News for October 27, 2005

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Iranian’s ‘wipe Israel off map’ words prompt sharp world response (October 27, 2005) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s call for Israel to be “wiped off the map” triggered widespread outrage and prompted Israel to describe the regime in Tehran as “a clear and present danger”. “We believe that Iran is trying to buy time ... so it can develop a nuclear bomb,” said Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom in Jerusalem. “Iran is a clear and present danger,” he said at a joint press conference in Jerusalem with visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. In Washington, the White House said the words of the hardline Iranian president also underlined US concerns about Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. “It just reconfirms what we have been saying about the regime in Iran. It underscores the concerns we have about Iran’s nuclear operations,” spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. In Berlin, the German government said the comments were “completely unacceptable”. “If these comments were in fact made, they are completely unacceptable and should be condemned in the strongest terms,” said foreign ministry spokesman Walter Lindner. Together with Britain and France, Germany is a member of the so-called EU3 group that is negotiating with Tehran over its controversial nuclear programme. But the Russian foreign minister differed, saying Moscow had no substantial evidence that “we have a clear and present danger” from Iran’s nuclear programme. more...

Iran is a clear and present danger says Israel (October 27, 2005) - Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad issued call to “wipe Israel off the map” and threatened a new wave of Palestinian attacks to destroy the Jewish state. Israel responded: Iran is a clear and present danger. As well as the Hizballah, Iran is the principle sponsor of the Palestinian Jihad Islami whose suicide bomber killed 5 Israelis in Hadera market a few hours later. Ahmadinejad told students at a conference in Tehran called The World Without Zionism: “An yone who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury. Any Islamic leader who recognizes the Zionist regime means he is acknowledge the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world.” France is reported considering recalling its ambassador from Tehran in protest against an unacceptably savage attack on Israel.

Russian Foreign Minister Brushes Off Israel's Call for Quick Action Against Iran (October 27, 2005) - Lavrov also suggested that Russia will not pursue UN sanctions against Syria. The U.S., France and Britain want the Security Council to consider sanctions after last week’s UN report alleging Syrian involvement in the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. “Our aim is not to adopt sanctions as an aim in itself but to make sure that the culprits in the assassination of Prime Minister Hariri are brought to justice,” Lavrov said after a meeting with his Palestinian counterpart, Nasser Al Kidwa. As one of the five permanent members of the council, Russia can veto any of the body’s decisions. Lavrov said Russia will accept the results of the inquiry and has urged Syria to cooperate with the commission. The report implicated top Syrian and Lebanese security officials and accused Syria of not cooperating with the probe. Syria denies the allegations. Israeli officials have long considered Iran to be the biggest threat to their country, and accuse the Tehran government of pursuing nuclear weapons and missile technology that could be used against Israel. more...

Russia Launches Booster Rocket With Iranian Satellite (October 27, 2005) - Russian booster rocket with eight satellites was launched Thursday morning from the Plesetsk space center. One of the satellites, the Sina-1, belongs to Iran. The other satellites are China’s DMC, Norway’s NCube-2, the European Space Agency’s SSYTI Express, the UK’s TopSat, Germany’s UWE-1, Japan’s XI-V, and Russia’s Mozhayets-5, the Russian space forces’ press service reported. The launch of the Chinese-origin Sina had been twice postponed because of technical difficulties. Sources said Iran failed to complete the Sina on schedule. Iran had originally planned to launch the Sina-1 on its own, but later decided on the Russian booster rocket. The United States expressed their opposition to Iran’s unilateral plan to launch the satellite.

Christian Bigotry: The Only Acceptable Cultural Prejudice (October 27, 2005) - The slow but steady rise of the anti-Christian tide began in the early to mid 80’s and is now reaching the flood stage. Do you think I am overreacting? Here is just one week’s worth of anti-Christian headlines:

• “Massachusetts Mannn Arrested for Protest of Homosexual Kindergarten Curriculum”
• “Air Force Rule May Ban Chrisitian Prayer”
• “Wiccan Halts Jesus Prayers at Town Council”
• “Distribution of Bibles, Open Prayer Stopped by School Administration”
• “Air Force Sued Over Religious Intolerance.”
• “Praying School Board Compared to Terrorists”
• “Police Arrested Christians Sharing Faith Outside of Courthouse”

And these are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. From California to the Carolinas andn from the Florida Keys to the Canadian border, Christian faith in America is under fire. Organizations like the ACLU, People for the American Way, and a host of other leftist groups are in full attack mode against anything that remotely resembles a public Christian testimony. more...

