What are the Signs…?

And Jesus answering, said to them: Take heed that no man
seduce you: For many will come in my name saying, I am Christ: and they
will seduce many. And you shall hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that ye be
not troubled. For these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against
kingdom; and there shall be pestilences, and famines, and earthquakes in
places: Now all these are the beginnings of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall put
you to death: and you shall be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be scandalized: and shall betray one
another: and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall seduce
many. And because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall
grow cold. But he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be
saved. And this gospel of the kingdom, shall be preached in the
whole world, for a testimony to all nations, and then shall the consummation
come. For there shall be then great tribulation, such as hath not
been from the beginning of the world until now, neither shall be. And unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be
saved: but for the sake of the elect those days shall be shortened. Then if any man shall say to you: Lo here is Christ, or
there, do not believe him. For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and
shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch as to deceive (if possible) even the
elect. Behold I have told it to you, beforehand. If therefore they shall say to you: Behold he is in the
desert, go ye not out: Behold he is in the closets, believe it not. For as lightning cometh out of the east, and appeareth even
into the west: so shall the coming of the Son of man be. Wheresoever the body shall be, there shall the eagles also be
gathered together. And immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun
shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall
from heaven, and the powers of heaven shall be moved: And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven:
and then shall all tribes of the earth mourn: and they shall see the Son of man
coming in the clouds of heaven with much power and majesty. And he shall send his angels with a trumpet, and a great
voice: and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the
farthest parts of the heavens to the utmost bounds of them. And from the fig tree learn a parable: When the branch
thereof is now tender, and the leaves come forth, you know that summer is
nigh. So you also, when you shall see all these things, know ye
that it is nigh, even at the doors. Amen I say to you, that this generation shall not pass, till
all these things be done. Heaven and earth shall pass, but my words shall not
pass. But of that day and hour no one knoweth, not the angels of
heaven, but the Father alone. Watch ye therefore, because ye know not what hour your Lord
will come. But know this ye, that if the goodman of the house knew at
what hour the thief would come, he would certainly watch, and would not suffer his
house to be broken open. Wherefore be you also ready, because at what hour you know
not the Son of man will come. Who, thinkest thou, is a faithful and wise servant, whom his
lord hath appointed over his family, to give them meat in season. Blessed is that servant, whom when his lord shall come he
shall find so doing. (Matthew 24:4-14, 21-36, 42-46 DRA)
Who said: Take heed you be not seduced; for many will come in
my name, saying, I am he; and the time is at hand: go ye not therefore after
them. And when you shall hear of wars and seditions, be not
terrified: these things must first come to pass; but the end is not yet
presently. Then he said to them: Nation shall rise against nation, and
kingdom against kingdom. And there shall be great earthquakes in divers places, and
pestilences, and famines, and terrors from heaven; and there shall be great
signs. But before all these things, they will lay their hands upon
you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and into prisons,
dragging you before kings and governors, for my name’s sake. And it shall happen unto you for a testimony. And you shall be betrayed by your parents and brethren, and
kinsmen and friends; and some of you they will put to death. And you shall be hated by all men for my name’s sake. But a hair of your head shall not perish. In your patience you shall possess your souls. And when you shall see Jerusalem compassed about with an
army; then know that the desolation thereof is at hand. Then let those who are in Judea, flee to the mountains; and
those who are in the midst thereof, depart out: and those who are in the countries,
not enter into it. For these are the days of vengeance, that all things may be
fulfilled, that are written. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword; and shall be
led away captives into all nations; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the
Gentiles; till the times of the nations be fulfilled. And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in
the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, by reason of the confusion of the
roaring of the sea and of the waves; Men withering away for fear, and expectation of what shall
come upon the whole world. For the powers of heaven shall be moved; And then they shall see the Son of man coming in a cloud,
with great power and majesty. But when these things begin to come to pass, look up, and
lift up your heads, because your redemption is at hand. (Luke 21:8-13, 16-22, 24-28 DRA)

Palestinian and Israeli San Remo Conferance Agreement

From: The Israel-Arab Reader, edited, Walter Laqueur, New York, Bantam Books, 1976, pps 34-42. [NB: This is an edited version of the complete San Remo Agreement, and the elipses found within form part of Dr. Laqueur’s editorial process.]
“The San Remo Conference decided on April 24, 1920 to assign the Mandate [for Palestine] under the League of Nations to Britain. The terms of the Mandate were also discussed with the United States which was not a member of the League. An agreed text was confirmed by the Council of the League of Nations on July 24, 1922, and it came into operation in September 1923.”
The Council of the League of Nations:

Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have agreed, for the purpose of giving effect to the provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, to entrust to a Mandatory selected by the said Powers the administration of the territory of Palestine, which formerly belonged to the Turkish Empire, within such boundaries as may be fixed by them; and

Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country; and

Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connexion of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country;

and

Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have selected His Britannic Majesty as the Mandatory for Palestine; and

Whereas the mandate in respect of Palestine has been formulated in the following terms and submitted to the Council of the League for approval; and

Whereas His Britannic Majesty has accepted the mandate in respect of Palestine and undertaken to exercise it on behalf of the League of Nations in conformity with the following provisions; and

Whereas by the aforementioned Article 22 (paragraph 8), it is provided that the degree of authority, control or administration to be exercised by the Mandatory, not having been previously agreed upon by the Members of the League, shall be explicitly defined by the Council of the League of Nations;

Confirming the said Mandate, defines its terms as follows:

Article 1.

The Mandatory shall have full powers of legislation and of administration, save as they may be limited by the terms of this mandate.

Article 2.

The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.

Article 3.

The Mandatory shall, so far as circumstances permit, encourage local autonomy.

Article 4.

An appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognized as a public body for the purpose of advising and cooperating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish national home and the interests of the Jewish population in Palestine, and, subject always to the control of the Administration, to assist and take part in the development of the country.

The Zionist Organization, so long as its organization and constitution are in the opinion of the Mandatory appropriate shall be recognized as such agency. It shall take steps in consultation with His Britannic Majesty’s Government to secure the cooperation of all Jews who are willing to assist in the establishment of the Jewish national home.

Article 5.

The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of, the Government of any foreign Power.

Article 6.

The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.

Article 7.

The Administration of Palestine shall be responsible for enacting a nationality law. There shall be included in this law provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine.

Article 8.

The privileges and immunities of foreigners, including the benefits of consular jurisdiction and protection as formerly enjoyed by Capitulation or usage in the Ottoman Empire, shall not be applicable in Palestine.

Unless the Powers whose nationals enjoyed the aforementioned privileges and immunities on August 1st, 1914, shall have previously renounced the right to their re-establishment, or shall have agreed to their non-application for a specified period, these privileges and immunities shall, at the expiration of the mandate, be immediately re-established in their entirety or with such modifications as may have been agreed upon between the Powers concerned.

Article 9.

The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that the judicial system established in Palestine shall assure to foreigners, as well as to natives, a complete guarantee of their rights.

Respect for the personal status of the various peoples and communities and for their religious interests shall be fully guaranteed. In particular, the control and administration of Waqfs shall be exercised in accordance with religious law and the dispositions of the founders.

Article 10.

Pending the making of special extradition agreements relating to Palestine, the extradition treaties in force between the Mandatory and other foreign Powers shall apply to Palestine.

Article 11.

The Administration of Palestine shall take all necessary measures to safeguard the interests of the community in connection with the development of the country, and, subject to any international obligations accepted by the Mandatory, shall have full power to provide for public ownership or control of any of the natural resources of the country or of the public works, services and utilities established or to be established therein. It shall introduce a land system appropriate to the needs of the country having regard, among other things, to the desirability of promoting the close settlement and intensive cultivation of the land.

The Administration may arrange with the Jewish agency mentioned in Article 4 to construct or operate, upon fair and equitable terms, any public works, services and utilities, and to develop any of the natural resources of the country, in so far as these matters are not directly undertaken by the Administration. Any such arrangements shall provide that no profits distributed by such agency, directly or indirectly, shall exceed a reasonable rate of interest on the capital, and any further profits shall be utilized by it for the benefit of the country in a manner approved by the Administration.

Article 12.

The Mandatory shall be entrusted with the control of the foreign relations of Palestine, and the right to issue exequaturs to consuls appointed by foreign Powers. He shall also be entitled to afford diplomatic and consular protection to citizens of Palestine when outside its territorial limits.

Article 13.

All responsibility in connexion with the Holy Places and religious buildings or sites in Palestine, including that of preserving existing rights and of securing free access to the Holy Places, religious buildings and sites and the free exercise of worship, while ensuring the requirements of public order and decorum, is assumed by the Mandatory, who shall be responsible solely to the League of Nations in all matters connected herewith, provided that nothing in this article shall prevent the Mandatory from entering into such arrangements as he may deem reasonable with the Administration for the purpose of carrying the provisions of this article into effect; and provided also that nothing in this Mandate shall be construed as conferring upon the Mandatory authority to interfere with the fabric or the management of purely Moslem sacred shrines, the immunities of which are guaranteed.

Article 14.

A special Commission shall be appointed by the Mandatory to study, define and determine the rights and claims in connection with the Holy Places and the rights and claims relating to the different religious communities in Palestine. The method of nomination, the composition and the functions of this Commission shall be submitted to the Council of the League for its approval, and the Commission shall not be appointed or enter upon its functions without the approval of the Council.

