British Scientist Solves Global Warming Mystery

British Scientist Solves Global Warming Mystery
Vol: 111 Issue: 31 Friday, December 31, 2010

The Washington Post is cheering a decision by the Obama administration to ignore the Congress and to impose cap and trade regulations by decree.  

“Congress hasn’t passed a sensible, comprehensive energy policy. EPA regulation of greenhouse gases is one way the government can cut emissions now, using current law. Over the next year, the president should defend his administration’s authority to do so.”

How’s that again?  Since the Congress, totally controlled by Democrats, refused to enact legislation, it should be imposed by the White House whether the public likes it or not? 

Welcome to the first hint of what the Obama administration has prepared for 2011.  The Washington Post is titled its piece, “2011 – The “Year of the EPA“.  So much for the will of the people.

“With the Supreme Court’s blessing, the EPA has deemed greenhouse emissions threats to public health under the Clean Air Act. That means the agency can require emitters to arrest those gases’ release in various ways. What the EPA will force plant operators to do, though, isn’t yet clear.”

When it comes to global warming, NOTHING is clear.  I believe that’s by design.

For example, according to a purportedly scientific study by the British Royal Society, the sun has no bearing on global warming.  Let me repeat that.  The sun has no bearing on global warming.

That statement is so transparently false that I’m tempted to repeat it one more time and end the briefing right here.  Where does one begin?  

Let’s start with the Royal Society.  The Royal Society’s full name is the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge.   

One of the ways that the Society has been ‘improving’ scientific knowledge is by suppressing any science that contradicts the conclusion that global warming is the result of human activity.

Indeed, the study by the Royal Society cited by the BBC was initiated in response to the documentary broadcast, The Great Global Warming Swindle that exposed the shady science and cooked data behind global warming alarmism.

“This should settle the debate,” said Mike Lockwood, from the UK’s Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, who carried out the new analysis together with Claus Froehlich from the World Radiation Center in Switzerland.”

This should “settle” the debate?  Good heavens!  I thought that the debate was settled. The global warming alarmists say that human activity is responsible for global warming.  Anybody that says differently is an idiot.  

Pay no attention to the record-shattering cold that began when the sun went into one of the least active solar minimums in history.  Pay no attention to the British government’s confident prediction that, due to global warming, the Continent would enjoy a mild winter.  

They have been predicting it for three years running. Odds are that eventually they will be right, in much the same way a broken clock is right twice a day.

The year 2007, it predicted, would be “the warmest ever” – just before global tempratures plunged by more than the entire net warming of the 20th century, Three years running it predicted warmer than average winters – as large parts of the northern hemisphere endured record cold and snowfalls. Last year’s “barbecue summer” was the third time running that predictions of a summer drier and warmer than average prefaced weeks of rain and cold. Last week (January, 2010) the Met Office was again predicting that 2010 will be the “warmest year” on record, while Europe and the US look to be facing further weeks of intense cold.

What is not generally realized is that the UK Met Office has been, since 1990, at the very centre of the campaign to convince the world that it faces catastrophe through global warming. (Its website now proclaims it to be “the Met Office for Weather and Climate Change”.)

I thought weather was climate change. 

Assessment:

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring;  Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.” (Luke 21:25-26)

There are certain facts about global warming that actually are “settled science.”   

1.)    The “Hockey Stick” temperature graph relied on by the global warming True Believers is a fraud and alleged improvements to the graph by the IPCC are a deliberate fraud.

2.)    Higher temperatures have historically driven CO2 levels higher and not the other way around, destroying the rationale behind reducing so-called ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions.  The claim that CO2 levels drive temperatures higher is a deliberate fraud.

3.)    During the 1990s during one of the most intensely active solar maximum periods in history, temperatures warmed slightly on Earth.  Similar warming was measured on Mars, Venus and even Pluto.  

4.)    Global warming alarmists have cooked the data, ignored or denied conflicting data, and have systematically and deliberately lied to the public in order to advance the global warming agenda, which is, of course, global governance.

Despite the total lack of evidence to support it, the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency is preparing for an end-run around Congress by imposing cap-and-trade regulations by decree after Congress rejected it.

The Congress rejected it despite the overwhelming majority held by Democrats at the time.  The EPA therefore has no actual authority to regulate mythical greenhouse gas emissions, like the CO2 that trees convert into oxygen we breathe and convert back into CO2 — so the trees can breathe in CO2 and breathe out oxygen.

Without nitrogen, another alleged greenhouse gas that the EPA wants to regulate, nothing could grow.   If the EPA were to be completely successful, the question would be whether we’d run out of food first?  Or air?

What I find astonishing is the number of liberal newspaper editorials defending the EPA decision to ignore the wishes of a majority Democrat Congress.  The Houston Chronicle is enraged that the state of Texas refuses to be governed by decree from Washington and is fighting the EPA.

In summary, then, the situation is like this.  For most of the 21^st century, temperature averages have been falling, not rising.  The past couple of winters have been among the most brutal in living memory.

The sun, which had been unusually active during the late 80s and 90’s, entered into an unusually quiet solar minimum and the temperatures began to fall, prompting the British Royal Society to make the indescribably inane statement that the sun has no effect on global warming. 

Really? Then why is it warmer at noon than it is at midnight?)

The global warming hoax has provided governments with a blank check to impose pretty much anything they choose, with or without public approval, by slapping a climate change label on it. 

Even as another blizzard is screaming across the Midwest before NYC has even been able to plow and reopen many of its own roads, the EPA is crying ”greenhouse gases” and “global warming” and telling the public to pay no attention to the science. 

As we close the books on 2010 and the EPA prepares to implement new regulations to prevent global warming, this just crossed the wires. 

It’s snowing in Phoenix.

Who Will Rule the Web?

Who Will Rule the Web?
Vol: 111 Issue: 30 Thursday, December 30, 2010

A headline in this morning’s Drudge Report linked me to a report from CTV News detailing a late night meeting at a UN office in Geneva where officials from 18 countries voted to staff a working group on the future of something called the Internet Governance Forum.  

First off, because it’s the UN, there is already reason to worry.  Secondly, the report says the plan was supported by China and Iran and protested by the United States and Portugal.  (Portugal?) 

That made it doubly interesting and worth following up.

Fourteen technical organizations that help oversee how cyberspace runs wrote an open letter asking the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development (UNCSTD) to reverse its decision.

Meanwhile the Internet Society, an umbrella group that helps manage technical standards online, posted a petition to its website in protest.

“A significant fuss has been kicked up about it,” said Byron Holland, president and CEO of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, which manages the .ca domain. Even Google waded into the fray. . .”

The UN’s argument favoring an international Internet Governance Forum is a powerful one.  Like land warfare or naval warfare, cyberspace has become simply one more dimension.

In 2007 Russia crippled Estonia via cyber attacks aimed at banks, transportation centers, infrastructure and newspaper websites. 

The first wave of Russia’s invasion of South Ossetia in 2008 was from cyberspace, blinding Georgia and knocking out its information infrastructure while Russian tanks rolled across the border. 

And the Stuxnet worm was reportedly more effective in setting back Iran’s nuclear program than would a bombing campaign, according to experts that estimated Stuxnet set them back at least two years without firing a shot.

Those are all great arguments favoring the creation of a supra-national governing body to regulate cyberspace.   The Russians want to take the lead, proposing that it be given control of domain name assignments, a task currently handled by ICANN, a private corporation whose CEO wasn’t invited to the meeting.

The Chinese have a different vision that they would like to bring to the table.  So do the Iranians, the Saudis, the Europeans, the Japanese and the Americans.

So the UN says that as the world’s only impartial, supranational body, it is uniquely qualified to regulate the internet.   They even have their own website.   It’s pretty interesting – it provides a bit of background about who they are what they do and where they do it from.

“This is the official Web site of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), run by the IGF Secretariat. Its purpose is to support the United Nations Secretary-General in carrying out the mandate from the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) with regard to convening a new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue – the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). The site provides an interactive, collaborative space where all stakeholders can air their views and exchange ideas.”

Paragraph 72 of something called the Tunis Agenda outlines the “mandate” of the Forum outlines all the things that the Tunis participants think should be included.  

The website lists previous IGF meetings; Sharm El Sheik, Hyderabad, Rio de Janeiro, Athens, and Vilnius.

