Watchman Newsletter

‘Lukewarm’ climate change deal in Copenhagen

Times Online (Link) - Simon Alford (December 19, 2009)

The UN climate conference in Copenhagen today approved a deal to tackle global warming proposed by world leaders, after an accord Barack Obama brokered with China, India, Brazil and South Africa.

But the UN Secretary General today admitted the non-binding agreement at the conclusion of the conference was not “everything everyone had hoped for,” as he confirmed a deal had finally been done.

Delegates have agreed to “take note” of the American-led Copenhagen Accord, despite criticism that there are no long-term targets to cut emissions and it is not a legally-binding treaty.

Obama had brokered the agreement with China, India, Brazil and South Africa to tackle global warming, which included a reference to keeping the global temperature rise to just 2C - but the plan does not specify greenhouse gas cuts needed to achieve the 2C goal.

Prime minister Gordon Brown said the Accord was a “necessary first step” but those in opposition to it described it as “weak” and “meaningless.” 

U.S. National Debt Tops Debt Limit

CBS News (Link) - Mark Knoller (December 12, 2009)

The latest calculation of the National Debt as posted by the Treasury Department has - at least numerically - exceeded the statutory Debt Limit approved by Congress last February as part of the Recovery Act stimulus bill.

The ceiling was set at $12.104 trillion dollars. The latest posting by Treasury shows the National Debt at nearly $12.135 trillion.

A senior Treasury official told CBS News that the department has some “extraordinary accounting tools” it can use to give the government breathing room in the range of $150-billion when the Debt exceeds the Debt Ceiling.

Were it not for those “tools,” the U.S. Government would not have the statutory authority to borrow any more money. It might block issuance of Social Security checks and require a shutdown of some parts of the federal government.

20,000 evacuated as Philippine volcano oozes lava

Associated Press (Link) - Jim Gomez (December 15, 2009)

Authorities moved thousands of villagers from harm’s way near the Philippines’ most active volcano Tuesday after it oozed lava and shot plumes of ash, and said they probably would spend a bleak Christmas in an evacuation center.

State volcanologists raised the alert level on the cone-shaped, 8,070-foot (2,460-meter) Mayon volcano overnight to two steps below a major eruption after ash explosions and dark orange lava fragments glowing in the dark trickled down the mountain slope.

Nearly 50,000 people live in a five-mile (eight-kilometer) radius around the mountain, and authorities began moving thousands of them in case it erupts, Albay provincial Gov. Joey Salceda said.

More than 20,000 people were evacuated to safety by nightfall Tuesday, Salceda said, adding he has placed central Albay province, where Mayon is located, under a “state of imminent disaster,” which will make it easier for him to draw and use emergency funds.

“Whatever the volcano does, our target is zero casualty,” Salceda told The Associated Press.

Albay province lies about 210 miles (340 kilometers) southeast of Manila.

Abbas names 1967 borders as precondition for talks

YNet News (Link) - Ali Waked (December 15, 2009)

PLO Central Committee convenes in Ramallah to discuss plan aimed at resolving its political crisis. Palestinian president clarifies he will not seek another term and slams building freeze, which he says ‘is not considered a halt of settlement activity.’

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas demanded Tuesday that the international community recognize the 1967 borders as the borders of a new Palestinian state, and stated that this was a condition for the resumption of peace talks with Israel.

“We will renew negotiations if the settlements are completely halted and the 1967 borders recognized as the borders of the Palestinian state,” he said in Ramallah.

Speaking before the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Abbas commended the European Union on a proposal to declare east Jerusalem the future capital of a Palestinian state.

Here Comes The Sun

Investors Business Daily (Link) (December 15, 2009)

Drip by drip, like a glacier melting in the sun, the claim that man is changing the climate is dissolving into irrelevance. The recent findings of Swiss researchers expose another hole.

Former Vice President Al Gore has for years warned that man-made global warming is melting the world’s glaciers — a tactic commonly used by alarmists who want to whip up hysteria. Swiss researchers, however, have presented evidence that weakens the argument.

Scientists at Zurich’s Federal Institute of Technology have found that solar activity caused Alpine glaciers to melt in the 1940s at rates faster than today’s pace, even though it’s warmer now.

The study found that the sun in the 1940s was 8% stronger than average and far more powerful than it is today. It also concluded that solar activity was weaker from the 1950s to the 1980s, an era in which the glaciers advanced.

The Swiss researchers are spinning their own work, saying that the evidence doesn’t mean the public can stop worrying about man-made warming. But their finding validates other researchers who have said solar activity has a far greater impact on temperatures than human CO₂ emissions.

