News for October 28, 2005

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Israel presses militant crackdown as tensions soar (October 28, 2005) - Israel’s hardline defence minister has dismissed the Palestinian leadership as a partner for peace and ruled out any Palestinian state in the foreseeable future after a night of attacks by Israeli warplanes. In an echo of the Israeli stand against the late Yasser Arafat, Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz said Friday: “I doubt very much that one day we can reach a peace accord with the present leadership of the Palestinians. We must wait for the next generation.” Quoted by the Yediot Aharonot newspaper, Mofaz added: “I don’t think that a Palestinian state will see the light of day in the coming years.” The minister, a close aide of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was speaking two days after a suicide bomber blew himself up in northern Israel and killed five civilians. As Israel forged ahead in the early hours with its offensive against militants, Palestinians on Friday prepared for the funerals of two militants and six bystanders killed in an airstrike late Thursday in the Gaza Strip. They died late on Thursday when Israeli planes slammed three missiles into a vehicle in the northern Gaza Strip, in a targeted operation against a senior Islamic Jihad operative and his assistant. Mofaz’s comments brought swift condemnation from chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat who accused the Jewish state of taking “one sided measures” and not wanting a partner to revive the largely non-existent peace process. more...

Iranians hold anti-Israel street protests (October 28, 2005) - Tens of thousands of Iranians have joined anti-Israeli protests in support of their president’s call for the destruction of Israel. Iranians staged multiple protests in the capital, Tehran, and other cities such as Mashad in Iran’s east, holding banners carrying anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian slogans. “Death to Israel, death to America,” read many placards. The street demonstrations are being held as part of annual al-Quds Day (Jerusalem) protests, first held in 1979 after Shia Muslim clerics took power in Iran. The state-organised rallies were expected to grow throughout Friday as worshippers gathered for midday sermons and prayers at mosques across Iran. At the same time, however, Iran’s embassy in Moscow has sought to smooth the effects of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s comments, saying the president did not mean to speak in such “sharp terms”. The statement was the first official Iranian reaction since the president’s speech on Wednesday to a meeting of consevative Islamic students. “Mr Ahmadinejad did not have any intention to speak up in such sharp terms and enter into a conflict.” more...

How the cult of the guru puts gullible nation under its spell (October 28, 2005) - They are everywhere - the life coaches, the supernannies, the makeover experts, the celebrity chefs, the fashion police. They tell us what not to wear, what not to eat, what not to do with our lives, our children’s lives and our bathrooms. Tony and Cherie Blair famously defer to a lifestyle guru, Carole Caplin, who applies Mrs Blair’s lipstick and was depicted in a television satire this month calling Mr Blair “Toblerone” and offering him a Reiki massage. According to a leading academic, the nation is in “thrall to a new priesthood of gurus”. In a speech at the Battle of Ideas Festival tomorrow at the Royal College of Art, Prof Frank Furedi says the collapse in traditional authority figures has not produced a less deferential or more questioning society. Instead, we are now slaves to therapists and “hustlers” and taking advice on saving Africa from pop singers. Prof Furedi, the professor of sociology at the University of Kent in Canterbury, said the “unquestioning and fatalistic deference” to relationship and other types of experts was coming from the “very top of society”. He added: “It is so sad when you see grown-up people - people of my age - on television needing someone to take them shopping for clothes. There is this myth that we live at the end of an age of deference, but we are entirely subservient to unacknowledged forms of authority.” more...

UN’s Annan expresses dismay over Iranian anti-Israel comments (October 28, 2005) - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan expressed dismay about remarks made by Iran’s hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suggesting that Israel should be ‘wiped off the map’. ‘The secretary general has read with dismay the remarks about Israel attributed to Mr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,’ a statement released by his spokesman said. Annan reminded all member states that Israel is a long-standing United Nations member ‘with the same rights and obligations as every other member.’ ‘He recalls in particular that, under the United Nations Charter, all members have undertaken to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,’ the statement said. Noting that he had already planned to visit Iran in the next few weeks to discuss other issues, Annan said he now intended ‘to place the Middle East peace process, and the right of all states in the area to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force, at the top of his agenda for that visit.’ Ahmadinejad told a conference Wednesday in Tehran entitled ‘The World without Zionism’ that ‘the establishment of the Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world.’ more...

