The United States government is financing its more than trillion-dollar-a-year borrowing with i.o.u.’s on terms that seem too good to be true.

But that happy situation, aided by ultralow interest rates, may not last much longer.

Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed.

Even as Treasury officials are racing to lock in today’s low rates by exchanging short-term borrowings for long-term bonds, the government faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages.

With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher.

In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The potential for rapidly escalating interest payouts is just one of the wrenching challenges facing the United States after decades of living beyond its means.

The surge in borrowing over the last year or two is widely judged to have been a necessary response to the financial crisis and the deep recession, and there is still a raging debate over how aggressively to bring down deficits over the next few years. But there is little doubt that the United States’ long-term budget crisis is becoming too big to postpone.

Americans now have to climb out of two deep holes: as debt-loaded consumers, whose personal wealth sank along with housing and stock prices; and as taxpayers, whose government debt has almost doubled in the last two years alone, just as costs tied to benefits for retiring baby boomers are set to explode.

The competing demands could deepen political battles over the size and role of the government, the trade-offs between taxes and spending, the choices between helping older generations versus younger ones, and the bottom-line questions about who should ultimately shoulder the burden.

“The government is on teaser rates,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates lower deficits. “We’re taking out a huge mortgage right now, but we won’t feel the pain until later.”

So far, the demand for Treasury securities from investors and other governments around the world has remained strong enough to hold down the interest rates that the United States must offer to sell them. Indeed, the government paid less interest on its debt this year than in 2008, even though it added almost $2 trillion in debt.

The government’s average interest rate on new borrowing last year fell below 1 percent. For short-term i.o.u.’s like one-month Treasury bills, its average rate was only sixteen-hundredths of a percent.

“All of the auction results have been solid,” said Matthew Rutherford, the Treasury’s deputy assistant secretary in charge of finance operations. “Investor demand has been very broad, and it’s been increasing in the last couple of years.”

The problem, many analysts say, is that record government deficits have arrived just as the long-feared explosion begins in spending on benefits under Medicare and Social Security. The nation’s oldest baby boomers are approaching 65, setting off what experts have warned for years will be a fiscal nightmare for the government.

“What a good country or a good squirrel should be doing is stashing away nuts for the winter,” said William H. Gross, managing director of the Pimco Group, the giant bond-management firm. “The United States is not only not saving nuts, it’s eating the ones left over from the last winter.”

The current low rates on the country’s debt were caused by temporary factors that are already beginning to fade. One factor was the economic crisis itself, which caused panicked investors around the world to plow their money into the comparative safety of Treasury bills and notes. Even though the United States was the epicenter of the global crisis, investors viewed Treasury securities as the least dangerous place to park their money.

On top of that, the Fed used almost every tool in its arsenal to push interest rates down even further. It cut the overnight federal funds rate, the rate at which banks lend reserves to one another, to almost zero. And to reduce longer-term rates, it bought more than $1.5 trillion worth of Treasury bonds and government-guaranteed securities linked to mortgages.

Those conditions are already beginning to change. Global investors are shifting money into riskier investments like stocks and corporate bonds, and they have been pouring money into fast-growing countries like Brazil and China.

The Fed, meanwhile, is already halting its efforts at tamping down long-term interest rates. Fed officials ended their $300 billion program to buy up Treasury bonds last month, and they have announced plans to stop buying mortgage-backed securities by the end of next March.

Eventually, though probably not until at least mid-2010, the Fed will also start raising its benchmark interest rate back to more historically normal levels.

The United States will not be the only government competing to refinance huge debt. Japan, Germany, Britain and other industrialized countries have even higher government debt loads, measured as a share of their gross domestic product, and they too borrowed heavily to combat the financial crisis and economic downturn. As the global economy recovers and businesses raise capital to finance their growth, all that new government debt is likely to put more upward pressure on interest rates.

Even a small increase in interest rates has a big impact. An increase of one percentage point in the Treasury’s average cost of borrowing would cost American taxpayers an extra $80 billion this year — about equal to the combined budgets of the Department of Energy and the Department of Education.

But that could seem like a relatively modest pinch. Alan Levenson, chief economist at T. Rowe Price, estimated that the Treasury’s tab for debt service this year would have been $221 billion higher if it had faced the same interest rates as it did last year.

The White House estimates that the government will have to borrow about $3.5 trillion more over the next three years. On top of that, the Treasury has to refinance, or roll over, a huge amount of short-term debt that was issued during the financial crisis. Treasury officials estimate that about 36 percent of the government’s marketable debt — about $1.6 trillion — is coming due in the months ahead.

To lock in low interest rates in the years ahead, Treasury officials are trying to replace one-month and three-month bills with 10-year and 30-year Treasury securities. That strategy will save taxpayers money in the long run. But it pushes up costs drastically in the short run, because interest rates are higher for long-term debt.

Adding to the pressure, the Fed is set to begin reversing some of the policies it has been using to prop up the economy. Wall Street firms advising the Treasury recently estimated that the Fed’s purchases of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities pushed down long-term interest rates by about one-half of a percentage point. Removing that support could in itself add $40 billion to the government’s annual tab for debt service.