Hamas: All Islamist groups will unite with Iran if Israel attacks

Haaretz (Link) - Reuters (December 15, 2009)

Hamas leader Khaled Meshal warned on Tuesday that Islamist militant groups would back Iran if the Islamic Republic was attacked by Israel, Iranian state television reported.

“All Islamist militant groups will form a united front with Iran against Israel if it attacks Iran,” Meshal told a news conference.

Israel and the United States have not ruled out military action if diplomacy fails to resolve the row over Iranian nuclear work that the West suspects is aimed at making bombs.

The Hamas leader added: “We are all parts of the same body... We all should fight against the mutual enemy. But how, the leaders will decide based on our capacities.”

He further said that Israel was a danger for the Middle East region.

Fastest Food Inflation Since Riots Means Milk Up 39%

Bloomberg (Link) - Alan Bjerga, Madelene Pearson and Yi Tian (December 14, 2009)

Falling production in commodities from rice to milk is bad news for just about everyone except investors.

Rice may surge 63 percent to $1,038 a metric ton from $638 on Philippine imports and a shortage in India, a Bloomberg survey of importers, exporters and analysts showed. The U.S. government says nonfat dry milk may jump 39 percent next year, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. forecasts a 25 percent gain for sugar. Global food costs jumped 7 percent in November, the most since February 2008, four months before reaching a record, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Farm prices this year lagged behind copper futures that doubled and oil’s 57 percent increase. A recovery from the worst recession since World War II would spur food demand and boost costs for buyers of commodities including milk processor Dean Foods Co. while increasing the number of hungry people that the UN says now exceeds 1 billion.

“Agricultural commodities will be a great investment in the next three to five years,” said Oliver Kratz, who manages $10 billion as head of Global Thematic Strategy investments at Deutsche Bank AG’s DB Advisors in New York, including $3 billion in agriculture. For those who can’t afford to pay more for food, there’s the “painful” risk of hunger, he said.

Iran, Syria sign mutual defense pact

The Jerusalem Post (Link) (December 12, 2009)

Iran and Syria signed a defense agreement on Friday, according to an Iranian Press TV report.

The document, signed by Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi and his Syrian counterpart Ali Mohammad Habib Mahmoud, aimed to face “common enemies and challenges,” the report said.

Vahidi praised Syria’s great potential in the defense and military fields and said that “it is natural for a country like Syria - which has an inhumane and menacing predator like Israel in its neighborhood - to be always prepared [against possible foreign aggression].”

His visit to Syria comes a week after Saeed Jalili, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, also visited Damascus.

Iran’s treaty with Syria comes just as Western countries are warning Teheran that if it fails to respond to overtures intended to make its nuclear program transparent, it will face sanctions.

Van Rompuy plans shake-up of EU summits

EU Observer (Link) - Honor Mahony (December 11, 2009)

The new EU president, Herman Van Rompuy, is planning to shake up the regular gatherings of EU leaders to make them less formulaic so that they result in decisions that have immediate relevancy.

The summits, which take place at least four times a year in Brussels, will have their attendance streamlined and will produce conclusions which are “operative” and contain a message which is “readable and visible” for the European public.

Until now, summits have been numerically weighty affairs - involving over 50 people including foreign ministers, and often resulting in impenetrable conclusions the length of a short novel.

This is partly due to the fact that the post-meeting statements are carefully pre-written by ambassadors before being passed up the political food chain and partly as a result of the EU increasingly feeling obliged to take note or react to certain political situations beyond its borders as a matter of rote.

Speaking about future meetings of EU leaders, which he will start to chair from 2010, Mr Van Rompuy on Thursday evening (10 December) said: “We have to constitute a group, a club, that gets on, that works for the same cause, namely the European Union.”

The Frightening Rise Of Christian Persecution: Christians Around The World Are Being Shot, Burned, Hanged, Tortured And Stuffed Into Metal Shipping Containers

This Is The End of the World As We Know It (Link) (December 11, 2009)

There is a widely quoted statistic that more Christians died for their faith in the 20th century than in the 19 centuries leading up to it.  But as bad as the 20th century was, the 21st century is starting to make that look like a Sunday picnic.  In every corner of the globe, Christians are being shot, burned, hanged, tortured and even stuffed into metal shipping containers.  Christian clergy are being marked for assassination around the world, hundreds of churches are being burned to the ground along with scores of homes and businesses owned by Christians.  Dozens of nations across the globe have now passed strict anti-conversion laws in an attempt to stifle the spread of Christianity.  In the countries where Christians are not yet facing physical persecution, they still must deal with open discrimination, lawsuits and increasing ridicule.  Christianity is now the most hated and most persecuted religion on the plant.  The reality is that the words that Jesus spoke in John 15:18 ring truer today than ever: "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first."

