A christian blog with a decidedly biblical perspective on the world and events around us. Look around, read, enjoy and feel free to comment. Interesting story, send us the info via our contact page. Subscribe by clicking here.
Subscribe to RSS
A five-year research programme, called Project Indect, aims to develop computer programmes which act as “agents” to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers.
Its main objectives include the “automatic detection of threats and abnormal behaviour or violence”.
Project Indect, which received nearly £10 million in funding from the European Union, involves the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and computer scientists at York University, in addition to colleagues in nine other European countries.
Shami Chakrabarti, the director of human rights group Liberty, described the introduction of such mass surveillance techniques as a “sinister step” for any country, adding that it was “positively chilling” on a European scale.
The Indect research, which began this year, comes as the EU is pressing ahead with an expansion of its role in fighting crime, terrorism and managing migration, increasing its budget in these areas by 13.5% to nearly £900 million.
The European Commission is calling for a “common culture” of law enforcement to be developed across the EU and for a third of police officers – more than 50,000 in the UK alone – to be given training in European affairs within the next five years.
According to the Open Europe think tank, the increased emphasis on co-operation and sharing intelligence means that European police forces are likely to gain access to sensitive information held by UK police, including the British DNA database. It also expects the number of UK citizens extradited under the controversial European Arrest Warrant to triple.
Stephen Booth, an Open Europe analyst who has helped compile a dossier on the European justice agenda, said these developments and projects such as Indect sounded “Orwellian” and raised serious questions about individual liberty.
“This is all pretty scary stuff in my book. These projects would involve a huge invasion of privacy and citizens need to ask themselves whether the EU should be spending their taxes on them,” he said.
“The EU lacks sufficient checks and balances and there is no evidence that anyone has ever asked ‘is this actually in the best interests of our citizens?’”
Miss Chakrabarti said: “Profiling whole populations instead of monitoring individual suspects is a sinister step in any society.
“It’s dangerous enough at national level, but on a Europe-wide scale the idea becomes positively chilling.”
According to the official website for Project Indect, which began this year, its main objectives include “to develop a platform for the registration and exchange of operational data, acquisition of multimedia content, intelligent processing of all information and automatic detection of threats and recognition of abnormal behaviour or violence”.
It talks of the “construction of agents assigned to continuous and automatic monitoring of public resources such as: web sites, discussion forums, usenet groups, file servers, p2p [peer-to-peer] networks as well as individual computer systems, building an internet-based intelligence gathering system, both active and passive”.
York University’s computer science department website details how its task is to develop “computational linguistic techniques for information gathering and learning from the web”.
“Our focus is on novel techniques for word sense induction, entity resolution, relationship mining, social network analysis [and] sentiment analysis,” it says.
A separate EU-funded research project, called Adabts – the Automatic Detection of Abnormal Behaviour and Threats in crowded Spaces – has received nearly £3 million. Its is based in Sweden but partners include the UK Home Office and BAE Systems.
It is seeking to develop models of “suspicious behaviour” so these can be automatically detected using CCTV and other surveillance methods. The system would analyse the pitch of people’s voices, the way their bodies move and track individuals within crowds.
Project coordinator Dr Jorgen Ahlberg, of the Swedish Defence Research Agency, said this would simply help CCTV operators notice when trouble was starting.
“People usually don’t start to fight from one second to another,” he said. “They start by arguing and pushing each other. It’s not that ‘oh you are pushing each other, you should be arrested’, it’s to alert an operator that something is going on.
“If it’s a shopping mall, you could send a security guard into the vicinity and things [a fight] maybe wouldn’t happen.”
Open Europe believes intelligence gathered by Indect and other such systems could be used by a little-known body, the EU Joint Situation Centre (SitCen), which it claims is “effectively the beginning of an EU secret service”. Critics have said it could develop into “Europe’s CIA”.
The dossier says: “The EU’s Joint Situation Centre (SitCen) was originally established in order to monitor and assess worldwide events and situations on a 24-hour basis with a focus on potential crisis regions, terrorism and WMD-proliferation.
