorities in Asia Minor — that land where, 13 centuries and more before the Turk came to rule, Paul had journeyed as a missionary through its length and breadth, and where the first ‘seven churches that are in Asia’ stood, to which the messages written in the Book of Revelation were sent?”

But that was then; and this is now.

http://article.nationalreview.com/437766/turkey-christians-in-danger/john-f-cullinan?page=1

Egypt official: U.S. president claims to be Muslim

2010-06-15T14:19:00.001+04:00

WND

Quote from foreign minister stirs up tempest

An Egyptian foreign service official's comment about President Obama is turning into a sensation among bloggers for its claim that the American leader claims to be Muslim.

Obama's religiosity has been the subject of discussion since before he was elected and his Chicago-area pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, delivered a "God d--- America" sermon that was caught on video.

Obama later claimed to be a Muslim in a television interview where the interviewer corrected his "misstatement" and he has referenced the Muslim heritage in America's past several times.

Now the heat on the issue is being turned up because of a weeks-old report in Israel Today.

In the report, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit was quoted as saying during an appearance on Nile TV that, "The American president told me in confidence that he is a Muslim."

The White House remained silent on the comment, declining to respond to a WND request for comment.

But blogger Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs wrote, "This is akin to an SS officer getting elected president during WW II. Every country in the free world must be cognizant of such a catastrophic sea change in the leadership of the free world (as witnessed by events over the past year). This changes everything. He took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, and yet he has gone around the world promoting Islam, the Shariah (Islamic law)."

She suggested that the exchange could have happened early in 2010 when Gheit was in Washington, D.C., to address "Mideast peace talks."

Obama's comments from before the 2008 election:

The Israel Today report, from late in April, focused on the "crisis" in relations between Jerusalem and Washington under Obama.

It quotes sources who called Obama a "strategic catastrophe" for Israel.

They expressed concern, speaking on condition of anonymity to the newspaper, that Obama's administration is a serious threat to the future of Israel.

The report then said Israelis feel Obama is "appeasing" Muslims at the expense of Israel.

"'The American president told me in confidence that he is a Muslim,' said Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit on Nile TV. That could explain why Obama has instructed that the term 'Islamic extremism' no longer be used in official government documents and statements," according to the report.

There was no independent verification of the statement attributed to Gheit.

But a video has been assembled by a group called Feel the Change Media highlighting Obama's numerous remarks about Islam:

It has been viewed more than two million times already.

It was last year when Toby Harden, of the Daily Telegraph, cited Obama's statement that the U.S. is "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."

Obama had said, he quoted, "if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we' be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."

Obama also previously said in Turkey that Americans "do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation."

That prompted members of Congress to disagree. At that time a bipartisan group of 25 members of the House of Representatives submitted H.Res. 397, which calls on Congress to affirm "the rich spiritual and religious history of our nation's founding and subsequent history" and to designate the first week of May as America's Spiritual Heritage Week for "the appreciation of and education on America's history of religious faith."

Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., specifically challenged the president's claims that America is not a Christian nation in a news conference announcing the bill immediately following a National Day of Prayer observance.

"The overwhelming evidence suggests that this nation was born and birthed with Judeo-Christian principles," Forbes told reporters, "and I would challenge anybody to tell me that point in time when we ceased to be so, because it doesn't exist."

During a June 2007 speech available on Youtube, Obama stated, "Whatever we once were, we're no longer a Christian nation. At least not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, and a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers."

In that speech, Obama took aim at the "Christian Right" for "hijacking" religion and using it to divide the nation:

"Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and started being used to drive us apart. It got hijacked. Part of it's because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, who've been all too eager to exploit what divides us," he said.

Geller suggested perhaps other evidence should be considered as well, listing how Obama in early 2009 declared the "war on terror" over, suggested discussions with Hamas and recruited more Muslims for the White House staff.

He also created the Outreach to the Worldwide Muslim community in the State department, announces cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, offered funding to a Muslim technology fund, issued a special hajj message, had a "non-religious" Christmas, ordered NASA to work with Muslim nations and offered support for an anti-Israel resolution at the U.N.

"This is one hellacious argument and anyone not lobotomized by liberalism can see Obama's an agent of Islam inside the wire," said one participant in Geller's forum page.

Jesus Christ’s Resurrection real, according to some scientists

2010-04-05T12:36:00.001+04:00

REDLANDS - Pastor Greg Wallace of First Lutheran Church will preach an Easter message Sunday with full faith that a man from Galilee rose from the dead 2,000 years ago.

"As far as the physicality of the resurrection, as Christians that's a non-negotiable," Wallace said. "If the resurrection isn't real, then the whole basis (of Christianity) is a sham and not worth much more than platitudes."

He may hear hallelujahs from what some would consider unlikely sources: scientists.

Frank Tipler, professor of mathematical physics at Tulane University in New Orleans and author of the book "The Physics of Christianity," maintains that belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a matter of faith founded on scientific fact.

"Believe in the laws of physics and they will tell you Jesus rose from the dead," he said Thursday.

According to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus rose early on the first day of the week and appeared first to Mary Magdalene. According to Tipler, the body of Christ was a "glorified" body capable of de-materializing at one location and materializing in another.

Modern particle physics provides a mechanism for de-materialization, Tipler said.

Tipler said that's the conversion of matter into neutrinos, which are elementary particles that interact very weakly with normal matter, and thus would be invisible.

Reversing the de-materialization process would result in apparently "materializing" out of nothing.

Tipler believes if this was the mechanism of Jesus' resurrection, there are tests that could demonstrate it.

The image of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin has certain features that would arise in the neutrino de-materialization process, according to Tipler.

"What happens is, the matter of Jesus' body was converted into neutrinos," Tipler said. "To a person standing by, he would see exactly what Mel Gibson pictured in (the movie) 'The Passion of the Christ."'

