In the news:

Joel Rosenberg is also noticing Putin's movements to continue his power grab in Russia:

Putin Set To Re-Emerge As Czar Of Russia

On August 17th – in a column entitled, “Putin Rising: But Is He Gog?” — I wrote that “after keeping a relatively low profile for the last several years, Vladimir Putin is rising. In recent weeks, the Russian leader — currently serving as his country’s prime minister — once again has been making headlines, stoking controversy, and seeming to position himself to run for president of Russia again in March 2012.”

As stated before, I would argue that he never really lost power, due to the way he crafted the position of Prime Minister.

Reuters notes that “the next president will be elected for six years and the constitution still allows the head of state a maximum of two straight terms — meaning Putin could be in power for another 12 years.”

The re-emergence of Putin as Russia’s central tyrant will re-stoke speculation that we are heading towards the “War of Gog and Magog”as prophesied in the Bible in Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39.

A growing number of Jews also believe Ezekiel 38 and 39 could come true in our lifetime, and possibly in the next few years. In June of 2010, for example, a group of Rabbis in Israel said current events seemed to be leading to the “War of Gog and Magog.”

Below we see another stark reminder of the rising Christian persecution around the globe, as the nations yawn:

More Than 100 Christians Killed in Nigeria's Plateau State

A rash of attacks by armed Muslim extremists on villages in Nigeria’s Plateau state in the past month have left more than 100 Christians dead, including the elimination of entire families, sources said.

In a guerilla-type “hit and run” attack on the Christian community of Vwang Kogot, Muslim attackers at about 8 p.m. on Sept. 9 killed 14 Christians, including a pregnant woman. Survivors of the attack told Compass that the assailants raided the village with the aid of men in military uniforms of the Nigerian Army.

“After the soldiers and the Muslims left, we rushed into the place to see the destruction they did,” he said. “We discovered that 14 people were killed. Among them was a pregnant woman who died with a child in her womb – bringing the number of deaths to 15 persons. We also observed that the victims died from gun and machete wounds.”

Netanyahu's Speech and the Deafening Silence

If Israel shrank to just one downtown city block in Tel Aviv, it would still be reason for an all-out war of extermination by the Arab and Muslim world.

Those of you who saw Bibi’s speech at the UN - that Temple of Hypocrisy and Moral Turpitude - will have noticed the polite but tepid applause from a few along with the deafening silence from oh, so many of the international delegates.

The stark fact, which nobody wants to hear, is that Islam will never make peace with a non-Muslim state, especially if the Muslim foot trod triumphal upon that same territory once occupied in the name of Allah.

In conclusion, the endless and repeated begging for peace from a perverse and irretrievably hostile Muslim and Arab world must stop. The reality is desperately hard to acknowledge and accept, but it is an Islamic fact that Islam and its adherents will never make peace with non-Muslims.

A Palestinian State Will Not Bring Peace

Abbas, not surprisingly, blamed the failure of earlier negotiations on Israel. He complained that "the Israeli government ... frantically continues to intensify building of settlements on the territory of the state of Palestine.

Are the Israeli settlements really the problem? No, they’re just the obstacle du jour.

In fact, the Palestinian Arabs rejected the United Nations’ original proposal to create a Jewish state and an Arab state in 1947, long before any "settlements” were on the horizon.

As Israeli Prime Minister Bejamin Netanyahu explained in his own UN address on Friday: "Our conflict has been raging for—was raging for nearly half a century before there was a single Israeli settlement in the West Bank. ...

The hypocrisy below is mind numbing:

Syria's UN envoy: Israel is committing 'state terrorism' against Palestinians

Compare these two statements:

Israel's human rights violations are proof that it is committing "state terrorism," Syria's ambassador to the United Nations told the UN's Human Rights Council on Monday.

The comment by the Syrian official came amid a months-long crackdown by Bashar Assad's regime against pro-democracy protesters. Earlier this month, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said that at least 2,700 people have been killed in Syria since anti-government protests broke out in March.

Again. Mind numbing. Typical for discourse in the Middle East.

We can see the same below:

Stockholm Syndrome from Tehran

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad engineered the release last week of two American hikers serving eight-year prison terms on trumped-up espionage charges.

He may have thought the release would make him seem more humane, but the $1 million bail-for-freedom deal makes Tehran look like Somali pirates, grabbing innocent tourists, holding them hostage and then releasing them for ransom.

So why did released hiker Shane Bauer say the following upon his release? "Two years in prison is too long, and we sincerely hope for the freedom of other political prisoners and other unjustly imprisoned people in America (emphasis added) and Iran."

The moral-equivalent rhetoric may have worked when Bauer was a peace and conflict studies major at the University of California, Berkeley, but one country ginned up phony espionage charges to use him and his companions as political pawns -- that's Iran -- and the other country doesn't imprison critics because of what they say or use violence to quell dissent.

At the time of their arrest, Bauer and Shourd were living in Damascus, in the bosom of Bashar Assad's Syria. They have shared a professed love of Middle Eastern culture. They also shared some blind spots.

Shourd, for example, wrote that in Yemen,

"The separation of sexes is widely understood as an attempt to protect women, and I have to admit, the streets do feel safe. Men leave you alone as long as you are covered; in a bizarre way it is less of a hassle being a woman here than anywhere I've ever been."

However, reality suggests something very different. Again - its the whole "reality thing":

Newsweek lists Yemen as one of nine countries that are "the worst places to be a woman," because domestic violence is not illegal and there is no legal recognition of spousal rape.

A year before Shourd wrote about how safe she felt in Yemen, 10-year-old Nujood Ali went to a Sanaa courtroom to ask a judge to release her from an arranged marriage to an older man who beat her. Other girl brides came forward with their horror stories. A Sanaa University study found that more than half of Yemeni girls are married before they turn 18.

But reality matters little in bizarro world.