Saturday, September 29, 2007

Greed Triumphs Once Again

BAGHDAD (AP) — Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Friday rejected a U.S. Senate proposal calling for the decentralization of Iraq's government and giving more control to the country's ethnically divided regions, calling it a "catastrophe." The measure, whose primary sponsors included presidential hopeful Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., calls for Iraq to be divided into federal regions for the country's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities in a power-sharing agreement similar to Bosnia in the 1990s.

Iraq's constitution lays down a federal system, allowing Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north to set up regions with considerable autonomous powers. But Iraq's turmoil has been fueled by the deep divisions among politicians over the details of how it work, including the division of lucrative oil resources. Many Shiite and Kurdish leaders are eager to implement the provisions. But the Sunni Arab minority fears being left in an impoverished central zone without resources.
  • JJ Commentary: In the end, greed usually triumphs over nationalism, religion and blood.

Forked Tongue?

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said his government was completely committed to a U.S.-proposed Mideast peace conference and vowed that the "olive branch of peace" would not fall from his hands. "Today, there is not the slightest obstacle to promoting the holding of (the upcoming) peace meeting, in particular because our brother Arab countries have demonstrated through the Arab Peace Initiative their true readiness to bring about a just, lasting and comprehensive peace," Abbas said, referring to the Arab proposal that offers peace in exchange for land.

He reiterated his government's position that the key to solving the decades-old conflict between Israel and the Palestinians lay in directly addressing the divisive "final status" issues including Palestinian statehood, the status of Jerusalem and right of return for refugees.
  • JJ Commentary: Whether Abbas is sincere or duplicitous, the “final” issue is Islam’s inherent desire to completely destroy Israel.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Liberal Bias Exposed

NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Times' ombudsman says the newspaper violated its standards when it gave the liberal activist group MoveOn.org a $77,508 price break on a full-page advertisement targeting Gen. David H. Petraeus. The organization paid $64,575, instead of the standard $142,083, for the ad questioning the war in Iraq, public editor Clark Hoyt wrote in a column published Sunday. Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis told Hoyt that an advertising sales representative shouldn't have agreed to the discounted price. "We made a mistake," she told Hoyt..

The ad also seemed to disregard internal advertising standards that ban ads involving attacks of a personal nature, Hoyt wrote. MoveOn.org said in a statement it would wire the difference in the ad rates to the Times. The ad's headline — "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" — questioned his honesty and said he was "constantly at war with the facts" in giving positive assessments of the war. "The ad infuriated conservatives, dismayed many Democrats and ignited charges that the liberal Times aided its friends at MoveOn.org with a steep discount in the price paid to publish its message," Hoyt wrote.
  • JJ Commentary: This is just the tip of the iceberg in what the liberal-controlled media do behind the scenes to promote their beliefs at the expense of journalistic neutrality and integrity.

Friday, September 21, 2007

Currency Disorder

Investors dumped dollars yesterday, sending the euro to a record high and putting the American currency at par with the Canadian dollar for the first time in more than 30 years. While the dollar has generally been drifting down against both currencies, along with the British pound, for much of this decade, its fall has gathered pace in recent weeks as traders foresee a slowing American economy while expecting more robust growth overseas. The Federal Reserve’s decision this week to cut interest rates put further pressure on the dollar by making investment returns in other countries comparatively more lucrative.

As American assets become cheaper to buyers overseas, foreigners may step up their purchase of businesses and land here, creating political and cultural tensions. Yesterday, a stock exchange from Dubai, on the Persian Gulf, announced plans to take a sizable stake in Nasdaq, drawing a mixed response in Washington. And a prominent private equity firm, the Carlyle Group, sold a minority stake to the Abu Dhabi government.The impact of the falling dollar is rippling through the world and American economies in numerous ways. It will give an edge to American manufacturers and has already helped lift exports by more than 11 percent in the first eight months of the year. Businesses with large foreign operations can expect a lift in profits when they convert their overseas earnings into dollars. On the other side of the equation, the decline in the American currency is helping push up commodity prices, most of which are denominated in dollars, and kindling fears that inflation could rise.
  • JJ Commentary: It is the New World (Dis)Order’s goal to minimize nationalism, particularly the last remaining superpower, and they already control enough of the world’s finances to do so.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Sinking Sovereignty

The U.S. is poised to turn much of its authority on the high seas over to international arbiters by ratifying a long-controversial United Nations sea treaty. Approval of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), a 25-year-old international treaty regulating use of the world’s oceans, is steaming full speed ahead in the Senate, where committee hearings are set to begin Sept. 27. The full Senate is likely to ratify the treaty -- which would link U.S. naval actions to those of 155 other member nations -- by year's end.