In the menu bar under the title “Tools For Interaction” are links to the IGF’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr pages.  

Is that creepy?  Or is it just me?

Assessment:

The IGF has been around for more than five years, but somehow has managed to stay just below the average person’s radar while it continues to develop its reach. 

I once opened a Facebook account and without my doing very much at all, suddenly much of my life showed up on the web. 

All my brothers and sisters and cousins and our baby pictures and our offspring and their cousins and all their friends, and what everybody is doing and where they are living all appeared by magic on my Facebook page, together with links to everybody else’s, plus their friends plus their friends plus friends of theirs and even some cows from someplace called ‘Farmville’.

Without my making a single entry of my own, my Facebook page filled was soon inundated with personal information useful to everyone from telemarketers to secret agents to jihadi assassins. 

Not that I am particularly worried about telemarketers or secret agents – although jihadi assassins give me pause for reflection.   

Ultimately, I took down my Facebook page.  Not for any particular reason other than it scared me.  I wasn’t sure why.  It was just too much information out there and too far outside of my control.

It made me more than a bit uncomfortable.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s inventor, or founder, or whatever, is TIME’s Person of the Year as the person who had the most profound effect on the world in 2010.   Facebook is estimated to have more than a half billion members worldwide. 

Who will control all that information?  Currently, it belongs to the client, but it is controlled by Facebook. Who controls Facebook?  Again, currently, it belongs to Mark Zuckerberg. 

Mark Zuckerberg, and his billions, and his corporation, is in the United States but Facebook is in every country in the world.   Then there is the matter of Twitter and Youtube and Flickr and all that personal user information in all those databases. 

According to the Bible, within three years of coming to power, the antichrist will introduce a new economic system based on some kind of mark obtainable only by swearing allegiance to his government and offering him personal worship.

“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.”

To accomplish this, the antichrist will have to control a developed, global infrastructure capable of enforcing the measures outlined.

The entire Tribulation is but 7 years, it will take time to develop the physical infrastructure and even more time to overcome popular resistance to the idea of putting your whole life online and under government control.

That infrastructure is already well developed through all the various social networking systems that the IGF so astutely linked to as “Tools For Interaction.”

I’m not saying that they are bad or that participation in them sets you up for the antichrist. If you are saved, you will be gone before that becomes an issue.  What I am saying is look at the infrastructure that is developing.

“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” (Revelation 13:18)

This is the prophecy that gets all the attention – the 666 prophecy and what does it mean?  So much so that nobody really notices how Jesus says we get there.  First, the antichrist “causeth all” to get it. 

That implies a method. 

It hints at being machine-readable (ie, hand or forehead). Without it, persons will be denied social and financial intercourse (all internet/computer dependent).  

Then we get the part that says, “Here is wisdom” before revealing the number to be 666, driving twenty centuries of Christians crazy trying to decipher the wisdom behind the number.

So, here is wisdom. The UN wants to control the World Wide Web. Every website address begins with “www” including this one —  www.omegaletter.com

The Hebrew letter vov is the equivalent to our English “w”.  In Hebrew, as in Greek and Latin, each letter has a corresponding numeric value.   

In Hebrew, the number “6” is the letter vov.

New Truths and Old Lies

New Truths and Old Lies
Vol: 111 Issue: 29 Wednesday, December 29, 2010

I was asked by a reader to comment about the prediction from Family Radio President and founder Harold Camping that the world will end on May 21, 2011.

The reader wanted to know if  A) there was any Scriptural basis for Camping’s prediction; and B) Is Harold Camping a reliable Bible teacher?  

I first heard of Harold Camping in 1993 after one of his followers sent his book “1994!”  to me with an urgent request to investigate its claims for a future “This Week in Bible Prophecy Segment.”  (I still have a copy of it in my library.)

Camping said the following in the introduction to his book:

“No book ever written is as audacious or bold as one that claims to predict the timing of the end of the world, and that is precisely what this book presumes to do.”

(Spoiler alert! – The Lord didn’t come back on September 6, 1994 – not even for Harold, who at 89 is still teaching his unique brand of eschatology on his Family Radio Worldwide ministry.)

Instead of the Lord returning in 1994, says Camping, what really happened was the Church Age ended.  

In 1914, having wrongly predicted the end of the world six times, Jehovah’s Witness founder Charles Taze Russell declared the world actually DID end, but only spiritually. 

It worked for Russell. And it appears to be working for Camping.  

Camping therefore was right, sort of, in his audacious book. Since 1994, the Holy Spirit has ceased His work among the churches.  See? It was a no-brainer!

Apologist James White writes in a critique of Camping’s theology:

“He [Camping] will normally begin with a proposition, a statement, and then use a biblical passage to support his statement. This is the way of the eisegete (the one reading into the text rather than reading out of the text its natural meaning). He sets up a context, an assertion, and then expects the citation of the biblical passage to “prove” the point….Does Camping take the time to establish the connection? No, he does not. The connection exists solely because Harold Camping insists it does, nothing more.”

Ultimately, Camping forces one to choose to submit to one authority or the other, either Sola Scriptura or Solus Campingus.

In his book, “The End of the Church Age” Camping says that the star in Revelation 9:1 is really Jesus. Also according to Camping, the archangel Michael of Revelation 12:7 is also really Jesus.

 The two Witnesses aren’t two literal Witnesses, but are symbolic of the “true believers” either driven out of their churches or who come out in obedience to 2nd Corinthians 6:15.

The rider on the black horse is a warning to the churches that if they do not remain faithful to God, He will take away the Gospel.  

The list goes on and on.   Camping teaches that hell doesn’t exist. The second death is really annihilation, not eternity in the Lake of Fire.

Camping began teaching that Christians should leave their churches because absent the Holy Spirit, they are all apostate tools of Satan.

“Now, however, the Bay Area prognosticator has baffled the community of Christendom with another rather shocking pronouncement. Camping, who labors under the burden of his own self-designed brand of “millennialism,” has declared that we are at the beginning of the “great tribulation” period, hence the “church age” has ended. He has produced a tract that is titled: “Has the Era of the Church Age Come to an End?” He answers his own query in the affirmative.

When one enters the world of “Harold Camping teaching,” he finds himself in a maze of mystery. It is almost as if the gentleman selects a variety of passages fr
http://www.omegaletter.com/admin/tinymce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js
om different sections of the Bible — Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Matthew, Luke, or Revelation — and throws them on the floor, to see whether or not a pattern of theology will form.

As noted above, Camping now contends that “the work of the church is finished,” and that those who remain in the church, during the time of the on-coming “tribulation,” will be destroyed. He thus bids the faithful to flee the church. He goes so far as to suggest that if one were to find a church “where it appears that each and every doctrine they hold is faithful to the Word of God,” it should be avoided — if one hopes to escape the impending destruction.”

In these new Camping fellowships, there is to be no discipline, no hierarchy, no baptism, no communion and no authority apart from the Bible (as Camping interprets it).  

And so now, we return to the questions at hand.  The answers got easier.

Q) Is there any Scriptural basis for Camping’s theory?   

A) No.

Q) Is Harold Camping a reliable Bible teacher?

A) No.

Assessment:

Harold Camping and Family Radio used to be on the level.  Family Radio was once home to J Vernon McGee’s “Through the Bible” broadcast – which probably explains in large part how Family Radio managed to grow to more than 150 stations world-wide.  

But in the 90’s Camping started finding “hidden secrets” in the Scriptures — necessitating the reinvention of a few key points in order to make them fit his pre-determined views. 

First, Camping decided that the Church Age ended in 1994, and then he set out to prove it using Scripture.

Whenever Scripture seemed to conflict with his theory, he would reinterpret the Scripture until it fit.  If thatdidn’t work, he would spiritualize the offending Scriptures away.  

By glossing over the differences between the Dispensations, Camping could use the Old Testament to ‘prove’ his theories when they conflicted with the New. 

A good example is the New Testament’s prohibition on date setting.   Camping admits that Jesus forbade date-setting in Matthew 24:36 and in Acts 1:7 but then cites Ecclesiastes 8:5 as evidence that prohibition doesn’t apply to him.