This month, the Treasury Department’s private-sector advisory committee on debt management warned of the risks ahead.

“Inflation, higher interest rate and rollover risk should be the primary concerns,” declared the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, a group of market experts that provide guidance to the government, on Nov. 4.

“Clever debt management strategy,” the group said, “can’t completely substitute for prudent fiscal policy.”

- From Prophecy News Watch

Iran’s military is staging five days of exercises this week in an attempt to test its defenses, particularly around its nuclear installations. Amongst other issues, it is trying to establish, in the eyes of analysts, whether it could survive any strike by Israel.

Israel and the United States have consistently refused to rule out the possibility of military strikes against Iran over its refusal to halt its nuclear program. While Iran has said on numerous occasions that if it is attacked by Israel or the United States it will destroy the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.

These bring suppositions being made about how the two sides would act in the event of warfare.

DEFINING THE SCENARIO

The war game will cover about 600,000 square kilometers of central, western and southern parts of Iran, Iran’s state television reported, adding that both the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) and Iran’s regular armed forces will participate in the exercises dubbed “Asemane Velayat 2.”

Brigadier General Ahmad Miqani, head of the air-defense headquarters of Iran’s armed forces, said Saturday that the maneuver is aimed at developing the country’s aerial defense against any potential attacks — especially on the country’s nuclear plants.

During the practice “we will experience an authentic war situation and we will harness all our defensive facilities and the systems for an electronic war,” the semi-official Fars news agency quoted IRGC’s air force commander Amir-Ali Hajizadeh as saying, where he mentioned the possible offensive on Iran by Israel.

However, what follows is pure speculation, with the analysts stressing that their guesswork is based on what information is currently available on the Israeli and Iranian militaries.

The analysts who spoke with Xinhua do not suggest the Iranians would launch a pre-emptive strike, but rather assume that if there were to be military action it would be an Israeli attempt to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

The war scenario as it unfolds below is the combination of the thoughts of Francis Tusa, the editor of the London-based newsletter Defense Analysis and Barbara Opall-Rome, the Israel bureau chief for Defense News.

ISRAEL STRIKES

An Israeli attack on Iran would be led by the Israel Air Force, with backing from the Israel Navy and potentially with additional fire power supplied by ground-based intermediate-range ballistic missiles, according to analysts.

The target bank is constantly being updated by Israel’s military intelligence staff and the military believes it is very much on top of its game, as opposed to its 2006 war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, where there were clear disagreements between the soldiers and the politicians as to the best way to fight against the enemy.

“The Israel Defense Forces is very confident that if called by the political leadership to respond militarily they could do so,” said Opall-Rome.

The working assumption is that Israel would have to hit multiple targets, presumably at roughly the same time. The sites, that would have to be taken out, number anywhere from six, according to Tusa, up to two dozen in Opall-Rome’s estimate.

In terms of aircraft required, for every one strike fighter jet at least two more, or even three, would be needed to deal with Iranian military defenses, including aircraft, missiles, radar, ground forces and military headquarters.

Even then, Tusa does not believe Israel would have sufficient strike power. In his opinion, Israel could not commit all of its aircraft to Iran, and it would have to retain some at home in the event that Hezbollah to the north, Hamas to the south and even Syria to the northeast were to attack Israel in retaliation to its strikes against Iran.

Tusa also wonders whether Israel lacks the refueling aircraft necessary for such a mission. One solution would be for aircraft to take with them larger long-range supplies of fuel, but that would mean a reduction in the size of their attack payload. Another factor to be taken on board is whether Israel would be granted permission to fly over Saudi Arabia or the Gulf states, to dramatically reduce the flight time required to reach Iran and return home.

Given that Israel’s airpower may be insufficient, it would therefore also have to rely, for example, on cruise missiles fired from the sea. It has been reported that Israeli submarines have been investigating waters close to Iran. These missiles would most likely not be used to hit underground nuclear facilities but rather to destroy Iranian ground defenses.

Israel could also consider deploying ground forces but they would have to be in situ for several weeks, if not months, beforehand to prepare for any strike, said Opall-Rome.

Another option available to Israel is its own nuclear arsenal, something it will not confirm exists, but whose existence is internationally agreed. Tusa thinks it highly unlikely Israel would use nuclear weapons in an initial strike.

What Israel would have to be certain of is its ability not to damage Iran’s nuclear capabilities but to destroy them. Merely taking down power lines, for instance, would achieve little.

IRAN BEFORE AND AFTER S-300s

Iran has been preparing for Israeli or other foreign attacks for some time now and, according to Tusa, has been talking with other states that have been attacked by the West about their experiences.

Iran’s most obvious response to any airborne attack, including missiles fired from sea, would be with aircraft and missiles.

It is assumed that Iran’s air force pilots are not in the same league as their Israeli counterparts. “I think you’ll have the Israel Air Force pilots queuing up to be the guys to do the air-superiority role because they would end up being combat aces in the first three minutes,” said Tusa.

