JPost.com Staff
Late Sunday, US Vice President Dick Cheney met with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who told him that while Israel supports sanctions against Iran, "none of the options should be taken off the table," according to a Defense Ministry statement - a reference to possible military action.
Before meeting with President Shimon Peres, Cheney said the US was dedicated to doing all it could to advance the peace process. He said the administration also was "actively involved in dealing with the threats that we see emerging in the region - not only threats to Israel, but threats to the United States as well."
It was clear that Cheney was referring to Iran. Peres was more specific, saying declarations that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made against Israel cannot be ignored. Peres also told Cheney that the US and Europe were apparently ignoring Iran's ballistic missile development.
"Iran's only intentions of developing ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads are to destroy Israel and threaten the entire world," he added.
Peres stressed that the anti-Israel declarations that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes against Israel, and Iran's support for Lebanese and Palestinian terror groups, cannot be ignored.
"We have this problem of the ...   more »

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By Jeff Jacoby,
I HAVE known my rabbi for more than 20 years. The synagogue he serves as spiritual leader is one I have attended for a quarter-century. He officiated at my wedding and was present for the circumcision of each of my sons. Over the years, I have sought his advice on matters private and public, religious and secular. I have heard him speak from the pulpit more times than I can remember.
My relationship with my rabbi, in other words, is similar in many respects to Barack Obama's relationship with his longtime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright. But if my rabbi began delivering sermons as toxic, hate-filled, and anti-American as the diatribes Wright has preached at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, I wouldn't hesitate to demand that he be dismissed.
Were my rabbi to gloat that America got its just desserts on 9/11, or to claim that the US government invented AIDS as an instrument of genocide, or to urge his congregants to sing "God Damn America" instead of "God Bless America," I would know about it straightaway, even if I hadn't actually been in the sanctuary when he spoke. The news would spread rapidly through the ...   more »

“Our neglect of the Middle East Peace Process has spurred despair and fueled terrorism”
Barack Obama
My friend and Conclub contributor thompaine asked me to expand on certain concerns I had regarding Senator Obama’s outlook on Israel and the Middle East. Well my young friend will most assuredly learn that to ask me to expand is to invite a verbose reply at the minimum (mostly cutting and pasting and I had been working on something like this for awhile). In any event here is your messenger’s humble attempt to respond.
To understand Senator Obama’s view regarding Israel, and US interests in the Middle East as a whole, one would do themselves a favor by becoming familiar with Liberation Theology. A few good sources for doing that might start with its birth from mid-twentieth Catholic-Marxist thought, through the decades to one of its current branches - “Black” Liberation Theology. One could begin with the current Pope’s thoughts on it in the 1980’s, or Wikipedia if you must. If one has time Ron Rhodes has treatments on both the original Latin American Liberation Theology, and on the present form of “Black” Liberation Theology. There are those that might not agree with Ron’s ...   more »

President of U.S. operations questions predictions of peak theorists
By Jerome R. Corsi
Shell U.S. President John Hofmeister
John Hofmeister, the Houston-based president of Shell Oil's U.S. operations, expressed doubt about the validity of peak oil theory in an appearance on CNBC's Squawk Box show.
"The peak oil theory has really swamped the world. God bless Matt Simmons," Hofmeister told CNBC anchor Carl Quintanilla, according to a transcript provided to WND by CNBC. "His assumptions are correct based on his hypotheses, but his hypotheses are too narrow."
Matt Simmons, a Houston-based investment banker who specializes in the energy industry, is widely known for his 2005 book, "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy," in which he analyzed oil depletion data from Saudi Arabian wells.
The peak oil theory argues the world's oil resources are finite and will be completely exhausted at a future date. 
Simmons, one of the most vocal and visible of the peak oil advocates in the industry today, has also been a frequent television guest arguing that the world is running out of oil.
In a recent YouTube.com-archived appearance on Bloomberg TV, Simmons argued the world has hit peak oil now, ...   more »

David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor 
The next major earthquake on the Hayward Fault - inevitable anytime now, experts say - will be the Bay Area's own Hurricane Katrina, affecting more than 5 million people, causing losses to homes and businesses of at least $165 billion and total economic losses of more than $1.5 trillion, scientists warn.
And that's from ground shaking alone. If major fires break out - think 1906 in San Francisco - the total losses would be far higher, they said.
The staggering numbers come from new predictions of losses resulting from a magnitude 7 temblor on the fault, in which ground shaking could spread from the quake's epicenter directly on the fault to communities as far off as Santa Rosa and San Jose - or beyond.
Seismologists and quake loss experts joined Thursday to report the latest assessment of what scientists call "the single-most dangerous fault in the entire Bay Area."
The analysis came from the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, from Risk Management Solutions, a scientific and engineering firm in Newark, and from the Association of Bay Area Governments. Their view of the past and future was sobering.
Records and geologic trenching show that five ...   more »

