1. Where is the United States in
Prophecy?
The world in 2009
When President Bush leaves office, will America once again be liked by most of the world? Not necessarily, since most current problems are either already getting better or not our fault. When the next president takes office in January 2009, he or she will confront a world that either understandably appreciates America or for self-interested reasons will challenge it. On the positive side, the new president will see a Middle East without the Taliban in charge in Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein ruling Iraq. A stabilizing constitutional Iraq should result in a steadily diminishing American presence there. In Europe, the French under Nicolas Sarkozy and the Germans under Angela Merkel will remain pro-American. But they will also expect continued American leadership. Both may talk grandly of the Atlantic Alliance, but in real terms they do little to help us in Afghanistan or elsewhere. Most of Africa likewise is already friendly to the United States. And why not? Mr. Bush extended more humanitarian aid to combat African hunger and disease than any president in our history. But what of our enemies? Won't adversaries back off when the Christian cowboy George Bush rides back to Texas — and we have a kinder, gentler commander in chief who offers hope, or at least change, to the world? Hardly......
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US warning as China bolsters military
China has announced a rise of a fifth in military spending, the day after the Pentagon issued a warning over its growing prowess in missile and cyberwarfare technology. The rise from 350 billion to 417.8 billion yuan (£30 billion), or 19.4 per cent, was revealed on the eve of the opening of China's parliament, the National People's Congress, which meets for two weeks each year. A spokesman insisted that the rise still left China's budget trailing that of middle-ranking western powers like Britain and France, let alone America, and that in any case the country's military preparations were solely "defensive" in nature. But a few hours before he spoke, the Pentagon released its annual report on the current state of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, in which it estimated total military expenditure at double the official level - £49-70 billion. It claimed China had the most active programme to buy and develop ballistic missiles of any country in the world, and was "developing capabilities" for use in conflicts over resources and disputed territories.
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Record-high ratio of Americans in prison
For the first time in U.S. history, more than one of every 100 adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report documenting America's rank as the world's No. 1 incarcerator. It urges states to curtail corrections spending by placing fewer low-risk offenders behind bars. Using state-by-state data, the report says 2,319,258 Americans were in jail or prison at the start of 2008 — one out of every 99.1 adults. Whether per capita or in raw numbers, it's more than any other nation. The report, released Thursday by the Pew Center on the States, said the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, the report said. The steadily growing inmate population "is saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime," the report said......
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2. Israel - God's Timepiece
War game scenario - how one rocket could start the next Middle East War
It begins with a single Qassam rocket, one of the thousands of homemade projectiles fired in recent years by the Islamic radicals of Hamas from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel. The rockets have made life nightmarish for many Israelis but have largely missed their targets. But this one gets "lucky": It smashes into an elementary school, wounding 40 children and killing 15. The Israeli government, which had heretofore responded to the Qassams with airstrikes and small ground raids, cannot resist the nationwide demand for action. Within hours, tens of thousands of Israeli troops and hundreds of tanks are rushing into Gaza, battling house-to-house in teeming refugee camps. Just as swiftly, Palestinian officials accuse Israel of perpetrating a massacre and invite the foreign press to photograph the corpse-strewn rubble. The images flash around the Middle East on al-Jazeera TV and trigger violent demonstrations in Arab capitals. Hezbollah, the radical Lebanese Shiite militia, then gets into the act, raining Katyusha rockets on northern Israel. But when Israeli warplanes bomb the Katyusha batteries, Syria leaps in, sending its commandos to retaliate by capturing key Israeli bunkers atop the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israel's counterattack succeeds only in precipitating a hailstorm of Syrian Scud-D missiles, some armed with chemical warheads, into Israeli cities. Then, just as Israeli planes are incinerating the main electricalplant in Damascus, the first of hundreds of Shehab-3 rockets, pre-targeted at Tel Aviv, lift off from Tehran. Sound fantastical or too horrific to ponder? Not to Israeli intelligence analysts it doesn't. The Israeli military recently conducted a round of large-scale war games based precisely on this scenario. In some rounds, Israel managed to humble Hamas and Hezbollah while shooting down most of the Iranian and Syrian rockets with its own Arrow and Patriot antimissile systems. But other forecasts went far less well: Israel survives but barely, with its cities devastated and countless civilians killed. This is the mess that will soon land in the lap of President Clinton, President Obama or President McCain.......