If Iran has done its preparation work properly it will also adopt deception techniques, analysts suggest. One example would be by creating dummy nuclear sites with lots of activity that would be picked up by Israeli radar. It would require the installation of large blast doors in a hillside and trucks arriving and departing from the site. Israeli aircraft would then waste their weaponry attacking such non-existent facilities.

Israel remains confident of its capabilities as the military balance stands today. However it is concerned that the potential delivery of Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missiles could make the guarantee of success that bit smaller. The S-300s are used to defend against aircraft, cruise and ballistic missiles.

“They make Patriots look pretty old fashioned. The radars are incredibly powerful and agile. They are very difficult to jam and once there’s engagement you are talking about simultaneously guided surface-to-air missiles,” said Tusa.

However, for the time being Iran has not taken receipt of the S-300s. As it stands, the analysts believe the question of the success of an Israeli attack depends more on Israel’s capabilities than Iran’s defenses.

There is one additional factor though. Iran could call on its regional allies, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas to attack Israel at home. While their combined prowess would not normally be much of a challenge to Israel, if its focus was entirely on Iran, it could suffer serious damage before coming to terms with the new front, analysts suggest.

While Opall-Rome does not believe Iran could successfully thwart an Israeli attack, she does see psychological warfare coming into play. If the Iranians were to down a single Israeli plane, even an unmanned drone, or capture just one Israeli pilot and display, that would be a “devastating blow” to Israeli moral and public opinion.

All of this guesswork is trying to extrapolate what might happen if Israel decided to attack Iran. However, as war planners are sitting in bunkers in Tel Aviv, Tehran and elsewhere doing precisely the same thing, Opall-Rome believes both Israel and Iran are very wrong to be conducting highly-publicized military exercises.

“This is just more of the psychological operation that both sides are irresponsibly waging to deflect serious attention from the type of negotiations that need to be done, it’s getting out of control,” she said.

Tusa does not believe it is beyond the realms of possibility that Israel will attack Iran, especially if Israel feels its back is against the wall in the international arena.

Israel fears that when Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks of wiping Israel off the world map he is not joking. When he adds messianic messages in to mix it only increases the concern amongst Israel’s decision-makers that Iran has or will very soon have nuclear weapons, said Tusa

- From Prophecy News Watch

With cutting-edge anti-missile systems and two new submarines that can carry nuclear weapons, Israel is readying a new generation of armaments designed to defend itself against distant Iran as well as Tehran’s proxy armies on its borders.

Having failed to crush Hamas’ firepower in its Gaza offensive last winter, or Hezbollah’s in its 2006 war in Lebanon, Israel is turning to an increasingly sophisticated mix of defensive technology.

A system that can unleash a metallic cloud to shoot down incoming rockets in the skies over Gaza or Lebanon has already been successfully tested, according to its maker, and is expected to be deployed next year. The army is developing a new generation of its Arrow defense system designed to shoot down Iran’s long-range Shihab missiles outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

It has three German-made Dolphin submarines and is buying two more. They can be equipped with nuclear-tipped missiles which analysts say could be stationed off the coast of Iran. Israel says Iran, despite its denials, is trying to acquire atomic weapons. It has never confirmed its Dolphin fleet has nuclear capabilities, but senior officials acknowledge that commanders are fast at work devising a strike plan in case diplomacy fails.

The missile projects have their critics in Israel, who question their effectiveness and say they are too costly. And many Israelis would probably agree with U.S. former President Bill Clinton’s recent warning to an Israeli audience that the country could achieve true security only by making peace with its enemies, who he said would always be able to improve their ability to attack.

“The trajectory of technology is not your friend,” he said. “You need to get this done.”

Under their overarching fear of nuclear annihilation by Iran, whose regime has repeatedly called for Israel’s extinction, the more immediate threat is seen as coming from Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Hamas.

Israel’s military believes Hezbollah has tripled its prewar arsenal to more than 40,000 rockets, some of which can strike virtually anywhere in Israel — a dramatic improvement over the short-range missiles fired in 2006.

Hamas has also increased its rocket arsenal since last winter’s fighting, said a senior military official who spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with army regulations. Hamas recently test-fired a rocket that can travel up to 60 kilometers (40 miles), putting the Tel Aviv area within range for the first time, according to Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, Israel’s military intelligence chief.

Israel’s defense industry says it is close to deploying Iron Dome, a system that will use cameras and radar to track incoming rockets and shoot them down within seconds of their launch. The system is so sophisticated that it can almost instantly predict where a rocket will land, changing its calculations to account for wind, sun and other conditions in fractions of a second.

Shooting down a missile is a bit like stopping a bullet with a bullet. But Eyal Ron, one of Iron Dome’s developers, said his system will fire an interceptor that explodes into a cloud of small pieces which make it unnecessary to score a direct hit.

“It’s a great advantage because to bring an interceptor to a target flying at incredible speed to an exact point is very hard,” said Ron, a specialist at mPrest Systems Ltd., an Israeli software firm developing the system along with local arms giant Rafael.