Alan J. DeWeerd, an associate professor of physics at the University of Redlands, said he is a Christian who believes in the resurrection.

DeWeerd hasn't read Tipler's theory, but doesn't believe it would necessarily be a boost to his faith in the resurrected Christ.

"I guess my take on it would be the claim is, it's a miracle, so you're not looking for a scientific explanation," DeWeerd said.

One Christian apologist agrees.

Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute in Charlotte, N.C., said Friday that Christianity presupposes the supernatural.

"Miracles are not only possible, but are necessary to make sense of the world in which we live," Hanegraaff said.

He said whereas philosophical naturalism posits that "nothing created everything," reason forces one to look at a supernatural designer of the cosmos who intervenes in his creation.

"If someone is truly open-minded in an age of scientific enlightenment, they allow for natural and supernatural (explanations) for what happens in the world," he said.

Regardless of the explanations, some skeptics say the resurrection account is a big stumbling block to faith.

Among them is Dan Barker, a former pastor who graduated from Azusa Pacific University with a degree in religion.

He preached throughout Southern California before embracing atheism, and is now the co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation in Madison, Wis.

"What I like to say is, I threw out all the bath water and found out there is no baby there," Barker said.

Barker believes that a natural explanation of the resurrection would make the event less impressive, and maintains there are too many contradictions in the gospels to believe it happened.

"It's ludicrous," Barker said. "It's hogwash to think that scientifically and even historically that the resurrection story holds up."

Barker believes the resurrection is a legend that has grown for 2,000 years. He's issued a challenge for Christians to come forward with a coherent harmony of the gospel texts.

On Easter morning, the former preacher has visits scheduled to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

"I will be visiting the Darwin exhibit," he said. "Most atheists on Easter Sunday are doing their taxes, mowing their lawns or planting their gardens."

josh.dulaney@inlandnewspapers.com,
909-386-3885

Resurrection real, according to some scientists

Moscow alarmed by Chinese maneuvers

2010-03-03T12:30:00.001+04:00

Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin

Moscow, which conspicuously left out any mention of China's growing influence and power in its newly adopted military doctrine, is revealing the depth of its alarm, however, through its trade and business decisions, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

The new doctrine takes aim at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which Moscow identifies as a threat due to its eastward expansion ambitions. But a glance at the trade balance sheets between Moscow and Beijing and other business decisions reveals an equal concern is developing there.

Not only are trade channels drying up, the Kremlin is planning an uptick in military exercises this year focusing on the Far East and also is reaching out to enhance its relationship with nations that surround China, signaling a possible containment policy toward Beijing.

Russia recently agreed to sell a dozen Su-30 top-of-the-line fighter aircraft to Vietnam, in addition to an increase in other arms exports such as the recent Vietnamese purchase of six Russian Kilo submarines.

A key analyst has concluded that while Moscow's policy doesn't directly mention China, it includes references to the nation because of its mention of a "real possibility of military conflict." The alarm follows China's training program for what would appear to be an invasion of Russia.

Further, Russian-Chinese trade last year fell some 31.8 percent from 2008, to only $38.8 billion.

For the complete report and full immediate access to Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, subscribe now.

Will Israel join the European Union?

2010-02-10T20:56:00.001+04:00

Italy's Prime Minister Berlusconi makes proposal in state visit to Jerusalem

Editor's Note: The following report is excerpted from Jerome Corsi's Red Alert, the premium online newsletter published by the current No. 1 best-selling author, WND staff writer and columnist. Red Alert subscriptions are $99 a year or $9.95 per month for credit card users. Annual subscribers will receive a free autographed copy of "The Late Great USA," a book about the careful deceptions of a powerful elite who want to undermine our nation's sovereignty.

While in Israel, Italy's president of the Council of Ministers, Silvio Berlusconi, proved once again that Italy is one of Israel's most committed allies by suggesting that he would like to see Israel invited to join the European Union, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports.

"At first glance the proposal did not seem to have been made seriously, except that the EU is considering extending membership to Turkey, so why not extend membership to Israel?" Corsi wrote.

Clearly, Berlusconi's envisioned measures that might prevent Middle East violence from extending into Europe.

If the proposal were to advance within the EU, Islamic states would almost certainly respond by launching anti-Italy demonstrations and boycotting Italian-made goods, Red Alert reported.

"With the requirement that EU countries not occupy territory that is not recognized as part of its own, Berlusconi could respond that a condition of Israel joining the EU would be for Israel to completely turn over the West Bank as well as the Gaza to the administration of the Palestinian Authority," Corsi noted. "Moreover, with the EU nations of Greece, Spain and Portugal about to experience economic collapse over continued high levels of unemployment and unsustainable levels of public debt, the EU could use among its members right now a strong economy such as Israel's."

In his visit to Yad Vashim, Jerusalem's Holocaust museum, Berlusconi left an emotional hand-written message saying: "Our soul cries out that 'it is not true, it cannot be true,' and then, facing reality, shouts 'never, never again."

The Italian newspapers also pointed out that Israel is considering the purchase of 40 of Italy's most advanced M-346 fighter jets at a cost of over 1 billion pounds ($1.365 billion).

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded in kind, stating, "Israel has no greater friend than Italy.

Berlusconi is also pursuing the sale of 48 M-346 fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates at a cost of 1.4 billion pounds (or $1.9 billion), but so far Italy has refrained from proposing that the UAE should be allowed to join the EU.

During his visit to Israel, Berlusconi also delivered an obvious message to Iran's President Ahmadinejad, saying, "We will not close our eyes before a state that wishes to destroy a country that is our friend."

Still, Italy remains Iran's second trading partner, behind Germany.

In 2008, Italy was responsible for approximately 6.1 billion pounds (or $8.4 billion) in trade with Iran, approximately 25 percent of the total trade conducted between the EU and Tehran.