Article 15.

The Mandatory shall see that complete freedom of conscience and the free exercise of all forms of worship, subject only to the maintenance of public order and morals are ensured to all. No discrimination of any kind shall be made between the inhabitants of Palestine on the ground of race, religion or language. No person shall be excluded from Palestine on the sole ground of his religious belief.

The right of each community to maintain its own schools for the education of its own members in its own language, while conforming to such educational requirements of a general nature as the Administration may impose, shall not be denied or impaired.

Article 16.

The Mandatory shall be responsible for exercising such supervision over religious or eleemosynary bodies of all faiths in Palestine as may be required for the maintenance of public order and good government. Subject to such supervision, no measures shall be taken in Palestine to obstruct or interfere with the enterprise of such bodies or to discriminate against any representative or member of them on the ground of his religion or nationality.

Article 17.

The Administration of Palestine may organize on a voluntary basis the forces necessary for the preservation of peace and order, and also for the defence of the country, subject however, to the supervision of the Mandatory, but shall not use them for purposes other than those above specified save with the consent of the Mandatory. Except for such purposes no military, naval or air forces shall be raised or maintained by the Administration of Palestine.

Nothing in this article shall preclude the Administration of Palestine from contributing to the cost of the maintenance of the forces of the Mandatory in Palestine.

The Mandatory shall be entitled at all times to use the roads, railways and ports of Palestine for the movement of armed forces and the carriage of fuel and supplies.

Article 18.

The Mandatory shall see that there is no discrimination in Palestine against the nationals of any State Member of the League of Nations (including companies incorporated under its laws) as compared with those of the Mandatory or of any foreign State in matters concerning taxation, commerce or navigation, the exercise of industries or professions, or in the treatment of merchant vessels or civil aircraft. Similarly, there shall be no discrimination in Palestine against goods originating in or destined for any of the said States, and there shall be freedom of transit under equitable conditions across the mandated area.

Subject as aforesaid and to the other provisions of this mandate, the Administration of Palestine may, on the advice of the Mandatory, impose such taxes and customs duties as it may consider necessary, and take such steps as it may think best to promote the development of the natural resources of the country and to safeguard the interests of the population. It may also, on the advice of the Mandatory, conclude a special customs agreement with any State the territory of which in 1914 was wholly included in Asiatic Turkey or Arabia.

Article l9.

The Mandatory shall adhere on behalf of the Administration of Palestine to any general international conventions already existing, or which may be concluded hereafter with the approval of the League of Nations, respecting the slave traffic, the traffic in arms and ammunition, or the traffic in drugs, or relating to commercial equality, freedom of transit and navigation, aerial navitation and postal, telegraphic and wireless communicatiion or literary, artistic or industrial property.

Article 20.

The Mandatory shall co-operate on behalf of the Administration of Palestine, so far as religious, social and other conditions may permit, in the execution of any common policy adopted by the League of nations for preventing and combating disease, including diseases of plants and animals.

Article 21.

The Mandatory shall secure the enactment within twelve months from this date, and shall ensure the execution of a Law of Antiquities based on the following rules. This law shall ensure equality of treatment in the matter of excavations and archaeological research to the nationalals of all States Members of the League of Nations….

Article 22.

English, Arabic and Hebrew shall be the official languages of Palestine. Any statement or inscription in Arabic on stamps or money in Palestine shall be repeated in Hebrew and any statement or inscription in Hebrew shall be repeated in Arabic.

Article 23.

The Administration of Palestine shall recognize the holy days of the respective communities in Palestine as legal days of rest for the members of such communities.

Article 24.

The Mandatory shall make to the Council of the League of Nations an annual report to the satisfaction of the Council as to the measures taken during the year to carry out the provisions of the mandate. Copies of all laws and regulations promulgated or issued during the year shall be communicated with the report.

Article 25.

In the territories Iying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions, and to make such provision for the administration of the territories as he may consider suitable to those conditions, provided that no action shall be taken which is inconsistent with the provisions of Articles 15, 16 and 18.

Article 26.

The Mandatory agrees that if any dispute whatever should arise between the Mandatory and another Member of the League of Nations relating to the interpretation or the application of the provisions of the mandate, such dispute, if it cannot be settled by negotiation, shall be submitted to the Permanent Court of International Justice provided for by Article 14 of the Covenant of the League of Nations.

Article 27.

The consent of the Council of the League of Nations is required for any modification of the terms of this mandate.

Article 28.

In the event of the termination of the mandate hereby conferred upon the Mandatory, the Council of the League of Nations shall make such arrangements as may be deemed necessary for safeguarding in perpetuity, under guarantee of the League, the rights secured by Articles 13 and 14, and shall use its influence for securing, under the guarantee of the League, that the Government of Palestine will fully honour the financial obligations legitimately incurred by the Administration of Palestine during the period of the mandate, including the rights of public servants to pensions or gratuities.

The present instrument shall be deposited in original in the archives of the League of Nations and certified copies shall be forwarded by the Secretary General of the League of Nations to all Members of the League.

DONE AT LONDON the twenty-fourth day of July, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-two.”

Found this article on the Internet

The Anti-Empire Report
October 4th, 2011
by William Blum
http://www.killinghope.org

The crime of making Americans aware of their own history
Is history getting too close for comfort for the fragile little American heart and mind? Their schools and their favorite media have done an excellent job of keeping them ignorant of what their favorite country has done to the rest of the world, but lately some discomforting points of view have managed to find their way into this well-defended American consciousness.

First, Congressman Ron Paul during a presidential debate last month expressed the belief that those who carried out the September 11 attack were retaliating for the many abuses perpetrated against Arab countries by the United States over the years. The audience booed him, loudly.

Then, popular-song icon Tony Bennett, in a radio interview, said the United States caused the 9/11 attacks because of its actions in the Persian Gulf, adding that President George W. Bush had told him in 2005 that the Iraq war was a mistake. Bennett of course came under some nasty fire. FOX News (September 24), carefully choosing its comments charmingly as usual, used words like “insane”, “twisted mind”, and “absurdities”. Bennett felt obliged to post a statement on Facebook saying that his experience in World War II had taught him that “war is the lowest form of human behavior.” He said there’s no excuse for terrorism, and he added, “I’m sorry if my statements suggested anything other than an expression of love for my country.” (NBC September 21)

Then came the Islamic cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, who for some time had been blaming US foreign policy in the Middle East as the cause of anti-American hatred and terrorist acts. So we killed him. Ron Paul and Tony Bennett can count themselves lucky.

What, then, is the basis of all this? What has the United States actually been doing in the Middle East in the recent past?

the shooting down of two Libyan planes in 1981
the bombing of Lebanon in 1983 and 1984
the bombing of Libya in 1986
the bombing and sinking of an Iranian ship in 1987
the shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane in 1988
the shooting down of two more Libyan planes in 1989
the massive bombing of the Iraqi people in 1991
the continuing bombings and draconian sanctions against Iraq for the next 12 years
the bombing of Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998
the habitual support of Israel despite the routine devastation and torture it inflicts upon the Palestinian people
the habitual condemnation of Palestinian resistance to this
the abduction of “suspected terrorists” from Muslim countries, such as Malaysia, Pakistan, Lebanon and Albania, who were then taken to places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where they were tortured
the large military and hi-tech presence in Islam’s holiest land, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region
the support of numerous undemocratic, authoritarian Middle East governments from the Shah of Iran to Mubarak of Egypt to the Saudi royal family
the invasion, bombing and occupation of Afghanistan, 2001 to the present, and Iraq, 2003 to the present
the bombings and continuous firing of missiles to assassinate individuals in Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, and Libya during the period of 2006-2011
It can’t be repeated or emphasized enough. The biggest lie of the “war on terrorism”, although weakening, is that the targets of America’s attacks have an irrational hatred of the United States and its way of life, based on religious and cultural misunderstandings and envy. The large body of evidence to the contrary includes a 2004 report from the Defense Science Board, “a Federal advisory committee established to provide independent advice to the Secretary of Defense.” The report states:

“Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the long-standing, even increasing, support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and the Gulf states. Thus, when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy.”

The report concludes: “No public relations campaign can save America from flawed policies.” (Christian Science Monitor, November 29, 2004)

The Pentagon released the study after the New York Times ran a story about it on November 24, 2004. The Times reported that although the board’s report does not constitute official government policy, it captures “the essential themes of a debate that is now roiling not just the Defense Department but the entire United States government.”

“Homeland security is a rightwing concept fostered following 9/11 as the answer to the effects of 50 years of bad foreign policies in the middle east. The amount of homeland security we actually need is inversely related to how good our foreign policy is.” – Sam Smith, editor of The Progressive Review

The lies that will not die
In his September 22 address at the United Nations, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad mentioned the Nazi Holocaust just twice:

“Some European countries still use the Holocaust, after six decades, as the excuse to pay fines or ransom to the Zionists.”

“They threaten anyone who questions the Holocaust and the September 11 event with sanctions and military action.”

That was it.

By the term “questions the Holocaust” the Iranian president has made clear repeatedly over the years what he’s referring to. He has commented about the peculiarity and injustice of a tragedy which took place in Europe resulting in a state for the Jews in the Middle East instead of in Europe. Why are the Palestinians paying a price for a German crime? he asks. And he has questioned the figure of six million Jews killed by Nazi Germany, as have many historians and others of all political stripes who think the total was probably less. This has nothing to do with the Holocaust not taking place.