“However, since 2005, SitCen has been used to share counter-terrorism information.
“An increased role for SitCen should be of concern since the body is shrouded in so much secrecy.
“The expansion of what is effectively the beginning of an EU ‘secret service’ raises fundamental questions of political oversight in the member states.”
Superintendent Gerry Murray, of the PSNI, said the force’s main role would be to test whether the system, which he said could be operated on a countrywide or European level, was a worthwhile tool for the police.
“A lot of it is very academic and very science-driven [at the moment]. Our budgets are shrinking, our human resources are shrinking and we are looking for IT technology that will help us five years down the line in reducing crime and combating criminal gangs,” he said.
“Within this Project Indect there is an ethical board which will be looked at: is it permissible within the legislation of the country who may use it, who oversees it and is it human rights compliant.”
The Israel Defense Forces and the U.S. military will soon hold a training exercise in which they will simulate missile attacks on Israel from Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza, the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported Sunday.
The exercise will be carried out as part of the ongoing maneuvers between Israel and the United States, the London-based paper said, which will reportedly be the broadest-ever this year.
According to the paper, the drill is also part of U.S. President Barack Obama’s new missile defense plan, under which the Pentagon will initially deploy ships with missile interceptors instead of stationing missile defense systems in Eastern Europe.
The objective of the missile plan is to counter the threat of missile attack from Iran, not Russia.
The report came shortly before Defense Minister Ehud Barak was to leave for the United States, where he was to meet with his counterpart, Robert Gates.
Only last month, the IDF held a joint naval exercise with the U.S. and Turkish militaries in the international waters off Israel’s coast, according to Army Radio. Six missile boats, three helicopters and two jets participated in the drill, which simulated search and rescue operations, Army Radio reported.
Few subjects get written about more often – and inaccurately – than the Palestinians, yet there is curiously little interest in the politics and ideology governing their behavior. The same situation applies to the man slated to become their next leader, only the third to hold that post in 50 years, after Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.
The fact that an issue that is supposedly the most important, high-priority question in the world is studied so little has a simple explanation. The contemporary narrative is that the Palestinian leaders yearn for a state, an end to the conflict, and peace, while the failure to achieve these can be blamed on Israel. Yet even the slightest real examination shows the exact opposite is true.
This point is only underlined by looking at the current candidate for next leader, Muhammad Ghaneim, often known as Abu Mahir. Of all those who might credibly have been considered for the leadership of Fatah – and hence of the PLO and Palestinian Authority (PA) – he is probably the most hardline.
While media coverage of the 2009 Fatah Congress may have stressed the accession of “young” and “more flexible” leaders, the 72-year-old Ghaneim certainly doesn’t fit that description.
Born in Jerusalem on August 29, 1937, his first political involvement was with the Muslim Brotherhood, but he became a founding member of Fatah in 1959 and has been active ever since, involved mainly in recruitment and organization.
It is difficult to say to what extent Ghaneim’s early involvement with radical Islam has shaped his thinking, and whether it would make it easier for him to reconcile with the even more radical Hamas. Most Fatah and PLO members came from more secular Arab nationalist or leftist movements. The only prominent leader who seemed to blend an Islamist background with nationalism was Arafat himself.
Ghaneim’s big career break came in 1968 when, at the age of just 30, Arafat appointed him commander of Fatah’s forces in Jordan. Later that year, he was put on Fatah’s Central Committee, in charge of organization and recruitment.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of these two jobs. At that time, Jordan was a Fatah stronghold and the group constituted a shadow government alongside that of King Hussein, the country’s nominal ruler. Fatah guerrillas – and shortly after Arafat took over, the whole PLO – had military bases from which they launched attacks on Israel across the Jordan River. Arafat must have had an extraordinarily high opinion of Ghaneim to appoint him to such a sensitive post.
Since so much of this task was involved with military matters, Ghaneim took a short officers’ course in China. On his return in 1969, Arafat gave him a third chore, as his deputy for military issues. While the details aren’t clear, this means Ghaneim must have played a central role in planning and implementing scores of guerrilla and terrorist attacks. Ghaneim played a central role in selecting those to be given key jobs and just how much authority each had. Of course, everyone was far below Arafat, but Ghaneim was about as essential as a second-tier figure could be.