Red Alert noted, Berlusconi won no friends among the Palestinians after his speech to the Knesset in which he claimed Israel was justified in launching rocket attacks in the Hamas-controlled Gaza during December 2008 that killed 1,400 Palestinians.

Berlusconi recalled Italy's vote against the United Nations report on Israel's December 2008 Operation Cast Lead against Hamas in the Gaza, in which Israel rejected the report presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council by an independent fact-finding committee headed by the South African prosecutor Richard Gladstone.

The so-called "Goldstone Report" sought to criminalize Israel for responding with military force to the Hamas-launched rocket attacks on Israel from the Gaza.

Red Alert's author, whose books "The Obama Nation" and "Unfit for Command" have topped the New York Times best-sellers list, received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972. For nearly 25 years, beginning in 1981, he worked with banks throughout the U.S. and around the world to develop financial services marketing companies to assist banks in establishing broker/dealers and insurance subsidiaries to provide financial planning products and services to their retail customers. In this career, Corsi developed three different third-party financial services marketing firms that reached gross sales levels of $1 billion in annuities and equal volume in mutual funds. In 1999, he began developing Internet-based financial marketing firms, also adapted to work in conjunction with banks.

In his 25-year financial services career, Corsi has been a noted financial services speaker and writer, publishing three books and numerous articles in professional financial services journals and magazines.

For financial guidance during difficult times, read Jerome Corsi's Red Alert, the premium, online intelligence news source by the WND staff writer, columnist and author of the New York Times No. 1 best-seller, "The Obama Nation."

For full immediate access to Jerome Corsi's Red Alert, subscribe now.

China's idiotic stance at Munich security conference

2010-02-06T09:49:00.001+04:00

CSM

In front of 300 diplomats, including senior US officials, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said the US was violating international law by a proposed arms sale to Taiwan, and defended Chinese TV and radio as more reliable than Western media.

Why do China sell weapons to failed states like North Korea or Burma or Iran?

By Robert Marquand

Munich, Germany

Today Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi, speaking with unusual bluntness in front of 300 leading diplomats – including senior US officials – here in Munich publicly stated that China is getting stronger on the international stage. He said the US was violating international law by a proposed arms sale to Taiwan, offered that China’s TV and radio news service contains “more solid” and reliable news than Western media, and that China is not ready to address sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program, stating instead that the Islamic Republic “has not totally closed the door on the IAEA.”

Transatlantic – meet the Pacific.

Foreign Minister Yang is the first Chinese official to speak at the annual Munich Security Conference, the premier transatlantic security meeting, in its 46 year history. He turned heads in the group at a time when the People’s Republic and the US have come to loggerheads over Taiwan arms sales, Internet freedom, currency rates, and climate policy coming out of the Copenhagen meeting in December.

“I haven’t heard a high-ranking Chinese official say, ‘Yes, we are strong,’ in a public setting before,” said a senior German diplomat. “It was a very assertive message, different, and it means we will soon see a different Chinese policy.”

Mr. Yang, a former ambassador to the US and highly respected, gave a somewhat conventional speech – though in a strong voice. He affirmed that China is both a developed and a developing country, that it seeks “win-win solutions,” and that it is preparing for greater “shared responsibilities” on the world stage – and that it played a transformative role in helping avert a global financial crisis in the past year.

Yet during three probing follow-up questions, Yang mopped his brow repeatedly in answering on Taiwan, cyberspace, and China’s position on Iran’s nuclear program, which he earlier admitted was “at a crucial stage.”

“Does China feel stronger? Yes,” he said as questions opened.

Regarding a proposed US $6.4 billion package of arms for Taiwan introduced in recent weeks by the Obama administration, and which China has for the first time threatened retaliatory sanctions on US firms that supply arms – Yang called it a “violation of the code of conduct among nations” by the US, said China has “every reason to feel indignant about this thing,” and added that Beijing has a “sovereign right to do what is necessary” in response.

He went on to say China is “totally against hacking attacks…I don’t know how this Google thing has popped up” – in response to a question about cyberspace. At a time when the American search engine giant has said it may leave China after repeated hacks on human rights workers, and British intelligence has reported official Chinese espionage against business travelers, Yang said that “China is a victim” of hacking.

The cyberspace answers were prefaced with polemics on the virtues of Chinese news gathering. The Chinese people have better news than members of the western public, and “freedom of speech is what we advocate,” Yang said, adding that with 15 million Chinese traveling abroad every year, “the Chinese people are well informed." Yang also said that while foreign companies were free to enter China, and that many had done well there, they still must submit to Chinese laws, “and what is in the best interest of China.”

China’s presence at the 48-hour Munich conference, hosted by German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger, and that will include US National Security Advisor James Jones, follows a robust Chinese presence at the annual Davos conference in Switzerland, where China rented one of the most splendid villas – used in the past by Microsoft.

Gary Smith, director of the American Academy in Berlin, said that Yuan’s assertive speech did not contain the kind of direct dynamite that Vladimir Putin’s address here did in 2007, when Russia's then-president affirmed that Russia would taking a newly assertive role on the world stage. But Yuan’s comments nonetheless would be felt strongly here, Smith said: “Europeans have been terrified by this kind of moment…they’ve been obsessed by the rise of China and India.

“[Yuan’s remarks] tells this group that the hard work of Atlantic consensus on global issues can be negligible if the Chinese don’t agree to play ball.”

Tensions flare in crossfire between South Korea and North

2010-01-27T23:46:00.001+04:00

CSM

North Korea ratcheted up tensions with the South after firing an estimated 30 shells into the two countries' no-sail zone, which may be a precursor to the testing of short-range missiles.

Seoul, South Korea

By Donald Kirk

North Korea raised the stakes Wednesday in the fight-talk contest for advantage in negotiations with live-fire artillery exercises that once again put tensions on edge between the two Koreas.