He said recent tests in Israel’s southern desert were successful, and a final dress rehearsal is expected in December before the system goes live next year.

While Israelis who have endured years of rocket fire from Gaza are sure to welcome Iron Dome, the system does not have wall-to-wall support.

“Maybe it will be good during times like this when you have 10 rockets, but not for a war. If you invest in such a system, I think you’re going to go bankrupt,” said Gabriel Saboni, the head of the military research program at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies.

Iron Dome is one part of a larger strategy that includes more tanks and dozens of new armored personnel carriers equipped with technology to repel anti-tank missiles.

The ultimate trump card is a nuclear arsenal Israel refuses to acknowledge but which no one doubts exists.

The strategy that became obvious in the Lebanon and Gaza wars was simply one of overwhelming force to deter further attack.

This policy appears to have bought Israel a fragile calm on both its northern and southern borders, but it has come at a heavy price.

The military brass are deeply concerned that international criticism of Israel’s conduct of the Gaza war, including allegations of war crimes contained in a high-profile U.N. report, will tie their hands in the future.

Military officials speaking on condition of anonymity said large resources are going into developing increasingly accurate weapons, such as bombs that cause damage over a smaller area and noisemaking explosions that scare away civilians before real bombs are dropped.

Few expect the current quiet to last indefinitely, and muscle-flexing on all sides attests to the elusiveness of a peaceful Middle East.

Iran is conducting large-scale air defense war games this week designed to protect its nuclear facilities from attack. Israel recently moved warships through the Red Sea toward Iran, and three weeks ago the Israeli navy captured a ship, the Francop, that it said was carrying a huge cache of Iranian weapons bound for Hezbollah.

Last week Netanyahu boarded a Dolphin submarine and then the missile ship that led the capture of the Francop. He thanked crew members for seizing the haul and told them that Israel is Iran’s first target, “but not the last” — reflecting his contention that Iranian ambitions are not just an Israeli problem.

- From Prophecy News Watch

Three-and-a-half years have passed since the Second Lebanon War, and Tuesday morning saw the end of a project for the renovation and restoration of bomb shelters in northern Israel in a festive ceremony.

The Prime Minister’s Office and the Defense Ministry invested NIS 96 million (roughly $25.27 million) in the renovation of 3,019 public shelters. An additional 1,838 joint shelters were renovated by the administration for the restoration of the North and the Amigour company.

Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said that in the event of another military operation, the fighting will not only be felt near Israel’s borders, but throughout the entire country. “We are building the State of Israel’s civilian front,” he said, “A war only on the military front, as in the Yom Kippur War – not involving the civilian population – will not reoccur.”

The minister added that, “the best war is one that is prevented, because if there is a war, it will reach every part of the State of Israel.”

Vilnai slammed the proposed budget cuts in communities on the confrontation lines and said, “It is unreasonable and unfathomable that they are trying to take away from grants to authorities in the periphery. These towns are located around the state’s borders and determine how the State of Israel looks.”

Eyal Gabai, director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office also noted the importance of supporting periphery communities. “The recent conflicts have proven the strength of the communities along the border. It is the State’s responsibility to change the perception, and the places that have been ignored will be made a top priority.”

Gabai added that the government plans to invest tens of billions of shekels in reinforcing infrastructure in the periphery, which he said would “change the lives of the residents of the Galilee and the Negev within 10 years.”

Head of Shlomi Local Council Gabi Naaman warned that the calm in the north in recent years could lead to complacency with regards to the continued restoration of shelters.

“We must not forget that the confrontation line has not disappeared, or that, alongside the economic and professional threats, there is still a security threat that is demonstrated with a Katyusha attack on the northern communities from time to time,” he said.

- From Prophecy News Watch

Fatah had made a strategic decision to declare a third intifada against Israel, movement officials told Nazereth-based newspaper Hadith Anas, citing the failed peace talks as the reason for their resolution.

The newspaper report quoted Fatah Central Committee members as saying that the movement wished to implement a decision made during its sixth convention, which assembled last August in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

One of the movement’s top officials interviewed by Hadith Anas said the third intifada will have a widespread popular base, adding, however, that unlike the previous popular struggle against Israel, which was sparked in September 2000, the movement will not endorse an armed struggle or the use of firearms.

“We want thousands of Palestinians to demonstrate daily near the settlements of the occupation, carrying out a human siege, and calling for the end of the occupation,” one senior official said.

According to the report, Fatah chief and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to the resolution in principle, stipulating only that the struggle mustn’t become a violent one.

Sources estimate that Abbas could prepare the conditions which would allow for such a move by stepping down as PA President as well as by declaring the dissolution of the PA by the end of the year.

Fatah officials had commented recently on the need to duplicate the weekly anti-separation fence rallies in the villages of Na’alin and Bil’in in locations across the West Bank, as well as turning some of those demonstrations against nearby settlements.

A senior member of an Arab-Israeli Knesset party, who maintains close ties with top Fatah and PA officials, said that anti-separation fence rallies could spark renewed popular resistance, if they continued to escalate as they did week ago near the Kalandia checkpoint.