He writes in his thesis that:

“about thirty-five years ago God began to open the true believers understanding of the timeline of history. . . it was not until a very few years ago that the accurate knowledge of the entire timeline of history was revealed to true believers by God from the Bible.

This timeline extends all the way to the end of time. During these past several years God has been revealing a great many truths, which have been completely hidden in the Bible until this time when we are so near the end of the world.”

The very best lies are those that contain some element of truth. 

Which would you be more likely to accidently accept as genuine? A color photocopy of a $100 bill on genuine-feeling paper?  Or a square of toilet paper with $100 written on each corner?   

The truth is, as we get closer to the end of the age, events confirm the existing truths that were already in the Bible.  Events don’t reveal new truths – especially those that contradict the rest of the testimony of Scripture.

Camping’s prediction that the Lord will return in May, 2011 has no more Scriptural support than the many who claim that the Tribulation has already begun or that they have figured out the identity of the antichrist.

But it shares the common methodology of arriving at a conclusion first and then seeking Scripture to support it.   

As we get closer to the end of this age, the Bible predicts a rise in false teachers, false prophets, wolves in sheep’s clothing seeking to use the Scriptures to magnify their own importance.  

When a guy claims to have boldly gone where no man has gone before . . .  he hasn’t. It is just that simple. 

There are no new theologies for the last days.  At least, no legitimate ones. There are only people wanting to call attention to themselves by claiming God has revealed something special, just to them. 

As we get closer to the end of the age, there are seeming endless theories challenging existing interpretations of end-time doctrines like the timing of Rapture, the start of the Tribulation, the identity of the antichrist and so on.  

Let me set your heart to rest.  The Bible isn’t getting more true.  And if the ‘new’ truths sound nuts to you, don’t worry.  They are.

Christianity is at its most basic level, founded on faith.  Faith that we can trust in the Promises of God. 

Most of the ‘new truths’ are being revealed ‘by God ‘to the select few in these last days who then use these new revelations to preach faith in one’s own ability.  

One’s ability to maintain one’s own salvation, for example.  Jesus kick-started my redemption at the Cross, but if I want to stay saved, that depends on how well I perform as a Christian. 

The Church will have to endure at least part of the Tribulation. So my teaching a pre-Trib Rapture is a heresy that doesn’t prepare Christians for the Mark of the Beast.  

Christians need to prepare so that they will be ready for the Mark of the Beast. (Hint: The Bible says “don’t take it.” A better plan is to get saved now.)

You see how it works? The Bible says by their fruits ye shall know them. What is the fruit of all this teaching?

It is all about my God-given ability to discern the hidden knowledge and your ability to use my discerning words of knowledge so that you can  circumvent the judgment to come upon those that dwell upon the earth.  

Although why Christians have to figure their own way around judgment isn’t clear to me.  If they are being judged, then shouldn’t they deserve it? Isn’t that fair? 

And if they deserve it, should they be trying to avoid it? Trying to avoid it sounds a lot like trying to beat God at His own game.

What makes more sense is that Christians were already judged at the Cross and are therefore not subject to the judgment of the Tribulation.  Which is where the Rapture fits in. 

For many, the drawback to the “Rapture theory” is that it means that Jesus does it all. Jesus does the saving, the preserving, the judging — it doesn’t leave much for them to do. (Or to take credit for.)

Truth doesn’t change simply because circumstances do.  What was truth when Jesus spoke it is true today.   

“But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but My Father only.” (Matthew 24:36)

With that fact in mind, I will make a faith-based prediction of my own.  May 21, 2011 is the day that the Rapture won’t happen.  

Feel free to make plans.

Israel 2011 — An Impossible Peace

Israel 2011 — An Impossible Peace
Vol: 111 Issue: 28 Tuesday, December 28, 2010

After days of violence between Israelis and Palestinians and accelerated rocket attacks on southern Israel from Hamas-led Gaza strip, Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman declared on Sunday that “peace was impossible” suggesting Israel should seek a less lofty goal and cut their losses.

The latest eruption between the two sides followed the continuing violence along the Israel-Gaza border. Lieberman told a conference of Israeli diplomats that instead of a full peace deal, Israel should seek a long-term, interim agreement on security and economic matters.

“It’s not only that it is impossible” to reach an overall agreement, he said. “It is simply forbidden.”

Lieberman said the West Bank Palestinian Authority — with whom Israel has pledged to negotiate — is “not legitimate” because it has postponed elections.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas remains in office though his term expired almost a year ago, and there is no date for a new election.

Palestinians have consistently rejected that approach.

Lieberman has a reputation for expressing hard-line views that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can’t, allowing him to float alternative plans while officially sticking to the premise of a final, negotiated peace settlement between the two sides.

Consequently statement from Netanyahu’s office said Lieberman’s comments reflect “his personal positions,” not those of the government.  

Peace talks were making progress until Obama switched sides and demanded that Israel cease all construction in Jerusalem.

Obama was eager to make his mark early and earn the Peace Prize awarded him for being black two weeks into his presidency.Being clueless from Chicago, he didn’t know that his demands immediately are transformed into the Palestinian default position.

So when he later tried to walk that back, the Palestinians wouldn’t let him.   Now the Palestinians say that they will not negotiate as long as Israel builds homes for Jews on any land they claim for their proposed state.

That’s what makes further negotiations “impossible” since it requires an Israeli capitulation over the issue in dispute before they will negotiate the issue in dispute.  

Like agreeing on the final price first – as a condition of haggling over the price.   It impossible.

Because the PA is unelected, the only legally-elected representative of the Palestinian people with whom Israel could credibly negotiate would be Hamas. 

Hamas exists by charter for the express purpose of annihilating Israel.   Hamas is a terrorist organization with whom negotiation is forbidden.

So peace is impossible. Israel has no credible negotiating partner. For that reason, French Foreign Minister Bernard Koucher had already discussed a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood regardless of the outcome of negotiations with Israel. 

That information came to light as part of the overall Wikileaks document dump.  According to a ‘secret’ (so to speak) cable written by US Ambassador to France to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:

“The French agree with us on the need to help [Palestinian Authority] President [Mahmoud] Abbas return to the negotiating table by offering assistance programs, guarantees, and the support of Arab leaders. However Kouchner also mentioned to SE [George] Mitchell the controversial idea of offering to recognize a Palestinian state now, with undefined borders, or offering to recognize a Palestinian state within a defined timeline, regardless of the outcome of negotiation.”

The Wikileaks cable says that Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay have already decided on formally recognizing a fully independent Palestinian state within the 1967 (Green Line) borders.

The Wikileaks plan somehow managed to trigger some deep, almost forgotten practice within the US Congress. Some in the Congress actually read the Wikileaks documents.  Having read them, they sneaked by a bill of their own, passing a resolution opposing unilateral steps aimed at a declaration of Palestinian statehood earlier this month.

(We should have leaked the TARP and Obamacare bills — maybe they would have read them, too!) 

Introduced by Rep Howard Berman,[D-Ca) and then- chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Berman moved to pass the resolution “supporting a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and condemning unilateral measures to declare or recognize a Palestinian state.”

Palestinian Authority chief negotiator Saeb Erekat slammed the action saying that;

“through the passage of this resolution, the US Congress is contradicting the policy of the American government to create a Palestinian state by hindering the ability of the Palestinians to navigate around the Israeli government’s obstructionist policies.”

In other words, Congress is obstructing the Palestinian ability to ignore its negotiating partners. And they don’t like it one bit.

So they’re taking it to the UN.

Assessment: 

Last week, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas announced his intention to ask the UN Security Council to pass a resolution defining Jewish construction in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem as illegal. 

STOP THERE!

Now go back up and read the sentence above one more time, slowly.  Sound out every word until you have a complete grasp of the thought being conveyed.

Mahmoud Abbas co-founded the PLO with Yasser Arafat, the father of modern terrorism. 

His ‘Palestinian Authority’ exists based on an agreement that if Israel will agree to its existence, then the Palestinians will stop committing acts of terror.

At no point along the way was terrorism legalized or any of the innocent dead revived. The death, mayhem and destruction wrought at the hands of Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas and the PLO was never paid for in any legal sense, neither was there any blanket pardon granted in any legal sense.

Mahmoud Abbas’ term of office expired two years ago.  So did the Palestinian Authority’s, well,  authority.  The PA won’t hold new elections because Hamas would win. 

