Watchman Newsletter

6.5-magnitude quake off Japanese coast

CNN (Link) (December 20, 2008)

A strong earthquake centered about 90 miles off Japan's east coast, measuring a 6.5 magnitude, was recorded by seismologists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) on Saturday. There were no immediate reports of damage from the quake, which happened at 7:29 p.m. (5:29 a.m. ET).

The quake was centered at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) underground and 170 kilometers (105 miles) east of Mito, on the main Japanese island of Honshu, the USGS said. Tokyo is about 255 kilometers (160 miles) west-southwest of the quake's center, the agency said.

Auto Makers to Get $17.4 Billion

Wall Street Journal (Link) - John D. McKinnon and John D. Stoll (December 20, 2008)

The Bush administration said it would lend $17.4 billion to General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, buying them a few weeks of financial relief but leaving the biggest decisions about the industry's future to President-elect Barack Obama.

Under the White House plan, the companies are required to extract enough financial concessions from workers, suppliers, dealers and other stakeholders to demonstrate their long-term viability by the end of March.

The deal's ambitious targets for the companies include replacing two-thirds of their debt with stock; using more stock instead of cash to fund retiree health-care obligations; eliminating much-criticized union "jobs banks" that pay laid-off auto workers; and establishing wage structures and workplace rules that are more competitive with foreign rivals.

But all those targets are nonbinding, and the agreement appeared to be much more porous than legislation that the administration and Democratic congressional leaders failed to pass earlier this month.

The loan package also requires the administration to drain what remains in the first half of the Treasury Department's $700 billion bailout fund, originally intended to aid the financial industry. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said lawmakers should release the final $350 billion "to support financial-market stability," a request likely to set up another battle with Congress.

Maitreya Rising?

News With Views (Link) - Paul Proctor (December 19, 2008) Commented

There was a very strange announcement made recently in the form of a press release posted on the Dow Jones & Company’s Market Watch website dated December 12, 2008, that bears mentioning, if for no other reason, because it reads like something from a supermarket tabloid. Come to think of it, didn’t Rupert Murdoch just buy Dow Jones & Company not long ago? If you’re not aware, they also publish, among other things, the Wall Street Journal. Anyway, whether this speaks to the decline of a once great business publication or the growing power and influence of a coming world leader, only time will tell. Either way, it is clearly another ominous sign of the desperate times in which we live.

The article in question titled, Share International Reveals Christmas Miracle, advises readers to prepare for a coming miracle that all of us will see in the sky shortly before the “emergence of Maitreya and his group, the Masters of Wisdom.” Allow me to reiterate: This is a major business and financial news publication – not some obscure blog for Bigfoot hunters and UFO enthusiasts. The article goes on to say:

Look now for the biggest miracle of all. In the very near future a large, bright star will appear in the sky visible to all throughout the world -- night and day.

Unbelievable? Fantasy? No, a simple fact. Around a week later, Maitreya, the World Teacher for all humanity, will begin his open emergence and -- though not yet using the name Maitreya -- will be interviewed on a major US television program.

Who is Maitreya, you ask? The press release describes him this way:

Awaited by all faiths under different names, Maitreya is the Christ to Christians, the Imam Mahdi to Muslims, Krishna to Hindus, the Messiah to Jews, and Maitreya Buddha to Buddhists. He is the World Teacher for all, religious or not, an educator in the broadest sense.

If that doesn’t peg your spiritual discernment meter, you may want to go have it checked.

Does our Federal Government Take Money Management Advice from Bernard Madoff?

Family Security Matters (Link) - Cliff Kincaid (December 19, 2008)

Business cable network CNBC is asking, in a special report, whether investment manager Bernard Madoff pulled off the “scam of the century.” But Madoff is only accused of a $50 billion heist. That’s peanuts compared to what the politicians have done to us.