But, as usual, the Western media pretends that it doesn’t understand.

The New York Post (September 22) referred to the Iranian president as “the world’s foremost Holocaust denier, the would-be genocidist Ahmadinejad”.

Agence France Presse (September 22) stated: “The Iranian leader repeated comments casting doubt on the origins of the Holocaust.”

The Washington Post wrote of “Ahmadinejad’s speech suggesting larger conspiracies were behind the Holocaust and the Sept. 11 attacks caused delegates to walk out.” (September 23)

And Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! (September 23) included this amongst the radio program’s news headlines: “For the third straight year, Ahmadinejad sent delegates to the exits after questioning the Nazi Holocaust.”

Without further explanation of that incendiary term — and none was given — what can “questioning the Nazi Holocaust” mean or imply to most listeners other than that Ahmadinejad was questioning whether the Holocaust had actually taken place?

Once again I must point out that I have yet to read of Ahmadinejad ever saying simply, clearly, unambiguously, and unequivocally that he thinks that what we know as the Holocaust never happened. For the record, in a speech at Columbia University on September 24, 2007, in reply to a question about the Holocaust, the Iranian president declared: “I’m not saying that it didn’t happen at all. This is not the judgment that I’m passing here.”

Indeed, I do not know if any of the so-called “Holocaust-deniers” actually, ever, umm, y’know … deny the Holocaust. They question certain aspects of the Holocaust history that’s been handed down to us, but they don’t explicitly say that what we know as the Holocaust never took place. (Yes, I’m sure you can find at least one nut-case somewhere.)

Another enduring lie about Ahmadinejad is that he has called for violence against Israel: His 2005 remark re “wiping Israel off the map”, besides being a very questionable translation, has been seriously misinterpreted, as evidenced by the fact that the following year he declared: “The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon, the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom.” (Associated Press, December 12, 2006) Obviously, the man was not calling for any kind of violent attack upon Israel, for the dissolution of the Soviet Union took place peacefully.

Carl Oglesby
The president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), 1965-66, died September 13, age 76. I remember him best for a speech of his I heard during the March on Washington, November 27, 1965, a speech passionately received by the tens of thousands crowding the National Mall:

The original commitment in Vietnam was made by President Truman, a mainstream liberal. It was seconded by President Eisenhower, a moderate liberal. It was intensified by the late President Kennedy, a flaming liberal. Think of the men who now engineer that war — those who study the maps, give the commands, push the buttons, and tally the dead: Bundy, McNamara, Rusk, Lodge, Goldberg, the President [Johnson] himself. They are not moral monsters. They are all honorable men. They are all liberals.

He insisted that America’s founding fathers would have been on his side. “Our dead revolutionaries would soon wonder why their country was fighting against what appeared to be a revolution.” He challenged those who called him anti-American: “I say, don’t blame me for that! Blame those who mouthed my liberal values and broke my American heart.”

We are dealing now with a colossus that does not want to be changed. It will not change itself. It will not cooperate with those who want to change it. Those allies of ours in the government — are they really our allies? If they are, then they don’t need advice, they need constituencies; they don’t need study groups, they need a movement. And if they are not [our allies], then all the more reason for building that movement with the most relentless conviction.

It saddens me to think that virtually nothing has changed for the better in US foreign policy since Carl Oglesby spoke on the Mall that day. America’s wars are ongoing, perpetual, eternal. And the current war monger in the White House is regarded by many as a liberal, for whatever that’s worth.

“We took space back quickly, expensively, with total panic and close to maximum brutality,” war correspondent Michael Herr recalled about the US military in Vietnam. “Our machine was devastating. And versatile. It could do everything but stop.”

Items of interest from a journal I’ve kept for 40 years, part V
A Bush administration regulation on Sept. 30, 2004 said Americans cannot buy or smoke Cuban cigars even in countries where the cigars are legal, such as Canada, Mexico, Europe, indeed most of the world. The same goes for Havana Club rum and other Cuban products.
April 26th, 2007 posting from the courageous but anonymous Iraqi woman who has, since August 2003, published the indispensable blog Baghdad Burning. Her family, she reported, was finally giving up and going into exile. In her final dispatch, she wrote: “There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally, we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends. … And to what?”
“God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle Eastern policy and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.” — John LeCarre (London Times, January 15, 2003)
Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq admonished his troops regarding the results of an Army survey that found that many U.S. military personnel there are willing to tolerate some torture of suspects and unwilling to report abuse by comrades. “This fight depends on securing the population, which must understand that we — not our enemies — occupy the moral high ground,” he wrote in an open letter dated May 10 and posted on a military Web site. (Washington Post, May 11, 2007)
“To most of its citizens, America is exceptional, and it’s only natural that it should take exception to certain international standards.” — Michael Ignatieff, former Canadian politician and Washington Post columnist
It is easy to understand an observation by one of Israel’s leading military historians, Martin van Creveld. After the U.S. invaded Iraq, knowing it to be defenseless, he noted, “Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy.” — Noam Chomsky
“It is easier for an American member of Congress to criticize an American president than to criticize an Israeli Prime Minister; it is easier for them to criticize an unjust and unwarranted US war than one launched by Israel.” — Jeffrey Blankfort
Ken Livingston, Mayor of London, re: his visit to Cuba in 2006: “What really stood out for me was hearing first hand from people working in the medical services just how appalling the US blockade is. When you meet people who are treating eye disorders and blindness on a huge scale and they describe how difficult it is to get the equipment they need except through indirect routes because of the blockade you get a feel for the scale of the injustice that is being imposed on Cuba.” Livingston might have added that the “indirect routes”, even if available, are much more expensive.
In 1965 when UN Secretary-General U Thant tried to open back-channel ties to the North Vietnamese, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk called him off by shouting: “Who do you think you are, a country?” (Washington Post BookWorld, January 7, 2007)
George W. Bush: “Years from now when America looks out on a democratic Middle East, growing in freedom and prosperity, Americans will speak of the battles like Fallujah with the same awe and reverence that we now give to Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima” in World War II. (Associated Press, November 11, 2006)
The National Endowment for Democracy was US Government initiated, and although ostensibly “independent,” has been continually funded by the US Congress, and its Board has included top level actors in the US Government’s foreign policy apparatus, including former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright, former National Security Council Chair Zbigniew Brzezinski, and former World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz.
CBS News, September 9, 2006: Senator Jay Rockefeller says the world would be better off today if the United States had never invaded Iraq. Does Rockefeller stand by his view, even if it means that Saddam Hussein could still be in power if the United States didn’t invade? “Yes. Yes.” says Rockefeller. “He wasn’t going to attack us.”
William Appleman Williams, in his 2007 book “Empire as a way of life”: Analyzing US history from its revolutionary origins to the dawn of the Reagan era, Williams shows how America has always been addicted to empire in its foreign and domestic ideology. Detailing the imperial actions and beliefs of revered figures such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, this book is the most in-depth historical study of the American obsession with empire, and is essential to understanding the origins of our current foreign and domestic undertakings.
Compare Washington’s reaction in recent years to popular uprisings alleging electoral fraud in the Ukraine and Georgia to its reaction to the same in Mexico in 2006 when the rightwing Felipe Calderon was declared the winner in a very questionable manner.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, in his talk at the United Nations, September 20, 2006, sharply criticized US president George W. Bush’s foreign policies and Bush himself. Britain’s Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett suggested that the Chávez comments were beyond the pale of diplomatic protocol at the UN. “Even the Democrats wouldn’t say that”. However, the Guardian reported that “Delegates and leaders from around the world streamed back into the chamber to hear Mr Chávez, and when he stepped down the vigorous applause lasted so long that it had to be curtailed by the chair.”
Only the imperialist powers have the ability to enforce sanctions and are therefore always exempt from them.
–

William Blum is the author of:

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at http://www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6 [at] aol.com with “add” in the subject line. I’d like your name and city in the message, but that’s optional. I ask for your city only in case I’ll be speaking in your area.

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Part 5 of the WOES I copied from my email

Jim Bakker’s Blog

Woe is Me – Part 5
Posted: 03 Oct 2011 11:35 AM PDT
Woe to the Shepherds!

One of the most scathing rebukes found anywhere in the Bible is in Ezekiel 34. It is a rebuke to the shepherds, or in today’s culture, the pastors. The Prophet Ezekiel was not the least concerned with sparing anyone’s ‘feelings’ when he gave his politically incorrect rebuke in the 34th chapter. He was concerned with saying what the Lord instructed him to say. He didn’t water it down, and he didn’t consider how it might put him in social jeopardy. He was not afraid of the shepherds, but he did have a healthy fear of God, something the modern Church seems to lack.

In my next few blogs, we will be looking at the Woes to the shepherds (pastors). This is one area of woes that you won’t hear preached very much. Why? This message about shepherds feeding themselves and not the flock may have been given centuries ago, but it is prophetically relatable to the modern-day Church. God showed me in prison, that we (pastors and myself included) had been preaching a false, made-up money gospel. I have repented of that and I continue to preach against it. But, it still permeates much of the Christian teaching you hear everywhere.

SKINNING THE SHEEP

In our desperation to maintain huge budgets, we have carelessly misused Scripture to our own advantage. In this regard, the prophet Ezekiel’s warning to spiritual shepherds sounds as though it were written in our generation:

Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: “This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals” (34:2–5 NIV).