Engineers Report Breakthrough in Laser Beam Technology (October 27, 2005) - A team of Stanford electrical engineers has discovered how to modulate, or switch on and off, a beam of laser light up to a 100 billion times a second with materials that are widely used in the semiconductor industry. The group used a standard chip-making process to design a key component of optical networking gear potentially more than 10 times faster than the highest-performance commercial products available today. The team reported its discovery in the current issue of Nature, which was published on Wednesday. Such an advance could have broad applications both in accelerating the already declining cost of optical networking and in potentially transforming computers in the future by making it possible to interconnect computer chips at extremely high data rates. Currently, the communications industry uses costly equipment to transmit data over optical fibers at up to 10 billion bits per second. However, researchers are already experimenting with optically linked computers in which components may be located on different sides of the globe. Cheap optical switches will also make it possible to create data superhighways inside computers, making it possible to reorganize them for better performance. more...

Sharon: Israel to launch ‘broad, non-stop’ operations (October 27, 2005) - In the wake of Wednesday’s suicide bombing in Hadera, which claimed the lives of five Israelis, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told the media that Israel would launch a “broad, non-stop” operation against Palestinian terror groups. “Yesterday we witnessed a serious terror attack,” Sharon said Thursday morning at the start of a meeting with visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. “Unfortunately, the Palestinian Authority isn’t taking a single serious step to fight terror. We are unwilling to tolerate, under any circumstances, the continuation of terror. Therefore, our operational activity will be broad and non-stop until we bring about the end of the terror.” Overnight Wednesday, Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz decided to clamp down on Islamic Jihad, which claimed responsibility for the attack. Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said there was no time limit to the offensive, which will continue until the group’s infrastructure is eliminated or the Palestinian Authority begins to act against terrorist groups. “Islamic Jihad has declared war on every Israeli civilian and of course we’re 100 percent entitled to take the appropriate action to defend our civilians,” Regev said. more...

IDF Launches Air Strikes in Gaza in Response to Attack (October 27, 2005) - There were no immediate reports of casualties in the strike in an open field near Gaza City. Shortly afterwards, Israel launched a new air strike in the northern Gaza Strip, damaging a road but causing no casualties, Palestinian witnesses said. The Israel Defense Forces said it was checking the report. The government on Wednesday night approved a major military operation in the territories a few hours after a suicide bombing in Hadera killed five people and wounded 55. The military operation, which was approved by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, will take place on two fronts: the northern West Bank and northern Gaza. The operation’s main target will be Islamic Jihad, which claimed responsibility for the bombing. However, ordinary Palestinians will also be affected, since a series of measures aimed at easing life for civilians will be rescinded for at least the duration of the operation. more...

Syria gets Iranian boost (October 26, 2005) - Western diplomat says Iran made commitment to Syria to provide Iranian technical assistance to facilitate Syria’s chemical warfare program. With the release of the UN International Independent Investigation Commission interim report on 20 October into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri increasing international pressure on Syria, a diplomatic source has said that Damascus is nevertheless pursuing what they describe as “an innovative chemical warfare (CW) program in co-operation with Iran”, Jane’s Defence Weekly newspaper reported Monday. The essence of this co-operation, the source told the newspaper, “is Tehran’s contractual commitment, made to Syria a few months ago, to provide Iranian CW technical assistance to facilitate Syria’s CW program”. Utilizing this assistance, they said, Syria hopes to reach an independent production capability of precursors for producing CW agents, which it has so far been unable to achieve. According to the source, Iran will assist Syria in the planning, establishment and pilot operation of about four or five facilities throughout Syria for the production of precursors for VX and Sarin nerve agents and mustard blister agent. “This project is unprecedented and millions of US dollars have been allocated to implement it,” the source said. “The project includes building major facilities, including advanced equipment to produce tens to hundreds of tons of CW precursors per year that are sufficient for CW industrial manufacturing pilot production,” the source added. more...

Size of Bankruptcy Bubble Surprises Banks (October 27, 2005) - For more than eight years, big banks lobbied aggressively to make it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy. Now that the new bankruptcy law has taken effect, was the investment worth it? The early data suggest that sometimes, you have to be careful what you wish for. Bankruptcy filings were supposed to snowball in the months before the tough new law went into effect on Oct. 17. But the avalanche of petitions, and the lines of debtors streaming out the courthouse doors caught even the credit card issuers who supported the new law by surprise. In recent days, the five biggest bank issuers of credit cards have said that the unexpectedly large flood of filings shaved hundreds of million of dollars off their earnings in the third quarter. But with tens of thousands of petitions still being processed and Hurricane Katrina’s impact on cardholders still being sorted out, the bankruptcy rush is likely to result in well over a billion dollars worth of losses by the end of the year. “We thought it would cause a bubble,” James Dimon, the president of J. P. Morgan Chase, said last week. “The bubble is just bigger than we thought.” more...