On Monday, December 15, in a story that went unnoticed, the General Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the federal government has failed another financial audit. It was the 12th year in a row that the federal government has been unable to accurately report on its fiscal condition. Frankly, nobody knows precisely where the money is going. But we know where it’s coming from - the beleaguered taxpayers.

We have all seen the film footage of Madoff leaving his New York apartment and being pushed around by a horde of photographers and cameramen trying to get a shot of him. Why aren’t the politicians being surrounded in similar fashion for destroying the financial stability of our country?

Almost every day we see a story that misses the big picture. On Thursday, President-elect Obama announced his pick to run the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Politicians are demanding to know why the agency failed to detect the Madoff fraud and what it will do in the future to uncover other fraudulent financial schemes. But what about the federal government’s own massive financial fraud, as documented by the GAO itself?

From Global Crisis to "Global Government"

Global Research (Link) - Andrew G. Marshall (December 19, 2008)

Introduction

The United States’ National Intelligence Council has released a report, entitled "Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World". This declassified document is the fourth report of the Global Trends 2025: The National Intelligence Council’s 2025 Project.

The report outlines the paths that current geopolitical and economic trends may reach by the year 2025, in order to guide strategic thinking over the next few decades. The National Intelligence Council describes itself as the US Intelligence Community’s “center for midterm and long-term strategic thinking,” with the tasks of supporting the Director of National Intelligence, reaching out to non-governmental experts in academia and the private sector and it leads in the effort of providing National Intelligence Estimates.

The report was written with the active participation of not only the US intelligence community, but also numerous think tanks, consulting firms, academic institutions and hundreds of other experts. Among the participating organizations were the Atlantic Council of the United States, the Wilson Center, RAND Corporation, the Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, Texas A&M University, the Council on Foreign Relations and Chatham House in London, which is the British equivalent of the CFR.[1]

Among the many things envisioned in this report to either be completed or under way by 2025 are the formation of a global multipolar international system, the possibility of a return of mercantilism by great powers in which they go to war over dwindling resources, the growth of China as a great world power, the position of India as a strong pole in the new multipolar system, a decline of capitalism in the form of more state-capitalism, exponential population growth in the developing world, continuing instability in Africa, a decline in food availability, partly due to climate change, continued terrorism, the possibility of nuclear war, the emergence of regionalism in the form of strong regional blocks in North America, Europe, and Asia, and the decline of US power and with that, the superiority of the dollar.

Value of 2008 Bailouts Exceeds Combined Costs of All Major U.S. Wars

CNS News (Link) - Fred Lucas (December 18, 2008)

The total value of the bailouts undertaken by the federal government in 2008 now exceeds the combined cost of every major war the United States has ever engaged in, according to a comparison of war costs calculated by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and the value of the bailouts as calculated by Bloomberg News or Bianco Research.

According to CRS, all major U.S. wars (including such events as the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, but not the invasion of Panama or the Kosovo War), cost a total of $7.2 trillion in inflation-adjusted 2008 dollars.

According to Bloomberg, the federal government has made commitments worth a total of $8.5 trillion in the bailouts of 2008. That includes actual expenditures as well as loan and asset guarantees. Bianco Research puts the total value of the bailouts at $8.7 trillion.
 

White House shocked by Lebanon fighter jet deal with Russia

World Tribune (Link) (December 18, 2008)

The Bush administration has been dismayed by the efforts of the Lebanese government to seek weapons from Iran and Russia. Officials said the government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora was urged by Washington not to acquire offensive combat platforms that could be seized by the Iranian-sponsored Hizbullah.

Officials said the State Department has contacted the Lebanese Foreign Ministry for clarification of Lebanon's decision to procure the MiG-29 fighter-jet from Moscow. They said the procurement would escalate regional tension, particularly with Lebanon's southern neighbor, Israel. In Moscow, Russia announced plans to supply 10 surplus MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter-jets to Lebanon. The Russian Federal Military Cooperation Service said the planes would be modernized and supplied free of charge. "Joint efforts with our Lebanese colleagues are now underway that deal with the purchase of Russian armored vehicles, artillery and other military hardware, as well as other types of armaments," Mikhail Dmitriyev, director of the Russian agency, said. "This means assistance in budgetary funds."