In a risky game of punch and counterpunch, North Korean gunners opened the episode in the morning by firing off 30 rounds into the Yellow Sea off the Korean west coast, judging from the number of geysers of water reportedly kicked up in the sea where they landed. South Korea responded with as many as 100 warning shots, according to South Korean defense officials, while the South’s Defense Ministry protested in a faxed message to the North.

The contest resumed in the afternoon with the North firing another dozen or so rounds after asserting its right to stage “exercises” in waters long disputed by the two Koreas. This time, however, the South did not fire warning shots – apparently in hopes of tamping down tensions while pursuing talks on issues ranging from the North’s nuclear program to resumption of tourism.

The shootout dramatized the dangers in troubled waters while North Korea pursues a peace treaty to mark a formal ending to the Korean War that broke out nearly 60 years ago.

North Korea earlier declared the area a no-sail zone, telling ships to stay away during test-firing.

The North Korean warning suggested that the North might plan to test short-range missiles, as it has done in the past, but the firing Wednesday was limited to artillery. Unlike in previous tests, however, the shells landed close to the “northern limit line” (NLL) set by the UN Command in 1956 three years after the Korean War, below which North Korean vessels are banned.

The General Staff of the North Korea’s Korean People’s army said the firing was part of an annual drill, that it had every right to stage live-fire exercises – and may go on doing so. South Korea’s defense ministry called the artillery exercise “a grave provocation” and demanded North Korea rescind the no-sail warning.

North Korea has repeatedly repudiated the NLL, and the area was the scene of bloody shootouts in June 1999 and in June 2002 when a number of sailors on both sides were killed. In the most recent previous incident, on November 10, a North Korean vessel retreated in flames after South Korean ships fired on it when it strayed across the line.

This time there were no reports of casualties, but South Korean officials worried that the firing was a sign of a two-track strategy in which North Korea has appeared interested in negotiations but has engaged in harsh rhetoric against South Korea.

North Korea “has been blowing hot and cold,” says Wi Sung Lac, the South’s chief nuclear envoy, back from four days of talks in Washington last weekend.

North Korea accused South Korea of making “an open declaration of war” after South Korea’s defense minister said the South would have to attack first if North Korea appeared likely to stage a nuclear attack. North Korea also responded with outrage, warning of war, after learning that the South was engaged in “contingency planning” in case of the collapse of the North Korean regime.

Mr. Wi says it’s “difficult” to ascertain the North’s intentions but hopes that North Korea would soon return to six-party talks on its nuclear weapons. South Korean officials have hinted that talks on a peace treaty, long sought by North Korea to replace the Korean War armistice, might be held simultaneously with six-party talks rather than after North Korea has done away with its nuclear program.

After months of tension, South Korea has resumed shipments of aid, mostly fertilizer, to North Korea, and North and South have agreed on talks next week on easing restrictions on South Korean companies and personnel at the economic complex at Kaesong, 40 miles north of Seoul, above the line between the two Koreas. North and South Korean negotiators also are expected to open talks soon on resuming tours to the Mount Kumkang region, suspended in July 2008 after a South Korean woman was shot and killed by a North Korean soldier when she wandered outside the tourist area.

A South Korean spokesperson said Wednesday’s shelling did not endanger a South Korean vessel returning with a load of silica through nearby waters from the North Korean port of Haeju on the Yellow Sea.

Joel Osteen Prays for Houston's First Openly Gay Mayor

2010-01-14T16:54:00.001+04:00

CHRISTIAN POST

By Lillian Kwon

Globally recognized pastor Joel Osteen has been drawing some flak from the press and the public in the past few months over his comments on homosexuality.

His remarks last year on "The View" and "Larry King Live" that "homosexuality is not God's best" drew fire from the gay rights community and from Christians for avoiding to identify the behavior as a sin.

More recently, his participation in the inauguration of Houston's first openly gay mayor has also drawn some – but less fiery – attention.

Pastor of America's largest church, Osteen was invited to offer the opening prayer at the inauguration of Houston's elected city officials on Monday. While praying for the 14-member City Council, he also specifically thanked God for the new mayor, Annise Parker, a partnered lesbian.

"She's our mayor. Joel doesn't view Annise through a gay lens," Don Iloff, Jr., spokesman for Lakewood Church in Houston, told The Christian Post. "He sees her as a person."

And the Bible instructs believers to pray for and respect those who govern us, he added.

"If you ask Joel he'll tell you 'when I can pray at an event over government leaders and in Jesus' name it's hard to resist,'" Iloff said. Osteen prayed for the previous mayor, Bill White, at his inauguration.

The spokesman also pointed out that Parker has never pushed or highlighted any kind of gay agenda during her time in government and during her campaign.

"She's an all business kind of gal," he said.

During the swearing-in ceremony Monday, the former city controller addressed the economy, public safety and education. She also briefly addressed the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community saying, "I feel your excitement and your joy, your apprehension and your longing for acceptance. I will gladly carry you forward. But today is simply one step toward a tomorrow of greater justice," according to the Houston Chronicle.

If Parker begins pushing a homosexual agenda, Iloff said Lakewood Church and Pastor Osteen are likely to distance themselves from her.

"Annise says she's a believer. Let her stand before God; that's kind of where Joel is," Iloff noted. "He's not going to tell homosexuals they can't come to our church. If the Holy Spirit convicts them, then they'll change."

Osteen does not affirm homosexual behavior. Though the pastor himself has never specifically called it a "sin," his spokesman Iloff says they believe homosexuality is a sin. But sin is sin and homosexuality is no worse a sin than others, such as adultery, Iloff pointed out.

Lakewood Church maintains good relations with city officials, some of whom attend the megachurch. Two of the City Council members are regular Lakewood attendees. Politicians, however, are not allowed to speak from the pulpit.

Arab claim to Dead Sea Scrolls rejected

2010-01-04T12:38:00.001+04:00

RON FRIEDMAN , THE JERUSALEM POST

Jordan has asked Canada to seize the selected parchments of the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls that have been on display in Toronto, invoking international law in a bid to keep the artifacts out of Israel's hands until their "disputed ownership" is settled, the Toronto-based Globe and Mail reported last week.