In 1970, Fatah overplayed its hand, was defeated by Jordan’s army, and had to flee to Lebanon. Ghaneim continued his organizational and military duties there. When the PLO and Fatah were forced out of Lebanon in 1982, Ghaneim accompanied Arafat to Tunis. From 1982 to mid-2009 he remained there, though he may have begun visiting the PA-ruled territories as early as July 2007.
Ghaneim didn’t return with Arafat in 1994 because, despite serving Arafat closely and loyally for 35 years, Ghaneim rejected the 1993 Oslo accords as too moderate. Only armed struggle, total victory, and Israel’s destruction were worthy goals in his eyes.
While Arafat sought these things covertly, the compromises involved in such a pretense were too much for Ghaneim. He stayed in Tunisia despite numerous invitations from Arafat, starting in October 1994, to join the PA, and instead insisted Arafat cease all negotiations with Israel.
Ghaneim moved closer to the popular Farouq Kaddumi, often referred to as the second most powerful man in Fatah. Kaddumi rejected the Oslo agreement and kept up a close connection with Syria. Arafat undercut him, but Kaddumi was so strong in the movement that he could never be fired altogether.
Finally, Ghaneim decided to return and support Mahmoud Abbas. While the details are not clear, this coincided with Abbas naming him as successor. Despite some who claim Ghaneim has moderated his positions, there is absolutely no evidence of this.
Ghaneim has a definite appeal for Abbas as ally and successor. He is one of the few remaining founders of Fatah, and has wide contacts throughout the movement.
In addition, as someone who has been outside PA politics for 15 years he is seen as a neutral figure in many petty disputes.
But this is not the man to choose if your top priorities are making peace with Israel and maintaining good relations with the West. He is the man you would choose if you intend to reject compromise, rebuild links to Syria and Hamas, and perhaps return to armed struggle.
On arrival at the Allenby Bridge crossing from Jordan on July 29, 2009, just before the Fatah Congress, Ghaneim was picked up by Abbas’ personal limousine, taken to his office, and welcomed in a ceremony.
At the reception, Ghaneim stated: “The struggle will continue until victory” and that if political means did not achieve Israel’s destruction, the movement would return to armed struggle. (Al-Hayat al-Jadida, July 30, 2009). It is clear how Ghaneim defines victory, and it is not a West Bank-Gaza state with its capital in east Jerusalem living alongside Israel.
That Ghaneim would give up “the right of return,” make any territorial compromise, or end the conflict permanently is extremely unlikely. These are things that even the supposedly less extreme Abbas has rejected.
Thereafter, Abbas promoted Ghaneim among the delegates to the meeting. He finished first in the Central Committee elections with 1,338 votes, about two-thirds of those participating and far ahead of every other candidate.
Ghaneim’s success, and the others elected, show that the old Arafat crowd is still in control. If Ghaneim becomes leader of Fatah the PA and PLO, you can forget about peace.
No one should say a word about the Palestinian issue, the peace process, or Israeli policy without analyzing these factors.
Unfortunately, there isn’t at present a Palestinian partner for peace. Fortunately, there is a Palestinian partner for maintaining a relatively peaceful status quo. But if and when Ghaneim takes over, even this consolation might be gone.
The embattled US dollar is expected to come under scrutiny at a summit of developing and industrialized nations following China-led calls to review its role as a reserve currency.
The dollar issue is bound to surface at the two-day meeting in Pittsburgh as US President Barack Obama and other leaders of the Group of 20 economies debate a new framework for tackling the so called global “economic imbalances” blamed for fuelling the latest financial crisis.
“Though not clear how the plan would be enforced, it would involve measures such as the US cutting its deficits and saving more, China reducing its reliance on exports and Europe making structural changes to boost business investment,” analysts at French bank Societe Generale said in a report.