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Hezbollah significantly rebuilding its military presence, includes 30,000 rockets
Israel has said Hezbollah is rearming and has an arsenal that includes 10,000 long-range rockets and 20,000 short-range rockets in southern Lebanon, according to a report from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Ban's report to the Security Council, obtained by The Associated Press on Monday, did not confirm Israel's claim. But the U.N. chief reiterated his concern about Hezbollah's public statements and persistent reports pointing to breaches of a U.N. arms embargo, which bans weapons transfers to the militant Islamic group. Ban also expressed concern at "the threats of open war against Israel" by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Nasrallah has accused Israel of trying to start a new war by assassinating a top Hezbollah commander and warned it would be a battle the Jewish state would
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Incompetence in Gaza
The Olmert-Livni-Barak government's latest exercise in saber-rattling has ended with customary haste. On Sunday, Palestinian terror forces maintained their rocket and missile offensive against Israel, shooting 40 rockets, including upgraded Katyusha missiles at Sderot, Ashkelon, Netivot and surrounding areas. Whereas in 2005, 25,000 Israelis lived within Palestinian rocket and missile range from Gaza, the past week has shown that the number has expanded at least tenfold since then. Monday morning, the limited IDF ground component that was deployed in Gaza on Saturday abruptly suspended operations and pulled out. The pullout came just hours after senior IDF officials announced that the forces in Gaza were about to be augmented by additional forces and Defense Minister Ehud Barak told senior military commanders, "The time has come for action. Hamas is responsible and will pay a price." It is obvious that in suspending Operation "Hot Winter" in Gaza, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government essentially crumpled in the face of pressure from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President George W. Bush. Sunday night the White House issued a press release demanding that Israel end its operations in Gaza and return to the negotiating table with Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas. For their part, Abbas and his Fatah underlings have been outspoken in their support for Hamas's missile and rocket offensive against Israel. Sunday they organized joint Fatah-Hamas rallies in Hebron and Ramallah where rioters called for Israel's destruction, burned Israeli and American flags and then attacked IDF patrols and the security fence. Truth be told, the US may have done Israel a favor preventing the escalation of operations. This is not because an offensive against Hamas's Iranian built war machine in Gaza is not vital. This is so because Operation "Hot Winter" was bereft of operational logic. Its strategic ends were unclear and, to the extent they were enunciated at all, they bore no connection to the operations on the ground which were so limited in scope that they were incapable of achieving any long-term objective.........
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3.
A Revived Roman Empire?
Sarkozy and Mandelson 'strike a deal to get top EU job for Blair'
Paris is not officially supporting anybody for the post of EU president, French EU affairs minister Jean-Pierre Jouyet has said, while describing France's ideal candidate for the top job. "Any choice now would be premature... We will see when the time comes, and not before the end of the year," Mr Jouyet said during a debate organised by Brussels-based think-tank. Nonetheless, France would like the person occupying this post to be "a personality who has charisma, experience, and enough drive to energise the work of the European Council," Mr Jouyet underlined. He stopped short of pointing to specific individuals, however
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The Mediterranean Union: Dividing the Middle East and North Africa
A recent Pew poll found that many Europeans would like Europe to play a larger role in other parts of the world. To balance U.S. military power, however, would require a doubling or tripling of defense spending, and few Europeans are interested in such an increase. Nevertheless, a smart strategy for Europe will require greater investments in hard power. The picture for Europe, however, is not as bleak as pessimists assume. Power is the ability to get the outcomes one wants, and the resources that produce such behavior depend upon the context.
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5.
Apostate Christianity
Obama: Sermon on Mount Justifies Same-Sex Union
In a stump speech at Hocking College in Nelsonville, Ohio, on Sunday, Sen. Barack Obama said his support for same-sex unions is rooted in the New Testament's Sermon on the Mount, as reported by Cybercast News Service. He also told the crowd that his position in favor of legalized abortion does not make him "less Christian. But theologians and other experts don't agree on what Obama's biblical reference meant. "If he's finding support for same-sex marriage from the Sermon on the Mount, he's reading a different Bible than I've ever read," Tom Minnery, senior vice president of government and public policy with the Christian Focus on the Family, told Cybercast News Service. "I think Obama needs to grapple with the words of Jesus on the meaning of marriage," Minnery said. "Hasn't he ever read Matthew 19:4 that the creator made the male and female? In other words, you cannot believe what Jesus said in Matthew and that Jesus endorsed same-sex marriage. It's inconsistent," Minnery said......
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UMC leaders accused of harboring 'longstanding bias' against Israel
IAn official with the Institute on Religion and Democracy says it's not surprising that top officials in the United Methodist Church are calling for a denominational boycott of firms who do business with Israel. Recently, officials from the United Methodist Church's (UMC) Washington lobby office asked leading General Conference delegates to support church divestment from Caterpillar, Inc. -- because they sold products to Israel. But UMC officials claimed the proposed divestment was neither anti-Semitic nor anti-Israel. Mark Tooley with The Institute on Religion and Democracy says many liberal church leaders have a compromised view of the authority of scripture. "It perhaps is not a coincidence that they tend to be very critical and biased against Israel," Tooley says of the UMC officials. "Because in many ways, spiritually, I think the continued existence of Israel is -- for those who are theologically liberal -- a very unpleasant reminder of God's continued activity in the world today." Tooley claims there has been a longstanding bias against Israel among UMC leaders, as well as among mainline Protestantism for the past 30-to-35 years as well.
