In 10 years we may feel Ahmadinejad should have been detained in NY
Uri Orbach
In five or 10 years, maybe in 15 years, when those of us who have survived completely lose their hair as a result of the radioactive fallout left in the wake of the Iranian bomb, we may think differently.
A little before that, say in five to seven years, when all of Tel Aviv disappears in one giant flame and the survivors are able to find refuge in the Negev desert, perhaps we will come to have a different view regarding Ahmadinejad's freedom of speech.
Until that time, we are in favor of granting the Iranian guy rights. He is a national leader, and even if we disagree with his view that Israel has no right to exist, we are willing to die for his right to say it. This is the basis of freedom of speech.
We are certainly unwilling to prevent him from speaking. Let him speak. As long as he is merely preparing and building his nuclear bomb, we won't be the ones to stand in his way by silencing him.
We can fight by using diplomatic and economic means, and even ...   more »

In BBC interview, Syrian president says Israeli air strike in northern Syria last month proved Israel's 'visceral antipathy towards peace.' Referring to regional peace conference, Assad says Syria will only participate if its concerns, including return of Golan Heights, are addressed
Ynetnews
The Israeli air strike in northern Syria early in September showed Israel's "visceral antipathy towards peace," Syrian President Bashar Assad told the BBC in an interview Monday.
He said Syria reserved the right to respond to the attack, although he did not specify what that response would be.
Assad said that Syria would not attend the regional peace conference scheduled for November unless the country's concerns were addressed, particularly the return of the Golan Heights.
"If they don't talk about the Syrian occupied territory, no, there's no way for Syria to go there," he stated. "It should be about comprehensive peace, and Syria is part of this comprehensive peace. Without that, we shouldn't go, we wouldn't go."
Assad stressed that any opportunity to promote peace was important, but was skeptical about the summit's potential success. He added that Syria needed more details about the conference before it decided whether or not to attend it.
"So far we didn't ...   more »

By Michael Eisenstadt
The September 6 Israeli airstrike in northeastern Syria has produced intense speculation. According to the New York Times, Israeli intelligence believes the target was part of a clandestine Syrian nuclear weapons program aided by North Korea. This raises broader questions about the status of Syria's strategic weapons programs, which would likely play a crucial role in any future confrontation with Israel.
Syria's Strategic Safety Net
Given that Syria lacks both a superpower patron and territorial depth (Israeli forces are thirty miles from Damascus), the regime depends on strategic weapons -- mainly conventionally and chemically armed rockets and missiles -- to deter foreign aggression and ensure its survival. The Israeli raid has heightened concerns that Syria might be seeking to supplement its substantial chemical weapons stockpile with a small nuclear arsenal.
Nuclear activities. Syria's declared civilian nuclear infrastructure is rudimentary, and until recently, there was no evidence of a nuclear weapons program (rumors that the regime was a client of the Abdul Qadir Khan network were never substantiated). Syria has nuclear research labs, a miniature 30-kilowatt reactor (unsuitable for the production of fissile material), a small particle accelerator, and a plant that separates uranium from the country's abundant ...   more »

Chuck Baldwin Chuck Baldwin
September 28, 2007
"Bush quietly advising Hillary Clinton, top Democrats." This is the title of a much under-reported news story, which appeared in The Examiner on September 24th. The Examiner opens the story by saying, "President Bush is quietly providing back-channel advice to Hillary Rodham Clinton, urging her to modulate her rhetoric so she can effectively prosecute the war in Iraq if elected president."
The story stems from an interview with White House Chief of Staff, Josh Bolten, for The Examiner's Senior White House correspondent Bill Sammon's new book, "The Evangelical President."
The Examiner said "Bush wants enough continuity in his Iraq policy that 'even a Democratic president would be in a position to sustain a legitimate presence there.'" Bolten went on to say that "He [Bush] wants to create the conditions where a Democrat not only will have the leeway, but the obligation to see it [the war in Iraq] out."
Bolten made it clear that Bush expects the war in Iraq to continue "[n]o matter who the president is, no matter what party . . ."
The Examiner story also reported, "A senior White House official said the administration did not put much stock ...   more »

Calderon has criticised the U.S. Congress, calling lawmakers insensitive for failing to pass immigration reform.
PUERTO PENASCO, Mexico — Mexican President Felipe Calderon told U.S. governors Thursday that immigration is an inevitable, natural phenomenon and he urged the U.S. Congress to approve reforms that would allow more Mexicans to work legally north of the border.
Calderon demanded that the United States respect "the right to work wherever one can make the greatest contribution."
"Immigration is a natural phenomenon that is economically and socially inevitable," he told the meeting in this Sonora seaside resort town.
In a rare acknowledgment of the costs of migration for Mexico, Calderon said his country "doesn't not celebrate migration ... our best people are the ones who go."
Immigration and border security were among the top issues at the meeting, the 25th annual such event between Mexican and U.S. governors from states along the two countries' common border. Mexican officials were focused on stopping the illegal flow of U.S. weapons into Mexico and protesting expansion of U.S. border fencing. For the Americans, the drug trade, migration and border security topped the list.
On Monday, the U.S. government announced plans to erect about 370 miles (600 kilometers) ...   more »

