Israeli war deaths go largely unnoticed

Israeli war deaths go largely unnoticed

Hours after mother and two daughters are killed in Hizbullah rocket attack, media outlets around world fail to report deaths; meanwhile, British press continues anti-Israel tirade
Yaakov Lappin

Media bias? Hours after 60-year-old Fadia Jumaa and her two daughters, Samira, 31, and Sultana, 33, were killed by a Hizbullah rocket attack on their home in the Israeli-Bedouin village of Arab al-Aramshe, the international media has so far largely ignored their deaths.

Reuters was alone among non-Israeli media outlets to report the deaths, according to a Google news search, a number of hours after the first reports of the attack surfaced.

The lack of coverage of the Israeli civilian war casualties stands in marked contrast to the swift response by many sections of the international media to reported Lebanese casualties.

Meanwhile, the British press, which has produced some of the most venomous anti-Israel coverage during the war, has continued its tirade against Israel.

Inaccuracies

An article in the London-based Guardian, entitled "Militants merge with mainstream ," argues that Hizbullah has gained widespread, cross-religious support in the Arab world, and uses terms such as "the Qana massacre" to explain the apparent newfound unity.

The article argues that Sunnis and Shiites have come together in their backing of Hizbullah: "Whatever qualms Arabs once had about Hizbullah they have since been dissipated by Israel's attacks, the hundreds of deaths, the sight of up to a quarter of the Lebanese population fleeing their homes, and especially the bombing of UN observers and the massacre at Qana. The Shiite organisation and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, have become symbols of resistance even in such unlikely places as the Gulf countries where Sunnis and Shiites have been spotted waving the yellow-and-green flag."

The article was co-written by Issandr el-Amrani, a freelance journalist in Egypt who referred to Hizbullah as " Lebanese resistance fighters " on his personal blog and who describes reports of Hizbullah members operating out of civilian areas as "Israeli lies."

The article's authors failed, however, to note that an influential Saudi Sunni cleric, Sheikh Safar al-Hawali, has issued an anti-Hizbullah fatwa declaring that "Hizbullah is not the 'Party of God' but the 'Party of Satan.'"

An Associated Press report, which undermines the Guardian's claims, says that "Al-Hawali's words are an addition to a previous fatwa issued two weeks ago in Saudi Arabia by the leader of the Wahhabi movement, Sheikh Abdullah bin Jabrin, which declared that it is illegal to support, join, or even pray for Hizbullah."

BBC correspondent reports his own views

Meanwhile, an article has appeared on the BBC website in which a reporter for the British broadcaster, Hugh Sykes, relays a conversation he has with Lebanese residents.

The article is remarkable as it contains the views of a BBC journalist being given to Lebanese locals, rather than the other way around.

In the piece, written in first person narrative, Sykes tells people in Lebanon that there would be "no point" for Israel to strike Hizbullah targets in Lebanon: "'People keep asking me… ' Beirut - will they bomb Beirut again?' 'What would be the point?" I reply.'"

The BBC journalist also attempts to second guess where Israeli strikes hit.

"Four massive thumps one night, and six the next, as Israeli bombs or shells slammed into the ground a few kilometres away. Or into the children's homes," Sykes wrote.

Redefining terrorism

Redefining terrorism

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Posted: August 4, 2006

By Joseph Farah

Have you noticed that when America declared war on terrorism, it immediately began to redefine the term.

Here's the way it works.

President Bush told the nations they were either with us or with the terrorists. Remember that speech? It may have been the high point of his administration.

But he didn't mean it.

The most recent proof is the suggestion within his administration that Syria be used to mediate the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict.

Bush's own State Department, which is no different than Bill Clinton's State Department or Jimmy Carter's State Department, classifies Syria as a terrorist-sponsoring nation. In fact, Syria sponsors Hezbollah, along with Iran.

Yet, the Bush administration actually suggested Syria mediate the dispute. This would be akin to having China mediate our dispute with North Korea. Oh, I forgot. The Bush administration suggested that, too.

What gives? Is Hezbollah no longer a terrorist organization? Is it no longer considered an enemy of the U.S. and the free world? Is it not indeed the largest terrorist organization in the world? Why is it that we no longer seek to destroy Hezbollah, but preserve it through mediation? And, even more bizarre, why do we consider using as a mediator a state sponsor of terrorism?

But there's more evidence America is redefining terrorism to avoid the harsh realities of the threat we face.

Last week, Muslim Naveed Avzal Haq, 30, took a 13-year-old girl hostage and began shooting up the Seattle Jewish Federation Center, killing one woman and injuring five others, including one who was pregnant. "I am a Muslim American," he shouted. "I am angry at Israel."

Not one newscast and not one news story (besides those in WND) labeled this terrorist act a terrorist act. It was a shooting. It was a "hate crime." It was a random act of violence" by a man not associated with any other organizations." On and on the euphemisms went.

But a 6-year-old schoolchild would recognize what happened in Seattle. It was terrorism.

We've seen this kind of denial before – and it has always been dangerous for America. It was the kind of denial that led directly to Sept. 11.

Quite frankly, terrorists weren't getting the ''credit'' they expected from major attacks like the Oklahoma City bombing and TWA Flight 800 and the first World Trade Center bombing. So they upped the ante. They raised the stakes.

No one could deny what Sept. 11 was. It was an overt act of undeniable terror – unspeakable terror, unimaginable terror.

Why do we deny terrorism when it is staring us in the face? Because it requires action – response. If we are not prepared to take action – to respond appropriately – we instinctively deny the reality of what has transpired.

Add to all this that ''terrorism'' was never the enemy any way. Terrorism, as many have pointed out, is a tactic, not an enemy. The real enemy is radical Islam. Terrorism is their tactic. If we don't recognize that fact, it should surprise no one that a Muslim fanatic can shoot up a Jewish center without anyone mentioning terrorism.

So President Bush, to his credit, responded after Sept. 11. But we're still paying the price for his lack of focus, his inability or unwillingness to define the enemy clearly, his desire not to hurt anyone's feelings or offend any ethnic or religious group.

But let's not resort to doublespeak. Let's not miss the forest for the trees. In our desire not to ethnically profile, do we have to give up all logic and common sense? Do we have to change the meaning of words? Do we have to put our heads in the sand?

CAN I KILL ANDREA YATES AND PLEAD INSANITY?

CAN I KILL ANDREA YATES AND PLEAD INSANITY?
By Dr. Patrick Jonston

August 5, 2006

NewsWithViews.com

On July 27, a Texas jury found Andrea Yates "Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity." She had confessed to drowning her five children in the bathtub one at a time.

Mr. John Cannon, the police spokesperson, described what the police found in the Yates' master bedroom. Four children were laid out beneath a sheet on the bed, clothed and soaking wet. All of them were dead, their opens wide open in a lifeless stare. In the bathtub, the oldest child was submerged amid feces and vomit floating on the surface.

The last jury in 2002 found her guilty and she was given a life sentence, but a testimony of psychiatrist Park Dietz during the trial was found to contain factual errors. He falsely claimed that a Law and Order television episode aired just before the deaths in which a woman drowned her children and was cleared of guilt by reason of insanity. This, the Texas Court of Appeals reasoned, could have swayed the jury and so the Court overthrew the unanimous jury verdict.

Now that the second jury has acquitted her of guilty, she will be under the care of a psychiatrist and, when he sees fit, she'll be released back into society a free woman. Who knows, she might even have kids again!

Why can't someone who loves those five children drown Andrea Yates and plead insanity? I'll tell you why: because that would be sanity, not insanity!

Hopefully, there is some good that can come out of this insane verdict. Maybe some of us will realize that the American justice system is hopelessly corrupt. We have long ago abandoned God's Word as the standard of morality and justice and an insane criminal justice system has been the inevitable result. As long as we endure this fundamentally corrupt system, children will continue to be murdered, raped, and molested.

It's not just murderers like Andrea Yates that should be put to death, quickly and humanely, but child molesters and rapists as well. Don't we despise these crimes as much as murder? What do we despise the most: a person who murderers a cheating spouse, or a man who lures a child, abducts, and rapes them repeatedly? Which crime more enrages your sensibilities provokes you to cry out for justice? Doesn't the child rapist deserve to be punished just as severely as the murderer?

There are roughly 563,000 free sex offenders who are supposed to be registered in state databases, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 100,000 to 150,000 whose location is unknown. As of today's date in the state of Ohio, there are 14,492 free sexual offenders according to Ohio's Electronic Sex Offender Registration and Notification (ESORN) website. These are rapists and child molesters who have been convicted by a jury and are free in Ohio. You could increase that number many times over if you included those who were really guilty but declared "Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity" or whose verdict was overturned on a technicality. Add to that the number of murderers free on parole. In Muskingum County, the county in Ohio in which I reside, there are 179 sexual offenders roaming free. And don't write that number down, there will be more added to that number every day! Our system of injustice guarantees it. It is hard to figure out who is more insane, our criminal justice system, or the ocean of victims who continue to trust morally bankrupt judges and criminal databases to protect them from child predators and murderers.

I have witnessed firsthand the devastation brought about by child predators. Several young members of a family close to mine were sexually assaulted by a 6 ½ feet tall, 240 pound child molester named Sean Featherstone. He lived in our neighborhood for one summer when I was in my early teens, then mysteriously disappeared. When I bumped into Sean again during my college years in Tallahassee, Florida, he had a wallet loaded with pictures of little boys he had molested and sodomized. It was then that he confessed of his sexual abuse of dear friends of mine many years earlier - three young boys between the ages of eight and twelve. Soon, he disappeared again into the shadows and, I assume, is back on the prowl.

As a physician, I treat many patients who have been devastated by sexual abuse when they were young. Most of them are being treated for psychological illnesses.

A fun-loving six-year-old boy told his aunt that his uncle "touches my privates" at night. He was spanked and sent to his room for "telling stories." The boy has been wetting his bed and having nightmares ever since.