And because Hamas would win, nobody is pressuring Abbas and Company to hold elections.

So, with no legal standing of its own, the PA is asking for a resolution declaring a Jewish presence in parts of Judea, Samaria or Jerusalem illegal? 

Leaving aside the lack of standing on the part of Abbas, where is the standing of the UN? Israel is a member-state of the United Nations?

Chapter 1, Article 2, Paragraph 7 of the United Nations Charter reads as follows:  

“Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter Vll.”

The central question is whether this is a domestic Israeli issue? Or an international issue involving Israel and an second member state or country?  The question doesn’t seem that difficult.

Totally apart from any religious tradition, history says that Jesus Christ was born a Jew, in Bethlehem, now claimed as part of the Palestinian Authority.  

He was raised a Jew in Nazareth, now claimed as part of the PA.  His ministry was to Jews living in Samaria, Judea and Jerusalem, now claimed as part of the PA.

Jesus lived during the Roman occupation of Judea, a period known to history through the writings of Flavius Josephus as the “Wars of the Jews” because that’s who lived in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.  

The Romans conquered Judea from the Greeks.  The Jews were there.  The Greeks conquered it from the Persians. The Jews were there. The Persians conquered it from Babylon, who conquered it from the Jews of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. 

Before that, Sargon the Assyria conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel.  Prior to the division of the Northern and Southern Kingdoms, it was all called “Israel.”  And Jerusalem was founded by Israel’s King David.

The UN’s jurisdiction on behalf of the Arab states is itself illegitimate.  The UN recognized Israel in 1948.  The Arab states declared war on Israel five times, each time leaving Israel in possession of more territory.  Under the internationally recognized right of conquest, the territory captured is then part of Israel.

The “right of conquest” is still the functioning basis for the existence of the United States, not to mention ALL of the modern states of the Middle East.  All were part of the Ottoman Empire until conquered by the Allies in WWI.  

Jordan’s borders were drawn by England in 1922, not the Jordanians.  The Jordanians attempted to draw their own borders in 1967.  They hoped to extend them to the Meditterranean Sea.  Instead, they were redrawn back to the Jordan River. 

But the UN didn’t do it.  Jordan did.  The West Bank wasn’t lost by Jordan, it was recovered by Israel.  Under the right of conquest, everything the UN has done concerning Israel and the “Palestinians” is illegal under its own charter.  

The United Nations came into existence as a consequence of World War Two.  One reason was to prevent the re-occurrence of forced deportations, ethnic cleansings and other forms of genocide practiced by the Axis powers, especially in Nazi Germany.

The United Nations defines “ethnic cleansing” this way:

“a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.”  

As part of his request that the UN Security Council criminalize the presence of Jews in parts of Jerusalem, Samaria and Judea, Abbas added the following so there could be no mistake.

“If there is an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, we won’t agree to the presence of one Israeli in it. When a Palestinian state is established, it would have no Israeli presence.”

‘A nation without the presence of a single Israeli in it’ — by design.  The Nazis had a word for that; “Judenrein” — but the United Nations defines it as “ethnic cleansing”.  

Caroline Glick summarized the impossible position Israel finds itself in as the books close on the year 2010.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signaled this month that the Obama administration is wholly on board Fatah’s political warfare bandwagon. In her speech at the Brookings Institute on December 10, she said the Obama administration supports Fatah’s plan to build facts on the ground that will make it more difficult for Israel to maintain its control over Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.

After calling Jewish presence in the areas “illegitimate,” Clinton pledged the US “will deepen our support of the Palestinians’ state-building efforts.”

Among other things, she pledged to continue training and deploying a Palestinian army in Judea and Samaria and pressuring Israel to withdraw the IDF from the areas.

As she put it, “As the Palestinian security forces continue to become more professional and capable, we look to Israel to facilitate their efforts. And we hope to see a significant curtailment of incursions by Israeli troops into Palestinian areas.”

These then are the contours of the Palestinians’ war plans for 2011. Hamas will launch an illegal missile war to provoke an IDF campaign in Gaza. Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Turkey, the UN and a vast array of NGOs and leftist governments from Norway to Brazil will support its illegal war.

Fatah will escalate its political war. Its campaign will be supported by the US, the EU, the UN and a vast array of NGOs and leftist governments.

The purpose of these two campaigns – which complement one another and which will likely culminate at the UN in September – is to weaken Israel militarily and politically with the shared purpose of destroying it in the fullness of time.

That last statement is what caught my eye.  The Gentile plan to take Jerusalem from the Jews and Glick’s use of the phrase,”in the fullness of time.”

Jesus predicted the Roman sack of Jerusalem, the Diaspora and the ultimate return of the Jews to their own land in the last days.   He outlined the entire history in a single sentence:

“And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” (Luke 21:24)

Jerusalem is in Israeli hands, but it is still trodden down of the Gentiles.  For now.  But all the signs point to this dispensation as rapidly winding to a close.

“That in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in Him:” (Ephesians 1:10)

As we wind down the year 2010, there is little remaining reason to doubt that we are witnessing the waning hours of the Dispensation of the fulness of times. Maybe this year. Maybe next.  But soon.

And after that, the Gathering!  

The ‘Quest’ For Preferred Truths

The ‘Quest’ For Preferred Truths
Vol: 111 Issue: 27 Monday, December 27, 2010

The Bible is under attack, as it has been since it was first compiled, but with a special fervor and intensity unique to this generation. What makes this generation unique is that the principle attackers are believers themselves.

It is possible to be a believer in the Bible and not be a Christian, although it doesn’t seem so until you think about it. 

Personally, I know lots of people who say they believe in God, or believe in the Bible, but who have never surrendered themselves to Christ. Most other religions reference it among their sacred texts, from Buddhists to Jews. 

And there are ‘cultural Christians’ as well. Most Americans were raised in a Christian culture, and identify with Christianity whether they are born-again or not. 

It is actually quite easy to believe in the Bible without even having read it. Which makes it even easier to attack it.  

Just turn on A&E and watch some of the ‘Mysteries of the Bible’ series. After watching a couple of them, you’ll conclude that the most mysterious thing about the Bible is that ANYBODY really believes it.

If you don’t know anything about the Bible except that you believe in it, then it is pretty easy to plant misconceptions as part of an effort to discover the ‘truth’ about it. 

After all, who doesn’t want to know the ‘truth’ about a Book as mysterious as the Bible? Especially if it comes packaged as a TV program saving the effort of having to actually read its ponderous text? 

The Scriptures say, “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18) 

That anyone could attack the Bible escapes me. Especially when one considers that the Bible isn’t one book, but is actually a collection of sixty-six books, written by forty different human authors. Reading through it, it seems to have penned by the same individual. 

But the Bible’s authors were shepherds and kings, intinerant preachers and traveling salesmen, tax collectors, tent-makers and fishermen, captives and slaves. 

In most instances, the Bible’s authors had never met one another and had no access to each other’s works. Ezekiel and Daniel were contemporaries, but Daniel was held captive in Babylon. Ezekiel lived hundreds of miles away in what remained of Israel. Each book refers to the other, although neither prophet met to compare notes. 

There were no libraries where each writer of Scripture could cross reference the other. But each book flows smoothly to the next, some books referencing passages written by the authors who came before, while others reference books not yet written for centuries. 

It is obvious to any honest seeker of truth that the Bible actually has only one Author. The alleged ‘quests for truth’ about the Bible like “Mysteries of the Bible” are predicated by that fact. 

What escapes A&E is the Identity of the Author, although the Bible clearly identifies Him. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17) 

The word translated here as ‘scripture’ comes from the Greek word ‘gramma’. This means a ‘letter’ — meaning even the smallest details are from God and are perfect. 

The Bible is not just a body of unrelated religious writings on various subjects. It is a systematic revelation of history from creation that continues to unfold before our eyes and continues to outline human history to its ultimate conclusion. 

The entire Bible revolves around only one central theme. The need for man’s salvation and God’s provision for it through Jesus Christ. 

The Bible is a gift from God to all men — a ‘love letter’, some say, from God to you. I like that synopsis, since that is how I have viewed it for most of my adult life. A love letter from God, that starts, “Dear Jack: In the beginning . . .” 

