Retired senior officers told Israelis on Saturday to prepare "rocket rooms" as protection against a rain of missiles expected to be fired at the Jewish state in any future conflict.
Speaking on radio as part of a military propaganda offensive, retired general Udi Shani said: "The next war will see a massive use of ballistic weapons against the whole of Israeli territory."
Shani was tasked recently with drawing up a report on the way the military authorities operated during Israel's 2006 summer war against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
During that conflict thousands of rockets hit Israel, but were limited to the north of the country from where hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated.
The character of war has changed, said the general.
"Strikes to the rear must now be taken into account -- that is what will come and we must prepare in a totally different way for this eventuality," he said.
Another reserve officer, Colonel Yehiel Kuperstein, added: "Protection of civilians must today be assured even inside their homes.
"There is no absolute protection, but the best possible sort is that of a room able to provide shelter" inside houses, he said, evoking the norms in force in ...   more »

The U.S.'s Rice and Bush aren't shy about their goal of establishing a sic "Palestinian State." What they don't tell their fellow United States citizens is that their Pseudistinian Arab buddies, those terrorists who unabashedly brag that they will destroy Israel, are also anti-Christian.
Christians are leaving those Arab populated areas in droves.
At 70, Nasser plans to stay in the city. But, like other Christian families that trace their roots to this city for centuries, he has watched family members, like his son and daughter leave the city. "There is no future for Christians," said Nasser.
Reverend Tomey Dahoud also says the pressure is mounting for all Christians to leave Palestinian-controlled lands.
The Arab Moslem terrorists destroy churches.
Besides being shaken down by the Palestinian Authority for blackmail money, and having their land stolen in elaborate schemes from Palestinian Authority officials, some Christians say they have looked on helplessly as they suffered what they call the ultimate injustice: the burning and desecration of their holy churches.
Christians are still reeling from September, 2006, when seven churches in the West Bank and Gaza were attacked in a three day period after Muslims were infuriated by comments made by Pope Benedict ...   more »

by Ezra HaLevi
(IsraelNN.com) Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called on the world to come to terms with the demise of the “filthy” Jewish state.
Ahmadinejad made his latest statements in a speech given in the southern Iranian town of Bushehr, where Iran’s first light-water nuclear reactor is being built by Russia. The speech was broadcast live on Iran’s state-run television. He addressed world nations, advising them to "abandon the filthy Zionist entity which has reached the end of the line."
Seeming to search for various synonyms to remove doubt sown by apologists that question the translation of his call to erase Israel “off the map,” the Persian leader said: "[Israel] has lost its reason to exist and will sooner or later fall. The ones who still support the criminal Zionists should know that the occupiers' days are numbered…Accept that the life of the Zionists will sooner or later come to an end." 
Ahmadinejad said that the “final chapter” has begun in which the Arabs of Israel, together with “regional nations” will confront Israel and bring about “Palestine.”
In the same speech, Ahmadinejad declared that nothing will stop his nation from pursuing nuclear capabilities. "[Iranians] will not back down one ...   more »

  A third undersea Internet cable has been damaged in the Middle East, adding to the disruption in online services after two other lines were cut earlier this week, the cable operating firm said.
The Falcon cable was cut 56 kilometres (35 miles) from Dubai, between Oman and the United Arab Emirates, according to its owner, FLAG Telecom, which is part of India's Reliance Communications.
The repair ship had been notified and was expected to arrive at the site in the next few days, the company said on its website.
Flag Telecom owns another cable that was damaged off Egypt on Wednesday. A repair ship was expected to arrive by Tuesday to restore that cable and repairs were expected to take a week, the company said.
The outages have disrupted business across the Middle East and South Asia, including in India, where businesses said it may take up to 15 days to return to normal.
Original Source
 