A 25-five-year-old single mother of three is riddled with tattoos and body-piercings, and her panic attacks are debilitating. She requires ever-increasing doses of controlled substances just to function. Her symptoms - as well as her licentiousness - began when a friend of the family's began to systematically grope, then rape her when she was a young girl.

One 45-year-old mother of four confided in me that she could not stop crying and she didn't know why. W traced her symptoms back to when they first began, and that's when she realized that her symptoms began when her father molested her from five to eleven years of age. Every time she saw him at a family reunion, the wound was ripped back open and the suffering continued. There has been no healing because there has been no justice. Even if he were convicted, he would certainly be free by now, and with the high recidivism rate of released child predators, he would likely have accumulated more victims.

Besides publicizing databases that don't protect children, what is our justice system doing about this devastation? Let's review three cases:

On the 6th of March, 2006, 38-year-old David Robison, who raped an 11-year-old boy over three years, had 16 years of his 25-year sentence suspended in exchange for five years' probation.

On the same day, 50-year-old Robert Lee Eismon was sentenced to 15 years for sexually assaulting a two-year-old girl during a holiday picnic. He lured the child into a garage, pulled down his pants, and began to fondle the little girl's genitals. Her screams of pain alerted those in the house who broke into the garage and rescued the terrified toddler.

The same month, a Franklin County Common Pleas Judge came under fire for sentencing 46-year-old Columbus resident Andrew S. Selva to five years' probation after the man admitted to sexually abusing two boys over three years. The youngest of the boys was five years old when the rapes began. The first of the five years will be spent at home with electronic monitoring.
"He's got a disease like I've got a disease," Judge John A. Connor said, justifying his decision to "treat" the child-rapist at large rather than incarcerate him. Apparently, Judge Connor's own disease is alcoholism; he is known to be involved in a 12-step program. "I don't know that prison would have helped, except for revenge, and revenge is not in the sentencing guidelines."

By Judge Connor's action, the Proverb is proved: "the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel." And we trust these men to protect us, to protect our children from child predators, rapists, and murderers?

It's high time that communities abandon the hopeless state and federal mandates for criminal justice and venture back to a reasonable system on their own.

If Muskingum County, for instance, rejected the system of justice practiced by the state and federal systems, and practiced a criminal justice system modeled after the one penned by the hand of God in the Holy Bible, child molestation, rape, and murder would come to a screeching halt. Why? It's a promise found in God's Word, the Holy Bible.

God's Word says that when murderers and rapists are executed, observers will "hear, and fear, and shall henceforth commit no more such evil among you" (Deuteronomy 19:20-21). God commands murderers and child-rapists to be put to death without pity because He loves us and doesn't want the innocent to suffer. God commands that they be put to death swiftly "because when a sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil" (Ecclesiastes 8:11). The penalty God's Word mandates provides a sufficient deterrent to protect children from child-predators, women from rapists, and the helpless from cruel murderers. Do we want to protect our children from these beasts, or not? Who are we going to trust to prescribe justice for criminals and protect the innocent - Judge John Connor or the Judge of heaven and earth?

Romans 13:1-7 confirms that God obligates civil authorities to do justice: they are to be ministers of God who "bear the sword" and are a "terror" to evildoers. Civil authorities are commanded by God to be a "revenger" - did you catch that, Judge Connor? - "to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil;" "Evil" defined not by a vote or popular consensus, but by the arbiter of right and wrong, justice and injustice - God Almighty. The Bible - the Old Testament tempered by the New - is all we need for criminal justice.

If we followed God's system, rapists and murderers would not go to prison. Prison is no more a biblically-justifiable sanction for child-rape or murder than probation and psychiatric group sessions. Incarceration in air-conditioned tax-subsidized facilities, eating three meals a day at taxpayer expense, getting healthcare at taxpayer expense, enjoying weight-benches and basketball courts at taxpayer expense, practicing perversion with fellow prisoners, and defending themselves in court with tax-subsidized attorneys who plea bargain and cut deals is not a just sanction for child-rape. To force the victims and the victims' families to pay for the upkeep of their assailants in prisons through forced taxation is the height of injustice and cruelty. The parents of murdered and molested children have to endure the stress and pain of the crime all over again every time that the child predator comes before the parole board for an opportunity to be let out of prison early for "good behavior."

If we followed God's system, the execution would take place publicly, and the witnesses would participate in the executing. There is no insanity defense, no statute of limitations, no throwing out authentic evidence gathered without a court order, no disregarding of uncoerced confessions, no cutting deals between defense and prosecution, no age limit for prosecution, no parole of convicts, no prison escapes, and no repeat offenders.

Furthermore, there would be few, if any, convictions of innocent people. In God's Word, the death penalty mandated at least two eye-witnesses (a strong piece of evidence, like a confession, video evidence, or DNA evidence, would count as a witness.) Circumstantial evidence, or the testimony of one person, would never lead to a conviction. I have a good friend - faithful husband, father of three children, youth minister and open-air preacher - who has wasted away four years of his life in a Pennsylvania prison cell based upon one lie from one boy, who claimed that he propositioned him for sex. All the character witnesses for this youth pastor couldn't persuade the jury to declare him "Not Guilty" for fear that the boy may be telling the truth. He would be eligible for parole if he would just confess to the crime, but this he will not do because God's Word forbids lying, and this dear brother refuses to lie to better his life.

What would be the punishment for this 14-year-old liar if he was caught in his lie today and brought on charges of perjury? A slap on the wrist? Community service? A couple of weeks in a youth detention center, hanging out and playing ball with kids just as evil as he? God's law punishes perjury in a capital case by executing the perjurer.

The perjurer faced the exact punishment that he tried to bring upon an innocent person by his lying. This, God promises us, prevents perjury.

On July 27, President Bush signed legislation that creates a searchable national database of sex offenders. Legislatures have fashioned rules that prevent sexual predators from driving school buses, working in day cares, or living within a thousand feet of a school. Would that have saved Adam Walsh from being abducted from a mall, sodomized and murdered? Would that have saved Elizabeth Smart from being abducted and raped for nine months? Would that have protected Joanne Presti and her 12-year-old daughter Alyssa from being raped and murdered by a convicted sexual predator out on parole? Would that have protected five-year-old Destiny Norton, pictured below, from being abducted by a sexual predator and murdered last month?

What is a sexual offender database good for, besides as a hit list for a Judge who knows what justice looks like? Don't you long for the day when we have to look up old obituaries in order to create a list of sexual predators?

John Walsh, whose son Adam Walsh was raped and murdered 25 years ago, told reporters last week that he thought that all sexual predators should have implants inserted into their rectums which would explode if they violated parole. (The reporters didn't laugh.)

Why don't we do away with the implant and the parole, and just put them to death in a quick, humane manner, like God says? It'll save the taxpayers a lot of money, it'll protect the children from rapists and murderers out on parole or who escaped from prison, it'll provide a sufficient deterrent to prevent men from becoming sexual predators in the first place - even more than Mr. Walsh's proposal for exploding rectal implants. Moreover, a public execution will increase the likelihood that the convicts will repent and make peace with God. The conversion rate was 50 % for the criminals who died next to Jesus on Calvary.

God's ways really are best. He knows what He's talking about. His cross and His law have one thing in common: both are evidence of His love for us. Why don't we repent of our injustice return to Him and His Word?

© 2006 Patrick Johnston - All Rights Reserved

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Patrick and his wife Elizabeth Johnston reside in central Ohio with their five young home-schooled children. Patrick Johnston is a family practice physician and founder of the Association of Pro-life Physicians, which is dedicated to restoring a remnant of physicians in our communities who are convinced that life begins at conception and who will not commit nor refer for abortions (www.ProLifePhysicians.org).

He founded the Alliance to Reform Education Funding to fighting public school levies and promoting Christian home-schooling (www.StopSchoolLevies.org). He founded the Coalition for Justice for All Ohioans to pursue justice for Ohio's pre-born and to provide photo-documentary evidence on-line at www.StopColumbusKilling.net of the abortionists and their accomplices at the abortion clinics of Columbus, Ohio. Dr. Johnston is committed to revival in the church, and the restoration of Biblical law and constitutional government in America.

KIDTRAX: ANOTHER INVASION INTO YOUR FAMILY

KIDTRAX: ANOTHER INVASION INTO YOUR FAMILY

Tricia Smith Vaughan
July 30, 2006
NewsWithViews.com

Only after I read The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto did I begin to think about how intrusive homework is on children’s lives. While I am thankful for Gatto’s insight, I am somewhat mad at myself for not seeing the obvious: Children spend at least six hours in school each day. Why can’t all the learning be done during that time?

Indeed it can. Ask any homeschooler.

But no, no. The efficient and effective education of most homeschoolers doth not please the NEA, or most government school teachers. If stuff that is supposed to be learned during the day seeps into our home in the evening, the NEA achieves its goal of brainwashing children to be socialist slaves 24 hours each day. What's the good, really, in making a part-time socialist?

Thinking outside our conditioned Skinnerian boxes, you can easily see how big of an invasion an hour or two of homework each night is to families. Besides, I can’t imagine a better way of teaching a child to hate learning than to make him or her suffer through homework after being confined in a government school all day.

Nonetheless, our government rulers and their lackeys, mainstream media, extol the virtues of homework and even coach parents on how supposedly to help their children with this unnecessary beast. Parents feel as though they’re wonderful people for adhering to the rules of their children’s local government school change agent. Meanwhile, children’s focus is taken away from their families each night and given to some teacher whose job it is to find which career slave spot the child is best slotted for.

How much better would it be if parents would spend the precious time that homework takes away helping their children to start a business, reading the Bible, or simply talking to their children? Instead, parents must allow one or two hours, after the child’s after-school activities, to review lessons that were supposed to be learned during the day. It’s been a government- and mainstream-media sanctioned intrusion into our homes for over 100 years.

Homework is an excellent way to track children and their parents, seeing how the parents will react to their children’s assigned work. Will the parent help? Complain? Be a cheerleader for the socialist agenda of the schools? Or will the parent even be allowed to help with homework? The answers to all these questions reveal much about the family, much that the government change agents can record dutifully in a child’s cumulative record.