What a God we serve! Allow yourself to dwell on the Bible’s magnificence. Meditate on how impossible it would be for the Bible to have come into being through human effort, apart from God, as is now the popular angle of attack. 

Many have made much of the alleged ‘Bible codes’ which indeed appear to be real, although not of any particular value apart from serving as the Signature of God for a high tech generation. 

Jesus said, “A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign . . .” -(Matthew 16:4) and that is what the Bible codes are to this generation. A sign. 

But the Bible proves itself by its very existence. The Bible wasn’t divided into chapters until the 13th century by Stephen Langton. It wasn’t divided into individual verses until the 15th and 16th centuries. 

But its contents have been debated by the best and brightest of every generation and has withstood every single attack. 

The King James Bible contains sixty-six books — 39 in the Old Testament, and twenty-seven in the New. There are 31,173 verses, 774,746 words and 3,556,480 letters that make up the entire Bible.

In all of that, nobody in all human history has ever conclusively disproved a single word. 

At approximately the middle one finds Psalms 118:8:

“It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man.”

And so it is.

Note: We had a great Christmas celebration despite the fact Kari and Mike and the kids couldn’t come because they all had the flu.  (I told them not to worry.  It just means we get an extra Christmas party this year.  But we sure missed them.)

Some of my kids stayed over and will be leaving soon.  I spent an hour working up an interesting piece on Israel before concluding I’m too distracted to put forth my best shot.   

So I hope you will forgive this retread while I finish my family’s Christmas celebration.  I pray yours was every bit as wonderful.

Christmas Pie

Christmas Pie
Vol: 111 Issue: 25 Saturday, December 25, 2010

Christmas at my house is always a busy time of year. As the kids grew older, it got even busier. Our family tradition was something started by my maternal grandfather in the late 1940’s.

Granddad had five daughters, and he realized he was going have to compete with five sons-in-law if he hoped to continue his own Christmas tradition. So Granddad adopted the English Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) as HIS Christmas celebration.

They called it the ‘Christmas Pie’. The ‘Christmas Pie’ was an old refrigerator shipping box filled with presents for all the parents and grandchildren. We’d all gather, the day after our individual Christmas celebration, for an extended Christmas.

All the time I was growing up, I thought that Granddad did it all for us grandkids, something that I thought odd in light of the fact that the rest of the year, he was a very proper English grandfather.

But at Christmas, all that British reserve would evaporate.

It wasn’t until my kids had kids that I realized what a brilliant man Granddad really was. His Christmas Pie celebration was NEVER about us. But we never knew it.

It was really about my Granddad and his daughters never losing their own special Christmas traditions.

Granddad headed off any competition with the out-laws about who went to whose house last year — whenever some young fella married into the family, it was firmly understood from the outset that Christmas was for them — but Boxing Day was Granddad’s.

I share my grandfather’s love of Christmas and could not imagine not having my day with my kids. So when Mike and Kari got married, I sat down with Mike and told him that he could have Kari for eleven of the twelve days of Christmas, but that Boxing Day was MINE.

Or he’d have to find himself another girl.

At our house, Christmas is a two-day affair. Christmas Day is for Gayle and her mother and I. We read the Christmas Story from Luke, remember the Greatest Christmas Gift of all — eternity — and have a traditional American Christmas.

Then, we spend the rest of the day preparing for tomorrow’s Main Event.

Mike and Kari and Hanna and Mikie and Sarah and Johnny, Ricky and Jacob and Mike and Kerilyn and Tristan and Charlyn and Taya and sometimes Jerry and Jessica and Bailey and Justin and Jeremy and Cora  — all together and at home with us — for one glorious day.

Lots of food, a Christmas ‘Pie’ and a chance for the parents to take a day off to be kids again.

Our Christmas wish for you is that you are surrounded by a family that loves you. We wish you laughter and love and fun and joy.

We pray our Lord Jesus Christ will envelope your family with an unspeakable love for one another — and for Him.

We wish you a merry, merry Christmas. And may you be truly blessed.

With much love, from all of us, to all of you.

The Most Ironic Story Ever Told

The Most Ironic Story Ever Told
Vol: 111 Issue: 24 Friday, December 24, 2010

The story of the Virgin Birth, sinless life and blameless death of Jesus Christ, an itinerant Jewish preacher from the Judean village of Nazareth is often and rightly called “the Greatest Story Ever Told.” 

What makes it great is its theme.  A Child born to a young Jewish virgin and (as was supposed) a Jewish laborer of low estate Whose birth is announced by angels.

“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:11)

The Child is the Son of God, come to bear the sins of the world.  He grows to maturity, living low as a laborer in Nazareth until He is called to ministry during His baptism in the Jordan by His cousin John.  

Jesus preaches repentance and the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.  He teaches love of God and to love one’s neighbor.  He lives a blameless and perfect life, is condemned as the King of the Jews and crucified for the sins of the world.

Three days after His execution, He rises from the dead to announce that the hereditary penalty for sin imposed on all men since Adam had been paid.   In evidence, He offers His own Body, showing the nail scars and the side wound.

“This is the price paid on your behalf for sins.  Believe in Me, and Him that sent me, and thou shalt be saved.”  

THAT is why it is the greatest story ever told.  But what makes it ironic is the WAY that it is told – as a Christian story.  The story actually begins way back in the Book of Genesis.   

Abram was the son of an idol maker named Terah who lived in the great city of Ur in modern-day Iraq. The Bible relates that Abram was called by God to a new land that God would show him. 

By faith Abram undertook the journey.Genesis 15:6 says;

 “And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.”

But Abram wanted a guarantee, nonetheless. 

“And he [Abram] said, LORD God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?” (Genesis 15:8) 

It was then that God proposed a blood covenant after the manner of the Chaldeans

“And He [God] said unto him, [Abram] Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 

Abram knew what to do next, since this was something he was familiar with.

“And he took unto him all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another: but the birds divided he not.”

The blood covenant worked this way. The animals were slaughtered and cut up. The pieces were intermingled and then carefully arranged to form a kind of aisle through which the two parties to the covenant would walk together, hands joined. 

The principle of a blood covenant, and the symbolism of the animal parts was clearly understood to Abram. Whoever broke the covenant would end up like those piles of animals.

A blood covenant was, by common custom, a joining of 2 or more persons, families, clans, tribes, or nations, where the participants agree to do or refrain from doing certain acts.

What God proposed was a patriarchal covenant. The patriarchal form of covenant is a self-imposed obligation of a superior party, to the benefit of an inferior party.  Something like adoption by agreement.

In this form, the terms the parties use to refer to each other are: father and son.  And God’s proposal included not only Abram, but extended to Abram’s seed forever.  Abram’s seed, as we learn in Galatians 3:29, are the Jews and Christians that are “heirs according to the Promise.” 

What promise?  The one made by God to Abram and to his heirs and guaranteed by a Chaldean blood covenant.  

Abram waited, driving away the carrion eaters from his grisly creation, waiting for God Himself to come down, join hands with Abram and together, they would swear a blood oath. God would be the Father of Abram and his descendents, who would then be required behave as sons of the covenant.

Genesis 15:12 records that as Abram waited for God, a deep sleep fell upon him. During that deep sleep,

“it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces. In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:” (Genesis 15:17-18)

Abram didn’t join with God in passing through the aisle.  The Bible says that God took TWO forms that Abram saw as a “smoking furnace” and “a burning lamp” to symbolize that the covenant was “signed” the requisite two times – but both times by God.

By passing through the aisle alone, God signed the contract — alone — for both sides, binding Himself to keeping both parts. 

And THIS is where the Christmas story begins.  Of the covenant that God signed on behalf of Abraham, Paul explains,

“Though it be but a man’s covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto.” (Galatians 3:15)

The covenant could only be confirmed when the price demanded for its violation was paid in full.

When the Law was given to Moses four centuries later, it was assumed by the Jews that to break it was to break the Abrahamic Covenant, for which the penalty was death. Remember, somebody had to die.

But God signed on behalf of Abraham, and Paul pointed out the blood penalty required of the covenant was paid in full.

“And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.”

The covenant demanded satisfactory payment for its violation and no one guilty of violating it was qualified to stand in full payment except those that signed it.  The penalty for its violation was death. 

Justice required that someone keep the provisions of the original covenant and be a true Son as it demanded.

