Thursday, February 28, 2013

Israel: Red Line Will Be Crossed By Iran This Summer

Israeli Ambassador: Red Line Will Be Reached By Summer. Bluff Or Preemptive Strike Coming?


This comes from Joel Rosenberg:





Even as President Obama and his team are preparing a major tour through Israel and the Middle East next month, two Israeli leaders today significantly ratched up the prospect of an Israeli military strike by this summer. Is it a bluff, or is Jerusalem running out of patience?
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented Wednesday on the nuclear negotiations between the West and Iran, saying that the six powers should clarify to Tehran that if it continues to pursue its nuclear program it would face ‘military sanctions,’” reports Ynet News in Israel. “As the talks drew to their end, Netanyahu said that if Iran’s refusal persists, ‘There are other means of compelling Iran to adhere to the international community’s demands.’”

“Netanyahu said that it was unlikely that the Islamic Republic would capitulate to the West’s demands, and curb its nuclear endeavors,” noted Ynet. “‘Just like North Korea, (Iran) continues to flout all international standards,’ Netanyahu said, adding that the international community should also toughen the financial sanctions imposed on the ayatollah’s regime. As the nuclear talks in Kazakhstan drew to an end Wednesday, Iran’s chief negotiator Said Jalili told reporters that the negotiations were ‘positive’ and that the offers made by the P5+1 group of nations’ delegates were ‘more realistic than those presented in the past and made an effort to approach the positions of Iran.’ According to Iran’s Press TV, the next round of talks between Tehran and the six powers – Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany – will be held in April.”
The Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. is echoing Netanyahu’s message today.
“I think there’s time, but there’s not much time” for sanctions to work, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren told USA Today. “There’s a window for diplomacy, but the window is closing….We know that given the centrifuges that they have now, they will pass a red line. That’s the point where we will no longer be able to prevent them from making a nuclear weapon, and that line is coming up in the summer. If they install the next generation of centrifuges — and they’re installing them right now — (and) if those centrifuges begin to spin, then the time will be even shorter.”








Four Israeli Air Force fighter jets crossed into Lebanese airspace Thursday, the Lebanese National News Agency reported. According to the report, the planes flew over the villages of Arqoub, Hasbaya, and West Bekaa at a medium altitude.
The news agency also claimed that Israeli troops and armored vehicles had massed along the Lebanese border, near the Shebaa farms.
There was no Israeli confirmation of the reports.
Israel has warned that it will intervene militarily if it fears Syrian non-conventional weapons are being transferred, or about to be transferred, to Hezbollah forces in Lebanon or other rogue forces.
Earlier this month, Israeli Air Force jets reportedly carried out a series of mock raids over southern Lebanon, flying low over the towns of Nabatiyeh, Iqlim al-Tuffah and Marjayoun.
The fighter planes also reportedly flew over the Litani River, a natural barrier that marked the northern lines of the IDF presence in Lebanon before Israel’s 2000 withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines.






Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comparison of Zionism to Nazism, calling it a “dark and slanderous remark, the likes of which we thought had passed from the world.”
The Foreign Ministry issued a statement regarding Erdogan’s “hollow” remarks as well, charging that they “stem from ignorance.”
Erdogan on Wednesday described Zionism as a “crime against humanity” on par with anti-Semitism and fascism.
Speaking in Vienna at a United Nations event devoted to dialogue between the West and Islam, Erdogan decried rising racism in Europe and the fact that many Muslims “who live in countries other than their own” often face harsh discrimination.


“We should be striving to better understand the culture and beliefs of others, but instead we see that people act based on prejudice and exclude others and despise them,” Erdogan said, according to a simultaneous translation provided by the UN. “And that is why it is necessary that we must consider — just like Zionism or anti-Semitism or fascism — Islamophobia as a crime against humanity.”
The Turkish leader’s comments, made at the official opening of the fifth UN Alliance of Civilizations Global Forum, drew harsh criticism from UN Watch, a Geneva-based watchdog group monitoring anti-Israel bias and human rights abuses at the organization.
“Erdogan’s misuse of this global podium to incite hatred, and his resort to Ahmadinejad-style pronouncements appealing to the lowest common denominator in the Muslim world, will only strengthen the belief that his government is hewing to a confrontational stance, and fundamentally unwilling to end its four-year-old feud with Israel,” UN Watch said in a statement.
Erdogan was also criticized by the Anti-Defamation League and B’nai B’rith International.