But those who have willingly allowed homework to invade their home and family can now prepare for an even greater invasion. Now, parents and their children will be tracked to an even greater degree. KidTrax, a database that lists all kinds of information on publicly-schooled children in Kentucky, is being touted as a wondrous innovation. According to its site, KidTrax makes it easy to” track virtually any information . . . from basic demographics, such as birth date, sex and ethnicity, to more targeted types of data like participation in government assistance programs, jersey sizes, and non-insured status.” Yes, jersey sizes. Nice. The government schools in Kentucky are buying this marketing ploy; in fact, they can’t wait to start tracking:

“If schools and afterschools share a mission of helping students succeed, why not share school data about who these kids are and what they need?”

Why not, indeed? I admire the way that mainstream media and corporations can make a huge invasion of family life look as innocuous and beneficial as a trip to the pediatrician to receive an antibiotic for a persistent ear infection. It’s called excellent public relations. And privacy snatchers, who live to invade family life, are wonderful at swaying the public to accept invasions of privacy. Just as doing homework has been sold as a way to succeed in life, the coming privacy invasions are being sold as innocently as the Teletubbies or Barney, as just another little bit of help for us ailing parents, from our benevolent rulers. It’s happening in Kentucky and it will spread like Federal Reserve Notes, across our once-free country:

“An estimated 6.5 million children are in afterschool . . . No longer do afterschool workers have to bug parents to drop off their kids' report cards. Now each child is tracked by KidTrax . . . . It connects to the school system though a separate software program. When students show up at an afterschool facility, they swipe their bar-coded ID cards through a reader, much like a credit-card scanner. The ID cards look like a driver's license, and they light up computer screens with data about the students. Afterschools can find out whether their students' families receive food stamps, or whether the student can swim, has applied for college scholarships or got into trouble for rowdiness.”

My first thought was, “Great! That’s what parents deserve who keep their children locked up in some supposed academic enrichment program after being locked up in school all day!” Obviously, it wasn’t my most tolerant moment. This KidTrax thing, which takes the onus off parents to actually have to talk with their children’s babysitters, links to that all-important database that the government is building on all of us sheep.

Like good little ruminant mammals, we are not amazed or even terrified that Leviathan is tracking our children. We are indeed grateful for one less responsibility, being that we’ve already, of course, given up the responsibility to teach and raise our children. Handing the evidently way too onerous responsibility to the government of taking a report card from one babysitter to another will free parents for lots of important things: to make that one more PowerPoint presentation at work or to have that extra mocha latte.

As the publicity article states, KidTrax is there to help parents. Surely, we can all agree on that, can’t we? All this technology does is to place the child’s personal information in an easily readable electronic form, perhaps as a precursor to some rice-sized microchip that parents will soon clamor to have implanted in their progeny. But who cares? Technology that invades our privacy is good for us! The government schools have been teaching us for decades that we should have no privacy, no family secrets.

As with retina scanning in some government schools, parents will look on KidTrax as if it’s a wonderful, time-saving technology. Like homework, it’s there to help students. And besides, if you have nothing to hide in your family, then, why worry?

In fact, I’d keep repeating that mantra to myself if I were you: I have nothing to hide! I have nothing to hide! Soon, you’ll need it. With tracking devices such as KidTrax making it look as though an invasion of privacy is beneficial, you’ll soon have no privacy to lose.

© 2006 Tricia S. Vaughan - All Rights Reserved

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Tricia Smith Vaughan has a Bachelor of Arts in Speech Communication, a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, and a Master of Arts in English. Before she became a mom, she taught first-year English Composition and Literature for five years at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. She has also worked in television, radio, and advertising.

She has written for the Los Angeles Times, Durham, N.C.’s Independent Weekly, Raleigh, N.C.’s News and Observer, and other newspapers. She performs stand-up comedy and writes about homeschooling and other momly stuff.

SLAVE SHIP AMERICA

SLAVE SHIP AMERICA

Nancy Levant
August 1, 2006
NewsWithViews.com

Comprehending globalism and the dismantling of the Constitution is a monumental undertaking. The complexities are difficult, the missions are many, and the history of world governance is daunting. With thousands of writers, articles, researchers – all with differing levels of knowledge – plus the on-going efforts of agent provocateurs, politicians, mass media, and public education, the American people exist beneath a mish-mash of dialectic and informational corruptions, half-truths, pretense, and a sophisticated process whereby pretexts for social and political action are fabricated or engineered.

With this said, there is also the shadowy enforcement of withheld information from the people by many ways and means. Why is it, for instance, that lawyers (esquires) have access to the laws and history of laws of the land, but the American public does not? Why does public education purposefully under-educate? Ignorance is bliss is, in fact, a political necessity. So, the question begs, what is it, exactly, that we don’t know? What are we missing that makes our national acceptance of truth and law so difficult?

To answer these questions requires that the primary questions are 1) known, and 2) asked. To understand globalism, you have to understand what has happened inside of our government. Governmental history is the key to our ignorance and our understanding. And there are just a few instrumental facts that are mandatory to the full and complete acceptance of truth and fact in today’s America. In essence, you have to see it with your own eyes and discern it with your own mind.

Slave Ship America, in this writer’s opinion, may be the most important site for the reclaiming of our hidden and denied education as American people. In a nutshell, what you don’t know is destroying your ability to understand and recapture “freedom” and to refuse “slavery.” If you don’t understand the bureaucracy and legislation (administrative processes) behind the actual creation of slavery, you won’t even attempt to stand against it, because the concept of slavery makes no sense, and particularly to contemporary Americans and other western nations. America, as it is proclaimed, is the freest nation on earth... Right?

We read a lot about the Federal Reserve Corporation, our Federal Reserve notes (our cash), gold and silver standards, and our national debt. We have a limited understanding that all-the-above is not good for the nation. We have a limited understanding that the nation is bankrupt, and we may have a sense that the bankrupting of our nation was by design, but we still don’t understand what is actually behind our current political-economic condition. Nor do we understand our actual political environment or the reasons for the actions of our elected representatives. This is understandable. We don’t want to discover that we elected people who are dismantling the sovereignty and continuance of our nation. But the question begs – when we elected our representatives, exactly what system of laws and governance are/were they operating beneath? We assume they operate beneath the auspices of our knowledge of Constitutional governance. But what if our knowledge of our Constitutional governance is wrong? What if our understanding of “freedom” and the "New World" which the original thirteen colonies represented, has been a maneuvered side-tracker and an intellectual/educational sham?

I would like all readers to go to SlaveShipAmerica. This is one of the most important requests I will ever make of my readers. When you reach this site, you will find a cover article, which I ask that you read. It is very short. You will find, embedded within the text of this article, click-able areas. I ask that you go into these areas and to spend an afternoon or evening reading the information provided in these links.

You will discover, in very readable language, things you have never known about our laws, our legal system, and the history of America. For instance, you will find that America, the entire nation and all 50 states, are a legally functioning corporation and operating not under Constitutional law, but corporate laws, which stem from the legal jurisdiction of the UCC or Universal Commercial Code. You will discover how and when this happened. Equally, you will finally and clearly understand Common Law and Admiralty Law. The Constitution provides us with Common Law. However, we do not operate under Common Law in the United States. We operate under Admiralty, or commercial Law. You will learn how and when this happened, and the results to our current state of political affairs. You will also discover the status of your condition as “a citizen” of this nation – a legal as opposed to a lawful "person" with a birth certificate and Social Security Number. Your citizenship is 100% directed and governed by corporate and Admiralty law, and you will discover how that affects your physical person, all your property, and your duties and obligations as “citizens” under these laws.

Equally, you will discover that our Constitutional rights are not only being dismantled, but have been steadfastly and incrementally dismantled throughout the history of our nation. What you are going to read is going to change your lives, your opinions, and your future courses. What you are going to read is going to finally, and once and for all, give you the full knowledge that you have been denied your entire lives. And until you have this knowledge, you cannot fathom or comprehend the missions and successes of the globalist movement inside of this nation. This is “the biggie,” folks.

I am also in the process of learning, taking in this information, processing and believing the extent of our mind-blowing deception, and of the magnitude of the betrayal upon the American people. You read this, and remember well what you have learned when the fall elections round our corners. If there is one incumbent left standing, then go out and buy your leg irons and slap them on. When you discover what your elected representatives, all operating in this fiction, have done to each and every one of you and your children, as physical persons in this nation, your hearts and minds will finally and permanently awaken to the fact that we are not operating as free people according to our Constitutional rights, responsibilities, and sovereign authority.

If you’re ready for the documented truth, go to SlaveShipAmerica. Open the links provided in the cover article, read each and every one of them, and then ask yourselves if you are now ready to come to the table to perform the duties mandated by your Constitution. This is what your minds have been waiting for – the truthful reasons for your national confusion. And you will finally understand the treasonous missions, actions, and plans of our elected representatives, and how they have accomplished their one-world government.

We are facing mandatory impeachments and also a planned martial law system and state of the union. The unimaginable is facing this nation, and face it, we must. Rather than looking for the next entertainment, chemical, or culinary fix - rather than always going for what's most "convenient," we must now all have a desire to aggressively search out and know the truth.

© 2006 Nancy Levant - All Rights Reserved

WHY DON'T BAD PUBLIC SCHOOLS GO OUT OF BUSINESS?

WHY DON'T BAD PUBLIC SCHOOLS GO OUT OF BUSINESS?

By Joel Turtel

August 5, 2006

NewsWithViews.com

If a store sells inferior products or a business gives bad service, most customers will not come back and that store or business will eventually go bankrupt. If public schools sell bad education, year after year, why don't they go bankrupt? Why don't they go out of business?

The answer is government compulsion. In private schools, if the school does a bad job educating children, parents will soon take their child out of that school. If enough parents take their kids out of the school, that school and its owner will go bankrupt. A private school depends on the voluntary consent and tuition payments of its parent-customers to stay in business.