By Nicholas Kralev - The State Department is losing millions as a result of the free-falling dollar, forcing its overseas missions to lay off local staff, reduce energy consumption, put facility repairs on hold and cancel travel, officials said.
Although the dollar's weakness is affecting embassies and consulates around the world, the most drastic measures are being taken in Europe, where the euro has been trading around $1.54.
"It's beginning to hurt — there is no question about it. It's tough on us," said Christopher R. Hill, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.
Another official said that 24 percent of the State Department's main operating account, which is $3.8 billion for 2008, is disbursed in foreign currencies.
"We already have a tight budget, and the buying power of those limited resources is further affected by the decline of the dollar," the official said.
He noted that the department has a "buying power maintenance account" where it puts money when the dollar's value goes up, but "there is no money in it now."
"The biggest impact I have seen is our ability to program events," a Foreign Service officer in Europe said. "We have had to become ...   more »

'Nothing we could do
would please them'
The Canadian government has ordered a Christian ministry that teaches doctrine and the differences between Christians and cults shut down because its reference materials were "critical" of the beliefs of those who are not Christian, WND has learned.
So what used to be called MacGregor Ministries with offerings in how to recognize and eliminate "faulty fads" in Christian churches has been re-created in the United States, and now operates under the name MM Outreach Media Ministries.
Lorri MacGregor, who has dedicated her life to explaining the straight and narrow of Christian beliefs since she found her way out of the Jehovah's Witness system years ago, told WND Canada's version of a "hate crimes" law prevented their work from continuing as it had for nearly 30 years.
"Canada is no longer a Christian nation," she said. "And watch out America!"
The issue of the ministry's charities license in Canada, allowing it to operate as a ministry, came up during a routine audit of the ministry's finances, which was uneventful.
"The auditor that originally looked at our books told us her supervisor had said she wanted us shut down," Mrs. MacGregor told WND. "Canada has ...   more »

Suspect grabs yarmulke, hit by car as he flees
A police investigation has been launched into an attack in New York City on a rabbi who was kicked and punched by Arabs screaming "Allahu akbar," the same chant reportedly used by the 9/11 hijackers as they killed thousands of people in the city in 2001.
The report comes from Vox iz Neiaas, which means "What's News," in New York.
The incident happened in the jurisdiction of the 78th Precinct, according to the report, and is being investigated as a possible bias crime.
The report said an 18-year-old Arab man grabbed the yarmulke of a Jew at the 4th Ave. and 9th Street train station in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, "while his friends kicked and punched the victim while screaming 'Allahu akbar.'"
The perpetrator grabbed the rabbi's head covering, then fled the scene only to be hit by a vehicle on a nearby street. The report said police arrested him and requested an ambulance, but were trying "to brush off the crime as just teenagers who don't know what 'Allahu akbar' means." 
Israel National News identified the rabbi as Oriah Ohana, a 25-year-old from Kfar Chabad, Israel
The rabbi ...   more »

Letter to the editor
Martial law is coming to America.
The nation is bankrupt, financial collapse is imminent. American freedoms, principles and values are completely antithetical to the egalitarian and planetary survival requirements for an advanced world civilization for the 21st century. Hence, the forcible take-down of the United States of America.
In collusion with an engineered economic collapse, a U.S. government-sponsored “false flag” terrorist attack is highly probable, using CIA-sponsored Al-Qaeda cells to detonate nuclear weapons over a select number of U.S. cities -- an act which will then be blamed on Muslim extremists in the Middle East
The threat of global warming is the hidden backdrop that is making all of this necessary -- since the issue is the number one international security threat to mankind and the biosphere. America, as a flagrant violator of international environmental law and a prime instigator of anti-environmental ethos throughout the world, cannot, and will not, be allowed to continue on with ‘business as usual’.
The extravagant, wicked, ungodly, wasteful, deceitful, selfish, decadent, insidiously destructive, and ecologically insane American lifestyle is to be “terminated” once and for all. There is no place left for this level of low-life reptilian consciousness to exist ...   more »