Clearly, the anger of the Lord expressed through Ezekiel was a result of the spiritual leaders’ callous concern for their own well-being, rather than being concerned about the needs of God’s people. God wanted shepherds whose hearts’ desire was to care for the sheep, not skin them alive. He still does.

One night while I was sleeping in a prison cell, God gave me another dream, a dramatic vision in which He showed me a picture of the church, the body of Christ. In the dream, the people of the church appeared as cattle being herded along in a line. I was horrified when I saw the sight, for these cattle had no skin! They were a bleeding, raw mass of flesh.

As I viewed the pitiful scene, I sensed God speaking to me. “This is what My leaders have done to My church—they have skinned them! They are being herded toward destruction by the shepherds; they are hurting and bleeding.”

I awoke shuddering with fear and an attitude of repentance. I vowed, “Never again do I want to be associated with anything that even hints at impropriety. Never again will I even hint that godliness is a means of financial gain.”

To Titus, Paul wrote of the requirements to be a spiritual leader, teaching that the bishop or overseer “must be above reproach as God’s steward, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not addicted to wine, not pugnacious, not fond of sordid gain” (1:7 NASB). Then, in an effort to alert Titus and other spiritual leaders to be on their guard against those teachers who were propagating false doctrine, Paul warned, “For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision: Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake” (1:10–11 KJV).

Granted, Paul’s main concern in this admonition was that spiritual leaders know sound doctrine so they could refute the errors being propagated by those believers who felt they should maintain the rituals of Judaism along with their newfound Christian faith; but it should not escape our notice that money was a motivating factor for the perpetrators of those false doctrines. It is still the same today. Money motivates much of the mixed-up, watered-down gospel messages being presented.

(to be continued)

My agreement is with this Pastor! I say AMEN BROTHER!

A Pastor with GUTS!

Thought you might enjoy this interesting
prayer given in Kansas at
the opening session of their Senate. It seems
prayer still upsets some
people.. When Minister Joe Wright was asked to open
the new session of the Kansas Senate, everyone was expecting the usual generalities, but this is

what they heard:

Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask
your forgiveness and to seek your direction and
guidance. We know Your Word says, ‘Woe to those
who call evil good,’ but that is exactly what we
have done.

We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed
our values.

We have exploited the poor and called it
the lottery.

We have rewarded laziness and called it
welfare..

We have killed our unborn and called it
choice.

We have shot abortionists and called it
justifiable.

We have neglected to discipline our
children and called it building self esteem…..

We have abused power and called it
politics.

We have coveted our neighbor’s possessions
and called it ambition.

We have polluted the air with profanity and
pornography and called it freedom of expression.

We have ridiculed the time-honored values
of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.

Search us, Oh, God, and know our hearts
today; cleanse us from every sin and set us free..
Amen!

The response was immediate. A number of
legislators walked out during the prayer in
protest. In 6 short weeks, Central Christian
Church, where Rev. Wright is pastor, logged more than
5,000 phone calls with only 47 of those calls
responding negatively. The church is now receiving
international requests for copies of this prayer
from India , Africa and Korea .

Commentator Paul Harvey aired this prayer on
his radio program, ‘The Rest of the Story,’and
received a larger response to this program than any
other he has ever aired.

With the Lord’s help, may this prayer sweep
over our nation and wholeheartedly become our
desire so that we again can be called ‘one nation
under God.’

If possible, please pass this prayer on to
your friends… ‘If you don’t stand for something,
you will fall for everything.’

Think about this: If you forward this
prayer to everyone on your
e-mail list, in less than 30 days it would be
heard by the world.

How many people in your address book will
not receive this prayer…..do you have the guts to pass it on?

IT IS WRITTEN

Behold, the day of the Lord is coming, And your spoil will be divided in your midst. For I will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem;
The city shall be taken,
The houses rifled,
And the women ravished.
Half of the city shall go into captivity,
But the remnant of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then the Lord will go forth
And fight against those nations,
As He fights in the day of battle. And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives,
Which faces Jerusalem on the east.
And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two,
From east to west,
Making a very large valley;
Half of the mountain shall move toward the north
And half of it toward the south. Then you shall flee through My mountain valley,
For the mountain valley shall reach to Azal.
Yes, you shall flee
As you fled from the earthquake
In the days of Uzziah king of Judah.
Thus the Lord my God will come,
And all the saints with You. It shall come to pass in that day
That there will be no light;
The lights will diminish. It shall be one day
Which is known to the Lord
Neither day nor night.
But at evening time it shall happen
That it will be light. And in that day it shall be—
That living waters shall flow from Jerusalem,
Half of them toward the eastern sea
And half of them toward the western sea;
In both summer and winter it shall occur. And the Lord shall be King over all the earth.
In that day it shall be
“The Lord is one,”
And His name one. All the land shall be turned into a plain from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem. Jerusalem shall be raised up and inhabited in her place from Benjamin’s Gate to the place of the First Gate and the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Hananel to the king’s winepresses. The people shall dwell in it;
And no longer shall there be utter destruction,
But Jerusalem shall be safely inhabited. And this shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the people who fought against Jerusalem:
Their flesh shall dissolve while they stand on their feet,
Their eyes shall dissolve in their sockets,
And their tongues shall dissolve in their mouths. It shall come to pass in that day
That a great panic from the Lord will be among them.
Everyone will seize the hand of his neighbor,
And raise his hand against his neighbor’s hand; Judah also will fight at Jerusalem.
And the wealth of all the surrounding nations
Shall be gathered together:
Gold, silver, and apparel in great abundance. Such also shall be the plague
On the horse and the mule,
On the camel and the donkey,
And on all the cattle that will be in those camps.
So shall this plague be. And it shall come to pass that everyone who is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. And it shall be that whichever of the families of the earth do not come up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, on them there will be no rain. If the family of Egypt will not come up and enter in, they shall have no rain; they shall receive the plague with which the Lord strikes the nations who do not come up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. This shall be the punishment of Egypt and the punishment of all the nations that do not come up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. In that day “HOLINESS TO THE LORD” shall be engraved on the bells of the horses. The pots in the Lord’s house shall be like the bowls before the altar. Yes, every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holiness to the Lord of hosts. Everyone who sacrifices shall come and take them and cook in them. In that day there shall no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts. (Zechariah 14:1-21 NKJV)

Future of Israel…being fulfilled in our eyes.

Again the word of the Lord of hosts came, saying, “Thus says the Lord of hosts:
‘I am zealous for Zion with great zeal;
With great fervor I am zealous for her.’ “Thus says the Lord:
‘I will return to Zion,
And dwell in the midst of Jerusalem.
Jerusalem shall be called the City of Truth,
The Mountain of the Lord of hosts,
The Holy Mountain.’ “Thus says the Lord of hosts:
‘Old men and old women shall again sit
In the streets of Jerusalem,
Each one with his staff in his hand
Because of great age. The streets of the city
Shall be full of boys and girls
Playing in its streets.’ “Thus says the Lord of hosts:
‘If it is marvelous in the eyes of the remnant of this people in these days,
Will it also be marvelous in My eyes?’
Says the Lord hosts. “Thus says the Lord of hosts:
‘Behold, I will save My people from the land of the east
And from the land of the west; I will bring them back,
And they shall dwell in the midst of Jerusalem.
They shall be My people
And I will be their God,
In truth and righteousness.’ “Thus says the Lord of hosts:
‘Let your hands be strong,
You who have been hearing in these days
These words by the mouth of the prophets,
Who spoke in the day the foundation was laid
For the house of the Lord of hosts,
That the temple might be built. For before these days
There were no wages for man nor any hire for beast;
There was no peace from the enemy for whoever went out or came in;
For I set all men, everyone, against his neighbor. But now I will not treat the remnant of this people as in the former days,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘For the seed shall be prosperous,
The vine shall give its fruit,
The ground shall give her increase,
And the heavens shall give their dew—
I will cause the remnant of this people
To possess all these. And it shall come to pass
That just as you were a curse among the nations,
O house of Judah and house of Israel,
So I will save you, and you shall be a blessing.
Do not fear,
Let your hands be strong.’ “For thus says the Lord of hosts:
‘Just as I determined to punish you
When your fathers provoked Me to wrath,’
Says the Lord of hosts,
‘And I would not relent, So again in these days
I am determined to do good
To Jerusalem and to the house of Judah.
Do not fear. These are the things you shall do:
Speak each man the truth to his neighbor;
Give judgment in your gates for truth, justice, and peace; Let none of you think evil in your heart against your neighbor;
And do not love a false oath.
For all these are things that I hate,’
Says the Lord.” Then the word of the Lord of hosts came to me, saying, “Thus says the Lord of hosts:
‘The fast of the fourth month,
The fast of the fifth,
The fast of the seventh,
And the fast of the tenth,
Shall be joy and gladness and cheerful feasts
For the house of Judah.
Therefore love truth and peace.’ “Thus says the Lord of hosts:
‘Peoples shall yet come,
Inhabitants of many cities; The inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying,
“Let us continue to go and pray before the Lord,
And seek the Lord of hosts.
I myself will go also.” Yes, many peoples and strong nations
Shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem,
And to pray before the Lord.’ “Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘In those days ten men from every language of the nations shall grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man, saying, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.” ’ ” (Zechariah 8:1-23 NKJV)

San Remo Resolution on April 25, 1920

(a) To accept the terms of the Mandates Article as given below with reference to Palestine, on the understanding that there was inserted in the process-verbal an undertaking by the Mandatory Power that this would not involve the surrender of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine; this undertaking not to refer to the question of the religious protectorate of France, which had been settled earlier in the previous afternoon by the undertaking given by the French Government that they recognized this protectorate as being at an end.