Unlike private schools, public schools are a government-controlled education system that stays in business through naked compulsion. Local governments pass laws that violate parents' fundamental rights by giving school authorities near-monopoly powers over our children's education.

Compulsory-attendance laws force children to go to these schools until they are 16 years old (the age varies for each state). If a parent refuses to send her child to public school (and can't afford a private school), she can be prosecuted for child "neglect" by social-service agencies.

Local governments force parents to pay for these schools through compulsory school taxes, whether or not parents think these schools are worth the money. If a parent refuses to pay his school taxes, his friendly local government will foreclose on his home.

Unlike private schools, public schools rarely go out of business, no matter how bad they are, because they get their "customers" (our children) and their money (taxes) by force. In effect, public schools are an education tyranny.

Compulsion rears its ugly head in our public schools in many other ways. In most cases, teacher-licensing laws prevent excellent but unlicensed educators or outside experts from teaching in the schools. Tenure laws make it almost impossible for school boards to fire bad teachers or principals.

Local governments force children to go to public schools for six to eight hours a day, five days a week for up to twelve years, even though these children might hate public school. School authorities force children to study subjects that school authorities dictate, even though children might find these subjects boring or meaningless. Public schools also force parents to accept teachers that parents might not like or think are competent.

Many public schools force children to learn math and reading with teaching methods that can cripple children's math and reading abilities, such as "whole-language" reading instruction (called "balanced literacy" or "language arts" today), or "fuzzy" or "new" math. If and when parents complain about these teaching methods, public schools can and often do ignore parent's complaints.

Public schools often subject innocent young children to shocking sex-education classes that parents detest or object to. Many public schools now allow special-interest groups to push their agenda on innocent children, such as homosexual, feminist, multiculturalist, or environmental (the sky is falling) groups, with or without parent's consent.

Teacher unions have pushed the idea of making kindergarten compulsory. It seems that public-school advocates want to get their hands on our children when they are only three years old, snatched from the arms of mothers who might not like that idea. The list goes on and on.

Like tax-supported prisons, public schools don't shut down because the whole system rests on a foundation of naked government force. Take away compulsory-attendance laws and compulsory school taxes and it's highly likely that many public schools would "go out of business," because parents would take their business elsewhere.

But parents don't have to wait for the highly unlikely event of public schools going out of business in their lifetime. Luckily, parents in America, unlike those in Germany, still have the right to homeschool their children. Parents can also take advantage of new, low-cost education options available to them right now, such as low-cost Internet private schools. I go into detail about these new education options in my book, "Public Schools, Public Menace."

© 2006 Joel Turtel - All Rights Reserved

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Joel Turtel, author of Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie To Parents and Betray Our Children, holds a degree in Psychology. For the last ten years he has served as an Education Policy Analyst, studying the climate of today's public schools and its effect on children and parents.

Mr. Turtel has written two books, published over fifty articles, and has been interviewed in both print and broadcast media on the subject. His latest book, Public Schools, Public Menace has garnered national media attention – recently, for example, Dr. Laura Schlessinger featured the book on her nationally syndicated radio show.

Joel Turtel is available to discuss his book Public Schools, Public Menace in the media, at conferences, or with individual groups. Be warned though, you may be shocked by the revelations he has uncovered in America's public-school system.

SHUT UP AND FLUSH

SHUT UP AND FLUSH

By Dr. Laurie Roth Ph.D.
August 4, 2006
NewsWithViews.com

Thank God our congress has done something right regarding the memorial cross in San Diego that has been under legal fire for some time. Now they just need our President's signature to transfer the land this cross is on to federal and save it from destruction! At least one cross won't come down!!! Although, just think of the mental pressure and stress that will put on all the drivers going by it. Why can't we think of their pain and suffering as they drive down the road to get their drug fix!! It is so inconvenient to have a cross collide with your peripheral vision!!!

Our morals continue to slither sideways and be challenged as Ms. Magazine now wants women to sign a petition stating they have had an abortion. After all, that isn't something to hide in shame, it is something to be proud of and promoted. After all, any sane and liberated woman who believes in making choices for her own body knows it ain't a baby in the womb, but a head of lettuce and green slime until month 9 when magically IT turns into a human baby as it comes through the womb. Of course if the Mom wants a partial birth abortion as it is coming through the cannel, then it is still a head of lettuce, granted a screaming and moving head of lettuce!

What other fronts must we face and fight in a time of war? Oh yeah, then there is the ongoing saga of Michael Newdow who is appealing the "In God we Trust" decision which didn't go his way! He must be horrified that our President came out this week with a proclamation reminding America of the 50th anniversary of "In God we Trust", coined by that trouble maker Francis Scott Key!

Sadly the battle we must fight is on several fronts…..saving babies lives, even defining what babies are! Feminists throw out "choice and anti choice" as the two positions we are all in. Wrong! I have always been pro choice!!! I am just pro moral choice. We either choose to wipe out a human life….murder….or save and protect it!!! Both are always "choices".

While we are having so much fun insulting God, country and our troops we shouldn't stop there. It wasn't too long ago that Judge Roy Moore got the boot because he wouldn't chuck the 10 commandments. Yet another symbol, reflecting our legal traditions and foundation under fire.

Not long ago I found myself desperately trying to reach out to the far left, anti God crowd by rewriting the Bill of Rights in an earlier article. This week however, I thought I would continue my attempt at empathy by rewriting the 10 commandments and making them more reflective of the far left's value system. At least I am trying!

10 commandments for the far left

1. You shall have all Gods including yourself before me offering up a deep dish pizza
2. You shall not make any idol before me unless of course it is Pee Wee Herman and Hillary dancing with a chicken
3. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord. Always make sure it is a winning table at Vegas before you call on His name
4. Remember the Sabbath. Remember all the excuses you need to keep your church friends confused. Then pull the blinds and watch your football.
5. Honor your Father and Mother. If they pray at the table and won't give you condoms turn them over to Children's service division
6. Thou shalt kill if it's a preacher on his way to church.
7. You shall not commit adultery more than once a month.
8. Thou shalt steal everything from the Government it can and sue neighbors and employers for ones other needs
9. Thou shalt not lie in bed with someone who won't lie about your affair
10.Thou shalt bare false witness against all red necks, gun owners and Christians and finally…..you shall not covet your neighbor's house. Just nock them over the head and steal it.

One can only wonder what the accepted symbols of the far left would be. If they had nothing to sue about what would they do? If abortions were popular and always legal where would the left get their much needed revenue? In a few generations they would all be dead! Then of course there is the problem of finding enough construction crews to put up all their new national symbols. 300 foot tall condoms and sex symbols at all our national land marks. Mt. Rushmore would have to be blown up and REAL patriots put up there, Hillary, Murtha, Kennedy and Feinstein.

As we continue down this American trail we must do a few things to stay alive and keep our quality of life!!! Remember who we are in God, our REAL history and the sacrifice from SO many to get us here! Continue to define and protect innocent life, young and old! Operate in this world from a position of sovereign strength by controlling our borders, not watering down our US identity by morphing us into Canada and Mexico! Have the courage and honesty to identify the enemy we face, Fundamentalist/extremist Islam….not terror! Finally, as we attempt to challenge and fix some of our problems within, stop apologizing for being American. Put the flags back up in our schools!

© 2006 Dr. Laurie Roth - All Rights Reserved

TEACH TRUTH

TEACH TRUTH

Coach Dave Daubenmire
August 3, 2006
NewsWithViews.com

I love to do secular radio.

It is a great opportunity to speak to the un-churched, or miss-churched masses. In no other place can you so clearly speak the Truth to so many, without being preachy. If we are well-informed, we can allow the Spirit to “guide them unto all Truth.” (John 16:13)

Most Christians in today’s culture are not equipped to defend the Truth. Oh they can give you end-time prophecy, the prosperity gospel, 7 steps to a better life, and why tithing is Biblical, but when it comes to engaging on the great moral issues of the day, they come up emptier than a drug-addict’s bank account. It is not that they don’t want to stand for Truth, it is just that they have never been shown how. No one will enter into a debate if he is not sure that he knows enough about the subject to win the debate.

Sadly, most churches no long teach cultural apologetics. That’s why I love appearing on secular radio. I tell the listeners that I am their worst nightmare. I know what the Bible says, I believe it, and most importantly, I can defend it.

But believing and defending the Bible is not enough. What do you do after you have made a great Biblical argument with someone and they answer with the deadly statement, “That’s fine for you, but I don’t believe the Bible.” We must learn to win the secular mind as well.

Last week on a secular show out of Portland, Maine I was discussing the condition of the public school system. The phone lines really lit up because there is great frustration in America over the lousy return taxpayers are receiving on their “investment.” However, there is an amazing dynamic at work. The average Joe knows the schools aren’t working, but he somehow thinks the school his children are going to is doing fine. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard callers say “Our school is doing a great job.” Sort of like congress. Everyone hates government, but thinks their congressman is honest.

One such caller dialed the phones on Saturday. A paraphrase of her argument went something like this;

“Coach, it bothers me that you are saying such bad things about our schools. Our family is Catholic, we have our children in church and we send them to our local public schools. I know many of the teachers there and they are wonderful, caring people. I don’t know why you are so down on schools. Our schools do a good job.”

Years of practice on radio had prepared me for the response. My natural inclination was to begin to feed her all of the things I knew about the public education, the NEA, they system’s moral bankruptcy, the religion of secular humanism being taught, and the dumbing down of our children, but I resisted the urge. I have learned that the best way to teach is to ask questions. This exposes a listener’s belief system, and provides an

opportunity to lead them to Truth. So, instead of whacking her on the head with my Bible, or showing her how smart I was, I simply asked her this question:

“Julie, could your children recite the first 10 amendments to the Constitution?”

“Probably not,” came her sheepish reply. “I’m not sure I could”

“Well Julie, do you think they should be able to? Don’t you think that is more important than learning how to put on a condom?”

It was as if all Maine suddenly gone silent. Nothing more needed to be said. Everyone listening had to answer that question…and the subsequent un-spoken question that followed. “Yeah! Why don’t they know the Bill of Rights?”