Keep those words in mind as you read the following shocking reports of Christian persecution from all over the world....

Importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls

Lamb & Lion Ministries (Link) - Nathan Jones (December 11, 2009)

What exactly are the Dead Sea Scrolls and why are they important?

In 1947, Bedouin goat-herders were searching the cliffs along the Dead Sea for (supposedly) a lost goat and came upon a cave containing ancient jars filled with manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts made their way to scholars, spurring a great archaeological race.

Eleven caves produced some 825 manuscripts and thousands of scroll fragments, dating from approximately 200 B.C. to 68 A.D. The writings included copies in the original Hebrew and Aramaic languages of the Old Testament (all but Esther), hymns, prayers, and Jewish writings. Much of the writings pre-date Jesus, so there is no direct mention of him. The strict Qumran community called the Essenes hid their writings in the caves before a Roman invasion killed them.

What makes these manuscripts so amazingly important to archeologists is that before 1947 the oldest copy available of the Old Testament was from 1008 A.D. Scholars could finally take our most modern Hebrew and Aramaic copies and compare them to the older Dead Sea Scrolls and try to find potential differences. What they found were accurate copies.

Temple model to open this Hanukkah

YNet News (Link) - Tzofia Hirschfeld (December 11, 2009)

Aish HaTorah center in Jerusalem to open 1.2 ton model of Second Temple to visitors this Hanukkah. Model, built out of original materials, including gold, marble, stone, faces Temple Mount.

The Second Temple will be open to visitors next week. Albeit in a different location, and a smaller size, not allowing much room for people to enter. Still, it is certainly the next best thing at the moment.

This Hanukkah the Aish HaTorah Jewish studies center in Jerusalem will inaugurate the largest model of the Second Temple to be built to date. The model, which was built on a scale of 1:60, and weighs 1.2 tons, is made of the original materials, namely, real gold, marble and stone, and was placed on the third floor of the center's building, facing the Western Wall.

The model was placed facing the Temple Mount in hopes of giving the visitors a feeling as close as possible to that felt by visitors back in the days when the structure, described as one of the most beautiful of its period, was standing. The place where the Jewish heart once stood, and, with its destruction, became a site of constant longing.

"We knew that our building was in the most beautiful place, and that you can see the entire Temple Mount from it," Aish HaTorah director Ephraim Shore said, "It was clear to us that such a place should be used to illustrate the experience of being there.

The Environmental Shakedown

Real Clear Politics (Link) - Charles Krauthammer (December 11, 2009)

In the 1970s and early ’80s, having seized control of the U.N. apparatus (by power of numbers), Third World countries decided to cash in. OPEC was pulling off the greatest wealth transfer from rich to poor in history. Why not them? So in grand U.N. declarations and conferences, they began calling for a “New International Economic Order.” The NIEO’s essential demand was simple: to transfer fantastic chunks of wealth from the industrialized West to the Third World.

On what grounds? In the name of equality -- wealth redistribution via global socialism -- with a dose of post-colonial reparations thrown in.

The idea of essentially taxing hard-working citizens of the democracies in order to fill the treasuries of Third World kleptocracies went nowhere, thanks mainly to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (and the debt crisis of the early ’80s). They put a stake through the enterprise.

But such dreams never die. The raid on the Western treasuries is on again, but today with a new rationale to fit current ideological fashion. With socialism dead, the gigantic heist is now proposed as a sacred service of the newest religion: environmentalism.

European Union presses IMF to consider Tobin tax

Telegraph UK (Link) - Reuters (December 11, 2009)

The European Union increased pressure on the International Monetary Fund on Friday to consider a global tax on financial transactions to limit the risk of another economic crisis.

In a draft statement expected to be approved on the second day of an EU summit, the bloc’s leaders also underlined the need for “sound and effective” financial sector pay but did not specifically back British calls to tax bankers’ bonuses heavily.

The leaders were also discussing on the final day of the summit how much money to give developing countries in the next three years to help them fight the effects of global warming.

“The European Council (of EU leaders) emphasises the importance of renewing the economic and social contract between financial institutions and the society they serve and of ensuring that the public benefits in good times and is protected from risk,” they said in a draft statement obtained by Reuters.