In its request, Jordan invoked the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, which is concerned with safeguarding cultural property during wartime.

The 1954 convention requires signatories "to take into its custody cultural property imported into its territory either directly or indirectly from any occupied territory."

The Jordanians claim Israel acted illegally when it seized the scrolls from the Rockefeller Museum, located in eastern Jerusalem, during the Six Day War.

On Sunday, Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum ended its exhibit "Words That Changed the World," which featured scroll fragments on loan from the Israel Antiquities Authority.

In the six months the scrolls were on display in Toronto, they sparked an unprecedented number of visitors, as well as political demonstrations.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor called Jordan's claim ridiculous.

"The Dead Sea Scrolls are an intrinsic part of Jewish heritage and religion. The scrolls have no relation to Jordan or the Jordanian people," said Palmor.

"Moreover, Jordan's occupation of the West Bank was never recognized by the international community and the kingdom relinquished all claims on the territories back in the '80s. On what grounds are they trying to lay claims to the scrolls, which are a cornerstone of Jewish cultural history?"

The Foreign Ministry had not contacted the Jordanian ambassador in Israel and believed that the matter was strictly between Jordan and Canada, Palmor said.

"Since it's a ridiculous claim, we are sure that it will be rejected. We haven't contacted the Canadians, either. At this stage it is a legal issue, not a diplomatic one," said Palmor.

The Jordanians aren't the only ones trying to get their hands on the ancient scrolls. Last April, the Palestinian Authority appealed to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to cancel the show. The Palestinian Authority and Toronto-based Muslim activists claimed that the scrolls were "stolen" from Palestinian territory and illegally obtained when Israel annexed east Jerusalem.

The exhibit sparked days of protest outside the museum, with pro-Palestinian groups calling on the public to boycott the exhibit.

So far Canada has refused to comply with Jordan's request. A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade told the Globe and Mail that "differences regarding ownership of the Dead Sea Scrolls should be addressed by Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. It would not be appropriate for Canada to intervene as a third party."

The Israel Antiquities Authority said in response to the report that it had the right to loan the artifacts.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are made up of roughly 900 documents and biblical texts and are considered one of the greatest archaeological finds of the 20th century.

The scrolls were first discovered in 1947, by Beduin in underground caves in and around Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. Excavations that took place between 1947 and 1956 discovered a total of 11 caves.

The texts include some of the only known surviving copies of biblical texts made before 100 BCE, and preserve evidence of Jewish life during the Second Temple period.

More than 200,000 people went to see the display in Toronto, which along with the scrolls featured 200 other artifacts on loan from the IAA.

The scrolls are scheduled to appear at the Milwaukee Public Museum starting January 22.

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1262339383479&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

Iran protests intensify, prompting state of emergency in Isfahan

2009-12-26T18:52:00.001+04:00

CSMONITOR

Iran security forces stepped up clashes with protesters in Isfahan Wednesday, the birthplace of dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, whose death has energized the opposition.

By Scott Peterson

Istanbul, Turkey

Iran security forces and opposition protesters stepped up clashes on Wednesday in the city of Isfahan, the birthplace of Iran’s top dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri. Montazeri's death this past weekend, and the rituals marking his passing, coincide with a new push by regime opponents during a 10-day religious commemoration.

The government has responded by harassing two reformist clerics who could replace Montazeri, as well as stripping the opposition’s top political figure – Mir Hossein Mousavi – of his sole official post.

In Isfahan, pro-regime basiji militiamen used batons, chains, and stones to beat mourners who gathered at the city's main mosque to remember Montazeri, the spiritual mentor of the Iranian opposition, whose websites reported the clashes.

“While people were reciting the Quran [in the mosque], plainclothed forces attacked them and threw tear gas into the mosque yard and sprayed those inside with pepper spray after they closed the doors,” reported the reformist Parlemannews. “They severely beat the people inside,” then doused the clerical speaker with pepper spray and arrested him.

“Tens of thousands gathered outside for the memorial but were savagely attacked by security forces and the basijis,” witness Farid Salavati told the Associated Press. He said that dozens were injured as riot police and vigilantes clubbed and kicked men and women alike – some in the face – and arrested 50 people who had gathered to mourn the grand ayatollah.

Montazeri – the chosen successor of Iran’s first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, until a falling out in 1989 – had been unrelenting in his criticism of the officially declared reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last June, as well as of Iran’s current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“Khamenei is a murderer, his rule is invalid,” protesters shouted on Wednesday, referring to violence since June, in which severe force has been used against Iranians who marched to reverse the official result. They wanted to see the “Green Movement” presidential candidate, Mr. Mousavi, elected. Scores died in June and thousands were arrested; protests have flared repeatedly around the nation since then.

Government announces state of emergency, calls in military for help

In Isfahan, the clashes on Wednesday portend more violence, as protesters and pro-government forces alike prepare for the religious peak of the Shiite calendar, Ashura, which falls on Sunday. By the end of the day on Wednesday, it was reported that the governor had announced a state of emergency and reportedly called in the military for help.

“The regime has no alternative but to try to block the commemorations of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, because it has been state policy to demote him,” says Mehrdad Khonsari of the Center for Arab and Iranian Studies in London. “But given the events of the last six months, this only aggravates the situation [and] becomes a catalyst for more protests and is counter-productive.

“Every demonstration is a dress rehearsal for the next demonstration. Once Ashura is over next week, there will be more demonstrations,” says Mr. Khonsari. “The fact is there is no likelihood that these protests are going to come to an end anytime soon.”

Mousavi stripped of title

Mousavi, a former prime minister who has vowed not to back down in his challenge, was on Tuesday stripped of his one official post – as president of Iran’s Academy of Art since 1999 – after joining mourners for Montazeri’s funeral in the Shiite holy city of Qom on Monday.