Good schools, huh? Compared to what? “Well the teachers are so nice….”

Christians are confused. A generation of values clarification and moral relativism, has overwhelmed the church’s one-hour-a-week Sunday school approach. John Dewey, the Father of American Education, created an educational system that indoctrinated Christian beliefs out of our children. The American government-education system has become the salt of the church. Make no mistake about it, your children think like little humanists, not like little Christians.

And the parents are no different.

How can a Christian parent, and even worse, Christian pastors, support an educational system that teaches the direct opposite of everything that they teach in Church? Think I’m crazy? I guess it is time for a few questions.

Do you believe God created you? What does your school teach?

Do you believe in abstinence? What does your school teach?

Do you believe that homosexuality is normal? What does your school teach?

Do you believe all families are equal? What does you school teach?

Do you believe in absolute Truth? What does your school teach?

Do you believe our rights come from government? What does your school teach?

Do you believe the environment is more important than an unborn child? What does your school teach?

Do you believe that God is the ultimate authority? What does your school teach?
Why do you allow your “good school” to teach your children things you don’t believe? Ooops, sorry. Why do you PAY them to teach lies?

Sooooo, let’s stop blaming the schools, and start blaming the Churches. “Judgment begins in the house of God” ( I Peter 4:17) It is time we got our act together, and “trained up or children in the way they should go,” (Prov. 22:6)

The world has gone mad because the Church has lost her way. Instead of being the salt, we have become the sugar. God’s love hurts, but only the Truth brings healing.

So let me turn the question around. Let’s replay the Julie-in-Maine call with a little twist.

“Coach, it bothers me that you are saying such bad things about our churches. Our family is Catholic, we have our children in school and we send them to our local church. I know many of the pastors there and they are wonderful, caring people. I don’t know why you are so down on churches. Our churches do a good job.”

Let me ask you a question Julie. Can your children recite the 10 commandments?” Do you think they should be able to? Isn’t learning the 10 Commandments more important than learning to tolerate sin?

Here is a short test for you. When your child comes home tonight, ask him/her this question: Should abortion be legal, and why or why not? My bet is they will respond like good little humanists, “I would never have one, but who am I to say what is right for someone else?” There it is, you see. What is right for me, may not be right for you. Moral relativism, no absolute Truth, “everyone doing what is right in His own eyes.” (Judges 17:6)

As harsh as this may sound into today’s Dr. Phil-America, it really doesn’t matter what you think. What matters is what God thinks.

It is time our churches lead the return to the teaching of Truth. Truth is not an opinion, and it is time that Christians said so.

Let’s get away from the youth-group model that is shaped by the world. Let’s stop trying so hard to entertain. Let’s start training. If it is true that most of the Gospel-sharing is done one on one, isn’t it time we equipped our kids to do some real evangelism?

Do our kids know what God thinks? Do they know why some things are right and some things are wrong? Do they know that the Gospel requires more than “being nice”?

Truth has fallen and we must raise the standard once again.

Enough of the fluff. It is time to teach Truth.

“But Coach we are supposed to be nice...”

IRAN: STRIVING TOWARDS ISLAMIC APOCALYPSE

IRAN: STRIVING TOWARDS ISLAMIC APOCALYPSE

By Elizabeth Kendal
World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission (WEA RLC)

AUSTRALIA (ANS) -- Ever since being elected President of Iran in June 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has used every means he can not only to drive Iran backwards to the days of the Islamic Revolution, but also to drive it forward to become a world leader in belligerence.

Ahmadinejad is driven by ideology. He believes his divine calling is to hasten the coming of the Mahdi (the Shia messiah, the Hidden 12th Imam) and prepare Iran to receive him. According to the myth, the Mahdi, who supposedly disappeared in the 9th Century, will return from his occultation (concealment) in the well behind the Jamkaran mosque on the outskirts of Qom during a time of world chaos. He will lead the apocalyptic battle between good and evil and establish the global rule of Islam.
Convinced the Mahdi's return is imminent, Ahmadinejad is preparing Iran to receive him. Various infrastructure projects are underway for the Mahdi's benefit, and Ahmadinejad has vowed to rid Iran of Christianity and all other offensive non-Islamic influences and practices. He is also agitating world chaos by inciting anti-Semitism, advocating genocide, bolstering his arsenal, courting dictators and stoking tension across the globe.

According to the myth, when the Mahdi returns from occultation Jesus will return from heaven to be his follower and pray behind him. Jesus will fight against the Dajjal, the deceiver or false messiah. There will be an apocalyptic battle between good and evil and Jesus will declare Islam to be the true religion and convert all Christians to Islam. The world will be transformed into a perfect Islamic society ruled over by the Mahdi. Then the Day of Resurrection will come. Hezbollah, an Iranian asset, holds the same ideology.

Persecution against the Iranian Church increased as soon as Ahmadinejad was elected. In the latest incident an Iranian Christian named Issa Motamadi was imprisoned for his faith on 24 July in the north-western town of Resht. He will soon stand trial before a Revolutionary Tribunal. According to sources, Issa and his wife Parvah, both converts to Christianity, came to the attention of the authorities seven months ago when they decided to give their new-born son a Biblical, Christian name. A security official is said to have advised Issa to renounce his faith. He also intimated that it may take several executions before Iranians actually comprehend the reality of the religious situation. There are rumours that Parvah may also be targeted. The family desperately needs a lawyer courageous enough to advocate with conviction for Issa's and Parvah's rights. Issa's mother, who is not a Christian, is traumatised by the situation. All their Christian friends will be at risk.

Observers are concerned Ahmadinejad may increasingly persecute Christians while the eyes of the world are on the conflict in the Levant. But he who made the eye does see! (Psalm 94:8-11) So we appeal to Christ, who has promised to build his Church, and to whom all authority in heaven and earth has been given for the benefit of the Church (Ephesians 1:22).

It's not just about land

It's not just about land
By Victor Davis Hanson
Published August 5, 2006

Despite the claims of terrorist organizations, Israel's current two-front war is not just about land. After all, Hezbollah and Hamas fired rockets from Lebanon and Gaza well after Israel had withdrawn from both places.
Indeed, if sacred Arab ground were driving the Middle East crisis, surely Syria would now be willing to risk a shooting war over the all important Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Meanwhile, Cairo is still perhaps the nexus of virulent Arab anti-Semitism, though Israel finished handing over Sinai to Egypt in 1982.
The world prayed that after the unilateral departure of Israel from Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005, and the recent elections in Beirut and the West Bank, it was witnessing an incremental evolution toward a lasting peace between rational democratic states. Gradually, Israel was returning to its 1967 borders. In response, gradually, it was hoped, Israel's Arab neighbors would vote into office reasonable statesmen who would renounce terror and get on with crafting workable economies and governments. But all that optimism presupposed a radical change in the Middle Eastern mentality that unfortunately hasn't happened.
So, if the most recent war in Lebanon and Gaza is not about land per se, whence arises the elemental desire to destroy Israel?
The answer boils down to Islamists feeling their reputation is at stake. Words like "honor" and "pride" are evoked-- in the sense they need to be regained -- by every insecure radical in the Islamic world, from al Qaeda's Osama bin Laden to Hezbollah's Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Fist-shaking crowds, fiery mullahs and terrorists all boast of not giving an inch to infidels, and restoring the now sullied honor of the Islamic people. Why their hurt?
For about the last half-century, globalization has bypassed most of the recalcitrant Middle East -- economically, socially and politically. So there are now few inventions and little science emanating from the Islamic world -- but a great deal of poverty, tyranny and violence. And rather than make the necessary structural changes that might end cultural impediments to progress and modernity -- such as tribalism, patriarchy, gender apartheid, polygamy, autocracy, statism and fundamentalism -- too many Middle Easterners have preferred to embrace the reactionary past and the cult of victimization.
At one time or another, they have welcomed all the bankrupt ideologies that traditionally blame others for prior self-induced failure: fascism, communism, Ba'athism, Pan-Arabism and, most recently, Islamic fundamentalism.
When there is high unemployment, corruption, zero economic growth, endemic illiteracy and no freedom, mullahs, dictators and jihadists of the Middle East always seem to fault the ancient colonial power -- Britain, France or Italy (though rarely Islamic Turkey) -- that supposedly set them back more than a century ago. Or they try blaming the omnipotent United States whose oilmen developed the riches of the Gulf and whose military has saved Muslims from Kosovo to Kuwait.
But above all, for decades leaders like Egypt's Abdel Gamal Nasser, Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, the Palestinians' Yasser Arafat and al Qaeda's bin Laden have scapegoated tiny Israel.
It is the closest Western bogeyman, and its Holocaust survivors transformed part of the desert into a technologically sophisticated Western state. Israel's astounding success is a constant irritant to many nearby Muslims, representing the infidel's ability to fashion a prosperous, democratic society without oil revenues.
Victimization turns out to be the real creed of the Middle East, uniting disparate Shi'ites, Sunnis, dictators, theocrats and terrorists. "They did it to us" offers an easy explanation of why Islamic states are now weak and offer little hope to millions of their poor, who, ironically, emigrate to the much pilloried West by the millions. U.S. aid, Israeli concessions, windfall petrol profits and, most of all, appeasement of radical Islamists can do nothing to alleviate these perceived grievances.
Instead, there will be no peace in the general Middle East until Iranians and Arabs have true constitutional government, free institutions, open markets and the rule of law. Without these reforms, they will continue to fail, seeking easy refuge in the shreds of mythical ancestral honor -- and this pathetic neurosis of blaming nearby Israel for the loss of it.

Homosexual-activist cop threatens Christians

Homosexual-activist cop threatens Christians
Officer orders pro-marriage petitions removed from Promise Keepers event

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Posted: August 4, 2006
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© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

A homosexual-activist police officer assigned to security at a Promise Keepers men's conference in Florida is being investigated for threatening members of a Christian organization petitioning for a state constitutional marriage amendment.

"I have never in my life seen such unprofessional and bizarre behavior from a law enforcement officer," said John Stemberger, the president and general counsel of the Florida Family Policy Council.