(b) that the terms of the Mandates Article should be as follows:

The High Contracting Parties agree that Syria and Mesopotamia shall, in accordance with the fourth paragraph of Article 22, Part I (Covenant of the League of Nations), be provisionally recognized as independent States, subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The boundaries of the said States will be determined, and the selection of the Mandatories made, by the Principal Allied Powers.

The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22, the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory, to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 8, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

La Puissance mandataire s’engage a nommer dans le plus bref delai une Commission speciale pour etudier toute question et toute reclamation concernant les differentes communautes religieuses et en etablir le reglement. Il sera tenu compte dans la composition de cette Commission des interets religieux en jeu. Le President de la Commission sera nomme par le Conseil de la Societe des Nations.

The terms of the mandates in respect of the above territories will be formulated by the Principal Allied Powers and submitted to the Council of the League of Nations for approval.

Turkey hereby undertakes, in accordance with the provisions of Article [132 of the Treaty of Sèvres] to accept any decisions which may be taken in this connection.

(c) Les mandataires choisis par les principales Puissances allies sont: la France pour la Syrie, et la Grande Bretagne pour la Mesopotamie, et la Palestine.

Super Sun Blast Fears Put Russian Nuke Plants In Lockdown | EUTimes.net

Super Sun Blast Fears Put Russian Nuke Plants In LockdownPosted byEU Times onSep 25th, 2011 //2 Comments A frightening report circulating in the Kremlin today prepared by the Federal Atomic Energy Agency FAAE states that “emergency notices” have gone out to all of Russia’s nuclear power plants warning them that a potential “blast” from our Sun could cause “massive power blackouts” and could even result in “spontaneous atomic explosions.”Prompting this unprecedented warning was our Sun’s unleashing of a massive X1.9 solar flare from the behemoth Sunspot 1302 yesterday, and that is just days away from putting our Earth squarely in its sights, that this FAAE report is blaming for the near total blackout that hit the entire South American nation of Chile within minutes of this event occurring.This FAAE report further warns that the blackout that occurred in Chile due to yesterday’s solar blast was forewarned about by a similar event that occurred earlier this month in the United States after their Southern California and Arizona regions were hit by a massive power blackout on 8 September.Even more concerning to the FAAE about these solar blasts were their being connected by Russian atomic scientists to the nuclear explosion at a nuclear-waste facility in southern France that occurred on 12 September and a Michigan nuclear plant “cooling failure” that occurred on 16 September, both of which were quickly followed by at least six more massive solar blasts occurring in less than 24 hours from 18 September until 19 September.The FAAE also states in their report that the fal

via Super Sun Blast Fears Put Russian Nuke Plants In Lockdown | EUTimes.net.

Netanyahu’s speech at 66th session of UN copied from Haaretz.Com

Full transcript of Netanyahu speech at UN General Assembly

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the 66th session of the General Assembly at United Nations headquarters, following Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ speech.

Tags: Benjamin NetanyahuUN

Ladies and gentlemen, Israel has extended its hand in peace from the moment it was established 63 years ago. On behalf of Israel and the Jewish people, I extend that hand again today. I extend it to the people of Egypt and Jordan, with renewed friendship for neighbors with whom we have made peace. I extend it to the people of Turkey, with respect and good will. I extend it to the people of Libya and Tunisia, with admiration for those trying to build a democratic future. I extend it to the other peoples of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, with whom we want to forge a new beginning. I extend it to the people of Syria, Lebanon and Iran, with awe at the courage of those fighting brutal repression.

But most especially, I extend my hand to the Palestinian people, with whom we seek a just and lasting peace.

Ladies and gentlemen, in Israel our hope for peace never wanes. Our scientists, doctors, innovators, apply their genius to improve the world of tomorrow. Our artists, our writers, enrich the heritage of humanity. Now, I know that this is not exactly the image of Israel that is often portrayed in this hall. After all, it was here in 1975 that the age-old yearning of my people to restore our national life in our ancient biblical homeland — it was then that this was braided — branded, rather — shamefully, as racism. And it was here in 1980, right here, that the historic peace agreement between Israel and Egypt wasn’t praised; it was denounced! And it’s here year after year that Israel is unjustly singled out for condemnation. It’s singled out for condemnation more often than all the nations of the world combined. Twenty-one out of the 27 General Assembly resolutions condemn Israel — the one true democracy in the Middle East.

Well, this is an unfortunate part of the UN institution. It’s the — the theater of the absurd. It doesn’t only cast Israel as the villain; it often casts real villains in leading roles: Gadhafi’s Libya chaired the UN Commission on Human Rights; Saddam’s Iraq headed the UN Committee on Disarmament.

You might say: That’s the past. Well, here’s what’s happening now — right now, today. Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon now presides over the UN Security Council. This means, in effect, that a terror organization presides over the body entrusted with guaranteeing the world’s security.

You couldn’t make this thing up.

So here in the UN, automatic majorities can decide anything. They can decide that the sun sets in the west or rises in the west. I think the first has already been pre-ordained. But they can also decide — they have decided that the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest place, is occupied Palestinian territory.

And yet even here in the General Assembly, the truth can sometimes break through. In 1984 when I was appointed Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, I visited the great rabbi of Lubavich. He said to me — and ladies and gentlemen, I don’t want any of you to be offended because from personal experience of serving here, I know there are many honorable men and women, many capable and decent people serving their nations here. But here’s what the rebbe said to me. He said to me, you’ll be serving in a house of many lies. And then he said, remember that even in the darkest place, the light of a single candle can be seen far and wide.

Today I hope that the light of truth will shine, if only for a few minutes, in a hall that for too long has been a place of darkness for my country. So as Israel’s prime minister, I didn’t come here to win applause. I came here to speak the truth. (Cheers, applause.) The truth is — the truth is that Israel wants peace. The truth is that I want peace. The truth is that in the Middle East at all times, but especially during these turbulent days, peace must be anchored in security. The truth is that we cannot achieve peace through UN resolutions, but only through direct negotiations between the parties. The truth is that so far the Palestinians have refused to negotiate. The truth is that Israel wants peace with a Palestinian state, but the Palestinians want a state without peace. And the truth is you shouldn’t let that happen.

Ladies and gentlemen, when I first came here 27 years ago, the world was divided between East and West. Since then the Cold War ended, great civilizations have risen from centuries of slumber, hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty, countless more are poised to follow, and the remarkable thing is that so far this monumental historic shift has largely occurred peacefully. Yet a malignancy is now growing between East and West that threatens the peace of all. It seeks not to liberate, but to enslave, not to build, but to destroy.

That malignancy is militant Islam. It cloaks itself in the mantle of a great faith, yet it murders Jews, Christians and Muslims alike with unforgiving impartiality. On September 11th it killed thousands of Americans, and it left the twin towers in smoldering ruins. Last night I laid a wreath on the 9/11 memorial. It was deeply moving. But as I was going there, one thing echoed in my mind: the outrageous words of the president of Iran on this podium yesterday. He implied that 9/11 was an American conspiracy. Some of you left this hall. All of you should have. (Applause.)

Since 9/11, militant Islamists slaughtered countless other innocents — in London and Madrid, in Baghdad and Mumbai, in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, in every part of Israel. I believe that the greatest danger facing our world is that this fanaticism will arm itself with nuclear weapons. And this is precisely what Iran is trying to do.

Can you imagine that man who ranted here yesterday — can you imagine him armed with nuclear weapons? The international community must stop Iran before it’s too late. If Iran is not stopped, we will all face the specter of nuclear terrorism, and the Arab Spring could soon become an Iranian winter. That would be a tragedy. Millions of Arabs have taken to the streets to replace tyranny with liberty, and no one would benefit more than Israel if those committed to freedom and peace would prevail.

This is my fervent hope. But as the prime minister of Israel, I cannot risk the future of the Jewish state on wishful thinking. Leaders must see reality as it is, not as it ought to be. We must do our best to shape the future, but we cannot wish away the dangers of the present.

And the world around Israel is definitely becoming more dangerous. Militant Islam has already taken over Lebanon and Gaza. It’s determined to tear apart the peace treaties between Israel and Egypt and between Israel and Jordan. It’s poisoned many Arab minds against Jews and Israel, against America and the West. It opposes not the policies of Israel but the existence of Israel.

Now, some argue that the spread of militant Islam, especially in these turbulent times — if you want to slow it down, they argue, Israel must hurry to make concessions, to make territorial compromises. And this theory sounds simple. Basically it goes like this: Leave the territory, and peace will be advanced. The moderates will be strengthened, the radicals will be kept at bay. And don’t worry about the pesky details of how Israel will actually defend itself; international troops will do the job.

These people say to me constantly: Just make a sweeping offer, and everything will work out. You know, there’s only one problem with that theory. We’ve tried it and it hasn’t worked. In 2000 Israel made a sweeping peace offer that met virtually all of the Palestinian demands. Arafat rejected it. The Palestinians then launched a terror attack that claimed a thousand Israeli lives.