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6.
The Rise of Islam
Dutch movie about Islam threatens nation
Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has warned a maverick lawmaker of the risks to Dutch national interests if he presses ahead with a film criticizing the Koran. Balkenende's appeal to Geert Wilders stopped short of demanding that he not release the film, which Wilders said was in the final stages of editing. "Already we are having to take account of serious threats to Dutch people," Balkenende said in a televised news conference. "When you see how the reactions have been at home and abroad, what the risks could be of this film, then there's one person who must answer for it, and that is Mr Wilders himself," he said. Wilders said his short film would portray the Koran as a "fascist book." He does not yet have a broadcaster for it, but says he will release it on the Internet if he fails to find one. In a statement after Balkenende's news conference, Wilders accused the Cabinet of "bowing to fear of terror and fear of Islam" and rejected calls to scrap the movie. "Let me make one thing clear: The film will be released," he said. Last week, the Pakistani government ordered Internet providers to restrict access to YouTube, allegedly to prevent Pakistanis from accessing a clip of Wilders in which he makes derogatory remarks about Islam. The move inadvertently caused a worldwide outage of the video sharing site. The Dutch development minister called off a visit to Somalia on Friday after he was warned his life would be in danger on the trip. "This is about the safety of Dutch citizens and businesses abroad, the Dutch military which is on a mission [in Afghanistan], about the broader interest of the Netherlands, the values for which we stand, our reputation internationally," Balkenende said.......
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7. Increase in Knowledge/New Technologies
More Americans turning to Web for news
Nearly 70 percent of Americans believe traditional journalism is out of touch, and nearly half are turning to the Internet to get their news, according to a new survey. While most people think journalism is important to the quality of life, 64 percent are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities, a We Media/Zogby Interactive online poll showed. Nearly half of the 1,979 people who responded to the survey said their primary source of news and information is the Internet, up from 40 percent just a year ago. Less than one third use television to get their news, while 11 percent turn to radio and 10 percent to newspapers. More than half of those who grew up with the Internet, those 18 to 29, get most of their news and information online, compared to 35 percent of people 65 and older. Older adults are the only group that favors a primary news source other than the Internet, with 38 percent selecting television.
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Radio frequency ID tags in garments worry privacy experts
Thousands of garments in the sprawling men's department at the Galeria Kaufhof are equipped with tiny wireless chips that can forestall fashion disaster by relaying information from the garment to a dressing-room screen. The garments in the department store, in Essen, Germany, contain radio frequency identification chips, small circuits that communicate by radio waves through portable readers and more than 200 antennas that can not only recommend a brown belt for those tweed slacks but also track garments from the racks, shelves and dressing rooms on the store's third floor. This pioneering pilot project of the Metro Group, a retail chain in Germany, heralds a shopping experience of the future in which dress shirts can wirelessly offer accessorizing tips to shoppers. But the rapid development of RFID technology is also being regarded cautiously by the authorities in the European Union, who are moving quickly to establish privacy guidelines because the chips - and the information being collected - are not always visible.
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Japan looks to a robot future
At a university lab in a Tokyo suburb, engineering students are wiring a rubbery robot face to simulate six basic expressions: anger, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise and disgust. Hooked up to a database of words clustered by association, the robot — dubbed Kansei, or "sensibility" — responds to the word "war" by quivering in what looks like disgust and fear. It hears "love," and its pink lips smile. "To live among people, robots need to handle complex social tasks," said project leader Junichi Takeno of Meiji University. "Robots will need to work with emotions, to understand and eventually feel them. While robots are a long way from matching human emotional complexity, the country is perhaps the closest to a future — once the stuff of science fiction — where humans and intelligent robots routinely live side by side and interact socially. Robots are already taken for granted in Japanese factories, so much so that they are sometimes welcomed on their first day at work with Shinto religious ceremonies. Robots make sushi. Robots plant rice and tend paddies. There are robots serving as receptionists, vacuuming office corridors, spoon-feeding the elderly. They serve tea, greet company guests and chatter away at public technology displays. Now startups are marching out robotic home helpers. They aren't all humanoid. The Paro is a furry robot seal fitted with sensors beneath its fur and whiskers, designed to comfort the lonely, opening and closing its eyes and moving its flippers. For Japan, the robotics revolution is an imperative. With more than a fifth of the population 65 or older, the country is banking on robots to replenish the work force and care for the elderly. In the past several years, the government has funded a plethora of robotics-related efforts, including some $42 million for the first phase of a humanoid robotics project, and $10 million a year between 2006 and 2010 to develop key robot technologies..