Terrorist: All Israeli citizens ‘are military targets’ (October 28, 2005) - While Israelis were burying casualties from this week’s suicide bombing and over a dozen injured were still lying in hospitals – some in critical condition – a senior leader of a terror group reportedly involved in the attack told WND the blast just north of Tel Aviv was “legitimate” because all Israelis are “military targets, they are not civilians.” “As long as Israelis do not react against their government and its policy, we will never consider them as innocent civilians and they will always be a legitimate goal for our attacks,” said Abu Carmel, a West Bank leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah Party. Abu Carmel was speaking to WND after a suicide bomber exploded in an open-air market in the coastal city of Hadera Wednesday, killing five people and wounding more than two dozen others. The attack was carried out in front of a falafel stand at the entrance to the market. Hadera has been a frequent target of bombings during the past five years. The Islamic Jihad terror group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast, saying the bombing was retaliation for the death of one of its senior leader in an Israel Defense Forces raid in the West Bank earlier this week. Sources close to the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades told WND the group was involved in the attack as well. more...

Sun’s Direct Role in Global Warming May Be Underestimated: Physicists (October 28, 2005) - The physicists said that their findings indicate that climate models of global warming need to be corrected for the effects of changes in solar activity. However, they emphasized that their findings do not argue against the basic theory that significant global warming is occurring because of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse” gases. Nicola Scafetta, an associate research scientist working at Duke’s physics department, and Bruce West, a Duke adjunct physics professor, published their findings online Sept. 28, 2005, in the research journal Geophysical Research Letters. West is also chief scientist in the mathematical and information sciences directorate of the Army Research Office in Research Triangle Park. Scafetta’s and West’s study follows a Columbia University researcher’s report of previous errors in the interpretation of data on solar brightness collected by sun-observing satellites. The Duke physicists also introduce new statistical methods that they assert more accurately describe the atmosphere’s delayed response to solar heating. In addition, these new methods filter out temperature-changing effects not tied to global warming, they write in their paper. According to Scafetta, records of sunspot activity suggest that solar output has been rising slightly for about 100 years. However, only measurements of what is known as total solar irradiance gathered by satellites orbiting since 1978 are considered scientifically reliable, he said. more...

Viewpoint: The Oil Tsunami (October 28, 2005) - The global oil market environment is becoming a target of opportunity for terrorists and world powers. The terrorists increasingly see disruptions of oil facilities as a valid strategy in their war against governments that they oppose. World powers like China, Japan, the United States and India are driven into increasing confrontation fighting for diminishing oil supplies. These are sinister developments, ingredients for the next tsunami to hit the already turbulent world of oil where prices have gone so high that they are depressing world economies. The trouble from insurgents blowing up oil facilities is no less dangerous than the pressures from China, India and Japan’s voracious appetite for more oil. China is a major superpower showing that it will not hesitate to use pressure to secure oil. The Chinese are developing a strong foothold in Pakistan, where thousands of Chinese workers are building a new port in Baluchistan at Gwadar, right at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. One of the main causes of friction between China and Japan now involves access to oil and gas deposits in the East China Sea. When the Security Council tried to impose sanctions on Sudan - one of China’s main oil suppliers - over the issue of Darfur, the Chinese said no. In May when a massacre occurred in Uzbekistan with hundreds of people killed on the orders of President Islam Karimov, the United States and Europe asked for an international investigation. China, which had signed a $600 million gas deal with Uzbekistan, blocked it. One needs to ring the alarm bell as this Asian pressure combines with terrorist attacks to form the elements of the perfect storm heading directly toward the Arabian Peninsula. more...

Hottest October 27 Ever. A Reason to be Cheerful? Hardly (October 28, 2005) - Just four days before Hallowe’en, Britain was enjoying the warmest 27 October since records began in 1880. As the UK basked in the freakish heat, it seemed almost churlish to seek an explanation. But these days, in the shadow of global warming, extreme weather patterns come with a health warning attached. Why was it so warm? The weather experts explained that the mini-heatwave was the result of a large area of high pressure over southeastern Europe and low pressure well to the west of Ireland. Sandwiched in between these two weather systems was Britain, which happily found itself right in the way of a warm southerly breeze blowing directly from the hot sands of north Africa. The dryness of the air was explained by it coming from the continent rather than from the Atlantic. The Scottish glens enjoyed the added benefit of a meteorological phenomenon known as the Fone effect, when air warms even further after descending from higher ground. Is this yet more evidence of climate change? Was this the sort of October day Britain might expect in a world where global warming has become reality? more...