Prime Minister Olmert afterwards made an even more sweeping offer, in 2008. President Abbas didn’t even respond to it.

But Israel did more than just make sweeping offers. We actually left territory. We withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 and from every square inch of Gaza in 2005. That didn’t calm the Islamic storm, the militant Islamic storm that threatens us. It only brought the storm closer and make it stronger.

Hezbollah and Hamas fired thousands of rockets against our cities from the very territories we vacated. See, when Israel left Lebanon and Gaza, the moderates didn’t defeat the radicals, the moderates were devoured by the radicals. And I regret to say that international troops like UNIFIL in Lebanon and UBAM (ph) in Gaza didn’t stop the radicals from attacking Israel.

We left Gaza hoping for peace.

We didn’t freeze the settlements in Gaza, we uprooted them. We did exactly what the theory says: Get out, go back to the 1967 borders, dismantle the settlements.

And I don’t think people remember how far we went to achieve this. We uprooted thousands of people from their homes. We pulled children out of — out of their schools and their kindergartens. We bulldozed synagogues. We even — we even moved loved ones from their graves. And then, having done all that, we gave the keys of Gaza to President Abbas.

Now the theory says it should all work out, and President Abbas and the Palestinian Authority now could build a peaceful state in Gaza. You can remember that the entire world applauded. They applauded our withdrawal as an act of great statesmanship. It was a bold act of peace.

But ladies and gentlemen, we didn’t get peace. We got war. We got Iran, which through its proxy Hamas promptly kicked out the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority collapsed in a day — in one day.

President Abbas just said on this podium that the Palestinians are armed only with their hopes and dreams. Yeah, hopes, dreams and 10,000 missiles and Grad rockets supplied by Iran, not to mention the river of lethal weapons now flowing into Gaza from the Sinai, from Libya, and from elsewhere.

Thousands of missiles have already rained down on our cities. So you might understand that, given all this, Israelis rightly ask: What’s to prevent this from happening again in the West Bank? See, most of our major cities in the south of the country are within a few dozen kilometers from Gaza. But in the center of the country, opposite the West Bank, our cities are a few hundred meters or at most a few kilometers away from the edge of the West Bank.

So I want to ask you. Would any of you — would any of you bring danger so close to your cities, to your families? Would you act so recklessly with the lives of your citizens? Israel is prepared to have a Palestinian state in the West Bank, but we’re not prepared to have another Gaza there. And that’s why we need to have real security arrangements, which the Palestinians simply refuse to negotiate with us.

Israelis remember the bitter lessons of Gaza. Many of Israel’s critics ignore them. They irresponsibly advise Israel to go down this same perilous path again. Your read what these people say and it’s as if nothing happened — just repeating the same advice, the same formulas as though none of this happened.

And these critics continue to press Israel to make far-reaching concessions without first assuring Israel’s security. They praise those who unwittingly feed the insatiable crocodile of militant Islam as bold statesmen. They cast as enemies of peace those of us who insist that we must first erect a sturdy barrier to keep the crocodile out, or at the very least jam an iron bar between its gaping jaws.

So in the face of the labels and the libels, Israel must heed better advice. Better a bad press than a good eulogy, and better still would be a fair press whose sense of history extends beyond breakfast, and which recognizes Israel’s legitimate security concerns.

I believe that in serious peace negotiations, these needs and concerns can be properly addressed, but they will not be addressed without negotiations. And the needs are many, because Israel is such a tiny country. Without Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, Israel is all of 9 miles wide.

I want to put it for you in perspective, because you’re all in the city. That’s about two-thirds the length of Manhattan. It’s the distance between Battery Park and Columbia University. And don’t forget that the people who live in Brooklyn and New Jersey are considerably nicer than some of Israel’s neighbors.

So how do you — how do you protect such a tiny country, surrounded by people sworn to its destruction and armed to the teeth by Iran? Obviously you can’t defend it from within that narrow space alone. Israel needs greater strategic depth, and that’s exactly why Security Council Resolution 242 didn’t require Israel to leave all the territories it captured in the Six-Day War. It talked about withdrawal from territories, to secure and defensible boundaries. And to defend itself, Israel must therefore maintain a long-term Israeli military presence in critical strategic areas in the West Bank.

I explained this to President Abbas. He answered that if a Palestinian state was to be a sovereign country, it could never accept such arrangements. Why not? America has had troops in Japan, Germany and South Korea for more than a half a century. Britain has had an airspace in Cyprus or rather an air base in Cyprus. France has forces in three independent African nations. None of these states claim that they’re not sovereign countries.

And there are many other vital security issues that also must be addressed. Take the issue of airspace. Again, Israel’s small dimensions create huge security problems. America can be crossed by jet airplane in six hours. To fly across Israel, it takes three minutes. So is Israel’s tiny airspace to be chopped in half and given to a Palestinian state not at peace with Israel?

Our major international airport is a few kilometers away from the West Bank. Without peace, will our planes become targets for antiaircraft missiles placed in the adjacent Palestinian state? And how will we stop the smuggling into the West Bank? It’s not merely the West Bank, it’s the West Bank mountains. It just dominates the coastal plain where most of Israel’s population sits below. How could we prevent the smuggling into these mountains of those missiles that could be fired on our cities?

I bring up these problems because they’re not theoretical problems. They’re very real. And for Israelis, they’re life-and- death matters. All these potential cracks in Israel’s security have to be sealed in a peace agreement before a Palestinian state is declared, not afterwards, because if you leave it afterwards, they won’t be sealed. And these problems will explode in our face and explode the peace.

The Palestinians should first make peace with Israel and then get their state. But I also want to tell you this. After such a peace agreement is signed, Israel will not be the last country to welcome a Palestinian state as a new member of the United Nations. We will be the first. (Applause.)

And there’s one more thing. Hamas has been violating international law by holding our soldier Gilad Shalit captive for five years.

They haven’t given even one Red Cross visit. He’s held in a dungeon, in darkness, against all international norms. Gilad Shalit is the son of Aviva and Noam Shalit. He is the grandson of Zvi Shalit, who escaped the Holocaust by coming to the — in the 1930s as a boy to the land of Israel. Gilad Shalit is the son of every Israeli family. Every nation represented here should demand his immediate release. (Applause.) If you want to — if you want to pass a resolution about the Middle East today, that’s the resolution you should pass. (Applause.)

Ladies and gentlemen, last year in Israel in Bar-Ilan University, this year in the Knesset and in the U.S. Congress, I laid out my vision for peace in which a demilitarized Palestinian state recognizes the Jewish state. Yes, the Jewish state. After all, this is the body that recognized the Jewish state 64 years ago. Now, don’t you think it’s about time that Palestinians did the same?

The Jewish state of Israel will always protect the rights of all its minorities, including the more than 1 million Arab citizens of Israel. I wish I could say the same thing about a future Palestinian state, for as Palestinian officials made clear the other day — in fact, I think they made it right here in New York — they said the Palestinian state won’t allow any Jews in it. They’ll be Jew-free — Judenrein. That’s ethnic cleansing. There are laws today in Ramallah that make the selling of land to Jews punishable by death. That’s racism. And you know which laws this evokes.

Israel has no intention whatsoever to change the democratic character of our state. We just don’t want the Palestinians to try to change the Jewish character of our state. (Applause.) We want to give up — we want them to give up the fantasy of flooding Israel with millions of Palestinians.

President Abbas just stood here, and he said that the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the settlements. Well, that’s odd. Our conflict has been raging for — was raging for nearly half a century before there was a single Israeli settlement in the West Bank. So if what President Abbas is saying was true, then the — I guess that the settlements he’s talking about are Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jaffa, Be’er Sheva. Maybe that’s what he meant the other day when he said that Israel has been occupying Palestinian land for 63 years. He didn’t say from 1967; he said from 1948. I hope somebody will bother to ask him this question because it illustrates a simple truth: The core of the conflict is not the settlements. The settlements are a result of the conflict. (Applause.)

The settlements have to be — it’s an issue that has to be addressed and resolved in the course of negotiations. But the core of the conflict has always been and unfortunately remains the refusal of the Palestinians to recognize a Jewish state in any border.

I think it’s time that the Palestinian leadership recognizes what every serious international leader has recognized, from Lord Balfour and Lloyd George in 1917, to President Truman in 1948, to President Obama just two days ago right here: Israel is the Jewish state. (Applause.)

President Abbas, stop walking around this issue. Recognize the Jewish state, and make peace with us. In such a genuine peace, Israel is prepared to make painful compromises. We believe that the Palestinians should be neither the citizens of Israel nor its subjects. They should live in a free state of their own. But they should be ready, like us, for compromise. And we will know that they’re ready for compromise and for peace when they start taking Israel’s security requirements seriously and when they stop denying our historical connection to our ancient homeland.

I often hear them accuse Israel of Judaizing Jerusalem. That’s like accusing America of Americanizing Washington, or the British of Anglicizing London. You know why we’re called “Jews”? Because we come from Judea.

In my office in Jerusalem, there’s a — there’s an ancient seal. It’s a signet ring of a Jewish official from the time of the Bible. The seal was found right next to the Western Wall, and it dates back 2,700 years, to the time of King Hezekiah. Now, there’s a name of the Jewish official inscribed on the ring in Hebrew. His name was Netanyahu. That’s my last name. My first name, Benjamin, dates back a thousand years earlier to Benjamin — Binyamin — the son of Jacob, who was also known as Israel. Jacob and his 12 sons roamed these same hills of Judea and Sumeria 4,000 years ago, and there’s been a continuous Jewish presence in the land ever since.