The official said that PA sources have come to understand that unarmed popular resistance, centering on symbols of the West Bank occupation, could garner sympathy for the Palestinian cause in international circles as well as embarrassing the Israeli government.

“The first intifada gained significant diplomatic ground as far as the Palestinians are concerned since its symbol, a boy throwing rocks at a tank, made it impossible for Israel to claim it was defending itself against terror as it did in the second intifada, followings the city-center bombings,” the official said

- From Prophecy News Watch

Herman Van Rompuy. Get used to the name. He is the first President of the European Union, which with the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon by all the 27 EU member states in early November was transformed into a genuine United States of Europe.

The President of Europe has not been elected; he was appointed in a secret meeting of the heads of government of the 27 EU member states. They chose one of their own. Herman Van Rompuy was the Prime Minister of Belgium. I knew him when he was just setting out, reluctantly, on his political career.

To understand Herman, one must know something about Belgium, a tiny country in Western Europe, and the prototype of the EU. Belgians do not exist as a nation. Belgium is an artificial state, constructed by the international powers in 1830 as a political compromise and experiment. The country consists of 6 million Dutch, living in Flanders, the northern half of the country, and 4 million French, living in Wallonia, the southern half. The Belgian Dutch, called Flemings, would have preferred to stay part of the Netherlands, as they were until 1830, while the Belgian French, called Walloons, would have preferred to join France. Instead, they were forced to live together in one state.

Belgians do not like their state. They despise it. They say it represents nothing. There are no Belgian patriots, because no-one is willing to die for a flag which does not represent anything. Because Belgium represents nothing, multicultural ideologues love Belgium. They say that without patriotism, there would be no wars and the world would be a better place. As John Lennon sang “Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.”

In 1957, Belgian politicians stood at the cradle of the European Union. Their aim was to turn the whole of Europe into a Greater Belgium, so that wars between the nations of Europe would no longer be possible as there would no longer be nations, the latter all having been incorporated into an artificial superstate.

A closer look at Belgium, the laboratory of Europe, shows, however, that the country lacks more than patriotism. It also lacks democracy, respect for the rule of law, and political morality. In 1985, in his book De Afwezige Meerderheid (The Absent Majority) the late Flemish philosopher Lode Claes (1913-1997) argued that without identity and a sense of genuine nationhood, there can also be no democracy and no morality.

One of the people who were deeply influenced by Dr. Claes’s thesis was a young politician named Herman Van Rompuy. In the mid-1980s, Van Rompuy, a conservative Catholic, born in 1947, was active in the youth section of the Flemish Christian-Democrat Party. He wrote books and articles about the importance of traditional values, the role of religion, the protection of the unborn life, the Christian roots of Europe and the need to preserve them. The undemocratic and immoral nature of Belgian politics repulsed him and led to a sort of crisis of conscience. Lode Claes, who was near to retiring, offered Herman the opportunity of succeeding him as the director of Trends, a Belgian financial-economic weekly magazine. It is in this context that I made Herman’s acquaintance. He invited me for lunch one day to ask whether, if he accepted the offer to enter journalism, I would be willing to join him. It was then that he told me that he was considering leaving politics and was weighing the options for the professional life he would pursue.

I am not sure what happened next, however. Maybe word had reached the leadership of the Christian Democrat Party that Herman, a brilliant economist and intellectual, was considering leaving politics; perhaps they made him an offer he could not refuse. Herman remained in politics. He was made a Senator and entered government as a junior minister. In 1988, he became the party leader of the governing Christian-Democrats.

Our paths crossed at intervals until 1990, when the Belgian Parliament voted a very liberal abortion bill. The Belgian King Baudouin (1930-1993), a devout Catholic who suffered from the fact that he and his wife could not have any children, had told friends that he would “rather abdicate than sign the bill.” The Belgian politicians, convinced that the King was bluffing, did not want the Belgian people to know about the King’s objections to the bill. I wrote about this on the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal and was subsequently reprimanded by the Belgian newspaper I worked for, following an angry telephone call from the then Belgian Prime Minister, a Christian-Democrat, to my editor, who was this Prime Minister’s former spokesman. I was no longer allowed to write about Belgian affairs for foreign newspapers.

In April 1990, the King did in fact abdicate over the abortion issue, and the Christian-Democrat Party, led by Herman Van Rompuy, who had always prided himself on being a good Catholic, had one of Europe’s most liberal abortion bills signed by the college of ministers, a procedure provided by the Belgian Constitution for situations when there is no King. Then they had the King voted back on the throne the following day. I wrote about the whole affair in a critical follow-up article for The Wall Street Journal and was subsequently fired by my newspaper “for grievous misconduct”. A few weeks later, I met Herman at the wedding of a mutual friend. I approached him for a chat. I could see he felt very uncomfortable. He avoided eye contact and broke off the conversation as soon as he could. We have not spoken since.

