In the news:

1. Persecution:

This one is unbelievable, yet it is symbolic of one of the signs of this age.

City demands Christians get permit for Bible study

Chuck and Stephanie Fromm already have been fined $300 for holding Bible studies for their friends at their home, and they face the potential for additional fines of $500 for each study held, according to a legal team taking their case to court.

The newest conflict over Bible studies in homes in America arose in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., where city officials say city code section 9-3.301 prohibits religious organizations in residential neighborhoods without a conditional-use permit, a sometimes very expensive procedure.

...larger churches that have been required to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars as part of the permit process on such items as engineering and traffic studies, architectural designs. The process includes public hearings and ultimately can result in a rejection by the city.

A report from the city's Dispatch newspaper said that Fromm, publisher of Worship Leader Magazine, wanted to hold Bible studies on Wednesdays that drew some 20 people, while similar studies on Sundays attracted up to 50 to their acreage that includes their home, a corral, a barn, a pool and a huge back yard.

"We don't like lawsuits, but we have to stand up for what's right. It's not just a personal issue," Stephanie Fromm told the newspaper. "Can you imagine anybody in any neighborhood, that one person can call and make it a living hell for someone else? That's wrong … and it's just sad."

Welcome to the "New America".

2. "Day of Rage" Update

From what I can gather thus far, the whole thing seems pretty laughably lame (as one could have predicted), however, a little insight can be gained from one of the quotes found below:

"What the cause is, remains anyone's guess". And odds are, most of the 'protesters' have no idea what the cause is. However, we do see one repeated theme - again, as obtained from one of the quotes below - spoken from one of the organizers:

"The system is going to collapse, we are here to make it collapse faster".

Consistent with the news coming from Gulagbound, it sounds exactly like George Soros speaking, and much evidence exists that he is lurking behind the scenes for these protests.

Protesters Converge on Lower Manhattan, Plan 'Occupation'

As the demonstration began this afternoon, as many as 1,000 people congregated in the Chase Manhattan Plaza area and, after speakers with a bullhorn rallied the crowd, broke into groups to discuss the event’s goals.

Some participants circulated trays of sliced white and wheat bread while others passed out jars of creamy Skippy peanut butter, and distributed apples, bananas and oranges from shopping carts.

Protesters waved red flags and toted cardboard signs with statements such as “represent the 99%.” Others donned white, mustachioed masks of the anti-authoritarian protagonist from the graphic novel and film “V for Vendetta.”

Tensions Escalate As Riot Police Surround Protesters

A little after 9:00 PM, as I previously reported, police began ordering protestors they had to leave by 10:00 PM or face arrest.

The protestors began speaking in union, describe by some as “chanting” in solidarity they would not disperse and would remain in solidarity in the spirit of the protestors at Egypt’s Tahrir square.

There are many reports of regular uniformed police and riot police amassing around the square while shouting orders and warnings to the protestors to disperse.

However, there are also reports from some that the police have blocked off the area and are not letting new people to join the crowd of protestors on the scene. Live video stream recorded just a little while ago showed protestors on the scene urging more people to join them tonight, tomorrow, or as soon possible.

50,000 Gathered in NYC Poised To Clash With Police In The "Occupy Wall Street" Protests

50,000 seems ridiculously inflated from everything seen thus far.

The above link was supposed to include a live feed, but there is a runner below the screen stating that it is blacked out for now.
There is an ongoing audio which appears to be live. There is also a live chat line in this link.

The Blaze Reports From Inside The "Comrade's" Ranks: 'Occupy Wall Street' Day of Rage

By the time I arrived at the Wall Street Day of Rage around 2:00 PM, the NYPD had Wall Street on total lockdown, with barriers at both ends, uniformed NYPD officers standing shoulder-to-shoulder, and plastic flexcuffs hanging in bundles from their belts. Clearly, the NYPD was not messing around.

So the anti-capitalists and comrades and anarchists had to move their march south.

But what that cause is remains anyone’s guess.

The Days of Rage protest was sort of a leftist outcry a la carte, a mishmash of grievances vaguely anti-capitalist, and anti-government. The main rallying cry was anti-banker, and there was much talk of ‘fat cats.’

After that, the message was unified only in its hatred for our current government, and the promise that we would all be better off if the system collapsed.

In the single most enthusiastic crowd moment, one of the organizers took the bullhorn and summarized the message of the whole event: ”The system is going to collapse,” he said, “we are here to make it collapse faster.”

This information is probably the most insightful:

This crowd looked more like Ben and Jerry’s hippies than communist storm troopers.

From what I saw, the NYPD played no small role in keeping things in check.

The NYPD may have been the main reason the ‘Day of Rage’ protest appeared much more like a college sit-in for Earth Day, or Free Palestine, or whatever the grievance du jour might be, than a surging Madrid or Cairo riot.

The protestors say they will sleep on the streets for months. Based on what I saw, I doubt it. Maybe a core group will make it a week.

And my personal favorite - no protest is complete without this aspect (the ole 'drum circle'):

People started to look tired, bored, and hungry.

A few turned into drum circles.

I concluded that the moment the Skippy peanut butter runs out, most of these self-styled radicals will hop a bus back to campus, or their parents’ suburban basements.

Also see:

Day of Rage: A Primer

And lastly, a few videos taken from the Seattle protest are pretty funny:

Seattle Protests

3. The Middle East

Jerusalem Prepares for Riots

Police in Jerusalem are preparing for the possibility of disturbances as the Palestinian Authority goes to the UN this week to ask for recognition as a state.

IDF Radio reported Sunday that schools in the eastern part of the city may close temporarily, if terrorists threaten principals.

The concern is the possibility of marches beginning in Judea and Samaria, or in villages near the capital, that head toward Jerusalem, he said. “There is no doubt that there will be disturbances, but they will not begin in Jerusalem… The momentum will come from outside,” he predicted.

Iran FM: Arab spring heralds emergence of Muslim Mideast

Salehi says that uprisings are "natural reaction" of Muslims when faced with oppression; slams Western involvement, saying it's motivated by "illegitimate interests."

Speaking at a conference on "Islamic Awakening," the Iranian foreign minister attributed the developments in the Arab world to "the unhealthy and oppressive relations between certain governments and their nations" in recent decades.

U.S. laboring to avoid veto of Palestinian statehood bid at UN, sources say

The United States is working to gather enough United Nations Security Council members to resist a planned Palestinian statehood bid so as to avoid having to use its veto power, Israeli and U.S. sources said on Saturday.

However, officials in both Israel and in Washington have affirmed that the U.S. was hard at work to prevent itself the possible embarrassment of being forced to use its veto power in order to thwart the Palestinian vote, by attempting to assemble enough council members to either vote against the proposal or abstain as to make the veto unnecessary.

Speaking to reporters in Ramallah, Nabil Shaath said that a plan delivered at the last minute by U.S. envoys David Hale and Dennis Ross did not meet several Palestinian demands, thus convincing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that the U.S. was not serious in trying to negotiate peace.