Liberman: West 'Stands Down' As Iran Races Toward Bomb



This first article comes from Times of Israel:








The world has been retreating in the face of Iran’s rush toward nuclear weapons capability, Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chair Avigdor Liberman said Thursday.
Talks held this week in Kazakhstan between Iran and world powers revealed “a great compromise” on the part of the West and “a hardening of stances” from Tehran, Liberman told Army Radio, noting he spoke for himself and not the government. “The Iranians are racing toward the bomb and the powers are withdrawing and looking for a way to contain it.”
Liberman decried a proposal to ease sanctions against Iran if it drastically slowed or stopped its uranium enrichment program.
“It’s clear to everyone that the Iranians don’t intend to halt their efforts to reach nuclear capability,” he said. “The reactors at Parchin and other locations are working at full steam without any [International Atomic Energy Agency] observer being allowed to visit.”
The former foreign minister pointed to the example of North Korea, which continues to conduct nuclear experiments despite tough international sanctions.
“At the end of the day, the enlightened world doesn’t want to confront extremists,” he said. “It prefers to stand down and search for complex diplomatic solutions instead of striving for victory and teaching them a lesson once and for all.”
Asked about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s November speech at the UN, in which he said the spring of 2013 could mark the last chance to stop Iran from reaching nuclear weapons capacity, Liberman said, ”There is no debate regarding the timeline Iran is on, but there are different opinions when it comes to deciding on the best course of action.”




Below we see more U.S. involvement in the Middle East - aiding and assisting radical Islam in Syria (just like Libya, Egypt etc.) - which essentially hurts Israel (Genesis 12:3):









The US is ratcheting up its support for the Syrian opposition in an effort to oust President Bashar Assad, and has even begun training rebels to that end, The New York Times reported Thursday.
Senior American administration officials told the paper that the US was training the rebels at a base somewhere in the Middle East, and would be offering the rebels nonlethal assistance, but not arms.
The effort to train rebels is the most significant US involvement so far in a civil war that has killed tens of thousands of Syrians in two years.



One of the primary goals of providing financial aid was to promote the Syrian Opposition Council, which incorporates all the rebel forces, as a legitimate government with the ability to administer Syria, the report said. The US is concerned that undesirable groups, such as the al-Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front, are gaining a foothold in some regions and establishing themselves as the local authority. Since the war started in 2011, the US has provided some $365 million in humanitarian aid, and now the administration wants to make sure that recognized opposition groups can take advantage of it by building their credibility on the ground, the report said.
The move by the US comes a week after the European Union agreed to send nonlethal equipment to the Syrian rebels, although exactly what that will entail has yet to be decided. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius also called for providing more support to the rebels after a meeting with Kerry in Paris on Wednesday, but did not detail exactly what form that support should take.







Western and Arab governments on Thursday pledged more political and material support for the civilian Syrian opposition and called for an immediate halt to arms supplies to the Assad government.



A final statement after a meeting of the "Friends of Syria" diplomatic group in Rome added: "The regime must immediately stop the indiscriminate bombardment against populated areas which are crimes against humanity and cannot remain unpunished".
It added: "The ministers pledged more political and material support to the (Syrian National) coalition as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people and to get more concrete assistance (into) Syria." They gave no detail of what kind of support would be supplied.














Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday described Zionism as a “crime against humanity” on par with anti-Semitism and fascism.
Speaking in Vienna at a United Nations event devoted to dialogue between the West and Islam, Erdogan decried rising racism in Europe and the fact that many Muslims “who live in countries other than their own” often face harsh discrimination.
“We should be striving to better understand the culture and beliefs of others, but instead we see that people act based on prejudice and exclude others and despise them,” Erdogan said, according to a simultaneous translation provided by the UN. “And that is why it is necessary that we must consider — just like Zionism or anti-Semitism or fascism — Islamophobia as a crime against humanity.”
The Turkish leader’s comments, made at the official opening of the fifth UN Alliance of Civilizations Global Forum, drew harsh criticism from UN Watch, a Geneva-based watchdog group monitoring anti-Israel bias and human rights abuses at the organization.
“Erdogan’s misuse of this global podium to incite hatred, and his resort to Ahmadinejad-style pronouncements appealing to the lowest common denominator in the Muslim world, will only strengthen the belief that his government is hewing to a confrontational stance, and fundamentally unwilling to end its four-year-old feud with Israel,” UN Watch said in a statement.
The group also criticized UN chief Ban Ki-moon — “who was present on the stage yet stayed silent” — for not condemning Erdogan’s remarks.