In Paris, Netanyahu airs concerns on Iran

Associated Press (Link) - Jamey Keaten (December 18, 2008)

Benjamin Netanyahu, who hopes to become Israel's next prime minister, warned Thursday that "a terribly dangerous threshold will be crossed" if Iran obtains nuclear weapons, and urged world leaders to make sure it does not happen.

After a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the hardline front-runner in next year's Israeli elections laid out his plans for Mideast peace and called Iran the "greatest historical challenge" the world faces. "We have never had a situation in the history of the world in which a radical regime with a retrograde ideology and apparently known ambitions on the use of force will get access to the weapons of mass death," Netanyahu told reporters, referring to the prospect of an Iranian nuclear bomb.

The whirlwind visit to Paris came as a French parliamentary report raised new warning signs about Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapon, and amid revelations about a budding European Union peace initiative for the Middle East. French Foreign Ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier, confirming some details of a report Thursday in the Le Figaro daily newspaper, said EU foreign ministers had discussed earlier this month a "working document" to ease tensions between the Palestinians and Israel.

Obama planning billion-dollar 'bailout' for abortion industry

One News Now (Link) - Jim Brown (December 18, 2008)

A pro-life group in Washington has launched a campaign to oppose what it calls president-elect Barack Obama's planned $1.5 billion "bailout" of the abortion industry. Last week, the Obama-Biden Transition Project posted a report on its website that calls for dramatic policy reversals on abortion, including $1 billion in taxpayer money for international abortion groups like Planned Parenthood. The report, titled "Advancing Reproductive Rights and Health in a New Administration," also calls for a 133-percent increase in funding for the Title X program, which funds Planned Parenthood clinics across the country.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, is hoping a Republican-led effort in the Senate will block Obama's plan to substantially increase taxpayer funding of the abortion industry. "This billion-dollar bailout of the abortion industry comes at a time, number one, when the economy is suffering dramatically with true need. And number two, it communicates an incredible depth of arrogance, especially when you consider that the vast majority of Americans -- men and women, no matter who you talk to -- they don't believe that people who don't believe in abortion should be funding it," she contends. "Most Americans don't believe that we should be funding abortions, especially in a time of economic crisis."
 
The Susan B. Anthony List has started a "Stop the Abortion Bailout" campaign designed to recruit thousands of activists to send letters to their senators "with the goal of securing the 41 votes necessary to sustain a Senate filibuster of the abortion bailout."

Many beliefs, many paths to heaven?

USA Today (Link) - Cathy Lynn Grossman (December 18, 2008)

Most American religious believers, including most Christians, say eternal life is not exclusively for those who accept Christ as their savior, a new survey finds. Of the 65% of people who held this open view of heaven's gates, 80% named at least one non-Christian group — Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists or people with no religion at all — who may also be saved, according to a new survey released today by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. This means 52% of Christians do not agree with the doctrines many religions teach, particularly conservative denominations.

Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, calls the findings "a theological crisis for American evangelicals. They represent at best a misunderstanding of the Gospel and at worst a repudiation of the Gospel." This survey on salvation is a follow-up to a highly controversial finding in Pew's Religious Landscape survey, released earlier this year. It detailed the religious demographics, beliefs and behavior of 35,000 U.S. adults surveyed in 2007.

Hamas says won't extend truce with Israel

Yahoo News (Link) - Hussein Dakroub - Associated Press (December 18, 2008)

Two Hamas officials said the Islamic group would not extend a six-month truce with the Israelis as militants in the Gaza Strip fired rockets at southern Israel and Israel hit back with airstrikes Thursday. Hamas said previously that the cease-fire ends Friday, but Israel maintained the unwritten truce did not have an expiration date.

