In the news:

How much longer will the "international community" allow the Syrian carnage to continue?

"Fourty Killed, 100 wounded in Syrian blasts"

Two booby-trapped cars blew up at security sites in Damascus on Friday, killing a number of civilians and soldiers, state television said, in the worst violence to hit Syria's capital during nine months of unrest against President Bashar Assad.

Syria's Dunia television channel put the number of dead from the blasts at 40 with 100 wounded and said most of the casualties were civilians. Dunia cited information from its own correspondents at the scene.

The attack came a day after the arrival of Arab League officials to prepare for a monitoring team that will check whether Assad is implementing a plan to end the bloodshed.

State television broadcast footage of bloodied bodies being carried in blankets and stretchers into ambulances and people hunting through rubble of a badly damaged building.

A Reuters cameraman was barred from the site. State television also broadcast shots of bloodied streets littered with mangled human remains and blackened debris.

Iran Navy To Hold War Games Near Crucial Sea Lanes

Iran put neighbors on notice Thursday that it was about to conduct vast naval exercises in the Arabian Sea, including war games near the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane for international oil traffic.

The exercises, to start Saturday and last 10 days, are Iran’s first since May 2010 and were described by the official news media as the largest the country ever planned.

The exercises are bound to put Iranian warships close to vessels of the United States Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, which patrols some of the same waters, including the Strait of Hormuz.

About one-third of the world’s oil tanker shipments pass through the strait, which the United States Energy Information Administration has called “the world’s most important oil chokepoint.”

With All Of The Pieces In Place, When Will The Hammer Drop?

Over the past few months, those who have been paying attention have witnessed some of the most disturbing developments in modern American history unfold at breakneck speed.

This includes the explicit codification of indefinite detention without charge or trial as well as rendition under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Fiscal Year 2012, the KBR move to create a team of sub-contractors to activate the so-called FEMA camps on a moment’s notice and the designation of American citizens as the enemy under Continuity of Government (COG) plans created by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Unfortunately, the file revealing the FEMA COG plans, entitled “National Continuity Programs (NCP) Program and Mission Support Services (PAMSS)” was quickly removed from the Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) official website, according to Infowars.
All that is left is a message warning users to not upload any classified materials, even though the document was listed as “Source Selection Sensitive” and not classified, as the warning notice might have you believe.

These developments have been part of a gradual march toward an all-encompassing authoritarian police state with a massive surveillance grid so expansive George Orwell would likely never believe it could be reality.

This surveillance state, which has already been rolled out and is only increasing in reach and depth, is complimented by the militarization of police moving towards a de facto martial law.
However, the NDAA makes the steady move to turn local and state police departments into paramilitary forces look like child’s play.

Declaring martial law would just be redundant, given that there is absolutely nothing stopping the military from kicking down the doors of innocent Americans and holding them indefinitely under the guise of fighting terrorism.

Christchurch rocked by earthquakes

A series of earthquakes have terrified many already-frazzled Christchurch residents this afternoon, starting with a 5.8 magnitude tremor at 1.58pm.

It was followed by a 6.0 magnitude aftershock at 3.18pm, centred 10km east of Christchurch in South New Brighton.

There was also a 5.3 magnitude quake at 2.06pm and a 5.0 at 4.50pm.

GNS seismologist Ken Gledhill told TVNZ "this is part of a series of earthquakes that have been set off by what happened in September 2010.

"In the coming days the most likely scenario is that there will be a series of aftershocks in a similar location.

"This is just a reminder that this area is more active than what it was before September 2010."

Walter Reed Banned Family Members From Bringing Bibles To Wounded Warriors

In a Sept. 14 policy memorandum, Col. Chuck Callahan, chief of staff of Walter Reed National Medical Center, banned family members from bringing Bibles and other "religious items" when visiting wounded military personnel at the facility.

In a section entitled “Partners in Care Guidelines," describing what family members can bring to their wounded warrior in the hospital, the memo states: “No religious items (i.e., Bibles, reading materials and/or artifacts) are allowed to be given away or used during a visit.”

Only after the Family Research Council, a conservative pro-family advocate, got a copy of the memo and shared it with members of Congress, did the military issue a statement saying it was rewriting the policy because it was “incorrect.”

It's Massive Assault On Christmas Across U.S.

Christmas carolers are thrown out of a U.S. Post Office.

The U.S. military apologizes for promoting a Christian-based charity and relief program providing holiday gifts to poor children.

Across the country, Christmas lights, Christmas trees and menorahs are banned in public areas.

Atheists and "free-thinkers" sue cities into submission, forcing removal of all things "Christ" on public property during the Christian holiday.

Is the nation that puts "In God We Trust" on its currency at war with Christmas?

In Santa Monica, Calif., atheists complained about a 58-year tradition of displaying life-size paintings of the Nativity story at Palisades Park, the Los Angeles Times reported. They argued that the scene was a religious display in a public park, so they applied for space to share their anti-religion message.

Of the 21 park plots for displays, the atheists won 18 in a lottery overseen by the Santa Monica city attorney. The Nativity story typically spreads across 14 displays, but it had to be shortened to only three and crammed into two plots this year.

Israel: Some Basic Facts

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Nothing could attest to that fact more than the Israel-Arab conflict, which in reality is the Israel-Islamist conflict.

This is not a territorial dispute between Israel and those Arabs who call themselves Palestinians, though it is framed as such. No, the stark reality of the Muslim war against the Jewish state is rooted in one fundamental fact: namely, the unchangeable refusal by Muslims to ever accept a non-Islamic nation in territory once conquered in the name of Allah, even if that nation -- the Jewish nation -- precedes Islam by millennia.

Since 1973, when the same Muslim-Arab world attacked Israel on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, members of the "religion of peace" have sensed a growing opportunity to destroy Israel root and branch. Even now, Iran's mullahs and the devil-clown Mahmoud Ahmadinejad call not only for the destruction of the embattled Jewish state, but also for the extermination of Jews worldwide. In this they echo the same call by Gaza's Hamas rulers, who are the junior partner of the Muslim Brotherhood.

That such words are not condemned utterly by nation-states reveals the moral decay so prevalent in the world today, just 66 years since the Holocaust ended.

The basic facts, which should be self-evident, need to be repeated again and again, as Golda Meir urged nearly forty years ago. Perhaps the following is the most basic and pernicious falsehood leveled at the reconstituted Jewish state. It is predictably made by a hostile Muslim and Arab world, but it is echoed by their useful idiot supporters in the West.

Read the rest of the article for "myth-busting", regarding many common mistakes that people make regarding Israel.