On the afternoon of Jan. 15, Tyndale House Publishers Inc. learned it would not be emerging from between a rock and a hard place anytime soon. The Carol Stream-based Bible and Christian book publisher had won temporary relief from the Affordable Care Act’s birth-control coverage requirement in November. Now, the U.S. announced that it would appeal the ruling.

“The government has put us between two impossible decisions,” Tyndale President and CEO Mark Taylor said in an interview. “They are forcing us to do something that we feel is morally wrong, or they’re going to charge us such huge fines that, over time, it would put us out of business.”

Tyndale’s lawsuit is one of more than 45 that religious employers have filed in federal court over Obamacare’s contraception coverage mandate, which stipulates that group health insurance plans must offer employees all FDA-approved forms of birth control without demanding a co-payment. Those that fail to comply face fines of $100 per employee per day, creating an ultimatum that up-in-arms employers are calling an assault on religious liberty












The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is alerting clinicians of an emerging untreatable multidrug-resistant organism in the United States.
There are many forms of Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), but of the 37 forms reported in the U.S., 15 have been reported in less than a year.
The CDC said the increase in CRE means health care providers need to “act aggressively to prevent the emergence and spread of these unusual CRE organisms.”
Enterobacteriaceae lives in water, soil and the human gut. These “surperbugs” have developed high levels of resistance to antibiotics – even carbapanems. Individuals who usually develop CRE infections are those who are taking antibiotics and getting significant medical treatment for other conditions.
The majority of CRE were “isolated from patients who received overnight medical treatment outside of the United States,” according to the CDC.

Persons who shared a room with a patient who has a CRE infection – and maybe even health care providers who treated the infected patient – should be screened to make sure they have not caught the infection.
If the infected patient is transferred to another health care facility, the new facility should become aware of the CRE infection. Health care providers who care for infected patients should not treat other non-infected patients.



The article below is relatively long, but it traces back to the genesis of the Federal Reserve and how our economic crash and the collapse of the dollar has been long planned. The quotes below just represent the introduction and the conclusion:







Today, we are witnessing the final stages of the greatest financial fraud ever perpetrated on the American people. Behind the massive debt, threat of “sequestration,” and the threat of massive pending layoffs exists a story that must be told and understood by every American. It is a truth that too few understand and even fewer will talk about.


The system has been rigged. However, understanding exactly what is being done to us, our country, and our economy has been deliberately made difficult for a person of average or even above-average intelligence by the architects of our demise. This process continues today, and much of it is done in secret or behind closed doors.

Every person on the planet is being robbed of their wealth by a select group of people. Worse, they are robbing your children, grandchildren, and further generations of their wealth not yet earned and (by extension) their time not yet invested, while making you believe that their enrichment is your moral obligation. It’s mental conditioning on a grand scale.




I’ve attempted to cover as much history in Part I to establish the groundwork and backdrop of Part II: Who is responsible today for robbing the Americans of our wealth, our heritage, our freedom, and our country. Today, we have men and women in power who, by the very definition of the word, are involved in the greatest conspiracy to be thrust upon America and all of the world. By definition, they are traitors to our country, and will be responsible for the collapse of the United States. They must be identified and exposed. But to adequately and effectively do so, it is important to understand the history of the conspiracy of which we are the victims.

When the U.S. dollar collapses, who will appear to be our savior, rescuing the United States from economic destruction through restructuring? I contend that our salvation, which will be our imprisonment, will rise from the seat of economic power - a city within the city of London. The significance of this cannot be understated, as we will be facing the end of our country and our freedoms. It will be the final stage of the implementation of global governance.




Wednesday, February 27, 2013

In The News:


Interesting developments in Iran:











Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is planning an “extraordinary attack” on the political power of Iran’s clerics in an attempt to “separate mosque and state,” the Times of London reported.
Ahmadinejad, whose second and final presidential term ends in August, and his chief of staff and would-be-successor, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, intend to “effectively dismantle the theocratic structure of Iranian government that has stood since the revolution,” if Mashaei proves able to win the upcoming presidential election, Tuesday’s report said.
Mashaei, who is regarded as an opponent of the religious establishment, reportedly said during a recent planning meeting that he has “the deepest respect for the clerics, but they are not politicians. Their presence is damaging Iranian politics. Their role should be spiritual only. In the next four years we have an opportunity to change the constitution.” The quote was cited by an anonymous source who told the paper that Mashaei’s “implication was clear — he was endorsing a separation of mosque and state.”