Violence has already resumed, although at a lower level than before the truce took effect. On Thursday, Gaza militants fired 11 rockets and six mortar shells toward Israel. Israel's military launched at least two airstrikes on rocket squads. "There is no chance of extending the calm," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said in Gaza. He blamed Israel for the breakdown.

In Lebanon, Hamas official Osama Hamdan told The Associated Press the truce would end Friday. It was not clear whether this was Hamas' final word, however. The group, which rules Gaza, has been issuing contradictory statements this week about extending the truce. There was a chance the lull could be restored despite recent violence. Both sides appeared to be jockeying for position, trying to improve the terms of the truce, but a single attack by either side causing significant casualties could spark a larger conflict.

Obama defends Warren choice

WorldNet Daily (Link) (December 18, 2008)

Responding to outcry from homosexual-rights leaders over his choice of evangelical pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration, President-elect Barack Obama said today Americans who disagree with each other on social issues need to "come together." "That dialogue is part of what my campaign is all about," he told reporters in Chicago.

The announcement yesterday of Warren's role in the Jan. 20 inauguration prompted an angry response from homosexual-rights activists who decried the Southern California megachurch pastor's vocal support for Proposition 8. The ballot measure, which passed Nov. 4, enshrines in the California constitution a definition of marriage limited to one man and one woman.

Defending his choice, Obama told reporters today he's been a "fierce advocate for equality" for homosexuals and will remain so. Obama noted that despite his disagreement with Warren on a number of issues, the pastor invited him to speak at Saddleback Church's Global Summit on AIDS and the Church in 2006. Some evangelicals at the time objected to a pro-choice Democrat being given the pulpit of a church that opposes abortion. At last year's AIDS summit, in November, Sen. Hillary Clinton gave a warmly received speech while Obama was among several candidates who presented taped messages via satellite.

IMF warns of economic riots, police ready for civil unrest

WorldNet Daily (Link) - Chelsea Schilling (December 18, 2008)

Pentagon resources and U.S. troops may be used if needed to quell protests and bank runs during an economic crisis, the U.S. Army War College's Strategic Institute reported. "Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security," the War College study states.

Incidents of economic collapse, terrorism and disruption of legal order could require deployment of forces within the U.S., it said. A "strategic shock" could require the nation to use "military force against hostile groups inside the United States." International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has warned that advanced nations could face civil unrest during distressful economic times "[S]ocial unrest may happen in many countries – including advanced economies" if the economic crises are not properly dealt with, Strauss-Kahn said.

With economy in shambles, Congress gets a raise

The Hill (Link) - Jordy Yager (December 17, 2008)

A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay. Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.

“As lawmakers make a big show of forcing auto executives to accept just $1 a year in salary, they are quietly raiding the vault for their own personal gain,” said Daniel O’Connell, chairman of The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), a non-partisan group. “This money would be much better spent helping the millions of seniors who are living below the poverty line and struggling to keep their heat on this winter.”

However, at 2.8 percent, the automatic raise that lawmakers receive is only half as large as the 2009 cost of living adjustment of Social Security recipients. Still, Steve Ellis, vice president of the budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense, said Congress should have taken the rare step of freezing its pay, as lawmakers did in 2000. “Look at the way the economy is and how most people aren’t counting on a holiday bonus or a pay raise — they’re just happy to have gainful employment,” said Ellis. “But you have the lawmakers who are set up and ready to get their next installment of a pay raise and go happily along their way.”

Raid on Family's Home and Organic Food Co-Op Challenged

 The Buckeye Institute (Link) (December 17, 2008)

The Buckeye Institute's 1851 Center for Constitutional Law today took legal action against the Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) and the Lorain County Health Department for violating the constitutional rights of John and Jacqueline Stowers of LaGrange, Ohio. The Stowers operate an organic food cooperative called Manna Storehouse. ODA and Lorain County Health Department agents forcefully raided their home and unlawfully seized the family's personal food supply, cell phones and personal computers. The legal center seeks to halt future similar raids. The complaint was filed in Lorain County Court of Common Pleas.