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8. Christian Worldview/Issues
Homeschoolers Beware! Judge orders children into government education
A ruling from an appeals court in California that a homeschooling family must enroll their children in a public school or "legally qualified" private school is alarming because of the way the court opted to order those results, according to a team of legislative analysts who have worked on homeschooling issues in California for decades. The ruling, when it was released several days ago, sent ripples of shock through the homeschooling community. The appeals ruling said, California law requires "persons between the ages of six and 18" to be in school, "the public full-time day school," with exemptions allowed only for those in a "private full-time day school" or those "instructed by a tutor who holds a valid state teaching credential for the grade being taught." Such a holding, if unchanged, could ultimately be used against the tens of thousands who currently are homeschooling in California by fulfilling the state's requirements to establish a private school in a home, and enrolling the family's children in that school, observers said. For homeschoolers in California, Hanson said, "there may be everywhere from concern to panic, just based on not knowing what the ultimate results will be." The appeals decision also rejected religious concerns. The family's "sincerely held religious beliefs" are "not the quality of evidence that permits us to say that application of California's compulsory public school education law to them violates their First Amendment rights." The father said he objects to the pro-homosexual, pro-bisexual, pro-transgender agenda of California's public schools, on which WND previously has reported. "We just don't want them teaching our children," he told WND......
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Poll Confirms Parents' Influence on Teens' Religious Activities
When it comes to attending church, praying and reading the Bible, the apple does not fall far from the tree. A recent poll of teens and their parents overwhelmingly confirms that parents have the most influence on their children's religious activity. A survey -- the first to examine teens' and their parents' views of the Bible -- commissioned by the American Bible Society, found that almost 80 percent of America's 30.2 million 12-18 year olds think the Bible is important and 87 percent of parents think the Bible is important. Children mirror their parents' behavior. Parents who attend church weekly tend to have teens that worship weekly, while 78 percent of parents who never attend worship services have teens who never attend. The same correlation applies to Bible reading and prayer habits. Parents who responded positively to the question of whether it is important to raise children with religious or spiritual values had children who were significantly involved with faith......
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Religion a Consumer Product for Many Americans
If American religion is a spiritual shopping center, denominations that once dominated the market are in danger of being boarded up. A major survey of 35,000 Americans released this week by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life confirms the long-held belief that denominational loyalty is fraying — and those with much at stake include both mainline Protestant and evangelical churches. Yet to some observers, woven into the gloomy numbers is a roadmap for survival if not success if denominations get more nimble and creative while not compromising core beliefs. Sociologists point to many factors in the erosion of denominational loyalty, including a transient population less anchored to one city or job and the rise of individualized faith, including people who borrow from many traditions. "As with most things, for Americans religion is a consumer product," said the Rev. Eileen Lindner, a Presbyterian minister who edits the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. "So it's not brand loyalty you can rely on. It's marketing, location, and other things. Denominations have been slow to react to that."
The Pew survey found many Americans don't want to be associated with denominations, even when they belong to one.....
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9. Other Events
To Watch
Lebanon on the brink? Saudi citizens instructed to depart Lebanon with all possible speed, US warships off the coast
DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources report that this unprecedented order from the royal court in Riyadh on March 1 portends an unusual military outbreak in Lebanon. Kuwait quickly followed suit. Standing by since Friday off the troubled Mediterranean shores of Lebanon, Israel and Gaza is the USS Cole guided missile destroyer opposite Lebanon. It was joined Monday by the USS Nassau amphibious warship and its strike group of six vessels carrying 2,800 marines, flight crews and sailors. US naval sources report that a third group will join them shortly.....
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South America on brink of war
South America was on the brink of war yesterday as Venezuela and Ecuador amassed troops on the Colombian border in response to the killing of a Marxist rebel leader. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened to join the rebels in a war to overthrow hard-line Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, a key ally of the United States, deploying tanks, fighter jets and thousands of troops along the Colombian border. Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa also ordered troops to the border, expelled Colombia's ambassador and recalled its ambassador to Bogota, but left its embassy open. Venezuela closed its embassy in Colombia and ordered all diplomats home. A weekend battle sparked the mobilization, in which Colombian forces killed a top leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in a camp in Ecuador. On his weekly Sunday talk show "Hello President," Mr. Chavez accused Colombia of "invading" Ecuador, and compared the action to Israeli attacks against Palestinians. "The Colombian government has become the Israel of Latin America," Mr. Chavez said. He called Colombia a "terrorist" state and its president, Mr. Uribe, a criminal......
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