And for those Jews who were exiled from our land, they never stopped dreaming of coming back: Jews in Spain, on the eve of their expulsion; Jews in the Ukraine, fleeing the pogroms; Jews fighting the Warsaw Ghetto, as the Nazis were circling around it. They never stopped praying, they never stopped yearning. They whispered: Next year in Jerusalem. Next year in the promised land.

As the prime minister of Israel, I speak for a hundred generations of Jews who were dispersed throughout the lands, who suffered every evil under the Sun, but who never gave up hope of restoring their national life in the one and only Jewish state.

Ladies and gentlemen, I continue to hope that President Abbas will be my partner in peace. I’ve worked hard to advance that peace. The day I came into office, I called for direct negotiations without preconditions. President Abbas didn’t respond. I outlined a vision of peace of two states for two peoples. He still didn’t respond. I removed hundreds of roadblocks and checkpoints, to ease freedom of movement in the Palestinian areas; this facilitated a fantastic growth in the Palestinian economy. But again — no response. I took the unprecedented step of freezing new buildings in the settlements for 10 months. No prime minister did that before, ever. (Scattered applause.) Once again — you applaud, but there was no response. No response.

In the last few weeks, American officials have put forward ideas to restart peace talks. There were things in those ideas about borders that I didn’t like. There were things there about the Jewish state that I’m sure the Palestinians didn’t like.

But with all my reservations, I was willing to move forward on these American ideas.

President Abbas, why don’t you join me? We have to stop negotiating about the negotiations. Let’s just get on with it. Let’s negotiate peace.

I spent years defending Israel on the battlefield. I spent decades defending Israel in the court of public opinion. President Abbas, you’ve dedicated your life to advancing the Palestinian cause. Must this conflict continue for generations, or will we enable our children and our grandchildren to speak in years ahead of how we found a way to end it? That’s what we should aim for, and that’s what I believe we can achieve.

In two and a half years, we met in Jerusalem only once, even though my door has always been open to you. If you wish, I’ll come to Ramallah. Actually, I have a better suggestion. We’ve both just flown thousands of miles to New York. Now we’re in the same city. We’re in the same building. So let’s meet here today in the United Nations. Who’s there to stop us? What is there to stop us? If we genuinely want peace, what is there to stop us from meeting today and beginning peace negotiations?

And I suggest we talk openly and honestly. Let’s listen to one another. Let’s do as we say in the Middle East: Let’s talk “doogri”. That means straightforward. I’ll tell you my needs and concerns. You’ll tell me yours. And with God’s help, we’ll find the common ground of peace.

There’s an old Arab saying that you cannot applaud with one hand. Well, the same is true of peace. I cannot make peace alone. I cannot make peace without you. President Abbas, I extend my hand — the hand of Israel — in peace. I hope that you will grasp that hand. We are both the sons of Abraham. My people call him Avraham. Your people call him Ibrahim. We share the same patriarch. We dwell in the same land. Our destinies are intertwined. Let us realize the vision of Isaiah — (speaks in Hebrew) — “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light.” Let that light be the light of peace.

Terror alert in southern Israel

Israel border area awash with troops following terror alertAn urgent terror alert was called in southern Israel on Friday following defence warnings of an imminent attack from Hamas terrorists. Defence chiefs warned that information had been received about an intention from Hamas and other terror groups to carry out attacks on the Israel-Egypt border.

via Rapture Ready News.

Gossip NOT

Jim Bakker’s Blog

Woe is Me – Part 4
Posted: 22 Sep 2011 08:32 AM PDT
Woe to Those Who Destroy Others!

The world loves to hear gossip. In addition to printed material, we now have the ability through social media on the internet to multipy the effects of what we say for good or for evil. This is the information age, but we get a lot of disinformation! One of the greatest travesties of social media today is the ability of anyone to start rumors, gossip and slander about anybody. Hollywood even glamorizes it! The right of ‘free speech’ is taken to the absurd and social media is often used as a vehicle to air suspicion, bitterness, and outright lies. People who are looking for something bad about anyone will usually find it on the internet!

Have you noticed that the things people are saying are becoming more and more vicious? This is especially true when they can do it anonymously. Behavior like that is somewhat more expected from the unregenerate, but we now see so much of this within the ranks of those who claim Jesus as Savior and Lord. My friends, this should not be.

When I went through the Valley in the 80’s and 90’s, it was not the words of the secular population that wounded my soul as much as it was the voices of those in the Church. David had some experience with those kind of ‘friends’. In Psalm 55:12-14 he said, “For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it: neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me; then I would have hid myself from him: But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of God in company.” KJV

Do you want to know who to listen to? …who to trust? Seek out that one that you never hear saying anything bad about anybody. That’s the one you can trust not to stab you in the back if they witness you in your humanity. Surround yourself with people who have learned that if they can’t say something good, then don’t say anything at all.

God does not take kindly to those who set out to destroy others. In fact, He says “Woe” to the them. That word ‘woe’ means “grief, alas, anguish, torment.” Those who set out to destroy others bring grief, anguish and torment upon themselves. It’s amazing how moral immoral people become when they’re out to destroy others. Yet, they want their own sins covered.

I don’t know why some people never learn this lesson. I don’t know why some people have to go down that slippery slope. It is a path many have traveled before and should have learned that it will only RETURN grief. You don’t gossip about God’s people without serious consequences and it’s time we get that straight and repent of it before we have to face the ‘woes’ that are surely coming. We can’t control what the world does in its vicious gossip, but we can let the Word of God cause us to repent of doing the same thing within the Church.

Isaiah 33:1 NCV

How terrible it will be for you or woe to you who destroy others but have not been destroyed yet.

How terrible it will be for you, traitor, whom no one has turned against yet.

When you stop destroying, others will destroy you.

When you stop turning against others, they will turn against you. NCV

Proverbs 26:27 NCV

Whoever digs a pit for others will fall into it.

Whoever tries to roll a boulder down on others will be crushed by it.

The days ahead of us…

Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking.I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires.They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.”But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water.By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly livesas you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat.But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him.He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position.But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen. (2 Peter 3:1-18 BOOKS-ENG)

Treasures in Heaven

Jim Bakker’s Blog I CUT AND PASTED THIS ITEM.

Treasure in Heaven
Posted: 22 Sep 2011 09:58 AM PDT

Most of us want our lives to count for something. When you are a Child of God, your life on this earth takes on a greater cause than just accomplishing something in the natural. A Child of God is not satisfied with accomplishments – a Child of God wants to store up treasures in Heaven where moths and rust cannot corrupt them.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. “But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:19-21

We recently dedicated our Grace Cinema to Evelyn Campbell, aka “God’s Girl” who passed from this life into the arms of Jesus in 2010. Evelyn was and is an inspiration to me and an example that all of us can follow. Evelyn’s legacy was that she loved Jesus and believed in people – and lavishly poured out encouragement on everyone with whom she came in contact. She was a pastor’s wife and she was my friend.

Evelyn was one of the first people to buy a condo here at Morningside. I remember how excited she was to pick out the exact location of her new home so that she could watch all the goings on here on Grace Street from her balcony. She wanted to be a vibrant part of the community. When Evelyn died, she left her entire estate to this ministry – at a time when we desperately needed it! She believed in us and she put the sum of her life’s work into keeping us alive.

As we embark on the vision of Lori’s House here at Morningside, we have a ‘knowing’ that we are on the threshold of something very sacred and near to the heart of God. There is a sense of purpose and unity in the grace it takes to give and sustain innocent life. This grace is uniting more and more of us in the business of keeping people alive in these last days. It’s bigger than buildings or ministries or television broadcasts. It’s about souls – the only eternally significant treasure we can invest our lives in and know that we are doing the Lord’s work.

In the dark night of my soul, when I was in prison, the enemy came after the last shred of my will to live when he said “it’s all gone – everything you’ve worked for – everything you’ve built – your life has counted for nothing – you’re no good.”

Then I began to get pictures of people, some teen-agers, some children, some adults. With the pictures came the encouragement that these were lives that were saved through the various ministries at Heritage USA – most importantly, the home for unwed mothers where babies were born and cared for and their mothers supported and trained in a vocation that could support them. It was a vibrant community that loved and supported each other and protected and loved innocent children. The devil is a liar!

We can see from the signs of the times that Jesus will come soon. He is coming for a Church that has his heart and is lead and motivated by love. They will be about their Father’s business – and no business is more perfect than caring for the orphans (James 1:27).

We need more Evelyns in these last days. We need people who are willing to give all they are and all they have for the work of the Lord. These are the ones who go beyond their own search for significance and understand that the real treasure is in the life to come – eternal life with Jesus. These are the ones who resonate with the call of justice for the innocent. These are the ones who store up treasures that moth and rust cannot corrupt.

Will you not be a part of this justice league? The call is going out – the gauntlet is being thrown down. It’s time to redeem the time. It’s time to be a part of something bigger than yourself. It’s time to get behind something that has eternal significance. We need you and God needs you.

Treasures in Heaven

Woe is Me – Part 4
Posted: 22 Sep 2011 08:32 AM PDT
Woe to Those Who Destroy Others!