"The use of these police state tactics on a peaceful family is simply unacceptable," Buckeye Institute President David Hansen said.  "Officers rushed into the Stowers' home with guns drawn and held the family - including ten young children - captive for six hours. This outrageous case of bureaucratic overreach must be addressed."

The Buckeye Institute argues the right to buy food directly from local farmers; distribute locally-grown food to neighbors; and pool resources to purchase food in bulk are rights that do not require a license. In addition, the right of peaceful citizens to be free from paramilitary police raids, searches and seizures is guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Section 14, Article 1 of the Ohio Constitution.

Dollar No Longer Haven After Fed Moves Rate Near Zero

Bloomberg (Link) - Kim-Mai Cutler and Bo Nielsen (December 17, 2008)

The world’s biggest currency-trading firms say the dollar’s appeal as a haven amid the financial crisis all but evaporated. The U.S. currency slid to a 13-year low against the yen today and had its biggest one-day decline versus the euro after the Federal Reserve reduced its target interest rate yesterday to a range of zero to 0.25 percent, the lowest among the world’s biggest economies. CMC Markets said today the currency’s prospects appear “ominous.” State Street Global markets said the dollar’s outlook has been “undermined.”

“The dollar has been under heavy downward pressure,” said Robert Minikin, a senior currency strategist in London at Standard Chartered Bank Plc. “This move is very well-justified and has a long way to run.” Standard Chartered is preparing to cut its dollar forecasts, Minikin said. Yesterday’s rate cut brings the Fed’s target to below the Bank of Japan’s for the first time since January 1993. U.S. policy makers repeated plans to buy agency debt and mortgage- backed securities and said they will study buying Treasuries, a policy known as quantitative easing.

U.S. - Israel Collision Course

Dick Morris (Link) (December 17, 2008)

With the election of Barack Obama, the United States has moved dramatically to the left in its foreign policy at just the time that Israel, which seems likely to return Bibi Netanyahu to office in early February, is moving to the right. A collision is almost inevitable.

Caroline Glick, the highly astute conservative columnist for the Jerusalem Post, writes that the “international community” believes that Obama “will move quickly to place massive pressure on the next Israeli government to withdraw from Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the interests of advancing a ‘peace process’ with the Palestinians and the Syrians.” She notes that “people who have been in close contact with Obama’s foreign policy transition team have privately acknowledged that the widespread belief that Obama will move swiftly to put the screws on Israel is fully justified. According to one source who has spent a great deal of time with the transition team since last month’s U.S. elections, Obama’s people are ‘scope-locked’ on Israel.”

Meanwhile, in Israel, there is a growing consensus, reflected in public opinion surveys, that trading land for peace is a chimera. Netanyahu points out that “we do not have a viable partner with whom to negotiate peace.” The Palestinian Authority does not speak for the people of either Gaza or the West Bank, and Hamas, which probably does (it won the election), does not want to be a party to any peace agreement. Recent experience suggests that Hamas will quickly install rocket launchers on any territory Israel concedes, using it not as a basis for peace, but as a platform from which to kill more Jews.

Top Israeli officer says Hizbullah will be destroyed in five days 'next time'

The Daily Star (Link) - Andrew Wander (December 17, 2008) Commentary

Israel is developing plans to "destroy" Hizbullah in an armed onslaught of such severity that it would require no more than five days to complete, a senior Israeli military officer has said. The commander of Israel's artillery division, which fired an average of 5,000 shells a day into Lebanon during the summer war in 2006, said that in any future conflict his men would "fire to destroy." "No village will be immune," Brigadier General Michael Ben-Baruch told The Jerusalem Post newspaper. "We will give them about a 12-hour warning and then strike back."