“The European Council encourages the IMF to consider the full range of options including insurance fees, resolution funds, contingent capital arrangements and a global financial transaction levy in its review.”

The IMF is considering how to limit risk in the financial system following the economic crisis.

The 10 Nations: Still Going Strong — What Holly Thinks

Fulfilled Prophecy (Link) - Holly Pivec (December 10, 2009)

FP has a very active discussion board, and everyday I try to check in on some of the conversations taking place. Recently, I noticed a question some of our board members asked about if the Western European Union was still made up of 10 nations or if it had expanded to 27 nations.

I knew it was still made up of 10 nations, but didn’t weigh in on the discussion because I was confident one of the board members would find out the answer and share it with the others. I was right. One of our members e-mailed the question directly to the Assembly of the Western European Union. He received a reply from the assembly’s press officer, Corine Caballero-Bourdot.

I wanted to reprint the answer here because I think it shows a couple of important things. First, it helps clear up confusion about the alliance by explaining the difference between the WEU (the 10-nation military alliance) and the Assembly of the WEU (a 27-nation parliamentary assembly that oversees the work of the WEU). The WEU remains a 10-nation military alliance that has risen out of the ashes of the old Roman Empire, and, as such, should continue to be watched by students of prophecy.

Second – and most fascinating – the answer reveals that the 10-nation alliance is still going strong. It hasn’t been dissolved by the Lisbon Treaty and, in fact, appears to have no intention of being dissolved any time soon. Note how the press officer calls the treaty that created the 10-nation alliance “the most binding mutual defence treaty in the West” – even surpassing NATO.

More U.S. Christians mix in ‘Eastern,’ New Age beliefs

USA Today (Link) - Cathy Lynn Grossman (December 9, 2009)

Going to church this Sunday? Look around. The chances are that one in five of the people there find “spiritual energy” in mountains or trees, and one in six believe in the “evil eye,” that certain people can cast curses with a look — beliefs your Christian pastor doesn’t preach.

In a Catholic church? Chances are that one in five members believe in reincarnation in a way never taught in catechism class — that you’ll be reborn in this world again and again.

Elements of Eastern faiths and New Age thinking have been widely adopted by 65% of U.S. adults, including many who call themselves Protestants and Catholics, according to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released Wednesday.

Syncretism — mashing up contradictory beliefs like Catholic rocker Madonna’s devotion to a Kabbalah-light version of Jewish mysticism — appears on the rise.

And, according to the survey’s other major finding, devotion to one clear faith is fading.

Democrats to lift debt ceiling by $1.8 trillion, fear 2010 backlash

Politico (Link) - David Rogers (December 9, 2009)

In a bold but risky year-end strategy, Democrats are preparing to raise the federal debt ceiling by as much as $1.8 trillion before New Year’s rather than have to face the issue again prior to the 2010 elections.

“We’ve incurred this debt. We have to pay our bills,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told POLITICO Wednesday. And the Maryland Democrat confirmed that the anticipated increase could be as high as $1.8 trillion — nearly twice what had been assumed in last spring’s budget resolution for the 2010 fiscal year.

The leadership is betting that it’s better for the party to take its lumps now rather than risk further votes over the coming year. But the enormity of the number could create its own dynamic, much as another debt ceiling fight in 1985 gave rise to the Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction act mandating across-the-board spending cuts nearly 25 years ago.

Already in the Senate, there is growing pressure in both parties for the creation of a novel bipartisan task force empowered to force expedited votes in the next Congress on deficit reduction steps now shunned by lawmakers.

Failed Russian missile visible over Northern Norway

Barents Observer (Link) (December 9, 2009) Video

UPDATED: This unique photo taken in Northern Norway shows a Russian intercontinental missile flying into a spiral before it exploded in the atmosphare early Wednesday morning. The missile was most likely yet another failed test launch of a Bulava missile from the Typhoon submarine “Dmitri Donskoy” in the White Sea area.

The giant spiral shaped light that could be seen in the eastern sky for several minutes on Wednesday morning was probably caused by a failed missile launch from the White Sea, several Norwegian space and defense experts believe.

Interviewed by the Norwegian TV2, an anonymous Russian military source says it was failed launch of a Bulava missile from a submarine in the White Sea Wednesday morning.

Researcher at the Tromsø Geophysical Observatory Truls Lynne Hansen is certain that the light was caused by a missile launch:

The missile has probably come out of control and exploded. The peculiar spiral shaped light pattern comes from reflection of the sun in the leaking fuel, he said to Aftenposten.