Mr. Ahmadinejad was reported to have broken off a domestic trip to take part in the meeting that removed Mousavi. Judicial officials last week made clear they had “evidence” against Mousavi, and might arrest him – an act that analysts say would surely provoke a popular outpouring on the streets.

Pro-regime forces expanded their crackdown to include the two high-ranking reformist ayatollahs who might fill Montazeri’s shoes as spiritual guide to the opposition.

Security forces on Wednesday reportedly surrounded the compound of Ayatollah Jalaledin Taheri, the former Friday prayer leader for Isfahan. Originally appointed by Ayatollah Khomeini – the founder of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution – he resigned in 2002 in protest then at the direction the regime was going.

Taheri has called the June results “illegitimate,” and was the organizer of the Wednesday commemoration in Isfahan. Until he resigned, his sermons were sometimes disrupted by pro-regime vigilantes – the same ones he lambasted in his 2002 resignation letter as “louts and fascists, who are a mixture of ignorance and madness, but whose umbilical cord is connected to the center of power, and who are completely uncontrolled and beyond the law.”

Pro-reform grand ayatollah's offices also attacked

Those same vigilantes and their more formal basiji militia brethren on Tuesday also attacked the offices of the pro-reform Grand Ayatollah Yusuf Saanei in Qom. They broke windows, insulted and beat up his staff, and put up posters of Khamenei, according to a report on the main reformist party website. Police prevented the staff from defending the premises.

The semi-official Fars News Agency on Tuesday reported that pro-regime theology students staged a protest against "the insult against sanctities" during the Montazeri funeral, and their protest ended up outside Grand Ayatollah Saanei's offices. They signed a statement for Saanei to be stripped of his religious authority.

Saanei told the Monitor in late 2003 that vigilantes were “criminals ... and wild wolves,” and decried the regime’s tyranny, violence and prisons for rendering Iran unfit to be “presented as an Islamic example.”

Clerics distancing themselves from government to retain legitimacy

Opposition websites reported that Montazeri’s family have called off the traditional third and seventh mourning nights to prevent further disturbances, after vigilantes and basijis attacked the offices of Montazeri and his son following the funeral on Monday.

“Montazeri was the spiritual leader of the Green Movement ... but the situation is really beyond the need for having a spiritual person back this movement,” says Khonsari. “You don’t need a cleric to legitimize it. But the clerics are legitimizing their own positions by distancing themselves from the ruling establishment, to indicate they are in tune with general aspirations.”

Iraqi insurgents hack US drones with $26 software

2009-12-19T11:32:00.001+04:00

CSMONITOR

Iraqi militants are intercepting sensitive video feeds from US predator drones using $26 off-the-shelf software, and the same technique leaves feeds from most military aircraft vulnerable to snooping, according to published reports.

To access the feeds, the militants have been using SkyGrabber, a publicly available program that pulls movies and music off satellites and sells for $26.

The US military is at the beginning of the era in which the cyber security of its weapon systems will be increasingly important, and under constant threat.

That’s one of the lessons that might be drawn from revelations that Iraqi insurgents have intercepted video feeds transmitted by US drone aircraft, using software and hardware available to virtually any technically-adept teenager in the world.

Today, general military cyber war is in its infancy, noted General C. Robert Kehler, commander of US Air Force Space Command, in an address on the subject in September.

It is about where military air power was at the beginning of the last century, said Gen. Kehler – the biplane level of development.

“So we know that this will evolve,” said Kehler, referring to the offensive and defensive sides of confrontation with bits and bytes.

By itself, the breach of the drone video stream does not appear to have been particularly threatening. Insurgents merely tapped into an unencrypted data transmission that provided them with pictures of what the drone was looking at. It was not information detailed enough to provide the insurgents with tactical intelligence. It was not something that would have allowed them to take control of the aircraft, any more than intercepting a police call on a radio scanner allows the listener to drive a police car.

The transmission was open because the Pentagon in essence has not yet bothered to encrypt it.

“This is a vulnerability that they’ve known about for decades,” says John Pike, a security analyst and president of GlobalSecurity.org.

In some ways, another type of cyber attack that occurred this week might be more threatening to US national security. The Twitter outage caused by a group calling itself the “Iranian Cyber Army” may, or may not, have been directed by the Iranian government.

But whoever was behind it, is just the sort of denial of service blow that could wreak havoc with military systems, or government services, or sectors of the economy, if properly carried out.

“Dealing with a deliberate denial of service attack designed to disrupt the on-line economy – I don’t think we’re set to deal with that,” says Pike.

This is as much a concern for the Pentagon as is the operational cyber security of weapons. It is a technique adversary nations have already used against each other, said Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, deputy Air Force chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance earlier this year.

“This denial of service strategy was recently applied by North Korea, and Russia used it in the cyber isolation of Georgia,” said Gen. Deptula in an address to the Air Force Association.

Meanwhile, one of the lessons of the stolen drone video feed is that different systems have different vulnerabilities, and all need to be addressed to secure US military operations, according to US officials.

“Every airman is a defender. That’s the mindset you have to have,” said Gen. Kehler in his address to AFA. “When you log onto your computer, when you pick up your handheld device, when you get on your cell phone, et cetera, you are entering a combat zone and you need to behave accordingly.”

Clinton Cautions Latin American States About Iranian Influence

2009-12-13T11:41:00.001+04:00

VOA

U.S. secretary of state urges Latin American countries to 'think twice' about establishing links with Iran, which she said is the world's leading promoter and exporter of terrorism.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Friday urged Latin American countries to "think twice" about establishing links with Iran, which she said is the world's leading promoter and exporter of terrorism. Clinton also expressed concern about democratically-elected leaders in Latin America who later move to undermine democratic institutions.