DENVER - Negative opinions about Islam are on the rise, Mormons are viewed as Christian but different and Pope Benedict XVI trails his predecessor in popularity, a poll of Americans released Tuesday said.
The survey of 3,000 adults from Aug. 1-18 was conducted for the Pew Research Center and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
The number of Americans who say Islam has little or nothing in common with their own religion has spiked to 70 percent in the past two years from 59 percent, the poll found.
Another significant shift has taken place: In 2005, 36 percent of the public said Islam is more likely than other faiths to encourage violence among its believers. That number has risen to 45 percent.
Fifty-three percent of Americans viewed Mormonism positively, while 27 percent viewed Mormons unfavorably.
A slim majority - 52 percent - said Mormonism is a Christian religion. Yet among non-Mormon believers, more than six in ten said Mormonism and their own religion are very different.
The poll also found that Pope Benedict XVI has high approval ratings with the public two years into his papacy: 73 percent with an opinion view him favorably. Those numbers lag behind ...   more »

Accuses Caterpillar of helping to destroy Palestinian property
Israel Defense Forces bulldozer
The United Methodist Church's official lobby office is urging church agencies and members to divest their holdings in Caterpillar Inc. because the company sells bulldozers to Israel.
United Methodist General Board of Church and Society sponsored the resolution, accusing Caterpillar of facilitating Israel's destruction of Palestinian property.
Caterpillar, along with Israel, was the target of a lawsuit by the family of Rachel Corrie after the activist was crushed by a bulldozer in 2003 while attempting to block the destruction of a Palestinian home used to facilitate arms smuggling.
The resolution will go before the United Methodist General Conference in April 2008.
The 7.9 million member church's pension agency reportedly has $5 million in Caterpillar stock out of $15 billion in assets.
Other mainline churches, including the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Church of England, recently have rejected similar measures.
However, WND reported earlier when the Presbyterian Church hosted a three-day meeting to justify to denomination leaders its decision to divest from Israel, presenting what one church elder described as a panel of "full-time, paid, anti-Israel propagandists."
The denomination's General Assembly had voted 431-62 to divest from the Jewish ...   more »

When Jerome Corsi and I first began reporting on the quiet conspiracy to integrate the U.S. politically, socially and economically with Mexico and Canada, we were castigated, ridiculed, marginalized ands demeaned by elected officials, our colleagues in the press and some radio talk-show hosts.
We were making it all up, they said.
Congress has never considered any such action, they scolded.
Show us the legislation, they demanded.
Not one responsible official in Washington sees any such threat, they claimed.
This is black-helicopter stuff, they scoffed.
Recently, all seven of the 11 candidates who showed up for the Republican presidential debate organized by "values voters" in Florida acknowledged this European Union-style movement and pledged to halt it should any of them be elected.
(Column continues below)
Recently, Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., introduced a resolution expressing the sense of Congress that the U.S. "should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada." Already it has 27 cosponsors from both sides of the aisle.
Even President George W. Bush, seen as one of the architects of this plan for integration of the three North American ...   more »

Bush administration pushing for ratification in next 3 weeks 
WASHINGTON – For the second time in three years, the Bush administration is putting on a major effort for Senate ratification of the United Nations' Law of the Sea Treaty, a wide-ranging measure critics say will grant the U.N. control of 70 percent of the planet under its oceans.
With Democrats in nearly unanimous agreement with the treaty and the Bush administration behind it, it will be up to a handful of determined Republican senators to derail it from getting a two-thirds vote in the upper house.
The treaty is currently under review by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and could be approved by the entire Senate in the next three weeks, before popular opposition has a chance to grow.
This is not the first time LOST has come up, of course. International negotiators drafted it in 1982 in an attempt to establish a comprehensive legal regime for international management of the seas and their resources. President Ronald Reagan, however, refused to sign LOST because he realized that the treaty doesn't serve U.S. interests.
In 1994, however, President Clinton signed a revised version of the treaty and forwarded it to the ...   more »

by Alan D. Busch
My unexpected portal into the rich spiritual world of Judaism. The richness of Jewish life had somehow eluded me in my childhood leaving me so unschooled that I could not even distinguish between a prayer book and any book written in Hebrew. Mind you, my youth had not been entirely barren of Jewish experiences. We gathered at my Aunt Iris's house for my family's one Seder on Passover, knew enough to eat matzah, read the story of our exodus in the Haggadah from Maxwell House, feasted on Rosh Hashana, broke the fast of Yom Kippur, and my mother lit Hanukkah candles by plugging in an electric menorah. My family did not lack the threads so much as it did the fabric of Jewish life.
Many years later, my wife, children and I moved into a religious neighborhood on Chicago's north side. I felt pretty much at ease in my new neighborhood where I found myself surrounded by religious Jews. But when the Goldmeyers invited me to the bar mitzvah of their first-born son, my excitement was met with equal amounts of intimidation.
The occasion would mark my first time in an Orthodox synagogue. Shabbos morning arrived. ...   more »

I want to add to my previous post regarding the beautiful love I witnessed last week between an Israeli Arab mother and an Israeli Jewish mother in the battered town of Sderot by noting the lessons I learned at that event about touching the hearts of Israelis.
I am a fairly reserved, though straight-forward person, so I am not always comfortable in the presence of dramatic Christian expressions of faith. I will qualify that by noting that I am not critical of such displays - if God found favor with David wildly dancing in his underwear in the presence of His ark, then clearly there is nothing wrong with such behavior.
Anyway, since I am personally perhaps a little too bashful to act out in such a way myself, I always feared that the Israelis we were visiting during these Feast of Tabernacles outings were viewing the group as a bunch of mentally-disturbed nut-jobs. I always feared that instead of providing comfort, the brightly colored biblical-style clothing, the waving banners and the chorus of shofars were instead eliciting internal chuckles of disdain.
While a handful of Israelis may indeed view the Feast groups in such a way, I discovered in ...   more »