Herman’s political career continued. He became Belgium’s Budget Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Speaker of the Chamber of Representatives and finally Prime Minister. He kept publishing intellectual and intelligent books, but instead of defending the concept of the good, he now defended the concept of “the lesser evil.” And he began to write haiku.

Two years ago, Belgium faced its deepest political crisis ever. The country was on the verge of collapse following a 2003 ruling by its Supreme Court that the existing electoral district of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde (BHV), encompassing both the bilingual capital Brussels and the surrounding Dutch-speaking countryside of Halle-Vilvoorde, was unconstitutional and that Parliament should remedy the situation. The ruling came in response to a complaint that the BHV district was unconstitutional and should be divided into a bilingual electoral district Brussels and a Dutch-language electoral district Halle-Vilvoorde. This complaint had been lodged by… Herman Van Rompuy, a Flemish inhabitant of the Halle-Vilvoorde district.

In 2003, however, the Christian-Democrats were not in government and Herman was a leader of the opposition. His complaint was intended to cause political problems for Belgium’s Liberal government, which refused to divide the BHV district because the French-speaking parties in the government refused to accept the verdict of the Supreme Court. The Flemish Christian-Democrats went to the June 2007 general elections with as their major theme the promise that, once in government, they would split BHV. Herman campaigned on the issue, his party won the elections and became Flanders’ largest party.

Belgium’s political crisis dragged on from June until December 2007 because it proved impossible to put together a government consisting of sufficient Dutch-speaking (Flemish) and French-speaking (Walloon) politicians. The Flemings demanded that BHV be split, as instructed by the Supreme Court; the Walloons refused to do so. Ultimately, the Flemish Christian-Democrats gave in, reneged on their promise to their voters, and agreed to join a government without BHV being split. Worse still, the new government has more French-speaking than Dutch-speaking ministers, and does not have the support of the majority of the Flemings in Parliament, although the Flemings make up a 60% majority of the Belgian population. Herman became the Speaker of the Parliament. In this position he had to prevent Parliament, and the Flemish representatives there, from voting a bill to split BHV. He succeeded in this, by using all kinds of tricks. One day he even had the locks of the plenary meeting room changed so that Parliament could not convene to vote on the issue. On another occasion, he did not show up in his office for a whole week to avoid opening a letter demanding him to table the matter. His tactics worked. In December 2008, when the Belgian Prime Minister had to resign in the wake of a financial scandal, Herman became the new leader of the predominantly French-speaking government which does not represent the majority of Belgium’s ethnic majority group. During the past 11 months, he has skillfully managed to postpone any parliamentary vote on the BHV matter, thereby prolonging a situation which the Supreme Court, responding to Herman’s own complaint in 2003, has ruled to be unconstitutional.

Now, Herman has moved on to lead Europe. Like Belgium, the European Union is an undemocratic institution, which needs shrewd leaders who are capable of renouncing everything they once believed in and who know how to impose decisions on the people against the will of the people. Never mind democracy, morality or the rule of law, our betters know what is good for us more than we do. And Herman is now one of our betters. He has come a long way since the days when he was disgusted with Belgian-style politics.

Herman is like Saruman, the wise wizard in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, who went over to the other side. He used to care about the things we cared about. But no longer. He has built himself a high tower from where he rules over all of us.

- From Prophecy News Watch

In accepting his appointment to be the first permanent president of the European Council in the European Union, Herman Van Rompuy affirmed his belief that the new world order would be dominated by international organizations that would seek to destroy the last vestiges of nation-states on the face of the globe, Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert reports.

In the following speech captured by BBC and posted on YouTube, Van Rompuy proclaimed, “2009 is the first year of global governance with the establishment of the G20 in the middle of the financial crisis.”

He continued, “The climate conference in Copenhagen is another step toward the global management of our planet.”

In the following widely viewed YouTube video, Mario Borghezio, a member of Italy’s Lega Nord who is also a member of the European Parliament, pointed out in a speech to the European Parliament that Van Rompuy is a frequent attendee at Bilderberg Group and Trilateral Commission meetings.

Borghezio asked how it is possible that no one has mentioned Van Rompuy is a candidate of these “occult groups” who “meet behind closed doors to decide matters over the heads of the people.”

Van Rompuy is known in Europe for his proposals that in the EU national symbols need to be replaced by European symbols, such that the national flags of the EU member nations would disappear in favor of the EU flag, and the same would happen with license plates, identity cards and even sporting events, as reported by the Telegraph in Great Britain.

“Even the selection of the largely unknown Van Rompuy to be the first EU Council president and the selection of the equally unknown Lady Catherine Ashton, an EU trade commissioner, to be EU foreign policy head, smacked of back-room deals made by global elitists seeking to fill the new posts created by the Lisbon Treaty with EU global elitists like themselves,” Corsi wrote.

He said neither Van Rompuy nor Ashton was elected, noting that Lady Ashton has never held an elected position in her life.

Contemplating the appointment of Van Rompuy and Lady Ashton, Corsi said he is reminded of Jean Monnet, a key architect of the European Union.