"This kind of ridiculous harassment and intimidation was meant to thwart the effort to protect marriage in Florida. It should remind all of us that we are engaged in a culture war. …"

His group had rented a display table at a June Promise Keepers conference in the Fort Lauderdale area to publicize its effort to collect more than 611,000 signatures on petitions to call for a vote of Florida people. The goal is to protect traditional marriage – between one man and one woman – in the state constitution.

But as the signatures were being collected, officers of the Sunrise city police department ordered volunteers for Florida4Marriage.org to stop accepting names.

"Officers then physically removed the petitions from 'public view' on the table at the exhibitors tent," the council said in a website update of the situation. "Two of the male officers mocked the volunteers by kissing each other after they initially removed all the petitions from the area."

Stemberger yesterday told WorldNetDaily the situation now is on hold while the police department fulfills its obligation to do an investigation.

"I have filed the complaint with internal affairs. They are doing a good-faith investigation because they've called me several times. I know that the officer's retained counsel," he said.

"No one would have ever believed our story without that photograph. That photograph really captures the attitude that we were approached with," he said.

The camera was a fortunate circumstance, he said, because one volunteer said she always carried one around. Her tape recorder, however, didn't work, he said.

Stemberger said without a significant result from the police department's investigation, it would produce a "chilling" effect on any Christian activities in public areas.

"Marriage is the picture God gives in the Scripture about Christ and the church," he said.

In the actual confrontation, Stemberger was called after the officers removed the petitions. He sought further legal counsel from Rick Nelson of American Liberties Institute and then confronted Sgt. Allen.

He said he asked the sergeant what law or ordinance was being violated by the petitions and Allen simply responded with a not-entirely accurate lecture on Jesus' view of homosexuality in the New Testament and the statement that the petition was a "waste of time."

The sergeant then proclaimed he was the authority and "the Bible says that Christians should obey the authorities."

Allen was backed up by four other Sunrise officers and continued to argue "theology" even after Promise Keepers' own security and event officials arrived and explained the petitions were authorized.

Allen also threatened to arrest Stemberger, who stood his ground.

The situation ultimately cooled down when managers for the arena told the sergeant to stand down, the council said.

WND's calls to the city manager's office yesterday were referred to the police chief, whose secretary said he was out of town and unavailable to provide an update on the investigation. The police agency's website does speak of a "diversified" team of officers.

The petition drive is trying to collect 611,009 signatures to put the issue on the 2008 election ballot. Similar constitutional amendments already have been endorsed by voters in 20 states, with another half dozen on the ballot this year already.

"We always have great relationships with the venues and the security details (at the conferences) and that's the first time we ever saw that level of partisanship from security," Promise Keepers spokesman Steve Chavis told WND.

'Hizbullah committing war crimes'

'Hizbullah committing war crimes'

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JPost.com Staff, THE JERUSALEM POST Aug. 5, 2006

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Hizbullah must immediately stop firing rockets into civilian areas in Israel, Human Rights Watch said Saturday.

"Lobbing rockets blindly into civilian areas is without doubt a war crime," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Nothing can justify this assault on the most fundamental standards for sparing civilians the hazards of war."

"Most of the attacks appear to have been directed at civilian areas and have hit pedestrians, hospitals, schools, homes and businesses," the humanitarian organization's website stated.

Since July 12, when Hizbullah captured two IDF soldiers and killed eight, Human Rights Watch researchers have been documenting the war's impact on civilians in Israel and Lebanon, interviewing the witnesses and survivors of attacks, as well as doctors, emergency workers, police, military and government officials.

"Hizbullah must stop using the excuse of Israeli misconduct to justify its own," said Roth.

The organization's Web site recognized that northern Israel had come to a virtual standstill because of Hizbullah's rockets, which were "exacting an enormous human and economic toll."

"Under international humanitarian law - also known as the laws of war - parties to an armed conflict must not make the civilian population the object of attack, or fire indiscriminately into civilian areas. Nor can they launch attacks that they know will cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects that exceeds the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. Such attacks constitute war crimes," the site explained.

"Several medical and educational institutes have sustained damage from Katyusha attacks." Human Rights Watch researchers visited hospitals in Nahariya and Safed after they were hit.

At Nahariya Hospital, rockets had been landing near the hospital since July 12, a hospital spokesperson said. "There are no military bases around here; nothing military at all," he said. "I believe they know perfectly well they are firing at a hospital."

"In the absence of troops or military assets inside, hospitals must never be attacked," Human Rights Watch said. "Deliberately attacking them is a war crime."

China police crush Christian church

China police crush Christian church
Dozens imprisoned as nearly-finished meeting place destroyed

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Posted: August 5, 2006
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© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

A nearly completed Christian church building in Xiaoshan district has been demolished by government contractors and about 60 Christian leaders imprisoned as China continues to battle unregulated Christianity.

China Aid Association, a Texas-based organization set up to develop and preserve religious freedom in China, said yesterday the demolition of the Dangshan city church building happened July 29.

On that day, about five dozen Christian leaders, some of whom now have disappeared, were taken into custody. And yesterday, China Aid said three more leaders were jailed.

The three latest Christian community leaders jailed were identified as Ni Huiming, 45; Shen Zhuke, 52; and Shen Jian, 48. China Aid officials say they, like the people arrested earlier, largely are held incommunicado, and their locations and conditions are unknown.

One other woman, Wang Aizhen, of Kanshan town, remained hospitalized with broken chest bones after being beaten by riot police during the July 29 church demolition, China Aid said.

The action is out of the ordinary, even for a government that maintains a constant crackdown on house churches like this one, or those that are not formally acknowledged by the government, officials said. "It was very unusual to use excessive force to destroy an almost-finished church building," Bob Fu, a spokesman for China Aid, told WorldNetDaily yesterday.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a government agency, noted in its 2006 report that "every religious community in China is subject to serious restrictions, state control, and repression."

"We were informed that some brothers and sisters were seriously injured when they were caught, and some have lost contact with their family members who do not know where to send money or clothing to help them," China Aid said. "The lives of some Christians might be in danger."

The original church building, built in 1921 on a 10,000-square-foot parcel, was occupied starting with the 1949 "liberation" by the communist government. The local Christians then worshipped in a 200-year-old building for a time, and in recent years had been reconstructing a worship center on the original site. Then government officials, four excavators and hundreds of military policemen arrived and destroyed the structure.

Of the 60 Christians arrested, about 50 remain in custody, without any formal charges being filed, China Aid said.

"What has worried us most is that some Christians disappeared after the conflict," China Aid said. "Some are young students that can not be found in either the detention or custody centers. According to reliable sources, some may have been beaten to death."

In China, only churches that have registered with the state and meet the government's requirements are allowed to meet, have property or buildings. The government also decides who can register.

While China Aid monitors the China situation on its Monitor China site, the USCIRF lists China as a country of "particular concern" because of the government's behavior towards religious groups.

In its 260-page report on international religious persecution, agency members noted that during their first-ever visit to China to discuss those issues, when a Catholic bishop with the state-affiliated Catholic church began discussing the arrest of a bishop from the unregistered Catholic church, the interview was immediately ended.

Ex-agent says U.S. ignored WMD sites

Ex-agent says U.S. ignored WMD sites
Waged 3-year battle to conduct searches, but politics, fear got in way

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Posted: August 5, 2006
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© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

Dave Gaubatz
A former U.S. federal agent and counter-terrorism specialist deployed to Iraq before the war says he waged a three-year, unsuccessful battle to get officials to search four sites where he believes the former Saddam regime buried weapons of mass destruction.

Dave Gaubatz, an Arabic linguist who now serves as chief investigator with the Dallas County Medical Examiner, told his story to Ryan Mauro of WorldThreats.com.

Gaubatz said the suspected sites have never been searched by the Iraq Survey Group, the fact-finding mission dispatched by the U.S.-led multinational force. Two sites are within the city limits of Nasariyah, another about 20 miles south and the fourth in Umm Qasr, near Basra.

Emphasizing these are sites established by the Saddam regime after the first Gulf War, Gaubatz said he believes they contain chemical and/or biological weapons.

The former federal agent said the WMD were buried under riverbeds, and one site has a sewage pipe system. Before the war, he said, he had been briefed to search oil, gas, water and sewage pipes.

"Saddam was very good about hiding and moving WMD," Gaubatz told Mauro. "People need to research how easy it is to do using a gas-oil pipeline."

Providing more details, Gaubatz said the first site is within a couple of miles of several thousand U.S. military personnel at Ali Air Base, previously called Talil Air Base. The WMD are inside concrete bunkers buried under the riverbed of the Euphrates, he said.

The second site is in the sewage pipe system near the Saddam Hospital, where Pvt. Jessica Lynch was held hostage. There are pipes within the pipes, he noted.

The third site has WMD buried in canals, Gaubatz said, pointing out missile imprints were seen nearby.

The fourth site is at Umm Qasr, hidden in the channel. An Iraqi police captain assigned to both Nasariyah and Basra had information on this site, he said, and other Iraqis identified it as well.

Arguing for the validity of the sites, Gaubatz emphasized that many Iraqis risked their lives to identify them to his team.

Illustrating the danger, he told of receiving an e-mail June 23 from a special agent for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations in Nasariyah informing him that many of the Iraqi sources who came forward to help him and other OSI agents had been assassinated by insurgents since 2003.

"All they ever asked is that we, the U.S. government, inspect the sites they were risking their lives to show us," Gaubatz said. "They had heard President Bush say Saddam Hussein had WMD, and they wanted to help America. Now they are dead and the sites remain unsearched."

The Iraqis he interviewed provided many details about the suspected sites, he said. Many of the areas around the sites had been closed for several months while it was excavated to bury the weapons, causing severe hardship to the Iraqis nearby.

High-ranking Iraqi personnel and military trucks come into the area, according to the informants.

"Low-ranking soldiers often talked to the locals about the WMD being buried," Gaubatz explained. "Most people don't realize that alcohol and narcotics were often used excessively by Iraqi civilians, Fedayeen and military personnel. People talk when they are under the influence of drugs and alcohol."