For decades, critics have derided the 182-page Law of the Sea pact as a threat to U.S. sovereignty and naval independence. They add that it would create a massive new U.N. bureaucracy (the International Seabed Authority); would give environmentalists a back door to greater regulation; and would hinder the U.S. military's efforts to capture terrorists on the high seas. “This is nothing less than a raid on our sovereignty,” Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., warns Newsmax. “I objected to it when it resurfaced in 2004, and I object to it now as I see it sneaking up on us again. What is this obsession we have for surrendering our jurisdiction to this international body? Nobody can give me a reasonable answer.”

Despite those concerns, however, support for the measure has never been stronger. The treaty has garnered a letter of support from President Bush, favorable testimony from the Navy and Coast Guard, and the backing of at least a dozen oil, gas, and environmental groups.
  • JJ Commentary: This is just another example of how President Bush is selling out America to the New World (Dis)Order folks.

Monday, September 3, 2007

Arabs Gone Wild

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Malnutrition is increasing in Sudan's violence-wracked Darfur region along with lawlessness and the number of people fleeing their homes, a senior U.N. official said. The humanitarian operation in Darfur remains the largest in the world — as it has been for the past three years — with 4 million people now dependent on humanitarian assistance as a consequence of the protracted conflict, rising tension and increasing lawlessness. 18 spot surveys by U.N. agencies and non-governmental organizations in the three Darfur provinces all found that for the first time in three years the number of malnutrition cases has increased beyond the emergency threshold of 15% to "well over 17% being detected in some areas.

Some of the same Arab tribes accused of massacring civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan are now unleashing their considerable firepower against one another in a battle over the spoils of war that is killing hundreds of people and displacing tens of thousands. In the past several months, the Terjem and the Mahria, heavily armed Arab tribes that United Nations officials said raped and pillaged together as part of the region’s notorious janjaweed militias, have squared off in South Darfur, fighting from pickup trucks and the backs of camels. They are raiding each other’s villages, according to aid workers and the fighters themselves, and scattering Arab tribesmen into the same kinds of displacement camps that still house some of their earlier victims.
  • JJ Commentary: All of which proves once again the prophecy that the Arabs (descendents of Ishmael) would be as wild donkeys fighting with everyone, even each other (Genesis 16:12)

Temple Proof

JERUSALEM – Islamic authorities using heavy machinery to dig on the Temple Mount – Judaism's holiest site – have been caught red-handed destroying Temple-era antiquities and what's believed to be a section of an outer wall of the Second Jewish Temple. WND obtained a photograph of a massive trench the Waqf, the Muslim custodians of the Temple Mount, have been blasting around the periphery of the holy site purportedly to replace 40-year-old electrical cables for mosques on the Mount. The Waqf has steadfastly denied they found or destroyed any Jewish antiquities during their dig. The picture, which was obtained in conjunction with Israel's Temple Institute, shows concrete slabs broken by Waqf bulldozers and what appears to be a chopped up carved stone from Jewish Temple-era antiquity.

Eilat Mazar, considered one of the most prominent Temple Mount archaeologists, analyzed the photo and told WND the damaged stone displays elements of the second Temple era and might be part of a Jewish Temple wall Israeli archeologists charge the Waqf found and has been attempting to destroy. If authenticated, the wall would be one of the most important Temple Mount archaeological discoveries in recent history. "It certainly looks like Second Temple antiquity and could very well be part of a Second Temple courtyard wall," Mazer said.
  • JJ Commentary: Islamic leaders do not want anything that supports Israel’s historical and Biblical claims to Jerusalem and the Temple to come to the light.