In his “Memoirs,” Monnet recalled that in his Luxembourg office he kept on his desk a photograph of the Kon-Tiki, the raft Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl used in his 1947 expedition from South America to the Polynesian islands across the Pacific.

When asked about the photograph, Monnet explained that he admired the young men who sailed the Kon-Tiki because once they chose a course, they knew they could not turn back.

“We too are headed for our objective, the United States of Europe,” Monnet openly proclaimed, “and for us too there is no turning back.”

Corsi wrote, “Following Van Rompuy’s comments, there should be no doubt that the globalists have no intention of stopping or slowing down, as even the EU itself is simply one small step of regionalism on the new world order journey of international government in which nation-states themselves become bygone entities of a once-treasured past.”

- From Prophecy News Watch

**MEMORY VERSE OF THE WEEK**

O LORD, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave: thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit. Sing unto the LORD, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness.
Psalms 30:3-4 KJV

**IMPORTANT NEWS HEADLINES**

Bibi Wants Help For Gaza Explusion Victims – November 24, 2009
Visiting expulsion victims in the Eshkol Region, near the Gaza barrier that separates the families from the destroyed sites of their former homes, Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with regional council leaders and three cabinet ministers. Also present was the new head of the committee that for four years has been sharply criticized for failing to help the expulsion victims rebuild their lives. Arutz Sheva

Gold Hits Record High – November 23, 2009
Gold jumped to a record price as the slumping dollar boosted bullion’s appeal as an alternative asset. Silver also gained. Gold futures touched an all-time high of $1,174 an ounce in New York, after the dollar fell as much as 0.9 percent against the euro. Bloomberg

Conscious Man Trapped in ‘Coma’ For 23 Years – November 23, 2009
An engineering student thought to be in a coma for 23 years was actually conscious the whole time, it has emerged. Rom Houben was misdiagnosed as being in a vegetative state after a car crash left him totally paralyzed. But, in actuality, he was trapped in his own body the whole time with no way of letting friends and family know he could hear every word they were saying. Sky News

Chinese Intellectuals Drawn To Christianity – November 19, 2009
Officially, the Chinese government counts some 10 million Protestants and four million Catholics belonging to registered churches, which proscribe evangelical activity and preach a patriotic dogma. But Chinese and foreign observers alike believe the number of Chinese belonging to underground churches may now exceed 100 million people. That figure has grown rapidly as more and more Chinese, particularly well-educated city dwellers, turn away from Communist Party atheism. The Wall Street Journal

WHAT IS EVOLUTION? REVIEWING THE TERMS

Darwin’s Origin of Species celebrates its 150th birthday on Tuesday, November 24, 2009, and during those 150 years Darwin’s ideas have come to dominate scientific disciplines from biology to archeology to sociology and everything in between. Biologists like to claim that evolution has been proven absolutely, with no question about it among reputable scientists. Scientists may quibble about the specifics of evolution, they say, but not about the fact of it.

There are indeed a growing number of professional scientists who disagree that the evidence points to molecules-to-man evolution. Whether those scientists are “reputable” is not at issue; in today’s scientific community, having the audacity to question Darwin can in itself quickly tarnish the reputation of a formerly respected scientist. The fact is, men and women who know their stuff can disagree about the ability of existing evidence, paired with Darwinian ideas, to sufficiently explain the formation of life as we know it. These scientists come from all manner of religious backgrounds, including agnostics who claim no religion at all.

During the next several weeks, we are going to diligently and carefully address some major issues in the evolution debate, things like transitional forms and the reliability of cladistic analysis, radiometric dating, the fossil record, bacteria, and potentially more. To begin our series on evolution, though, we need to start with a return to the definition of “evolution.”  We’ve run this article in the past, but a review is necessary before we take this further, especially for new readers.  In the following weeks, God willing, we can go on to fascinating topics that are of interest to science lovers everywhere.

There are a number of different concepts that can be used when talking about evolution.  Unfortunately, many people do not stop to define the terms they are using when getting into discussions on evolution.  Because of this, students of science can easily misunderstand one another.  Below are some general terms often involved in discussions about evolutionary theory, and sorting these out can help one keep definitions straight when discussing origins.

Change over time:  The most basic definition of evolution is simply “the process of change or development over a period of time.”  Hence, music, cultures, sports teams all “evolve.”   In biology, classes of animals and plants have experienced marked change over dozens or hundreds or thousands of years.  At one time, beavers were as big as today’s bears, and ancient ground sloths once grew to be the size of oxen.   Little three-toed horses and small camels roamed what is now Texas.  Over time, groups of animals diversify, as shown by the fossil record and common observation.  This definition is extremely broad, and says nothing about what caused the change or where the beavers or sloths came from in the first place.

Descent with Modification: This term that Darwin used basically means that living creatures have the ability to create offspring like themselves, but with the potential for variation.  Today, descent with modification is explained through the field of genetics and studies involving DNA.  Through the building-plan code of DNA, creatures can produce offspring like themselves, yet with room for variation.   Brown-eyed parents who have recessive gene coding for blue eyes can produce blue-eyed children.  Cats can give birth to kittens with a range of characteristics, all in one litter, depending on the specific DNA coding passed on to each kitten by its mother and its father.