So Abraham could not pay the penalty on behalf of his seed.   Abraham was already under penalty of death.  But somebody had to die for justice to be satisfied and the only signer was God.  

The terms of the Abrahamic covenant required God Himself to step out of eternity and into space and time where He could be subject to the death penalty justice demanded.   

Two thousand years after the first covenant, an angel announced that “unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:11)

Unto WHO was born a Saviour?   Unto the Jews of Israel, first. And then to the Gentiles

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew FIRST, and also to the Greek.” (Romans 1:16)

That is what makes it the Most Ironic Story Ever Told.  Christmas is the most Jewish of all holy days.  It is the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant whereby the terms demanded were satisfied. 

But to most observant Jews, Christmas is a Christian holiday that celebrates something to do with the Christian God.  

That is the irony of the story.  It is a day that celebrates the birth of a Jew from Nazareth, born unto them in the city of David, which is Christ the Lord.  

So this Christmas, pray for the peace of Jerusalem. And pray for His Chosen People that they will receive Him as their King.  And may our God richly bless you and yours, until He comes.

Shalom.  And Merry Christmas.

Note: The Omega Letter will not publish Christmas Day.  We will resume publication on Monday, December 27, 2010.  Merry Christmas.

From Congress With Love

From Congress With Love
Vol: 111 Issue: 23 Thursday, December 23, 2010

Ninety-eight years ago today, the 63rd Congress of the United States’ unexpected Christmas gift to America was the Christmas Eve passage of the Federal Reserve Act. 

The United States had not had a central bank since the 2^nd Bank of the United States was killed by Andrew Jackson in 1845, mainly because nobody wanted it. 

In 1908 the Congress created a National Monetary Commission which proposed what was then called the Aldrich Plan after its architect, Senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island.

The Plan called for the establishment of a National Reserve Association with 15 regional district branches and 46 geographically dispersed directors primarily from the banking profession.

The Reserve Association would make emergency loans to member banks, create money, and act as the fiscal agent for the U.S. government.

State and nationally chartered banks would have the option of subscribing to specified stock in their local association branch.

The outline to the Plan had been formulated in a secret meeting on Jekyl Island in November 1910 in which Aldrich and other well-connected financiers attended. Together, those present at the Jekyl Island meeting represented one sixth of the world’s wealth.

Since the Aldrich Plan essentially gave full control of this system to private bankers, it was opposed by a majority of states, primarily in the rural and western states.   Indeed, the Pujo Committee,  formed by the Republican majority to investigate the Money Trust and its interlocking directorates, quickly rejected it.

Control of the Congress shifted to the Democrats in 1912.  The Democrats won on a platform of opposition to the “so-called Aldrich bill for the establishment of a central bank.”  (In other words, they lied.)

In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson began pushing for something called “banking reform.” 

The Aldrich Plan was renamed the Federal Reserve Act and was the brainchild of a German immigrant and member of European banking royalty named Paul Warburg, who later became its first governor.

The House passed the Federal Reserve Act on December 22^nd 298-60 with 76 Congressmen (primarily from the west) not voting because they were on their way home for Christmas. 

Still, it would have passed, albeit by a much smaller margin.

On December 23^rd, any lawmaker that lived west of the Mississippi was either on his way home for Christmas or he wasn’t going.  Consequently, on December 23^rd, 1913, of the Senate’s 95 members, 27 were on the road.

The remaining sixty-eight senators passed the Federal Reserve Act by a vote of 43 to 25.  Had the full Senate been in session, the Federal Reserve Act would likely have failed, 52 to 43. 

The Federal Reserve Act passed without a single nay vote from the Democratic side that was elected on a platform of opposition to it.

The Federal Reserve Act created the greatest and most powerful money trust in the history of mankind. So, let’s take a quick look at what the Sixty-Third Congress has done for America.

A basket of goods that had cost $100 in 1845 when the 2^nd Bank lost its charter cost $110.14 in 1913 when Congress met to ‘fix’ the economy. What cost $100 in 1913 cost $96.45 sixty-eight years earlier.

Prices remained stable because there was a finite money supply.  Money was backed by gold and unless somebody found more gold, the money supply stayed the same.  A decent living wage in 1845 was about the same thing it was in 1913.

The average hourly wage for a bricklayer in 1913 was seventy-five cents an hour.   Once the Federal Reserve “fixed” things, wages started going up.  By 1925, the same bricklayer was making $1.50 an hour.

Where did the extra money come from? The Federal Reserve expanded the money supply.  And what had cost $1.50 in 1913 cost $2.65 in 1925. 

In 1929 the Fed contracted the money supply, sparking the Crash and the Great Depression t
http://www.omegaletter.com/admin/tinymce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js
o follow. At the peak of the Depression, unemployment hit 24.9% and bricklayers were making $1.30 an hour, if they could find work.  

But thanks to the manipulated money shortage, prices fell. What cost $1.50 in 1925 fell to $1.15 by 1934. Still,  there is a gap between wages and costs that never balances. 

In 1933, the government confiscated all privately held gold and then sold it off to satisfy its debts to the very banks that owned the Federal Reserve that created the liquidity ‘crisis’ in the first place.  The second World War provided new opportunities for central bankers world-wide. 

Both sides would blow stuff up, necessitating loans to buy new stuff . . . to blow up.  Each side would also steal each other’s stuff, creating a new market for stolen stuff plus more loans to replace the stuff that got stolen.

It worked great in the First World War.  At the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, among those representing the United States was Paul Warburg, first governor of the Federal Reserve.  Among Germany’s representatives was Max Warburg, head of the Kaiser’s Secret Service during the war. 

Representing Great Britain was Sir William Wiseman, a partner in Warburg, Koehn and Loeb.  Among the provisions of the Treaty was the transfer of Germany’s wealth to the victorious Allies in the form of war reparations.  

The transactions were to be handled by the Swiss-based Bank of International Settlements, headed by Fritz Warburg.

How was all this financed?  In 1945, the average hourly wage had fallen from $1.50 in 1920 to $1.15 in 1945, but prices remained relatively stable. What cost $1.50 in 1920 cost $1.47 in 1945. 

The difference was how much wealth was stolen by the banks. 

Cumulatively, this is what the Sixty-Third Congress accomplished for America with its midnight passage of the Federal Reserve 98 years ago today.  

A dollar fifty in today’s money has the same buying power as did three copper pennies ninety-eight years ago today.  To live as well as you could in 1913 on a buck fifty an hour, you would need to make $32.15 an hour today.  

Except in 1913 there was no IRS, no income tax, and no sales tax.  So you’d really have to make about fifty bucks an hour today to match the purchasing power of $1.50 per hour in wages.   

In real terms, according to the US government’s inflation calculator, that’s an inflation rate of two thousand, one hundred and ten percent!

Assessment:

The 111^th Congress ended forever when Nancy Pelosi reluctantly ended her four year reign of terror yesterday, banging her gavel to close what was one of the most ‘productive’ Congressional terms since the 63rd passed into history ninety-eight years ago today. 

Only two weeks into its first year, it passed an $800 billion stimulus bill, the largest single expenditure in American history – a theft that even made some members of the Federal Reserve blush.   

If there were any jobs saved, the evidence points to the jobs of federal workers and vested members of the United Auto Workers unions.  

The bill was passed based on a promise it would keep unemployment below 8%.   Once it passed 10% and real unemployment approached Depression era levels, the 111^th jumped into action, increasing unemployment benefits to almost two years.

Then it wiped out the used car industry with its “Cash for Clunkers” incentive program that did exactly nothing, other than mandate the destruction of perfectly serviceable used cars and spend tax dollars to subsidize the sale of new cars, most of which would have been sold anyway. 

Since nobody in the 111^th read the bill before passing it, nobody noticed that a huge majority of the “Cash for Clunkers” stimulus went to foreign car manufacturers until after it was gone.

Having saved the jobs of federal workers, foreign automakers and labor union members, created an unfunded federal unemployment insurance scheme, destroyed the US used-car industry and given away billions in taxpayer money to banks that didn’t need it,  the 111^th turned its attention to something else nobody wanted or needed.

Despite America’s dire fiscal circumstances and overwhelming evidence that the American public did not support it, the majority of Democrats rammed through a new health care entitlement that certainly will raise taxes, federal spending and the deficit to new heights if the bill takes full effect on its scheduled date in 2014.