Some argue that the financial crisis resulted from imbalances between savings and investment in major economies, which have led to large current deficits, as evident in the United States, and surpluses, as enjoyed by China.
Beijing was the first to call for a new global currency as an alternative to the US dollar as the US deficit rocketed — the White House estimates it could reach nine trillion dollars over a decade.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao expressed concern as early as March over the safety of his country’s huge US bond holdings now worth more than 800 billion dollars, making it the largest creditor to the United States.
Then, Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan, who supervises more than two trillion dollars worth of dollar reserves, the world’s largest, raised the stakes by calling for a new reserve currency in place of the dollar.
He wanted the new reserve unit to be based on the SDR, a “special drawing right” created by the International Monetary Fund, drawing immediate support from Russia, Brazil and several other nations.
“These countries realize that they would suffer losses if inflation eroded the value of the dollar securities they own,” said Richard Cooper, a professor of international economics at Harvard University.
But he said there were no feasible alternatives to the US dollar as a widely used international currency, discounting even IMF’s synthetic SDR currency, comprising a basket of the dollar, euro, yen and the pound.
“The dollar will remain the dominant world currency, thanks to the stability of our political system and the rule of law that isn’t a feature of many other economies,” said Irwin Stelzer, director of economic-policy studies at the Washington-based Hudson Institute.
Some groups, he said, were buying euros and other currencies from time to time, “but not in amounts that threaten the dollar’s primacy.”
Even the Chinese are stuck with nearly a trillion dollars worth of US bonds and are not likely to drive down the value of that hoard by selling large amounts of dollar-denominated assets, Stelzer said.
But what is baffling analysts is that a key UN agency — the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, or UNCTAD — has joined the chorus of calls for a new reserve currency.
An UNCTAD report this month endorsed a proposal that IMF-issued SDRs “could be used to settle international payments.”
Until the current global economic crisis, SDRs issued by the IMF have been used by IMF member nation states “primarily as a reserve account to support international trade transactions, not as an alternative international currency available to settle international debt transactions in danger of default,” said political scientist Jerome Corsi in “Red Alert,” a global financial newsletter.
China, meanwhile, continues to flex its muscle.
It has proposed that the G20 economies consider setting up an international wealth fund that would invest a portion of its members’ current-account surpluses in developing economies.
“These comments reinforce their desire to diversify out of dollars and to encourage other nations to do so as well,” said Kathy Lien, chief strategist for Global Forex Trading.
A few Chinese deals were recently seen accepting payment in the currency of the buyer rather than in dollars, especially with Brazil, which the Asian giant is wooing as a future oil supplier.
In addition, China — the first nation to sign an agreement to buy IMF bonds — took the unsual step of paying for the papers equivalent of 50 billion dollars with its yuan currency rather than dollars, which Beijing uses for much of its trade and other foreign transactions.
Carl Weinberg, chief economist of High Frequency Economics, said he was surprised by the move but did not see it having any major impact on the dollar.
“The transaction can now be clearly seen as a political move by Beijing to get more traction in the governance of the IMF, not as an effort by the PBOC (Chinese central bank) to reduce the share of dollars in its reserve asset,” he said.
A suspected bomb plot under investigation in New York and Denver has the ingredients of a worst case scenario for U.S. security, experts say: an al Qaeda link, overseas training and free movement within U.S. borders.
Colorado airport shuttle driver Najibullah Zazi, who U.S. authorities say admitted to taking a bomb-making course at an al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan, is at the center of what they say could be a plot to blow up subways or other targets.
Zazi has maintained his innocence, as has his father and a New York City imam who have also been arrested. So far authorities have only charged the three Afghan-born men with lying to investigators, which carries an eight-year maximum sentence, and not a more serious terrorism-related charge.
Whether or not the allegations outlined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in court papers are true, the picture they paint would make this case among the most serious within U.S. borders since the attacks of September 11, 2001.
“Here’s a guy who apparently was trained in Pakistan, had knowledge of bomb-making and was trying to assemble a team. That’s our worst nightmare, quite frankly,” said Michael Sheehan, a former counterterrorism chief for New York police and now a private consultant.