Asked why the Iraq Survey Group and the Bush administration didn't rush to have the sites checked, Gaubatz replied: "Our president only gets filtered information provided to him. Charles Duelfer, the former director of the ISG, provided the information he wanted President Bush to obtain. He never informed President Bush that the ISG was negligent by only searching less than 10 percent of all sites identified."

Duelfer, Gaubatz noted, said at the beginning of the war and in an interview recently that "it was dangerous to go to suspected sites, and is still dangerous; the area is a war zone."

"This is what we were up against," Gaubatz commented. "I have never known of any war that was not dangerous. He should have taken this into consideration before accepting the director position."

Gaubatz touched on the announcement in June by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., and Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., of some 500 chemical weapons discovered in Iraq since 2003, calling it "politics for personal gain and personal reaons."

Hoekstra and Rep. Curt Weldon wanted to locate WMD for their own political ambitions, Gaubatz charged.

"The release of the 'breaking news' of 500 WMD shells being found was purely Hoekstra in damage-control mode and old news to anyone who has worked intelligence," he maintained.

Gaubatz claimed the administration does not want to find out the truth because it could jeopardize the Republican Party.

"The sites I identified in 2003 were never searched; there is now a possibility the sites were looted and WMD is in the hands of terrorists," he said.

"Our administration, Weldon and Hoekstra can give 100 speeches about how much we are doing to fight the war on terrorism and how much they support our troops, but until they search the suspected WMD sites only two miles from our troops, they are feeding the American people B.S," he continued.

Gaubatz said he supports Bush, but the president's "advisers prevent the truth and the real intelligence from ever reaching him."

Iran supplies Hizballah with a battery of upgraded Zelzal missiles that can reach Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona

Iran supplies Hizballah with a battery of upgraded Zelzal missiles that can reach Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona

August 4, 2006, 11:09 PM (GMT+02:00)

This disclosure by DEBKA-Net-Weekly 264 was confirmed Friday, August 4, by Ali-Akbar Mohtashami-Pour, former Iranian ambassador to Damascus and Tehran’s senior liaison with Hizballah. The acquisition of an improved Zelzal through Syria with a range of 350-400 km was behind Hassan Nasrallah’s threat to bomb Tel Aviv if Beirut came under another Israel air attack. Tel Aviv is 150 km north of Dimona and therefore well within range of the improved Zelzal missile. The DEBKA-Net-Weekly report added: The battery consists of 16 missiles which, fired from northern or central Lebanon, can hit the Negev town of Beersheba which is some 34 km west of the nuclear center. Iran knows that a missile attack on the Dimona reactor, even if it is a direct hit, will not do much harm because the nuclear installations are buried deep underground and guarded by anti-missile defenses. But both Tehran and Hizballah are after the psychological impact on Islamic and world opinion of aiming the first Muslim missile against Israel’s atomic center. Earlier, Hizballah said there would be no ceasefire until the last Israeli soldier leaves Lebanon. France submitted draft UN resolution on Lebanon

Four Israel women killed in Hizballah barrage of 175 rockets Saturday – the heaviest on Kiryat Shemona and W. Galilee. Fifteen civilians die in rocket

Four Israel women killed in Hizballah barrage of 175 rockets Saturday – the heaviest on Kiryat Shemona and W. Galilee. Fifteen civilians die in rocket attacks on northern Israel in four days

August 5, 2006, 10:25 PM (GMT+02:00)

Three of the victims on Day 25 of the war were a mother and her two daughters In the W. Galilee village of Arb al-Aramshe: Fadiya Jum’a, 60, Samira, 33, and Sultana, 31. In an earlier barrage in the Haifa region, Frieda Kellner, 87 died of heart failure when an 11-rocket volley landed outside her home. Six people were injured in Haifa’s Kiryat Motzkin, Kiryat Haim and Kiryat Yam, which suffered major damage to homes and cars, as did Kiryat Shemona in the afternoon. A mortar shell seriously injured a soldier at his border post. Friday, Aug. 4, 3 Israelis were killed at Kfar Mughar, Majd el-Krum and Deir al Asad by 220 rockets, which also hit Kiryat Shemona, Sdeh Nehemiya and Safed. Friday night also saw the Hadera area hit for the first time by a Khaibar-1 missile, identified by military sources as a 302-mm made in a Syrian-Iranian munitions factories in Syria. This brought Hizballah’s offensive to within 45 km of Tel Aviv, the deepest yet. Majd el-Krum between Haifa and Carmiel was hit at the same time by a long-range Fajr-3. Thursday, Aug. 3, was the deadliest day of Hizballah’s rocket offensive against the northern Israeli population. At least 200 rockets left 8 civilians dead in the port of Acre north of Haifa and in Maalot Tarshiha further east. The day before, a member of Kibbutz Saar near Nahariya was killed by a direct rocket hit.

Tehran Sends Archterrorist Mughniyeh to Rescue Hizballah

Tehran Sends Archterrorist Mughniyeh to Rescue Hizballah

DEBKAfile’s Exclusive Military Report

August 5, 2006, 4:57 PM (GMT+02:00)

In the middle of the fourth week of the Lebanon War, the tide began to turn in Israel’s favor. DEBKAfile’s military sources report the battlefield finally responded to the effect of Israel’s air might, its tank columns, the pounding by mobile artillery and naval craft and its repeated armored infantry assaults.

After losing 44 fighting men, more than 30 civilians, many thousands of wounded and billions of dollars of damage, finally, the Israeli military was given the chance to do what it does best: focus its firepower instead of spreading it out thin over too many targets.

The setbacks of the first three weeks were partly due to tactical incompetence and laggard decision-making on the part of prime minister Ehud Olmert and defense minister Peretz. Israeli troops therefore spent too long in abrading combat against stubborn Hizballah resistance in such places as Maroun er Ras and Bint Jubeil. But as soon as Israeli ground forces shifted to the massive, long-distance firing mode which they knows best, the impact on the warfront was immediate. The battle went their way with a minimum of casualties. In places where Israeli troops adhered to the close combat tactics practiced in the first three weeks, they continued to suffer high casualties.

Hizballah soon showed signs of distress. Lacking the weapons and resources to stand up to IDF’s precise-shooting juggernaut, their commanders quickly pulled their men out most combat sectors of South Lebanon and ordered them to regroup in five places:

1. The Western Sector and the center of Tyre.

2. The Wadi Hajar pocket east of Tyre.

3. The Central Sector surrounding Bint Jubeil, where the outcome is still unresolved after many days of fighting.

4. The Wadi Saluki area northwest of the northernmost Israeli town of Metullah.

5. The Eastern Sector, including al Khiam, the Shabaa Farms and Mt Dov, which has seen little fighting - although last week Israeli forces began - then stopped - a major offensive before it got underway.

These pockets are now the main launching-pads for rockets fired into Israel.

Outside, there is no ground fighting in South Lebanon but for Israeli air strikes.

Hizballah also has also been using the Tapuach and al-Haroub areas south and northeast of Sidon for shooting rockets. It is from this region that Hizballah fired the long-range Khaibar-1 missiles at Hadera Friday night, August 4, which came 45 km short of Tel Aviv. Saturday morning, Sidon’s 200,000 inhabitants and its outlying villages up to the Zahrani River were warned to leave their homes and head north to escape the coming Israeli air offensive.

Until the Khaibar attack on Hadera, the concentration of Hizballah’s rocket launchers and stores in and around Sidon had been immune from Israeli attack – largely because Olmert and his senior ministers refused to increase the number of ground troops deployed in Lebanon. The military commanders had to do their best with the limited numbers available.

In other words, with the right manpower level, Hizballah’s abilty to fire rockets can be dented, notwithstanding claims by Israel officials and generals that there is no way to do this when most of Hizballah’s 13,000-rocket stockpile remains intact.

But even cutting down on the daily 200-plus rocket blitz on northern Israel is

not plain sailing because:

First, Neither the Israeli Air Force nor any other air force is capable of completely halting rocket fire from the ground. In the relatively small distances between Lebanon and Israel, the short-range Katyusha rockets have the effect of medium-range weapons, while the short-to-medium range rockets perform like long-range missiles.

Second, Israel does not have enough infantry on the ground to make substantial inroads on Hizballah’s rocket-firing capabilities.

Third, Iran and Syria are constantly restocking Hizballah’s diminishing supplies of rockets of all types, launchers and operating manpower by a round- the-clock airlift from Iran via Syrian military air fields. Some of the incoming supplies are destroyed by Israeli air attacks as they cross into Lebanon, but a substantial part is conveyed to Hizballah by smuggling networks employing mules to traverse Lebanese mountain paths. Even if 2,000 have been wiped out and a similar amount has been fired, no one knows how many are left in stock because it is replenished. As long as that corridor is not severed by bombing the Syrian stopover air facilities, Iran will continue to top up Hizballah’s stockpile. Therefore, the rocket offensive cannot be reduced by very much.

Fourth, Israeli forces do not operate in all parts of South Lebanon.

Hizballah’s withdrawal to five pockets in South Lebanon affords the IDF certain tactical advantages - although liabilities too.

The Advantages:

It is now possible to carve the region the Israeli army controls into three sections, western, central and eastern, a tactic familiar from the Gaza Strip, for encumbering Hizballah guerrilla movement between the sections. The goal is to confine Hizballah to the five pockets and place them under blockade. They can then be made to capitulate or face liquidation.

The Liabilities:

Leaving the two banks of the Litani River, the Nabatea plain and Hazbaya to the north of the river in Hizballah hands leaves a route open for its reinforcements to come through and to strike Israeli forces from the rear.

Nonetheless, by Thursday, August 3, Hizballah was showing signs of being in trouble.

A. Local Hizballah village commanders signaled repeated appeals for more manpower and ammunition. The appeals were not met because outside forces cannot break through the defense lines held by the advancing Israeli troops. The village commanders were therefore told by their superiors to fight to the last man and last bullet and reserve the last grenade for suicide.