A Separate Peace (October 28, 2005) - It is not so hard and can be a pleasure to tell people what you see. It’s harder to speak of what you think you see, what you think is going on and can't prove or defend with data or numbers. That can get tricky. It involves hunches. But here goes. I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it’s a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can’t be fixed, or won’t be fixed any time soon. That our pollsters are preoccupied with “right track” and “wrong track” but missing the number of people who think the answer to “How are things going in America?” is “Off the tracks and hurtling forward, toward an unknown destination.” I’m not talking about “Plamegate.” As I write no indictments have come up. I’m not talking about “Miers.” I mean... the whole ball of wax. Everything. Cloning, nuts with nukes, epidemics; the growing knowledge that there’s no such thing as homeland security; the fact that we’re leaving our kids with a bill no one can pay. A sense of unreality in our courts so deep that they think they can seize grandma's house to build a strip mall; our media institutions imploding--the spectacle of a great American newspaper, the New York Times, hurtling off its own tracks, as did CBS. The fear of parents that their children will wind up disturbed, and their souls actually imperiled, by the popular culture in which we are raising them. Senators who seem owned by someone, actually owned, by an interest group or a financial entity. Great churches that have lost all sense of mission, and all authority. Do you have confidence in the CIA? The FBI? I didn’t think so. more...

What NASA Isn’t Telling You About Mars (October 28, 2005) - We’ve all listened for years since we were children, to the endless stories about what the environment on Mars is and how no life could have ever lived on the planet. So let’s get right to the point. It’s past time to look at the overall picture of what we have been told, using the sanitizing light of common sense. We will use NASA data to start connecting the dots. Let's look at some of these common statements made about the planet.

IS THE MARTIAN SKY IS RED?

AA NASA statement from two years ago - “It’s very hard to get the color right on Mars, images.” Utter non-sense! All the spacecraft sent to Mars over the past 30 years have color calibration charts in one form or another, and have even included the American Flag. They have been caught not consistently using the charts. Blue color squares on some of the images are found to be red. So who is tampering with the color and why? Because it’s psychological: since the early days of astronomy the planet has appeared red as viewed from earth in a telescope. Viewed from the moon, our earth appears like a “big, blue marble” as one astronaut described it. Are rocks and dirt on earth BLUE because the sky is blue? Of course not. NASA conveniently forgets this “minor detail” and INSISTS that their images remain reddish - regardless of the negative impact good science. The book covers this in detail shows proof of color tampering. more...

Israeli DM: No peace likely with Palestinians in this generation (October 28, 2005) -- Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz launched a blistering attack on Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, calling him “a one-man show” bereft of support from his own people and saying he sees little chance that a permanent peace deal can be reached between the sides in the present generation. In an interview published Friday in Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, Mofaz said he had complained to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at a meeting in Cairo Wednesday at Abbas’ lack of leadership and Israel’s increasing frustration with him. “I’m not at all sure that we can ever reach a peace agreement with the present Palestinian leadership,” Mofaz told the paper. “We shall have to wait for the next generation.” He went on to say that for the time being the best that could be expected was another round of interim agreements between the sides rather than any final peace agreement. more...

Good News for the Church in Iraq (October 28, 2005) -- There’s good news for the Church coming out of Iraq. According to Charisma News, in Baghdad, a total of 15 evangelical congregations have started since the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime in April 2003. Officially, only two evangelical churches existed during Hussein’s rule. Now there are Baptists, Methodists, and Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA) congregations, all led by local Iraqi pastors. “The people are open like never before,” says Ghassan Thomas, pastor of a CMA church in Baghdad. “It is because we have no peace. This is how we connect our message to the nation: I preach on the topic, ‘How do we get peace?’ and everyone listens, especially when I talk about the deeper peace that Christ brings.” “Muslims, too, want peace,” Thomas adds. “Many of them are frightened. When the hostages are killed, often a Quranic verse is used to justify it. So many Muslims are scared of their own god. When we preach that God is love, it is so liberating to them.” Pastor Thomas told Charisma of an incident that occurred when he received death threats written on cardboard after erecting a sign outside his church that said, “Jesus is the Light of the World.” On the cardboard was scrawled: “Jesus is not the light of the world. Allah is, and you have been warned.” It was signed, “the Islamic Shiite Party.”

Thomas reportedly loaded up a van full of children’s gifts from a Christian relief agency, together with some Bibles and medicines, and drove to the headquarters of the Islamic Shiite Party. When he came to the compound, he demanded to “see the big sheikh, I have gifts for him.”

He was taken to meet the leader, and he introduced himself as a pastor.

“We respect you,” the sheikh said.

Thomas said, “Christians have love for you, because God is love, our God is a God of love.”

Again the sheikh replied: “We respect your God. We respect Jesus.” more...