The case also underscores how, after the September 11 attacks and the transit bombings in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005, U.S. law enforcement has been more aggressive in making arrests even as rights groups accuse them of being overly zealous.
Zazi, 24, was arrested with his father in Colorado on Saturday while the imam, a one-time police informant named Ahmad Wais Afzali, 37, was arrested in New York. All three have been living in the United States for years.
The FBI says it found a laptop in Zazi’s rented car with instructions on how to make, handle and detonate explosives.
When police on September 14 searched an apartment in the New York City borough of Queens that Zazi had visited, they told local media they confiscated cell phones and at least nine empty backpacks. The Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people involved backpacks stuffed with explosives that were detonated via cell phones.
PAKISTAN ANGLE RAISES CONCERN
Experts say that, if prosecutors can prove it, Zazi’s visit to an al Qaeda camp in Pakistan makes this case more serious than previous cases built around paid informants and suspects who had more fervor than training.
“The people who have been successful in these attacks generally have been to camps, where they’ve been trained, where they’ve been organized,” Sheehan said.
The FBI says Zazi in August 2008 visited Peshawar in the Northwest Frontier Province, where al Qaeda operates training camps. Concerns about al Qaeda activity in Pakistan is a factor in the debate whether to send more U.S. troops into neighboring Afghanistan.
Zazi had been under surveillance for some time, probably months, when the investigation was made public by the September 14 raids in Queens. Federal authorities say they acted after Afzali, the imam and police informant, tipped off Zazi he was being watched.
That warning may have forced investigators to pounce earlier than they would have liked, forfeiting the opportunity to gather more evidence.
“They have moved early here,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond.
“The trade-off is they are erring on the side of concern for the safety of people who might be hurt or killed, if this had materialized. But it might mean that they can’t convict or may not have a strong case,” he said.
The gathering of world leaders in New York this week for the U.N. General Assembly may have prompted authorities, said David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University.
That this is being looked at as an al Qaeda-linked plot has also put it in a different class of threats, Cole said. “There have been very few al Qaeda-connected terrorist plots in the United States that have come to light. And so in that respect, this is different from most of the others.”
Nonreligious Americans or “Nones” are no longer a fringe group, researchers state in a new report.
Nones presently make up 15 percent of the total adult U.S. population and the statistic is even higher among young people. Twenty-two percent of 18-29 year olds claim the nonreligious label, a jump from 11 percent in 1990, according to Trinity College’s American Nones: Profile of the No Religion Population.
If the younger generation remains nonreligious, researchers point out that the percentage of the U.S. population made up of Nones will continue to rise.
“Will a day come when the Nones are on top? We can’t predict for sure,” lead researcher Barry Kosmin told USA Today.
Kosmin and Ariela Keysar released statistics earlier this year revealing the rise in the number of Americans who do not identify with any religion over the past two decades. The Nones increased from 8.1 percent of the adult population in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008, findings from their widely reported American Religious Identification Survey showed.
The researchers released a follow-up report on Tuesday to provide a more detailed look at who the Nones are and offer predictions on the growing nonreligious population.
Nones may best be described as skeptics. Twenty-seven percent of Nones believe in a personal God. Hard and soft agnostics make up 35 percent of the None population and atheists account for only 7 percent of Nones. Contrary to what many believe, Nones are not particularly superstitious or partial to New Age beliefs. They are, however, more accepting of human evolution than the general U.S. population.
“American Nones embrace philosophical and theological beliefs that reflect skepticism rather than overt antagonism toward religion,” the researchers state.
Compared to the general population, Nones are disproportionately male, younger, and more likely to be Westerners and political independents. But researchers found that they are increasingly similar to the general U.S. population in terms of their marital status, educational attainment, racial/ethnic makeup and income.
When it comes to religious roots, researchers found that the majority of Nones came from religious homes (73 percent) and are first-generation Nones or “(de)converts” to non-religion (66 percent).
Nearly a quarter (24 percent) of Nones are former Catholics and 11 percent are former Christians. Almost a third (32 percent) who are currently Nones were Nones at the age of 12.