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Officials deny they voted down plan because of Baptist opposition
A Baptist church in Ohio is being accused of religious intolerance for allegedly thwarting a plan to build a mosque on nearby property.
The board of zoning appeals in Sugarcreek Township, Ohio, insists its 5-0 vote against a variance request that would have permitted the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton to build the mosque was not influenced by the local First Baptist Church. The rejection, officials say, was based only on the expected sewage and traffic impact, the Dayton Daily News reported.
But the senior pastor of the 1,900-member church, Barry Jude, has made his opposition to the mosque clear.
"We just feel that Christianity is right and that Islam is wrong," Jude told the Daily News. "Therefore, we take a stand to see (a mosque) not in our community. The wonderful thing about our American culture is that you have the right to speak out against something you don't support."
The paper says the issue "has touched on larger questions: Does the presence of a mosque locally evoke feelings of fear or even hatred? Are church officials saying out loud what a lot of people are thinking privately?"
The ...   more »

'You are going to see this decision quoted by cities across the country'
The right of a small town in Missouri to deal with the cost and crime caused by the influx of illegal aliens has been upheld by a federal judge who ruled the community's ordinance penalizing local companies that hire undocumented workers is not pre-empted by federal law, does not discriminate against Hispanics and does not violate due-process rights or state law.
The ruling late Thursday by U.S. District Judge E. Richard Webber was in favor of Valley Park, Mo., located about 20 miles west of St. Louis.
Valley Park is one of several cities across the U.S. that have attempted to address the problems resulting from illegal immigration and the failure of the federal government to address the issue.
City officials have been in court since 2006 after passing the town's first immigration law fining landlords who rent to illegals and suspending business permits of companies that hire them. The city eventually repealed the rental ordinance but continued to target businesses.
WND has reported on dozens of towns – including Hazleton, Pa., Manassas, Va., Bridgeport, Pa., Prince William County, Va. and Cape Cod, Mass. – that have ...   more »

Parents challenge curriculum targeting children as young as 4th grade
By Bob Unruh 
A campaign has been launched by concerned parents and others in Florida where a school board has adopted an explicit sex ed curriculum that includes various how-to lessons for students as young as fourth grade, and in one incarnation proposed field trips for children to purchase condoms and then talk about their experience.
The parents have created the Sex Ed Facts.com website to coordinate their work to oppose the program adopted by the board members of the St. Lucie County school district.
The dispute is similar to a controversy that has been going on in Montgomery County, Md., over a similarly graphic sex-education curriculum adopted by the school board there that teaches homosexuality is innate and provides depictions of "erotic" sex techniques.  
Brandon M. Bolling, of the Thomas More Law Center, told Judge William J. Rowan III during a recent court hearing on the legality of the program Maryland law requires that information presented in public schools be supported with evidence, and the teaching that homosexuality is "innate" lacks that support.
He also argued that the lessons required by Montgomery County Board of Education teach students ...   more »

FBI: Top defense advisers linked to radical Muslim Brotherhood 
Federal authorities say a high-level Muslim Pentagon aide, who led a campaign to silence a Pentagon intelligence analyst for taking a hard line against Islam, is running an "influence operation" on behalf of U.S. Muslim groups fronting for the radical Muslim Brotherhood.
Hesham H. Islam (left), Muslim aide to the deputy secretary of defense, with Muslim military chaplain Abuhena M. Saifulislam (right)
Hesham H. Islam, a special assistant to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, recently criticized Maj. Stephen Coughlin, one of the military's leading authorities on Islamic war doctrine, for making the connection between the religion of Islam and terrorism.
After Islam lodged complaints, Coughlin's contract with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon was not renewed.
Islam also was upset with briefings Coughlin recently prepared for the U.S. military warning that major U.S. Muslim groups were fronting for the Muslim Brotherhood, a worldwide jihadist movement based in Egypt.
Islam, who was born and raised in Egypt, is heavily involved with one of the groups – the Islamic Society of North America, which U.S. prosecutors last year named as a member of the U.S. branch of the ...   more »