Iranian rocket specialists are in the Gaza Strip, helping terrorist organizations develop their arsenal of projectiles, Palestinian security officials said Tuesday, hours after a rocket was fired at Israel for the first time in months.
Representatives of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard were helping Hamas, which rules the Strip, and the Islamic Jihad organization develop long-range rockets, the Hebrew news site Walla reported, citing the unnamed Palestinian officials. Israeli officials confirmed there was an Iranian presence in Gaza, adding it wasn’t the first time Iranian officials had entered the Strip, the report said.


On Thursday morning, an upgraded Fajr missile, with a range of 70 kilometers (over 40 miles), landed south of Ashkelon, breaking a truce between Israel and the terror groups in the Strip which had held since the end of Operation Pillar of Defense in November. In response to the rocket fire Tuesday, Israel temporarily curtailed operations at two Gaza border crossings.
Fatah’s military wing claimed responsibility for the attack, but Israeli reports said it was likely that Hamas — which controls Gaza — was also involved at some level.
In November, a senior Hamas official predicted that Iran would increase its military and economic aid to Gazan groups because of the victory his group claimed in Pillar of Defense, the eight-day confrontation with Israel.
“They give it to us in the name of Allah, without conditions, and I am a witness to this,” Mahmoud al-Zahar told reporters in Gaza at the time, adding, “It is our right to take money and weapons from Iran.”










 Warnings from U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that enemy nations are carrying out cyber attacks on the U.S. are on the rise.
The target? The U.S. electric infrastructure.

But that may not be the worst of it. Those same adversaries – China, Russia, Iran and North Korea – also incorporate in their military doctrine the use of a nuclear electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, attack as “part of a strategic operation that would basically ‘throw the kitchen sink’ at the United States,” according to Cynthia E. Ayers, who once was with the National Security Agency and currently is with the U.S. Army War College.
These countries, she said, will “hit us with everything – computer viruses, sabotage of critical communications nodes, kinetic strikes on key information systems and a nuclear EMP attack.”
“The last, an EMP, is their best chance to collapse our national power grid and take us down, perhaps permanently,” she said.
In recent months, U.S. banks, the Federal Reserve, oil and gas production companies, media outlets and U.S. Defense Department and National Nuclear Security Administration entities have reported what Ayers calls a “massive” number – “in the millions” – of cyber attacks daily





N. Korea's 'Hatred Of Christians' Puts 70,000 Believers In Prison




Persecution of Christians in North Korea shows no sign of abating under the country's new leader, Kim Jong-Un, according to a report by the worldwide ministry Open Doors.

"The fanatical regime, which rules the destitute country of 24 million people with a proverbial iron fist, has a special hatred for Christians," Jerry Dykstra of the California-based Open Doors USA noted. "North Korea is in a league of its own when it comes to persecution of Christians."

Dykstra's and other reports parallel incidents in North Korea chronicled in the U.S. State Department's religious freedom assessments.

Of an estimated 200,000 prisoners in North Korea, 70,000 of them are Christians, Open Doors reported. For the 11th consecutive year, North Korea tops Open Doors' list of the worst countries for its brutal treatment of believers.

North Korea is run like a giant religious cult, Dykstra wrote. He noted two ideologies that drive the regime: "Juche," which asserts that man is self-reliant, and "Kimilsungism," which is the worship of leaders.

Christianity is viewed as a Western-instigated threat to the regime, Dykstra wrote in an article which appeared on the Religion Today website Feb. 19.

Based on defectors, circumstantial evidence and international observers' reports, Dykstra has concluded that the situation for North Korean Christians is deteriorating rather than improving.

"Many North Koreans attempt to escape to neighboring China, and an informal network of Christians seek to provide practical assistance when they cross the border," Dykstra wrote. "However, the reach of Pyongyang extends even into China.

"Police officials follow the refugees over the border and hunt down and vigorously prosecute those who convert to Christianity while in China or those who attempt to bring Christian literature back to North Korea," he wrote.

North Koreans who return to their country are interrogated about whether they met any Christians in China and whether they visited a church in China, the Open Doors report said.

Recently a Christian was shot and killed while returning for Bible training in China, Dykstra wrote. An Open Doors worker reported, "He was very excited about his new faith and wanted to share the Gospel with his family. He wanted to come back to China to study the Bible more so he could explain the Christian faith better to his family."

Another Christian, who also had studied the Bible in China, died in a labor camp, Open Doors reported.

"The number of trained North Korean spies inside China is growing," Dykstra wrote. "They are attempting to track down human rights activists and Christians helping North Koreans refugees."