Clinton's remarks at a State Department public policy forum on Latin America were some of the strongest by an Obama administration official to date about increasing Iranian activity in the region.

Iran has been establishing close political, trade and other relationships with several left-leaning Latin American governments, underlined by recent visits by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Brazil, Venezuela and Bolivia.

In a question and answer session with participants in the event, Clinton said the United States has "no problem" with non-Western Hemisphere countries like China having legitimate business and investment activities in Latin America.

But she said U.S. officials are concerned about what she said was Iran's "interest in promoting itself" in countries like Venezuela and Bolivia and said allowing Iranian influence to take root is, in her words, "a very bad idea for the countries involved."

"We hope that there will be a recognition that this is the major supporter, promoter and exporter of terrorism in the world today," she said.

"The Revolutionary Guard of Iran is increasing its control over the country because of the elections, which were a stark example of the abuse of human rights in action, is deeply involved in the economy as well as the security issues of Iran. And I think that if people want to flirt with Iran, they should take a look at what the consequences might well be for them. And we hope that they will think twice and we're going to support them if they do."

There have been similar expressions of concern from Pentagon officials including Defense Secretary Robert Gates who in Senate testimony earlier this year said he was concerned about Iranian "meddling" in Latin America.

U.S. officials have accused Iran of supporting activities in Latin America of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, and Tehran is accused of involvement in 1990's bomb attacks on a Jewish center and the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires.

In the policy forum, Clinton also reiterated U.S. "worry" about countries in Latin America where leaders who, after being democratically elected, move to undermine constitutional rule, citing in particular Venezuela and Nicaragua.

"We need to make it absolutely an article of faith that any leader elected must not just further his own position, and his power base, but respect the right of the people who elected him and build up the democracy so that democratic development and economic development can go hand in had," she said.

Clinton said she hoped to see, "in the not-too-distant future," a democratic Cuba, which she said would be extraordinarily positive for the Hemisphere.

Gays and their guilt

2009-12-09T20:40:00.000+04:00

Gays and their guilt

Obama's latest target: Ousting baby Jesus

2009-12-09T20:38:00.000+04:00

Obama's latest target: Ousting baby Jesus

White House guest: President planned to break tradition with 'non-religious Christmas'

Global cooling documented in last decade

2009-12-09T20:35:00.000+04:00

Global cooling documented in last decade

Contradicts data released at Copenhagen climate summit

Famous weather scientist: Climategate 'tip of iceberg'

2009-12-09T20:27:00.000+04:00

Famous weather scientist: Climategate 'tip of iceberg'

'Conspiracy would become manifest' if all climate research e-mails unveiled

The Colorado scientist described by the Washington Post as "the World's Most Famous Hurricane Expert" says the "ClimateGate" e-mails from the United Kingdom that revealed possible data manipulation are evidence of a conspiracy among "warmists," those who believe man's actions are triggering possibly catastrophic climate change.

"The recent 'ClimateGate' revelations coming out of the UK University of East Anglia are but the tip of a giant iceberg of a well organized international climate warming conspiracy that has been gathering momentum for the last 25 years," said Colorado State University's Dr. William Gray.

Another 5 Chinese Megachurch Leaders Sentenced

2009-12-03T12:41:00.001+04:00

CHRISTIANPOST

Another five leaders of the Chinese megachurch whose pastor was recently sentenced to prison have been ordered to be re-educated through labor camps, a U.S. human rights group reported.

Just days after a Chinese court sentenced Pastor Wang Xiaoguang of Linfen Fushan Church in Linfen, northern Shanxi province to three years in prison and handed out three- to seven-year jail sentences to four other church leaders, ChinaAid Association learned that five more church leaders were each sentenced to two years in labor camps.

The sentences were reportedly given arbitrarily by the public security bureau without a proper court trial.

“To arbitrarily send five innocent citizens to labor camps is in direct violation against the international human rights covenants and norms the Chinese government has signed and even ratified," said Bob Fu, president of CAA, in a statement. "This case shows the Chinese government is determined to be on the wrong side of history by clenching its power with suppressing the basic freedom of religion and conscience for Chinese citizens. We call upon the international community to hold these rights abusers accountable."

Among the five Christian leaders is Yang Caizhen, whose husband Pastor Yang Xuan had received a three-year jail sentence by the court on Nov. 25. Yang Caizhen was reportedly severely beaten during interrogation, a witness told the Texas-based rights group. One of her front teeth is said to have been knocked out during the beating. She is reportedly fasting and praying during her detention and in very fragile condition.

CAA learned about the most recent sentences of Fushan church leaders on Nov 30, but it reportedly took effect from Nov. 11 when all the leaders were already detained.

The rights group said it confirmed the reality of the sentences with individual family members of three of the five church leaders. The other two members’ sentences were confirmed indirectly by Fushan church leaders.

In the latest sentences, the members were charged with “gathering people to disturb the public order” based on when they organized a 1,000 people prayer rally on Sept. 14 – the day after hundreds of people dressed as security force had raided and demolished 17 church buildings and injured more than 30 believers on the church campus.

The 50,000-member Fushan Church was raided on Sept. 13, by reportedly 400 people. Men tore at the building’s foundation with shovels as bulldozers worked to level other buildings on the site. Church members sleeping at the construction site of the new church building were attacked with bricks and other objects, according to CAA. Several members were severely injured and were sent to the emergency room, and some members were unconscious.

The attack is said to be the worst crackdown against a house church in the past decade.

After the attack, Yang Rongli, the wife of the church pastor, was leading a group of church members to Beijing to protest the destruction of the church when she was arrested and detained. Out of the ten church leaders who were given sentences, Yang was given the heaviest sentence of seven years in prison. She is accused of “illegal land occupation” and “assembling a crowd to disrupt public order.”

Yang and her husband, Pastor Wang, have led the Fushan Church for more than 30 years. During a break at their trial, they were said to have encouraged their son to stand firm in his faith in Christ despite thepersecution.