His comments are the latest in a series of saber-rattling interviews in which senior Israeli military figures have outlined their plans for the next assault on Lebanon. The tone of the rhetoric coming out of Israel became so severe during the summer that Prime Minister Fouad Siniora complained to the United Nations about the threats. A recurrent theme in the rhetoric has been the idea that in any future conflict, a wider range of Lebanon's civilian and military infrastructure would be considered a fair target for a disproportionate Israeli response.

Four really, really bad scenarios

Politico (Link) - Eamon Javers (December 17, 2008)

What’s the worst that could happen? That’s a question that James Rickards spends a lot of time pondering these days, as he sifts through the national security implications of the financial crisis facing the United States.

Rickards will lay out his worst case scenarios in a lecture sponsored by the Navy and the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy tonight. And his forecasts aren’t for the faint of heart. Rickards calls it the “A to Z” problem: What are the threats that could make the U.S. economy look less like America and more like Zimbabwe? He sees them everywhere – in the Chinese ownership of vast amounts of American debt, in Russia’s increased centralization of its economy, in Al Qaeda’s long-established fascination with damaging the U.S. economy.

In many ways, Rickards is the ultimate bear. He’s not just thinking about whether the stock market will decline, but whether or not the stock market will survive. All that puts Rickards decidedly outside mainstream economic and political thinking in America.

But he does have an influential audience: the United States intelligence and defense communities. Rickards is a regular adviser on financial issues to the director of national intelligence's office, and he lends his financial advice to the national security community. His lecture comes as part of an annual “Rethinking Seminar” produced by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Mutilated Christian girl, 10, forgives attackers

WorldNet Daily (Link) - Chelsea Schilling (December 16, 2008)

Hindu extremists may have burned a 10-year-old Christian girl's face, inflicted shrapnel wounds on 40 percent of her body and forced her family to hide in a forest and flee to a refugee camp in Orissa, India, but her plight hasn't shaken her faith and thankfulness to God this season. "Christmas is a time to thank the baby Jesus who saved me from the fire and saved my face which was disfigured and wounded," Namrata Nayak told Asia News.

Nayak's face was severely mutilated after Hindu extremists bombed the home where she was staying on Aug. 26. They broke into the house and burned it while Nayak and her siblings hid in a small bathroom. Before exiting the home, they left a bomb in a dresser, according to the report. While the little girl surveyed the destruction, the bomb detonated and burned her face. The explosion also lodged shrapnel into her face, hands and back.

Earthquake shakes southern Sweden

The Local (Link) (December 16, 2008)

Southern Sweden was rocked by an earthquake early on Tuesday morning which caused a flood of phone calls to emergency services operators from alarmed residents. The bed shook for about 20 seconds," Helsingborg resident John O'Leary told The Local. O'Leary said the quake woke him at about 6:20am and that the shaking knocked over several items in his apartment.

Uppsala University seismologist Reynir Bödvarsson estimated the quake measured between 4.5 and 5.0 on the Richter scale. “It was likely felt in much of southern Sweden. For Sweden, this is a very strong quake,” Bödvarsson told the TT news agency. Seismologists in Sweden estimate the quake’s epicentre was located 18 kilometres underground, beneath a point about one kilometre east from Malmö’s Sturup Airport, located about 30 kilometres east of the city.

According to the US Geological Survey, the earthquake had a magnitude of 4.7, which would make it the strongest earthquake to hit Sweden in more than 100 years. Back on October 23rd, 1904, an earthquake with an epicentre near the Koster Islands off Sweden’s west coast reached a magnitude of 6.0 on the Richter scale. Much of the Baltic region, including southern Sweden, was rattled in 2004 by a 5.3 magnitude quake with its epicentre in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad on the south shores of the Baltic Sea.