Amid such hardships, the faith of North Korean believers is strong, Dykstra wrote. Open Doors obtained a letter from an underground church leader who noted, "No matter what circumstances we face, we stand firm in the mighty hands of God, and we will continue to march strongly towards the eternal kingdom."







EU Labels Jerusalem Construction 'Deliberate And Provocative'


I wonder how they label the rocket fire coming into Gaza? 



The European Union is targeting Jewish construction in Jerusalem, calling it “systematic, deliberate and provocative.” Building projects in the eastern portion of Israel’s capital city are part of a strategy aimed at preventing the holy city from being divided and used as the capital for two states, the EU’s “Jerusalem Report 2012" claims.

Jewish construction in sections of the city restored to the capital and annexed following the 1967 Six Day War is seen by the EU as “the biggest single threat to the two-state solution,” according to the report seen by AFP on Wednesday.




The report, authored by EU heads of mission in Jerusalem and Ramallah, flagged construction in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Har Homa, Gilo and Givat HaMatos as being “the most significant and problematic plans.”
All three were referred to as “settlements” rather than the neighborhoods of the city that they are.

“The construction of these three settlements is part of a political strategy aiming at making it impossible for Jerusalem to become the capital of two states,” the report warned. “If the current pace of settlement activity on Jerusalem’s southern flank persists, an effective buffer between east Jerusalem and Bethlehem may be in place by the end of 2013, thus making the realization of a viable two-state solutioninordinately more difficult, if not impossible.”





Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Iran's Alternative Plan For Nuclear Weapons Development




This comes from The Telegraph and the information may represent a new tipping point in the Epicenter:











Iran is developing a second path to a nuclear weapons capability by operating a plant that could produce plutonium, satellite images show for the first time.





The Telegraph can disclose details of activity at a heavily-guarded Iranian facility from which international inspectors have been barred for 18 months.
The images, taken earlier this month, show that Iran has activated the Arak heavy-water production plant.
Heavy water is needed to operate a nuclear reactor that can produce plutonium, which could then be used to make a bomb.

The images show signs of activity at the Arak plant, including a cloud of steam that indicates heavy-water production.

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have been unable to visit the facility since August 2011 and Iran has refused repeated requests for information about the site, which is 150 miles south-west of the capital, Tehran.
Western governments and the IAEA have held information about activity at Arak for some time.
But today’s exclusive images are the first to put evidence of that activity into the public domain.

The details of Iran’s plutonium programme emerged as the world’s leading nations resumed talks with Tehran aimed at allaying fears over the country’s nuclear ambitions.
The new images also show details of the Fordow complex, which is concealed hundreds of feet beneath a mountain near the holy city of Qom. At talks in Kazakhstan yesterday, world leaders offered to relax sanctions on Iran in exchange for concessions over Fordow, which is heavily protected from aerial attack.



The striking image of steam over the Arak heavy-water complex is a vivid demonstration that the regime has more than one pathway to a potential nuclear weapon.
Previously, international talks on Iran’s nuclear programme have focused on the Islamic Republic’s attempts to enrich uranium at plants including Fordow.
But the new images of Arak highlight the progress Iran has made on facilities that could allow it to produce plutonium, potentially giving the country a second option in developing a nuclear weapon.


Other images of the area around Arak show that numerous anti-aircraft missile and artillery sites protect the plant, more than are deployed around any other known nuclear site in the country.
The missile defences are most heavily concentrated to the west of the plant, which would be the most direct line of approach for any aircraft delivering a long-range strike from Israel.


Mark Fitzpatrick, a former US State Department official at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, suggested that Arak could be part of a process that might trigger Western strikes on Iran.
One option for the Iranian regime would be to acquire the necessary reprocessing technology from North Korea, he said.
“By then, the option of a military strike on an operating reactor would present enormous complications because of the radiation that would be spread,” he explained.


The Telegraph’s images were analysed by Stuart Ray of McKenzie Intelligence Services, a consultancy firm.
He said: “The steam indicates that the heavy-water plant is operational and the extent of the air defence emplacements around the site make it suspicious.”
Based on its own analysis of satellite images, the IAEA has reached a similar conclusion. In a report distributed to its board last week, the agency reported “ongoing construction” at the Arak site and active heavy water production.
According to the Institute for Science and International Security, a US think tank, if the heavy-water plant reaches full capacity, it would produce about 20lb of plutonium a year.
That could be enough for two nuclear warheads if the plutonium was reprocessed.