ChinaAid is urging people to contact authorizes in Linfen as well as the Chinese embassy in the United States to urge that the Fushan church prisoners be released.

Yahoo.com used to foment anti-Israel violence

2009-11-30T20:01:00.001+04:00

WND

Activist garnering support for new uprising against Jewish state

A conversation group hosted by Yahoo.com is allegedly being used to build support for a new campaign of violence against Israel.

Lebanese-born activist Fadi Madi says he started the groups Lebanon View and Palestine Intifada to garner support for a new "intifada," or uprising, against Israel.

One of the events promoted is the Gaza Freedom March, a five-day protest scheduled to begin Dec. 27 that will begin in Cairo and culminate in Gaza.

News of the Gaza protest comes on the heels of the Middle East Media Research Institute reporting Palestinian officials are considering a new anti-Israel intifada.

In a message sent through the Lebanon View group, Madi says he hopes the march is the beginning of a new international movement.

"As an international movement … our faith in our common humanity leads us to call on all parties to respect and uphold international law and fundamental human rights to bring an end to the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories since 1948 and pursue a just and lasting peace. The march can only succeed if it arouses the conscience of humanity."

The campaign declares "an end to the military occupation that began in 1948 is a major condition for establishing a just and lasting peace."

The meaning is clear. Madi seeks the elimination of Israel.

Lebanon View e-mails feature a link to a dissolution of Israel petition.

When initially contacted about the sites, Yahoo said the company encourages dialogue.

"Our goal for Yahoo Groups and all of our online communities is to foster dialogue and interactions that are safe, meaningful, and respectful. We take the rights of our users very seriously, including their right to freedom of expression. At the same time, and as expressed in our Yahoo! Groups Guidelines, we do not permit harassment or abuse or threats or advocacy of violence."

When informed that the sites were being used to gain support for rebellion against Israel and were linked to sites promoting armed conflict, Yahoo released a statement through spokeswoman Fiona Tang.

"Yahoo is taking this matter very seriously and is actively looking into this matter," she said.

The Israeli government also has not responded to requests for comment on this story.

E-mail bulletins and press releases for the march say American novelist Alice Walker and Philippine peace activist Walden Bello will participate in the event.

Walker, author of the novel "The Color Purple," is a well-known supporter of the Palestinian cause.Walker's website features video of her participating in a Gaza protest marking International Women's Day.

Walden Bello is the author of several books centering on anti-American themes and radical causes. Two recent works are "Dilemmas of Domination," focusing on the demise of American power, and a laudatory biography of North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh.

A spokesman for the Gaza Freedom March denied any connection with Fadi Madi and said the Lebanon-based Madi "is neither a leader nor a participant of any kind with the Gaza Freedom March."

But who is Fadi Madi, and why is his march gaining such high-profile support?

Little is known about Madi, except that he was born into a Lebanese Muslim family and emigrated to Germany. Reports say he married a German woman and participated in campaigns to hold pro-Islam, anti-Israeli rallies in Germany.

According to reports, Madi's political activities are the reason German officials arrested and deported him to Lebanon in 2004.

The German government says its Data Protection Act prohibits it from making any statements about Madi's deportation.

It is on his websites that Madi openly rails against Israel. He writes on Lebanon View that he's against "Zionism."

"We declare the constitution of our international resistance; no to colonialism, no to slavery, no to Zionism and racism, no to imperialism, no to American hegemony, no to forest law, no to the globalisation of death and aggression, no to the destruction of moral and virtues, no to the commerce of slaves and countries, no to the American Zionist terror."

His front-page message ends with an appeal for money.

"Please support this work today – these initiatives cannot continue without your financial support. The Anti-US and Israeli Globalization and Hegemony Movement."

Writing in September 2004 for the radical Italian site Campo Antiimperialista, Madi believes his arrest makes him a hero of the cause.

"Just remember we were one unit all around the world, saying in all cities to end the occupation in Palestine and Iraq," he said. "It's only because of my words that they arrested me at the Berlin airport and held me for 12 hours. They deported me to Lebanon. …"

Madi has a Facebook page about "the resistance" in Lebanon. His writings reveal that the resistance is against Israel.

The Lebanon View page has drawn high-powered Arab supporters. One contributor to the page is Egyptian journalist and activist Iman Badawi. Badawi's journalism career involves Palestinian issues, intifada, jihad and social justice.

A regular contributor to IslamOnline, one of her most recent stories is "Tortured to Death," a story about Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri's brother Yusef Abu Zuhri, who was tortured to death in an Egyptian prison.

Badawi has sent frequent messages to the site, urging the readers to join the Gaza Freedom March scheduled for Dec. 27, 2009, to Jan. 1, 2010.

She also urges supporters to sign a petition outlawing the nation of Israel.

Despite her record as a journalist and her writings on these sites, Badawi rejects the idea of her being an organizer.

"I do not belong to any organization, and I do not know from where you got this idea. I'm just an activist," she says.

One link that repeatedly appears in the Arabic messages is to a site with a picture of a young girl biting barbed wire. It includes the English caption, "Freedom is only for those who are ready to die."

Another linked site in Arabic has photographs of armed men and of cartoons that encourage resistance against Israel.

When questioned about the messages urging armed struggle against Israel, second site owner Fathi Milad responded that questions were the product of Western indoctrination.

"Now I could recognise that you are a Western citizen, and therefore you are, unfortunately, under the influence of Western media programmed to gloss over the issue of the Palestinian people."

Milad proposes a solution but issues an ultimatum if his solution is not accepted.

"As a practical solution," he said, "the state (of Israel) should be re-established to combine both Arabs and Jews in one democratic country based on respect for all religions, but, if this does not happen, the wars and tragedies will continue and I think in this case that the future of the State of Israel is questionable, despite what they look like today and despite the Western support."

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2008-07-31T00:00:00-07:00

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