Researchers note that among those who reported being Nones at 12 years of age, 41 percent switched to join a religion after the age of 12 and 59 percent remained nonreligious. Among those who identified with a religion at 12 years of age, only 12 percent switched to become a None. The retention rate is higher for the religious but the report points out that Nones are growing at the expense of the religious.
“Mathematically, Nones can lose a larger percentage than the religious and still grow as a percentage of the population because they are starting as a smaller percentage of the population,” the report states.
If current trends continue, Nones can make up around a quarter of the American population in two decades. But the report highlights that the annual growth rate has slowed at the beginning of the 21st Century. Whereas 1.3 million adults were joining the ranks of the nonreligious in the 1990s, the number of Americans being added to the None population has halved to 660,000 a year since 2001.
Still, researchers caution that because of the Nones’ similar social characteristics to the rest of the population, “the transition from a largely religious population to a more secular population may be so subtle that it can occur under the radar as happened during the 1990s.”
The national security adviser during President Jimmy Carter’s administration says the U.S. should confront Israeli jets if that nation chooses to take military action against Iran’s nuclear threat.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, in an interview with the Daily Beast website, declared, “We are not exactly impotent little babies.”
Israel long has been thought to be considering a military strike against the Islamic regime’s suspected development of nuclear weapon technology. Israel has stated it is unwilling to be threatened by a leader with access to nuclear weapons who believes it should be wiped off the map, as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared.
But an Israeli attack on Iran probably would have to fly over coalition airspace in Iraq.
“Are we just going to sit there and watch?” Brzezinski asked.
He said the U.S. has to be “serious” about denying Israel the right to attack.
“That means a denial where you aren’t just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not,” he said.
“No one wishes for this but it could be a Liberty in reverse,” he said.
The Liberty was a U.S. ship in international waters in the Middle East during the Six-Day War in 1967 that was hit by Israeli gunfire.
Brzezinski advised Carter on confrontations in Iran, Afghanistan and the Middle East during Carter’s White House tenure.
He said the Obama administration also already should have developed “a clearer position on what we are prepared to do to promote a Palestinian-Israeli peace.”
“Simply giving a frequent-traveler ticket to George Mitchell is not the same thing as policy. It took a long time to get going on Iran, but there is an excuse there, the Iranian domestic mess. And we are now eight months into the administration, and I would have thought by now we could have formulated a strategy that we would have considered ‘our’ strategy for dealing with Iran and Pakistan,” he said.
“For example, the Carter administration, which is sometimes mocked, by now had in motion a policy of disarmament with the Russians, which the Russians didn’t like, but eventually bought; it had started a policy of normalization with the Chinese; it rammed through the Panama Canal treaty; and it was moving very, very openly toward an Israeli-Arab political peace initiative,” he said.
WND columnist and New York Times best-selling author Mike Evans wrote about Brzezinski just before the 2008 election, explaining how Obama added Brzezinski to his list of “advisers.”
“One of Brzezinski’s first jobs as adviser was to defend Obama’s plan, if elected, to meet with Iran and Syria: ‘What’s the hand-up about negotiating with the Syrians or Iranians?’ asked Brzezinski. ‘What it in effect means is that you only talk to people who agree with you.’
“People who agree with you?” wrote Evans. “I, for one, would like to know just why Obama would want to talk with Iran’s president who denies the Holocaust, has called Israel a ‘stinking corpse’ and vowed to wipe it off the map.”
WND columnist Ben Shapiro noted about that time Brzezinski “believes that the Jewish lobby forces America into pro-Israel policy, and he defends Carter’s anti-Semitic book, “Peace, Not Apartheid.”