Is it the Weather or Government Terror? Link Lost (October 27, 2005) - Government manipulation of weather for terror and destruction is one pattern your local weatherman is surely not pointing out. So let me help with the forecast, past, present and long-range. Starting on December 26, 2004, you had the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, an undersea earthquake that generated a tsunami that killed approximately 275,000 people. As the linked article reports, the magnitude of the Indian Ocean quake now stands at 9.15, making it one of the most deadly and frightening in history. From the third paragraph, come some hair-raising facts . . .

In May, scientists reported that the earthquake itself lasted nearly ten minutes when most major earthquakes last no more than a few seconds; it caused the entire planet to vibrate at least a few centimetres. It also triggered earthquakes elsewhere, as far away as Alaska.

The section on “Tectonic Plates” gives two more earth-shaking pieces of information . . .

. . . Seismographic and acoustic data indicate that the first phase involved the formation of a rupture about . . . 250 mi . . . long and . . . 60 mi wide, located . . . 19 mi . . . beneath the sea bed - the longest known rupture ever known to have been caused by an earthquake (italics mine) . . .

As well as the sideways movement between the plates, the sea bed is estimated to have risen by several metres, displacing an estimated . . . 7 cu mi . . . of water and triggering devastating tsunami waves. The waves did not originate from a point source, as mistakenly depicted in some illustrations of their spread, but radiated outwards along the entire . . . 750 mi . . . length of the rupture. This greatly increased the geographical area over which the waves were observed, reaching as far as Mexico, Chile and the Arctic. The raising of the sea bed significantly reduced the capacity of the Indian Ocean, producing a permanent rise in the global sea level by an estimated 0.1 mm.

Stated more simply, these facts point to an extraordinary amount of energy expended to produce extraordinary events, including a permanent rise in sea level. From the “Power of the earthquake” section, there are more unsettling statistics . . .

The total energy released by the earthquake in the Indian Ocean . . . is equivalent to 100 gigatons of TNT, or about as much energy as is used in the United States in 6 months. It is estimated to have resulted in an oscillation of the Earth’s surface of about 20–30 cm (8 to 12 in), equivalent to the effect of the tidal forces caused by the Sun and Moon. The shock waves of the earthquake were felt across the planet; as far away as Oklahoma, vertical movements of 3 mm (0.12 in) were recorded. The entire Earth’s surface is estimated to have moved vertically by up to 1 cm (italics mine).

. . . It also caused the Earth to minutely “wobble” on its axis by up to 2.5 cm (1 in) . . . or perhaps by up to 5 or 6 cm (2.0 to 2.4 in). . . . blockquote>

Simply stated, here we have an event that expends so much energy it literally shortens the day, causes the earth to wobble and its surface to raise.

What's more, on March 28, we have another earthquake in the area of Northern Sumatra and Indonesia. According to the National Earthquake Information Center, U.S. Geological Survey, it weighs in at 8.7. Add to that, a total of six Major Earthquakes around the World in 2005 , all over a magnitude of 7.0, not counting the one in Islamabad in Pakistan, which we'll deal with in a moment. more...

while I’m not prepared to declare any source for these happenings, I find it fits with what Yeshua said would happen, earthquakes in divers places. [Matthew 24:7; Mark 13:8; Luke 21:11]

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Hate Crime Laws and the Path to Tyranny (October 27, 2005) - The insidious thing about evolutionary tyranny is that it’s gradual progression. It doesn’t beat you over the head with the iron fist of a despot or sweep you aside with a wave of revolution, but, rather, is a death by a thousand doses of bad medicine that makes benign neglect seem utopian. One example of this brand of tyranny is the proliferation of hate-crime laws in the Western World. The very concept of hate-crime law itself is an offense against freedom and, as such, is quintessentially un-American. Yes, I hate hate-crime laws. And so should you. The main problem with hate-crime law is that it is an effort at thought-control masquerading as legitimate criminal-justice legislation. Let’s examine why this is so. Consider this example: two identical illegal acts are committed; the perpetrator of one is motivated by hate, whereas the perpetrator of the other is motivated by good old greed. I’ll call the latter Mr. Greed and the former Mr. Hate. The punishment deemed appropriate for Mr. Greed is ten years in prison, but the punishment visited upon Mr. Hate is twenty years up the river because his crime was motivated by a worse impulse. more...