It also places added pressure on existing entitlements Medicare and Medicaid, which are underfunded.

Noted the Washington Times, “Obamacare may be the worst piece of legislation passed by any Congress since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act guaranteed the Great Depression.”

The 111^th Congress failed to enact a budget or pass a single appropriations bill for this year, spending the whole year campaigning against the spending bills it passed the year before and saving anything for which they feared accountability until the post-election lame-duck session.

In the final hours leading up to its death by gavel yesterday, it tried to legislate a tax increase, pass another trillion dollar omnibus bill, increased unemployment benefits for another two years and repealed the ban on gays openly serving in the military despite warnings from military leaders and polls showing a majority of front-line troops opposed it. 

That’s what the 111^th left under America’s tree.  The last Congress to leave America a gift this expensive ended ninety-eight years ago today. 

No wonder Nancy Pelosi is so proud.

The Children of Ammon

The Children of Ammon
Vol: 111 Issue: 22 Wednesday, December 22, 2010

In October King Abdullah of Jordan predicted that without some kind of settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, “there would be war before the end of the year [2010].”

There are just a handful of days left in this year. There has been no agreement between the two sides; if anything, positions are hardening.   

Attacks against Israel from Gaza are escalating.  A Qassam missile launched Tuesday came dangerously close to a kibbutz nursery near Ashkelon.

On Saturday, an American tourist was murdered by two Arabs while she walked in the Jerusalem hills.  The attack was rumored to be a botched Hamas kidnapping effort. 

When one intended victim, a British tourist named Kaye Wilson, managed to escape, they murdered the American, Christine Luken and fled back across the border. 

“The incidents of the past several days are part of an escalation of terrorist attacks emanating from Gaza that target Israeli civilians, towns and military personnel,” Israel’s UN ambassador, Meron Reuben, said in  a letter of protest to the UN made public this morning. 

The letter is addressed to the US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, who holds the current chair of the Security Council, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

It says three rockets and 18 mortars have been fired into parts of southern Israel from Hamas-ruled Gaza since December 19.

“The Security Council, the secretary general and the international community must send a clear and resolute message that these attacks are unacceptable,” Israel said in the letter signed by Reuben and evidently ignored by the UN.

The PA’s chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, told the Jerusalem Post that the Palestinian Authority fears that ‘Israel is planning a new offensive’ against Gaza.  Hamas has launched three rockets and eighteen mortars at Israel in the past few days.

The Washington Post reported a couple of weeks ago on Syria’s active involvement in Lebanon, its open arming of Hezbollah, its interference in Lebanese politics and its alliance with Iran.

“Syria’s fresh interference in Lebanon and its increasingly sophisticated weapons shipments to Hezbollah have alarmed American officials and prompted Israel’s military to consider a strike against a Syrian weapons depot that supplies the Lebanese militia group, U.S. and Israeli officials say.”

Finally, Debka is reporting that King Abdullah of Jordan has ordered his government to wind down any remaining cooperative military ventures with Israel.   Debka notes that Abdullah is under pressure from both Turkey and Syria.  Historically, that’s a bad sign for Israel.

Jordan has a history of being a moderate insofar as Israel is concerned — until some kind of Arab alliance develops that looks like it has a chance of defeating Israel.  Jordan then takes a look around at its surroundings and suddenly goes all native again.   Noted Debka’s report:

In 1958, Abdullah’s father King Hussein opted to join the United Arab Republic federation established by Egypt’s pan-Arabist Gemal Abdul Nasser for fear that if he stayed out, the other two which topple him by subversion, then carve his realm up between them.  It took Hussein a year to realize his error and return to shelter under Israel’s military and intelligence shield. The UAR broke up three years later with Syria’s defection.
In 1967, the king of Jordan again jumped on the Egyptian-Syrian bandwagon racing toward the combined offensive against Israel later known as the Six-Day War – the time it took for Israel to vanquish the three Arab armies.
Syria, despite its political and economic weakness, is still a key player thanks to its strong strategic bond with Iran and its military proxy, the Lebanese Hizballah. Once the leading Middle East power, Egypt is being edged out of this role by Tehran, Damascus and their new ally, Tayyep Erdogan’s pro-Muslim Turkey.
When he looks around him, Jordan’s Abdullah sees Iran’s rising influence over the kingdom’s eastern neighbor Iraq, with America preparing to abandon ship next year. According to the latest information, not a single American soldier may be left there, a sign that the United States is on its way out of the entire Middle East, primarily because of the weakness of its president, Barack Obama.
Across his western border, the Jordanian king sees Israel standing by idly as Iran, Syria, Hizballah and Hamas tighten their military noose. It can therefore no longer be relied on as a strategic partner.
To the north, he sees Syria, Turkey and Hizballah-Lebanon bolstering the pro-Iranian axis in the Middle East.
Abdullah has therefore decided that to save his throne and kingdom, he had better jump aboard the winning side and ditch his former partner.

Not exactly like the last rat to leave a sinking ship.   But something like that.

Assessment:

The Bible forecasts two great alliances that will come against Israel in the last days in two ultimately unsuccessful attempts at her annihilation.

One is the Gog Magog alliance under Russia and Persia predicted by Ezekiel. This alliance is primarily political and includes most of the nations of the old Persian Empire.  The Gog Magog invasion is motivated primarily by political and economic considerations, rather than ethnic or religious ones.

The second is an alliance of Arab states, including Syria, Egypt, Gaza, Lebanon and parts of Iraq as predicted in Zephaniah Psalms 83, Obadiah and Isaiah 17.  This alliance is as distinctly different from the Gog Magog alliance as it can be.  

Politics has little to do with this alliance. Economics are even less relevant.  That is why they are all still Third World countries instead of enjoying the same First World standards of living enjoyed by Israel. 

This alliance is held together by white-hot ethnic and religious hatred so intense that it consumes all other considerations. Maintaining this anti-Israel alliance has cost its participants dearly but there is seemingly no price too high.   

Just as Iran and Turkey have been realigning themselves to take their appointed positions in Ezekiel’s alliance, Jordan is positioning itself for its role in the Psalms 83 alliance.  

Another difference between the two alliances is their Divinely appointed purposes.   Ezekiel’s alliance is defeated upon the mountains of Israel;

“Thus will I magnify Myself, and sanctify Myself; and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the LORD.” (Ezekiel 38:23)

The participants in the Gog Magog alliance are secondary to the purpose, which in this case, is demonstrating the power of God to the nations.   

But the participants in the Psalms 83 war are the purpose.  They aren’t being gathered to reveal God to the nations, they are being gathered for Divine retribution for their crimes against His Chosen people.  

Ammon and Moab were sons of Lot through his incestuous relationship with his daughters (Genesis 19:37-38) following the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.   The Ammonites and Moabites are both referred to throughout Scripture as the “children of Lot.”

Jordan is the land of Ammon and Moab – Jordan’s capital is Amman, named for the son of Lot.   

For decades, Turkey was on the wrong side of the Bible’s outline for the last days.  As a NATO member and strong US and EU ally,  Turkey was the only majority-Muslim state to have treaty ties with Israel. But God said Turkey would side against Israel.

In 1977 Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel that was expected to open up floodgates of cooperation between Israel and the Arab world.  But God said that Egypt would side against Israel in the last days. 

Jordan has been cultivating a reputation for moderation for decades and is only the second Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel.  Of all the Arab states of the Middle East, Jordan has the most to lose and the least to gain by Israels’ annihilation. 

But God said that Ammon and Moab would join the alliance against Israel in the last days. Egypt’s Gaza Strip and Jordan’s West Bank are now gateways of aggression into Israel. 

Both are moving precisely into position as predicted.

God said that in the last days, Turkey and Iran would side with Russia and not the West. Until 1978, Iran was an important ally of both Israel and the US.  Turkey remained an important ally until only this past year. 

I’ve been waiting for Jordan to jump ship and side with Syria.  Historically, it has been the last domino to fall.  King Abdullah predicted war by year’s end. 

That’s about nine days from now.

Fixing What Isn’t Broken

Fixing What Isn’t Broken
Vol: 111 Issue: 21 Tuesday, December 21, 2010

If you are anything like me, you probably don’t really understand what “net neutrality” really is, or how it will really affect you.  But you are against it because the government is for it and that is reason enough to oppose it right there.