B. Hizballah’s shadowy leader, the long-wanted Imad Mughniyeh, was hurriedly appointed commander of the southern front as a last resort to save South Lebanon from falling to Israel.(picture from the 1980s)

DEBKAfile’s military and counter-terror sources maintain that this appointment raises the conflict to a new and dangerous level on several counts.

Mughniyeh, wanted for a quarter of a century by the FBI for the huge bombing attacks he orchestrated on the US embassy in Beirut and American and French troops, as well as a spate of hijackings and murders, is important enough to take orders from no-one ranking lower than Iran’s supreme ruler, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Those orders come through the Revolutionary Guards commander Gen. Rahim Safavi.

Therefore, placing Mughniyeh at the head of Hizballah forces in South Lebanon confronts prime minister Olmert uncomfortably close to Iran’s supreme leader; ranges defense minister Peretz opposite his Iranian counterpart Mustafa Najer and chief of staff Lt. Gen Dan Halutz opposite Gen. Safavi, while on the warfront, Israel’s war leaders face the formidable Mughniyeh, Tehran’s secret weapon for rescuing Hizballah from collapse.

Informed circles in the West have a high opinion of Mughniyeh’s military, intelligence and tactical skills. His hand was seen in the transformation of al Qaeda’s 2001 defeat in Afghanistan into a launch pad for its anti-US campaign in Iraq and many other ventures in the terror war against America. After the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, Mughniyeh is rated the world Islamic terror movement’s most outstanding field commander.

Therefore, while the appointment is a measure of Israel’s belated military success in the Lebanese war, it also brings the conflict ever closer to two dangerous orbits – Tehran and al Qaeda. Mughniyeh is the only undercover agent in the Middle East who enjoys the complete personal trust of Khamenei and Osama bin Laden, on both of whom he is in a position to call for aid.

On the diplomatic front, even if the United States and France can get together on a unified UN Security Council ceasefire resolution, DEBKAfile’s military sources report that neither Iran nor Hizballah has any intention of complying with a resolution dictated by the United States, France and Israel.

The Theater of Jihad

The Theater of Jihad

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Posted: August 2, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2006

Welcome to the marquee performance of "Qana: The Fraud and the Furious," brought to you by the Acting Guild of the Religion of Perpetual Outrage.

The drama unfolded over the weekend with mob scenes across the Muslim world, ostensibly – ostensibly – in response to civilian deaths in Qana, Lebanon. Angry Muslims from Beirut to Gaza to Lahore set fire to American and Israeli flags. They burned effigies of Western leaders. They raised their voices in chants of "Death to America" and "Death to Israel."

The nervous Nellies sitting in the world's balcony seats exclaimed that the tragedy in Qana will make the Muslims hate us more. But if the uproar over the accident in Qana – an Israeli exception to the Hezbollah rule – sounds like a tired old rerun to you, well, it is.

This ongoing production utilizes the same talented field of Jew-haters and West-haters and flag-burners and machete-wielders who brought you worldwide months of manufactured rage over the Muhammad cartoons, crazed riots in Nigeria over the Miss World pageant, Shariah-approved murders in Somalia of World Cup soccer fans, the fictional Jenin "massacre," the fable of Muhammad al-Dura, and ululating protests over the corrupting influences of "The Satanic Verses," Theo van Gogh, Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald's, the sacrilegious Burger King ice-cream swirl, Valentine's Day and Piglet from "Winnie the Pooh."

The truth about Muslim outrage over Qana is that it's not really about the tragic deaths at Qana – just like the Muhammad cartoon jihad was not really about the cartoons. It's a pretext for much grander goals to defeat the infidels – be they Israeli, Danish, Dutch or American.

Remember: Muslim riots over the Muhammad cartoons printed by the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper last fall were manufactured amid attempts to bully Denmark over the International Atomic Energy Agency's decision to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for continuing with its nuclear research program. Iran blamed Israel for the cartoons in a speech marking the 27th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.

Now, the Qana jihad, gleefully stoked by Iran, is unfolding amid mounting U.N. Security Council pressure on Tehran to suspend its nuclear program. What better way to distract from Hezbollah's atrocities and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's annihilate-the-Jews plans than to start screaming about Israel's "war crimes" and Western crimes against humanity?

As we watch Hezbollah's horrible parade of dead children in Qana replay endlessly on television, here is a suggestion for all the intrepid American journalists gallivanting with Hezbollah's handlers in the region: Perhaps you could put down the figurative hookah pipes, take off your sympathy hajibs and find out the identity of the green-helmeted guy holding up baby corpses in Qana as props for your sensational, Page One pictures.

Is he just an ordinary bystander? A rescuer who just happened to be in the same place 10 years ago, traipsing around with dead children's bodies to exploit an accidental Israeli bombing prompted by terrorists hiding behind civilians?

A civilian volunteer or a propaganda producer?

To his credit, MSNBC reporter Richard Engel picked up on a question the blogosphere has been asking since the toddler-corpse paraders in Qana took center stage: Where were all the men? His reporting underscores Hezbollah's evil MO – embedding themselves in civilian populations to force exactly the kind of tragic error from Israel that appears to have occurred at Qana. "[W]e went house to house in trying to figure out where all the young men were. It seems that some of them were fighters, some of them were Hezbollah members that were out – this according to Hezbollah people who didn't want to be interviewed, but we convinced them to talk to us."

To the photographer-stenographers who were herded to the scene eight hours after the strike, why is it that the bodies of the children were already in a state of rigor mortis? How to explain the sparkling clean pacifier clipped onto a dust-covered toddler carried around by the friendly corpse-parader? And why were the women and children kept in the building for so long? Questions abound. Answers are as scarce as men in that Qana building.

"All the world's a stage," Shakespeare

DEBKAfile’s Update of DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Exclusive Military Analysis of July 28

Israel’s Surprise Raid of Baalbek Is No Panacea for Tactical Ills

DEBKAfile’s Update of DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Exclusive Military Analysis of July 28

August 2, 2006, 3:08 PM (GMT+02:00)

Israel’s audacious commando raid of a Hizballah stronghold near Baalbek more than 100 km north of the border recalled the old panache associated with Israeli military feats in the past. However the 22 days of the Lebanon war have shown an army hampered and slowed down by tactical and intelligence deficiencies which showed up in the costly Maroun er-Ras and Bin Jubeil operations in South Lebanon – and again this week in the Ayta a-Chaab battle. Those three engagements have claimed 17 lives. Between six and eight thousand troops and reservists are now deployed in South Lebanon fighting in Hizballah village-strongholds and positions along the Israeli border and plunging deeper for the mission assigned this week to push Hizballah out of the south as far as the Litani River. More such battles therefore lie ahead.

It is therefore important to heed the senior Israeli officers who tell DEBKAfile that a single successful commando raid is not going to cure the deficiencies hampering its 22-day Lebanon campaign.

The officers direct most of their criticism at the Northern Command’s handling of the war, arguing that the IDF should have kicked off the entire campaign with a series of audacious assaults like Tuesday’s Baalbek operation so as to catch Hizballah off-balance. Without these tactics, the three battles against a tough enemy which refuses to break under sustained battering were bound to end as they did.

On July 28, DEBKA-Net-Weekly 263 cited its military analysts on the IDF’s six principal failings in the Lebanon war:

1. Israeli elected leaders, Olmert and defense minister Peretz, lack military experience and the skills required for managing a war.

2. The military leadership qualities of chief of staff Lt.-General Halutz, former commander of the air force where he grew up, are questionable.

3. Olmert’s predecessor left him with a flawed legacy. During his six and-a- half years as premier, Ariel Sharon shook up the top levels of the IDF’s general command, military intelligence and the Mossad (although not the Shin Bet) and stuffed them with appointees who subscribed to his political philosophy.

Israel’s top military and security echelons have never before been picked for their political outlook. Sharon’s axe created a monolithic establishment lacking in the motivation burning in their predecessors for developing brilliantly innovative methods of warfare.

4. In six years of counter-terror warfare against the Palestinians, the IDF focused on perfecting small-time tactics for keeping local terror fires under control, but failed to produce methods applicable to a transition from fighting terrorists to waging war. Hizballah has foisted this transition on the Israeli military.

5. Israeli war planners, like the US army in Iraq, came to rely too heavily on air power, firepower and hi-tech weaponry for combating terror. They neglected to draw the lessons of the three-year Iraq war.

6. Hizballah’s tacticians and their Iranian Revolutionary Guards mentors studied every Israeli move in its 2002 Defensive Wall Operation against the Palestinian terrorist stronghold of Jenin, which ended in all the towns of the West Bank falling to the Israeli military. Taking this battle as their master plan, they invented a new war doctrine to fit a Hizballah offensive against an Israeli army which had not revised its doctrines of war in the intervening four years.

The battle fought in Jenin’s refugee camp on April 14, 2002, was the only engagement in the entire Israel-Palestinian conflict in which Hizballah and al Qaeda terrorists fought Israeli forces face to face.

The Palestinians fielded a small number of fighters. The Israeli army won the day but paid dearly in casualties. Drawing on the Jenin lesson, Iranian and Hizballah war planners are hammering at the Jewish state’s most vulnerable point - military losses and loss of life in general. By maximizing Israeli casualties, they believe that Hizballah does not have to win the war; it will turn the tables sufficiently to achieve parity with the Israeli army. For a small militia dependent on two outside governments, Iran and Syria, for heavy weapons and permission to use them, this would be no mean feat – better in fact that any Arab army has ever achieved in the past.

Nasrallah is fond of boasting that he has surprised Israel and will again. But it must be said that, going back to the Yom Kippur shock, the Israeli army did in fact recover from its early setbacks and turned the tide. It is still early days, and Israel may have surprises of its own up its sleeve. The pressure of war on the country’s borders and their homes under attack has always goaded Israel’s army into flights of improvisation and stimulated its generals into using the war arena as a testing ground for ingenious new ideas. But much depends on Olmert, Peretz and General Halutz, giving them enough rein to succeed while restraining their own pointless and often damaging statements