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Both Bashar Assad & Mahmoud Abbas are Teetering (October 27, 2005) - The Syrian leadership has gathered itself in for the next shock after the UN Hariri investigation’s findings drawn up by Detlev Mehlis implicated President Bashar Assad’s close family circle in the assassination of Lebanese leader Rafiq Hariri last February. They expect the UN Security Council convening Tuesday, Oct. 25, to pass an American-French draft resolution condemning Damascus. They are also braced for another disastrous UN report. This one was drawn up by Special Middle East Envoy Terje Roed-Larsen - according to DEBKAfile’s sources, as a cooperative effort with Mehlis. It damns Damascus for violating Security Council resolution 1559 which ordered foreign forces to quit Lebanon and the dismantling of militias in the country. Larsen will expose Syria as continuing to maintain military intelligence agents in Lebanon and derailing efforts to start decommissioning the Hizballah. The presidential palace in Damascus has set up an emergency response team to ward off these hammer blows. It is made up of officials of the presidency, the foreign ministry, the security services and legal experts. But this official framework is only a façade; it does not affect the turmoil raging inside the close Assad family circle or pacify the top military brass. more...

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Nanofabrication to Lead to Quantum Computer (October 27, 2005) - The team of scientists headed by professor Jeremy Levy at Pitts University has developed nanofabrication tools. The team has an electron beam lithography and nano engineering workstation - with an electron beam capable of adding and taking away from materials to create incredibly small objects. This according to Prof. Levy could lead to create a quantum computer, and it could break all codes on the Internet. Nano-fabrication is a technology that has the ability to create and destroy on a very small scale. Pitt now has a Raith electron beam lithography and Nan engineering workstation - with an electron beam capable of adding and taking away from materials to create incredibly small objects. The device uses five small capillaries. These are hollow injection needles. They are used to add specific gases and materials to a small surface. Then a small beam of electrons acts to help these gases interact with the object to shape it. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter, 1,000 nanometers is a micron and 100 microns is about the width of a single strand of hair. This implies that by its inherent nature the technology is precise. more...

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Electromagnetic Fusion & ET Space Technology (October 27, 2005) - In an interview with Robert Stanley, space technology consultant David Adair goes on the record about his extraordinary experiences at Area 51 when, as a mere teenager, he was testing one of his electromagnetic fusion engine prototypes.

Robert Stanley: Tell me about the government disclosure letter you are circulating.

David Adair: That letter is based on a series of events that occurred when I first testified for Dr Steven Greer in 1997. It’s very simple what we want: a congressional hearing that will grant covert operatives total immunity from their national security oath. Dr Greer is telling us that he has hundreds of witnesses. I know he is not blowing smoke regarding this issue, because in 1971 I saw a lot of people working on these things.

Robert: At Area 51?

David: Right. I saw them underground working on all these different craft and back-engineering lots of stuff. I believe there are people that have spent 30 years or more working on these types of projects. Imagine what they could tell us! But more importantly, they would be able to tell us who paid them, who signed the cheques.

Robert: So you are pushing for public hearings?

David: Absolutely. I really want the world to hear what these hard-core engineers have to say. more...

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Miers withdraws Supreme Court nomination (October 27, 2005) - President Bush on Thursday accepted the withdrawal of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, according to a statement from the White House. In her letter to the president, Miers said she was “concerned that the confirmation process presents a burden for the White House and its staff and it is not in the best interest of the country.” The White House said Miers had to withdraw over concerns that senators wanted documents of privileged discussions between the president and his top lawyer. more...

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Thousands implicated in payoffs to Saddam (October 27, 2005) - More than 4,500 companies took part in the UN oil-for-food program and more than half of them paid illegal surcharges and kickbacks to Saddam Hussein, the committee investigating the program was to report Thursday. The country with the most companies involved in the program was Russia, followed by France, according to investigators for the committee. The inquiry was led by Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. The findings are in the committee’s fifth and final report, a document of more than 500 pages detailing how outside companies from more than 60 countries were able to evade UN controls and make money for themselves as well as for the Saddam government. more...

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C. S. Lewis Letter Confirms That He Wrote Classic as Metaphor of Christ and His Redemption (October 27, 2005) - Author’s own words discredit skeptics who claim The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is nothing more than fantasy. As the opening date for the highly anticipated film, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, nears, Dr. Ted Baehr hopes Christians will not be misinformed about it’s powerful message of Christ’s redemption by skeptics who have long determined to minimize the message by denying that Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia are nothing more than fantasy. The book, and the film, are far more than just an entertaining story, says Baehr. Arguably the 20th Century’s most famous convert to Christianity, C. S. Lewis wrote The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when he was a renowned Oxford professor. Says Dr. Baehr, “C.S. Lewis was the great Christian apologist of the 20th Century. His radio programs reached millions and galvanized a new revival in the 1940s in the United Kingdom during World War II. His books including The Chronicles of Narnia have been read by 90 million people...” more...