But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. James 1:22-25 KJV
Iran Tests New Nuclear Technology – September 22, 2009
Iran says it has built a new generation of centrifuges for enriching uranium, and is testing them. BBC
Forecasts for Asian Growth Raised – September 22, 2009
The economies of China and India are set to grow by more than previously thought in 2009, according to the Asian Development Bank. BBC
U.S. Taxpayers Pay Millions to Keep Despots Safe at UN – September 22, 2009
When the despots of the world roll into New York on Wednesday for the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, American taxpayers will pay a hefty price to ensure their safety. The cost of keeping the dictators safe? At least $20 million. FOX News
China Could Undermine US Military Power in Pacific – September 22, 2009
China’s increasingly advanced weaponry could undermine US military power in the Pacific, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday. Gates echoed US intelligence guidelines that warned of Beijing’s military modernization, US naval carriers and air bases in the Pacific faced new threats from China. Breitbart
Europe Edges Out North America as Richest Region – September 22, 2009
The economic and financial crisis of the past 18 months has transformed the global map of the world’s wealthiest people, with Europe nudging out North America as the richest region, according to Boston Consulting Group. Wall Street Journal
‘See You At The Pole’ to Mark 20th Year – September 22, 2009
Around two million students across the nation and overseas are expected to gather at their schools’ flag poles Wednesday to ask God to bring moral and spiritual awakening to their campuses and countries. This year’s “See You At The Pole” event will mark 20 years since the student-initiated and student-led movement started in the Ft. Worth suburb of Burleson, Texas, in 1990. Christian Post
In today’s world information is easy to come by. In fact, information glut is a problem we all struggle with, with so many media vying for our attention. Internet, radio, television, newspapers, magazines, and more are all screaming loudly about what is happening in the world today, but there is one thing that Christians need that they don’t offer.
Perspective.
The Koinonia Institute is a Christian Think Tank and, as such, fills an important void by bringing some of today’s brightest Christian thinkers together to share their insider’s perspectives on today’s events and how they relate to the Bible.
Speakers will include:
Grant Jeffrey
Chuck Missler
Frank Peretti
Steve Berger
Walid Shoebat
Joseph Farah
Mosab Yousef
Music by: Grace Chapel Worship Team
For more information, or to purchase tickets, click here:
viagra and hearing loss Ed Treatment Natural Female use of viagra female version of viagra 761.
erectile dysfunction vacuums Cialis Dysfunction Erectile Levitra how to get viagra
herbal remedy for erectile dysfunction; Erectile Dysfunction Psychological Zocor erectile dysfunction zoloft erectile dysfunction 147.
robin williams viagra Viagra Spray "explore advances in male impotence treatments"
viagra perscription online Natural Remedy Erectile Dysfunction male hormone dhea impotence levels
will ferrell erectile dysfunction Viagra Perscription Online ed treatment with ginko
erectile dysfunction pills evaluated; On Viagra "non prescription viagra"
cialis viagra How To Buy Viagramale impotence age
Cigarette smoking and erectile dysfunction cigarette smoking causing male impotence 395. Impotence Viagra The latest treatment for ed topical ed treatment 237.
most effective ed treatment! Viagra 50 Mg actos erectile dysfunction
l dopa for male impotence! Buy Cheap Viagra erectile dysfunction and pravastatin;
male impotence pumps vacu Holistic Ed Treatment cost of viagra
female forcing male sexual impotence; Male Impotence Brochure actos erectile dysfunction
accounting treatment for sr ed Water Ed Treatment Male impotence due to surgery male impotence enema 629.
lamictal erectile dysfunction! Accounting Treatment Sr Ed Ias "buy viagra online"
problems with viagra, Viagra Cheap erectile dysfunction link suggest
"non prescription viagra" Viagra Uk viagra times;
viagra soft tabs? Ed Treatments erectile dysfunction ed treatment
u 3312 viagra cialis Male Impotence Advice yohimbie bark and male impotence
facts male impotence psychological effects
lexapro erectile dysfunction,
erectile dysfunction paypal, Zetia And Erectile Dysfunction straighttalk net erectile dysfunction review
male impotence and solutions? Make Your Own Viagra newest transdermal treatment for ed
tricor erectile dysfunction Hebal Ed Treatmenterectile dysfunction exercise
Viagra and alternatives viagra and blood pressure 767. How To Make Viagra how to take viagra
cialis medication erectile dysfunction Erectile Dysfunction Pills accupril and erectile dysfunction