Adaptation:  Sometimes an offspring receives certain traits or characteristics from its parents that allow it to survive in certain situations better than in others.  Large-beaked finches adapt better to eating hard, large seeds, because their beaks are strong enough to crush them.  Finches with long, thin beaks adapt better to getting food out of hard-to-reach places.   Finches with large beaks will do better in one environment and will flourish there, while others with long beaks will flourish in other environments.

Survival of the Fittest:  This basic concept promoted by Darwin argues that those organisms that are best able to adapt to a particular environment will live to produce more offspring. For instance, when there is plenty of food, all the finches on an island can do well.  However, during times of drought, only the finches with the strongest beaks will be able to eat the hardest seeds, enabling them to survive and reproduce.  If other finches with longer, thinner beaks can get seeds from places the rest of the finches can’t, these will survive and reproduce.  The other finches that can’t compete for the food supply will die out.  Soon, the “specialized” finches are reproducing more “specialized” offspring like themselves, so that obvious variations start showing up between the different groups of finches.

Natural Selection:  Adaptation and Survival of the Fittest work together to create success among certain groups of creatures with certain genetic variations.  “Nature” selects which ones survive based on which ones are best adapted to their environment and best able to overcome the competition.  Natural Selection includes both ecological selection (overcoming competition for food, safety, shelter) and sexual selection (which guy gets the girl).

Genetic Drift:  This refers to the way small populations of creatures end up reproducing and passing on their genetic information and becoming specialized even if they are not the best adapted to an environment.  If all the competition got killed by a lightening storm or flood or avalanche, those left behind would continue to reproduce and survive, whether or not they were the best suited to survive otherwise.

Most of the above concepts can be seen regularly in nature and are largely beyond dispute.  However, the following ideas start creating heavy debate:

Speciation:  This term refers to the formation of new “species” over time, generally through the mechanisms of natural selection and survival of the fittest.  When many people talk about “evolution” they often mean “speciation,” arguing that through natural selection, entirely new species have been formed.

Whether this can be proven actually depends on the definition of the term “species” (and there is still a great deal of arguing among scientists over that one).  Usually, a species is considered to be a group whose members only reproduce with each other.  Finches may become so specialized that they no longer mate with other kinds of finches.  These can be considered a new “species” of finch.

Yet, evolutionists often extrapolate to argue that through these processes thousands or millions of years ago, finches evolved from some more generic form of bird, which evolved from some more generic form of vertebrate.  The line should be drawn at the DNA evidence.  What does the DNA allow for?  How much genetic variation was originally available in the DNA of the earliest finches, and how can we determine it?  Natural Selection can only work with the DNA code already present, and cannot create new DNA coding that did not previously exist.  The specialized finches are still finches and are not turning into some other kind of bird.

Mutation:  To deal with this obvious problem of DNA coding, some evolutionary scientists have argued that through small mutations, new information can be added to the genetic code.

However, there is much debate over this issue.  Mutations are naturally destructive and cause damage, and evolutionary scientists have been hard pressed to find beneficial mutations. On rare occasion, a mutation can help a creature survive when it would otherwise not be able to, but only because the mutation has caused a malfunction.  For instance, children with sickle-cell anemia are more resistant to malaria, but this is because their red blood cells are not functioning properly, (and large numbers still die from the sickle-cell anemia).  Many “super bugs” in hospitals are immune to antibiotics because they are actually mutated, sickly bacteria and can’t function properly to take in the antibiotics.  When put in competition with normal bacteria outside of a hospital setting, these “super bugs” can die off quickly.

The General Theory of Evolution:  This is the popular but controversial idea that all life on earth started in a primordial soup, and that all the variation of life on earth arose through gradual evolution by way of mutation, adaptation, and survival of the fittest.

This is where the heavy argumentation over “evolution” is often focused.  The general theory that all life on earth evolved from primordial microbes is based on philosophical beliefs about the nature of nature, on models, on extrapolations, and on guesswork – because it deals with theories about things that cannot be directly observed or reproduced.  The best scientists can do is create models and work to fit the observable evidence to their models. In this sense, evolutionary theory is absolutely a work in progress.

While many concepts in “evolutionary” science are useful in understanding genetics and the variations between species, it is important to recognize where observation ends, and where extrapolation and theorizing begin.  Those in the information sciences recognize the vital importance of focusing on information and the genetic code and of determining where the DNA code originated in the first place.   Without a mechanism for adding information to the genetic code, natural selection and adaptation can only produce more specialized finches or dogs or horses, but they cannot tell us how finch or dog or horse DNA was programmed in the first place.

To be continued…

Related Links:

• Genetic Engineers Unwind Species Barrier – Creation.com
• Definitions of ‘Evolution’ – SIU Department of Zoology
• Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting The Theory Of Intelligent Design – The Discovery Institute
• November 30th ID v. Evolution Debate – Beverly Hills – The Discovery Institute
• Studies On Creation and Evolution – Koinonia House