Tabloid journalism has exploded in the last 30 years, much of it purely made-up, most of it completely fictitious… all of it unreliable. The world considers tabloid journalism good entertainment though some of it is vicious and its effects have been devastating to the lives of individuals. Why does the world read it? Because they love to hear gossip.

In addition to printed material, we now have the ability through social media on the internet to multipy the effects of what we say for good or for evil. This is the information age, but we get a lot of disinformation! One of the greatest travesties of social media today is the ability of anyone to start rumors, gossip and slander about anybody. Hollywood even glamorizes it! The right of ‘free speech’ is taken to the absurd and social media is often used as a vehicle to air suspicion, bitterness, and outright lies. People who are looking for something bad about anyone will usually find it on the internet!

Have you noticed that the things people are saying are becoming more and more vicious? This is especially true when they can do it anonymously. Behavior like that is somewhat more expected from the unregenerate, but we now see so much of this within the ranks of those who claim Jesus as Savior and Lord. My friends, this should not be.

When I went through the Valley in the 80’s and 90’s, it was not the words of the secular population that wounded my soul as much as it was the voices of those in the Church. David had some experience with those kind of ‘friends’. In Psalm 55:12-14 he said, “For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it: neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me; then I would have hid myself from him: But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of God in company.” KJV

Do you want to know who to listen to? …who to trust? Seek out that one that you never hear saying anything bad about anybody. That’s the one you can trust not to stab you in the back if they witness you in your humanity. Surround yourself with people who have learned that if they can’t say something good, then don’t say anything at all.

God does not take kindly to those who set out to destroy others. In fact, He says “Woe” to the them. That word ‘woe’ means “grief, alas, anguish, torment.” Those who set out to destroy others bring grief, anguish and torment upon themselves. It’s amazing how moral immoral people become when they’re out to destroy others. Yet, they want their own sins covered.

I don’t know why some people never learn this lesson. I don’t know why some people have to go down that slippery slope. It is a path many have traveled before and should have learned that it will only RETURN grief. You don’t gossip about God’s people without serious consequences and it’s time we get that straight and repent of it before we have to face the ‘woes’ that are surely coming. We can’t control what the world does in its vicious gossip, but we can let the Word of God cause us to repent of doing the same thing within the Church.

Isaiah 33:1 NCV

How terrible it will be for you or woe to you who destroy others but have not been destroyed yet.

How terrible it will be for you, traitor, whom no one has turned against yet.

When you stop destroying, others will destroy you.

When you stop turning against others, they will turn against you. NCV

Proverbs 26:27 NCV

Whoever digs a pit for others will fall into it.

Whoever tries to roll a boulder down on others will be crushed by it.

Earthquake 6.9 rocks Sikkim…”When God talks, Creation rocks”.

Major quake rocks Sikkim, tremors in N IndiaAn earthquake of 6.8 magnitude rocked Sikkim in Northeast India on Sunday evening. The tremors of the quake, which hit at around 6.10 pm, were felt as far as Delhi in North India. Major quake rocks Sikkim, tremors in N India According to the US Geological Survey, the epicentre of the quake was located at a depth of 10 kilometre. Major quake rocks Sikkim, tremors in N India Mild tremors were also felt across West Bengal, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Rajasthan.

via Rapture Ready News.

It pays to dig up dirt… There is so much more read 1 Samuel 17

Finding Goliath? Archaeologists Uncover Details About the Bible‘s ’Bad Guy’ Philistines

At the remains of an ancient metropolis in southern Israel, archaeologists are piecing together the history of a people remembered chiefly as the bad guys of the Hebrew Bible. The city of Gath, where the annual digging season began this week, is helping scholars paint a more nuanced portrait of the Philistines, who appear in the biblical story as the perennial enemies of the Israelites.

via Rapture Ready News.

Turkey and Middle East Update…(copied from Rapture Ready)

Togarmah Turbulence Stirring in Mideast  {more articles at www.RaptureReady.com

Current turmoil over last year’s Israeli Defense Force (IDF) naval commandos’ interception and action against a ship carrying pro-Palestinian operatives intent on running an Israeli blockade brings to the surface of Mideast tensions a reminder of Turkey’s future connection with the Gog-Magog prophecy.

Present-day Turkey sits geographically on much of the territory known in ancient times as Togarmah, whose inhabitants are predicted to be among the peoples that will attack Israel. The prophesied assault is termed the battle of Gog-Magog. The nations listed to invade from Israel’s north are given in Ezekiel 38:3-6. Turkey was governed by a secular government more or less friendly to Israel for many years. For the past several years, however, that country has turned toward religionists of the Islamist persuasion to govern, and Turkey has moved away from the ties that once held the two states together in a non-confrontational, even cooperative, disposition.

The most recent wedge issue further alienating the countries is Turkey’s determination to bring Israel before the United Nations to seek UN judgment against IDF actions that resulted in nine Turkish citizens being killed. Turkey is seeking the action through the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Based in The Hague, the ICJ is a permanent UN court set up to rule on state-to-state disputes. The primary judgment being sought is against Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

The nine pro-Palestinian Turkish citizens killed were on board the Turkish-flagged ship, Mavi Marmara, at the time the Israeli navy intercepted it on May 31, 2010 while it sailed toward Gaza’s coast. The pro-Palestinian activists on board at the time of the interception and boarding said the commandos started shooting as soon as they hit the deck. But the Israeli military said its comman

via Nearing Midnight.

Nearing Midnight

Sep 12, 2011  MY NOTE TO JOHNSON:  COPIED FROM INTERNET AT WWW.RAPTUREREADY.COM

Why Does America Seem Cursed?

There can be no doubt that 2011 is now the most calamity-prone year in American history. Three weeks ago, I wrote that the U.S. has set a record for the year with the most costly weather disasters. By the time the year is over, we could have $200 billion in weather-related losses.

Hurricane Irene has added $14 billion to the tab, and it is only the tenth billion-dollar weather event of the year. Amazingly, the hurricane was only a category 1 storm when it made landfall. Irene was able to inflict so much damage by having a perfect track over the most populated area of the East Coast.

Tropical Storm Lee was another weak storm that inflicted heavy losses. It never reached hurricane status, but it generated misery through relentless rainfall. Lee broke no less than eight major records for flooding.

The losses from the Texas drought continue to add up. It is now the worst dry spell in the history of that state. I can see the effects of the drought here in Arkansas. Every time I drive to Little Rock, I see at least ten trucks hauling massive loads of hay in the direction of the Lone Star State. So much hay is being moved to Texas on Interstate 30 that a layer of hay is building up on the side of the road.

Not all of America’s problems are weather related. Our nation has been struggling with a financial crisis for the past three years. You would have to go back to the days of the Great Depression to find a longer period of economic stagnation. Right now, Washington is trying to come up with a plan that creates new jobs.

You can see our downfall in various lists that are used to track the wealth status of nations. We no longer have the tallest buildings, the fastest trains, the busiest ports, or the most cars. The only category we lead in is that we are the country with the largest national debt.

Most prophecy-minded C

via Nearing Midnight.

Israel Watch

Sep 12, 2011   MY NOTE:  COPIED FROM INTERNET

Obama’s Betrayal of Israel

My friends at Encounter Books are innovative and informative. Their “broadsides” collection of pamphlets, in the tradition of the Founding Fathers, offers booklet-size position papers that are terrific for understanding our world, especially geopolitics.

Michael A. Ledeen has written Obama’s Betrayal of Israel, and I’d urge you to get a few copies and pass out to friends. I read my copy this morning after hearing about the Egyptian mob that stormed Israel’s embassy in Cairo.

We have Mr. Obama to thank for this. His sycophantic speech in Cairo a few years ago let the radicals know that the White House would stand-down if the Muslim Brotherhood came to power.

Which has now happened.

Only this morning, a statement was issued that Obama is “very concerned” about the situation. What is he concerned about, that Israel will actually keep its embassy in a sea of hostility?

Obama’s claim that American support for Israel is “unbreakable” is either disingenuous or naïve. And I don’t think he’s naïve. As I often tell liberals in the Church, one cannot—at least in the current climate—claim to be “for Israel’s security” while at the same time advocating for a Palestinian state. The Palestinians are thirsting for the liquidation of Israel, so it is illogical that one is both “pro Israel and pro Palestinian.”

Interestingly, as Ledeen points out, “Israelis certainly get the picture. In a recent poll, only 4 percent of Israelis said they thought President Obama’s policies are supportive of Israel.”

You see, the people who actually live in the region, and defend themselves daily against Arab terrorism, understand what the American liberal Church evidently does

via Israel Watch.

» Congress Contemplates Draconian Punishment for Internet Lies Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!

Congress Contemplates Draconian Punishment for Internet Lies

Orin S. Kerr

WSJ Online

September 17, 2011

Imagine that President Obama could order the arrest of anyone who broke a promise on the Internet. So you could be jailed for lying about your age or weight on an Internet dating site. Or you could be sent to federal prison if your boss told you to work but you used the company’s computer to check sports scores online. Imagine that Eric Holder’s Justice Department urged Congress to raise penalties for violations, making them felonies allowing three years in jail for each broken promise. Fanciful, right?

Think again. Congress is now poised to grant the Obama administration’s wishes in the name of “cybersecurity.”  MY NOTE;  MORE TO THIS ARTICLE

via » Congress Contemplates Draconian Punishment for Internet Lies Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!.