Former PM consults old Downing Street allies on campaign for new EU role
Patrick Wintour,
Tony Blair has been holding discussions with some of his oldest allies on how he could mount a campaign later this year to become full-time president of the EU council, the prestigious new job characterised as "president of Europe". Blair, currently the Middle East envoy for the US, Russia, EU and the UN, has told friends he has made no final decision, but is increasingly willing to put himself forward for the job if it comes with real powers to intervene in defence and trade affairs.
Blair, who is being actively promoted by the French president Nicolas Sarkozy, recognises he would need to abandon his well-paid, private sector jobs if he won. His wife Cherie - often portrayed as seeking ever more wealth and well-paid consultancies for her husband - is understood to be supportive of him accepting the job.
Some Blair allies also say that he now recognises that as envoy in the Middle East he is not going to be allowed to become the key player in furthering Israeli-Palestinian talks this year, and will be reduced to a role of supporting political development ...   more »

he U.S. Constitution empowers the federal government to "regulate commerce … among the several states. …" Historically, this has been interpreted to empower the feds to regulate "navigable" waters of the United States. Historically, "navigable" waters were defined to be water deep enough to float a canoe. Historically, the regulation of all other waters has been left to state and local governments, and before that, to whoever had the fastest gun.
No more. Nearly 40 percent (173) of the House of Representatives and 20 percent (20) of the Senate have co-sponsored legislation that will change existing law:
by striking "navigable waters of the United States" each place it appears and inserting "waters of the United States"; (H.R.2421, Sec. 5(1)).
The proposed law will define "waters of the United States" to be:
"[W]aters of the United States" means all waters subject to the ebb and flow of the tide, the territorial seas, and all interstate and intrastate waters and their tributaries, including lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, natural ponds, and all impoundments of the foregoing, to the fullest extent that these waters, or activities affecting these waters, are subject to ...   more »

Editor joins Breitbart, Horowitz at Conservative Political Action Conference in D.C. 
WASHINGTON – WND founder and Editor Joseph Farah joins radical-turned-conservative author David Horowitz and Internet pioneer Andrew Breitbart in a nationally televised panel discussion at the Conservative Political Action Conference Friday, Feb. 8, at noon Eastern at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in the nation's capital.
Farah will be addressing the imminent threat to the First Amendment of "Fairness Doctrine" legislation that will be introduced if Democrats recapture both houses of Congress and the presidency this fall.
The panel topic is "Hugo Chavez Democrats: Silencing the Right." It will be moderated by L. Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center.
CPAC is the largest gathering of political conservatives held annually in the U.S. The 2008 meeting is the 35th annual conference. It is typically televised by C-Span.
Farah is the founder, editor and chief executive officer of WorldNetDaily.com, the world's leading independent Internet news source. In addition, he writes a daily column for WND and a weekly newspaper column for Creators Syndicate. He is also the founder and co-publisher of WND Books, a publishing venture that has produced several New York Times best sellers in the last five years. WND ...   more »

Godless detractor after reading book: 'Trust me, it wasn't pretty' 
The first atheist critic to read and review WND columnist Vox Day's book, "The Irrational Atheist," has been left flummoxed and frustrated by its content, cursing the fact the new work is both "amazing" and, to him, "depressing."
Wrote Brent Rasmussen on the blog Unscrewing the Inscrutable:
"I am not going to go into a point by point review of the various arguments that Day addressed in 'The Irrational Atheist.' Suffice it to say that by the end of the chapters dealing with the individual [atheist] authors, I was happy that it was over. It was a thorough, detailed, dispassionate (with a little snarky levity thrown into the footnotes for flavor), and completely disheartening take-down of some of the best arguments that the godless have put into print – on their own terms, without using the Bible (in the first part of the book, that is), or any other sacred text to do it with. Amazing. And depressing. It is not my place to defend their books. I truly hope that they do find time to defend and clarify their books, specifically to the counter-arguments and claims made by Vox ...   more »