Tuesday's tremor was felt primarily by residents in Skåne. People living in Malmö reported feeling strong tremors and buildings throughout the city shook. “It’s not dangerous for people, but there certainly may be some cracking in the facades of buildings," said Bödvarsson. "I've never been so scared in my life," said Tina Morris, who resides in Skurup, about 40 kilometres south east of Malmö. “The roar of the quake was horrible, but it was the bed shaking that woke me up. I could hear the plates and glass rattling downstairs.” Residents in Blekinge, just east of Skåne, also reported feeling the ground shake beneath them.

A Giant Breach in Earth's Magnetic Field

NASA (Link) (December 16, 2008)

NASA's five THEMIS spacecraft have discovered a breach in Earth's magnetic field ten times larger than anything previously thought to exist. Solar wind can flow in through the opening to "load up" the magnetosphere for powerful geomagnetic storms. But the breach itself is not the biggest surprise. Researchers are even more amazed at the strange and unexpected way it forms, overturning long-held ideas of space physics.

"At first I didn't believe it," says THEMIS project scientist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "This finding fundamentally alters our understanding of the solar wind-magnetosphere interaction."

Brown: Settlements obstruct peace

The Jerusalem Post (Link) - AP (December 15, 2008)

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Monday that Israeli settlements are one of the largest remaining obstacles to a Mideast peace deal. Following talks with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad, Brown said resolving the settlement issue and boosting investment in Palestinian businesses could help broker a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Brown told reporters that "everybody now sees the contours of what a two-state solution would look like - a Palestinian state that was secure and viable economically, an Israeli state that's secure within its own borders and where its worries about peace and stability were answered. Brown has backed Fayad's attempts to stall European Union plans to strengthen relations with Israel until settlement construction is halted. Brown will hold talks Tuesday with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Israel: Hamas Makes "Declaration of War"

Bridges For Peace - BFP Israel Mosaic Radio - Joshua Spurlock (December 15, 2008)

With the December 19 end of the Hamas-Israel ceasefire looming, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had some strong words following Damascus-based Hamas-leader Khaled Mashaal’s comments on Hamas television saying Hamas would not renew the truce.

Regarding Hamas’s apparent decision to continue fighting, MFA spokesman Yigal Palmor, in an interview with Bridges for Peace, said, “That is a declaration of war, this is a declaration of intentions, that means that they are going to pursue bombings and rocket shootings and so on, and obviously there will be a reaction [by Israel].”

Haaretz reported Mashaal later toned down the comments by hinting that Hamas would not be the first to break the ceasefire. Hamas and the Gaza-based terror groups as a whole have appeared divided over renewing the ceasefire, which was initiated as a six-month truce on June 19.

The ceasefire has been a calm in name-only over the last month, as Hamas and other terrorists have fired massive numbers of rockets and mortars following an Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip to destroy a tunnel they say was meant for kidnapping more Israeli soldiers. Israel’s response to the rocket fire has varied, at times responding militarily, and at times only responding by closing the Gaza border.

Palmor said that Israel believes a renewal of the truce is in the best interests of both sides, but that while peace takes both sides, provoking violence only takes one side. “It needs both sides to commit themselves to the ceasefire,” said Palmor. “So if we are attacked by Hamas, then we will respond.”

Qurei: No room for Jews in the West Bank

The Jerusalem Post/AP (Link) - Khaled Abu Toameh and Mark Weiss (December 14, 2008)

There will be no room for Jews or settlements in the West Bank because their presence there will always be an obstacle to peace with Israel, Ahmed Qurei, head of the Palestinian Authority negotiating team, said at the weekend.

Qurei, who was speaking to Palestinian reporters at his home in the village of Abu Dis, said that the peace talks have been suspended because of the upcoming elections in Israel, adding that the gap between the two sides remained as wide as ever.

Qurei said that the major difference centered on the status of the settlements in the West Bank. Initially, Israel sought to annex 7.3 percent of the West Bank," he disclosed. "Then it went down to 6.8%. Of course we completely rejected this idea."