Most of the Democrats in Congress favor “net neutrality” which is also an excellent reason to oppose it. There isn’t much that the government is for that actually benefits its citizens.

And there is essentially nothing that the Democrats favor that benefits the country. Just the Democrats. 

There is an old joke that says that an elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.   And any comedian will tell you that the funniest jokes are those that contain the strongest elements of truth.

The fact that the government would like to control the internet is not surprising. Thanks to the internet, it is a lot harder to govern than it used to be.  

But if the government could control the internet, then one could see how governing could get a whole lot easier if it didn’t always have so much ‘splainin’ to do.

So there are plenty of good reasons to oppose net neutrality without knowing anything about it.  Good reasons, yes, but are they sufficient? 

What is net neutrality and would I be against it if it weren’t being proposed by a Democrat-controlled government? I’d to be accused of opposing it on pure partisanship – I’d like to have a better reason. 

So I went digging.  And I found LOTS of reasons. First off, let’s examine the government’s argument. 

The FCC says it wants to regulate internet traffic to bar providers from discriminating against legal internet traffic.  It says that consumers need protection against unscrupulous internet service providers. 

Net neutrality, says the FCC, would guarantee consumer access to legal websites. 

Let’s take the arguments one at a time and in order.  At present, there are no regulations in place that protect consumers from discrimination.   Lots of times, internet service providers take it upon themselves to block traffic they find offensive. 

The Omega Letter has been blocked at one time or another from practically every ISP out there.  We get emails on at least a weekly basis from OL members complaining that they haven’t been receiving their daily briefing by email.

Some ISP’s automatically redirect the Omega Letter to the junk email or spam folders, but that is more often a case of word filtering programs than it is censorship.   But there are some ISP’s that have actively engaged in censorship, bouncing OL’s because they don’t like some of the content.

Google does it all the time.  Google’s news aggregator once crawled the Omega Letter as a news site. It was removed later because of its overtly Christian content.  

It is censorship, but it isn’t government censorship. There’s a difference.

Google is a private corporation.  If its censorship practices offend enough people, a new ‘Google’ will emerge. ISP’s are private corporations.  OL members have reported that after complaining to their ISP about censoring their OL, delivery was resumed.   Others switched ISPs.    

You can choose a more friendly search engines or Internet Service Providers but you can’t choose a more friendly government.

“We must take action to protect consumers against price hikes and closed access to the Internet—and our proposed framework is designed to do just that: to guard against these risks while recognizing the legitimate needs and interests of broadband providers,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a blog post this month.

Notice the FCC’s heavy emphasis on legal in its protection package. In order for the FCC to guarantee access to a legal website, somebody has to define what a “legal website” would be.

At present, the definition of a ‘legal’ website is problematic.  Because the current definition of a legal website is ‘a website’.   There can’t be ‘legal’ websites until somebody comes up with an enforceable definition of an illegal website. 

It’s pretty obvious that there is no such thing as an illegal website at the moment.  If there was, then I wouldn’t be able to access Wikileaks.  Nobody has done as much damage to the United States foreign policy as has Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange.

The US government has raged at every level, threatening to seize and confiscate, punish and incarcerate, with much thunder and lightning, very, very frightening, but ultimately impotent. 

In everything accomplished against Assange so far, the Swedish rape charges, the British incarceration, canceling his bank and merchant accounts and hacking the Wikileaks website, the government has reacted like a petty dictatorship bent on revenge rather than a great nation seeking justice.

If ever there should be an “illegal” website, it should be Wikileaks.  Shouldn’t it?  Or so goes the FCC’s latest argument.  Except that the FCC couldn’t regulate Wikileaks or prosecute Julian Assange if it was granted all the authority it sought. 

It could only regulate you. 

The peer-to-peer file sharing sites like ISOhunt have been under legal attack from special interest groups like the one that represents the music industry.  Consequently, access to ISOhunt is limited or blocked to computers located in the US.   

Computers in Canada have unlimited access to the same site.  

Conversely, Canadians who attempt to access TV streaming websites such as hulu.com or US network sites like CBS to try and watch the latest NCIS episode get a blank screen and an explanation that they are attempting to access the content from a location outside the United States.

The FCC can’t “regulate” the internet.   It can only censor your part of it. And THAT’s the idea.

There is a sense of desperation to the FCC effort that is troubling.  The internet isn’t broken and it doesn’t need fixing.  And even if it was broken, the government can’t fix it, as we’ve already seen. 

Or they’d have ‘fixed’ Wikileaks long before it ‘fixed’ them. 

Industry analysts and broadband companies, ISPs and major internet corporations are united in their opposition to net neutrality rules, arguing among other things, that the regulations would inhibit capital investment, deter innovation, raise operating costs, and increase consumer prices.

Others maintain that the new rules will kill jobs. Yet they endeavor to persevere.

In April, a Federal Appeals Court ruled that the FCC didn’t have the legal authority to regulate the internet or impose net neutrality rules without specific authorization from Congress. 

The FCC appealed, saying it had Congressional authority through existing legislation from the 1950’s.

In a rare moment of bipartisanship, three hundred members of Congress including eighty-six Democrats sent a letter to the FCC asking it to follow the law and leave internet regulation to the Congress. 

Through the summer, it seemed that the FCC might defer to Congress.  Until Henry Waxman submitted a draft bill granting that authority to the FCC.  It failed to pass, ending legitimate Congressional efforts to regulate the internet.

Despite the court ruling that it lacks the authority, and despite the bipartisan Congressional opposition to granting it the authority, the FCC is prepared to impose net neutrality anyway, using the same method used 100 years ago to create the Federal Reserve.

Wait until Christmas Eve and hope that enough people aren’t watching to stop you.  

Assessment:

While the FCC is planning to seize control of the internet by fiat, there is a similarly disturbing report by the Washington Post detailing the existence of a developing domestic spying network created by the federal state security services.

“Federal state security services” – who would have ever thought those words would describe a part of the United States government?   The report says the government uses the FBI, local police, state police and military criminal investigators to collect and store information on its citizens.

The government’s goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, noted the paper.

According to the report, the network includes 4,058 federal, state and local organizations, each with its own counter-terrorism responsibilities and jurisdictions.

When one considers that the United States is at war, one could argue that the government needs a domestic spy network like the one it is developing and that this is a good thing.    Attorney General Eric Holder said as much during an ABC News interview.

“It is one of the things that keeps me up at night,” Holder said. “You didn’t worry about this even two years ago — about individuals, about Americans, to the extent that we now do. And — that is of — of great concern.”

“The threat has changed from simply worrying about foreigners coming here, to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens — raised here, born here, and who for whatever reason, have decided that they are going to become radicalized and take up arms against the nation in which they were born,” he said.

“For whatever reason.”  THIS is what keeps me up at night.  The reason is because they are Islamic converts.   “Radicalized” is not just a code word, it is meaningless as used.  

It means, “fundamental, extreme, drastic” but when married to the phrase “for whatever reason” it applies as equally to a Baptist preacher as it does a suicide bomber.

Having studiously avoided any overt mention of what ‘radicalized’ these guys in the first place, Holder then turns his attention to the real culprit.  Get ready for it. . .

“The ability to go into your basement, turn on your computer, find a site that has this kind of hatred spewed … they have an ability to take somebody who is perhaps just interested, perhaps just on the edge, and take them over to the other side.” he said.

The internet is used by radicals (for whatever reason) to radicalize people who are perhaps ‘just interested’ implying, of course, that without the internet making that hatred available, the guy would still be a regular Joe. 

Sigh. What’s a 21st century kind of guy like Holder to do?  He can’t help it.  He has to do his job.

“I have to have all those tools available to me to try to keep the American people safe, and to do the job that I’m supposed to do as a 21st century attorney general.”  

Net neutrality.  It is a lot like the super domestic spy operation.   It sounds like a good idea if you say it fast and move on to another topic.   

Which is why the FCC plans to pass it on Christmas Eve.  

What is net neutrality?  There are but a few times where Scripture repeats itself and I’ve found it profitable to pay attention when God repeats Himself. 

“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” (Proverbs 14:12, 16:25)

It certainly applies here.