Watchman Newsletter

Hezbollah War Can Destroy Half of Israeli Army!

Bible Prophecy Today (Link) - Bill Salus (October 17, 2009)

President Barrack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, but this crowning achievement certainly can’t be attributed to his “Engagement” Mideast peace policy. Current events in that hostile region depict the daunting prospect that the “Mother of all Middle East Wars” is coming soon!

For over six decades the international community has attempted to convince the Arabs and Jews to get along peacefully. It has reduced American presidents from kings to real estate brokers attempting to barter land for peace, and to what avail? The geo-political situation in the cradle of civilization worsens daily. The flawed land for peace policy does nothing more than ask the nation Israel to take a lethal bullet from point blank range for the good of the international community.

Israel realizes now, more than ever before, that their enemies don’t want peace with the Jews; they want peace without the Jews. The Arabs don’t want a 2 - State Solution; they seek a 1 - State Solution consisting of a final Arab State in the Mideast called Palestine. Furthermore, they now believe it is obtainable. The Palestinians and their Arab and Persian cohorts are no longer lobbing protest stones at the Jews but are on the verge of going nuclear!

Vaclav Klaus says it is 'too late' to stop Lisbon Treaty

Telegraph UK (Link) - Colin Freeman (October 17, 2009)

The Lisbon Treaty has taken another step towards becoming law across Europe after the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, effectively abandoned his attempts to stall it.

Mr Klaus, the sole remaining leader in the European Union not to have signed the document, conceded that despite his personal opposition to the treaty, it was now too late to stop it.

He also dismisssed speculation that he would try to hold off formally signing the document after the forthcoming British general election next year. Such a move would pave the way for a future Conservative government to hold a referendum on the treaty, which could derail the entire plan if it delivered a "No" vote. But Mr Klaus said: "I will not and cannot wait for the British election. They would have to hold it in the coming days or weeks."

In an interview with Czech newspaper Lidove Noviny, he added: "I do not consider the Lisbon Treaty to be a good thing for Europe, for the freedom of Europe, or for the Czech Republic.

"However, the train has already travelled so fast and so far that I guess it will not be possible to stop it or turn it around, however much we would wish to."

Thatcher adviser: Copenhagen goal is 1-world government

WorldNet Daily (Link) - Jerome R. Corsi (October 17, 2009)

A former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher says the real purpose of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen on Dec. 7-18 is to use global warming hype as a pretext to lay the foundation for a one-world government.

"At [the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in] Copenhagen this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed," Lord Christopher Monckton told a Minnesota Free Market Institute audience on Thursday at Bethel University in St. Paul.

"Your president will sign it. Most of the Third World countries will sign it, because they think they're going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regimes from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won't sign it," he told the audience of some 700 attendees.

"I read that treaty and what it says is this: that a world government is going to be created. The word 'government' actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity.

"The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to Third World countries, in satisfaction of what is called, coyly, 'climate debt' – because we've been burning CO2 and they haven't. We've been screwing up the climate and they haven't. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government is enforcement."

Doomsday For Damascus?

Bible Prophecy Today (Link) - Michael G. Mickey (October 17, 2009)

Examining current events through the lens of bible prophecy continues to paint a more accurate picture of the end times as detailed in Scripture, seemingly by the hour.

In this commentary I want to illustrate how events presently taking place in Lebanon may be setting the stage for Damascus, Syria - the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world - to cease to exist.

The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap (Isaiah 17:1).

Damascus is today a city of well over 1.5 million inhabitants. Thus, the magnitude of an event occurring that would lead to it being so utterly destroyed it would no longer remain a city brings frightening, even apocalyptic, imagery to mind. But could it happen, potentially very soon? As I'm about to detail, there is little doubt.

Report Says Syria Gave Hezbollah Rockets

United Press International (Link) (October 15, 2009)

Syria has given Hezbollah more than a quarter of its arsenal, including missiles capable of hitting anywhere in Israel, a television report said.

Syrian and Iranian military officers also are training Hezbollah fighters in the Lebanese mountains to use advanced missile systems, Israel Channel 10 reported Thursday.

The television station said it based its report on an article in the Kuwaiti Arabic-language newspaper al-Jarida.

The television report said the newspaper interviewed diplomats in Jerusalem on the issue.

Iranian and Syrian military officers are not only training Hezbollah operatives to use the new missiles but are assisting them to set up early warning stations in the Lebanese mountains to alert them when Israeli air force jets enter Lebanese airspace, the report said.

Israeli security officials have estimated Hezbollah has an arsenal of more than 40,000 rockets and more than 300 weapons caches in southern Lebanon.

Turkey Tightens Syrian-Iranian Axis after Snubbing Israel

Israel National News (Link) - Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu (October 14, 2009)

The threat of the anti-Israel axis north of the border worsened Wednesday with the announcement that Turkey, which has close ties with Iran, conducted joint military drills with Syria after snubbing Israel.

The maneuvers were held last week, revealed Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, who made the announcement on the Qatar-based Arabic-language Al Jazeera news network. "One week ago, Syria and Turkey carried out maneuvers near Ankara," Moallem announced. "This is important because it refutes reports of poor relations between the military and political institutes in Turkey over its strategic relations with Syria."

The Syrian-Turkish military exercises were apparently being held at the same time that Turkey was informing Jerusalem that it would ban the IAF from participating in the joint Anatolian Eagle exercise, a move that was not made public by Israel until Sunday. The war games, scheduled to be held together with Turkey, the U.S. and Italy, reportedly were to include mock bombing raids in air space near the borders of Iran, Iraq and Syria. Israeli planes are believed to have passed through Turkish air space two years ago during the attack on a Syrian nuclear facility under construction.

Two decades of close ties between Ankara and Jerusalem appear to be coming to an end, the Asia Times reported Wednesday. It explained that demands from the Arab world and from hard-line Muslims in Turkey have influenced the government to distance itself from Israel, which has supplied Ankara with hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of equipment for refurbishing tanks and airplanes.

"This is a seriously worrying development," former Israeli Air Force Commander Eitan Ben-Eliyahu told an interviewer on Israeli television. "Turkey is critically essential in the training of our air force over wide spaces, particularly given Turkey's strategic location adjacent to both Iran and Syria."

Turkey Follows Israel Snub with Syrian Exercises

The Media Line (Link) (October 14, 2009)

Turkey is following up its decision to allow joint military exercises with the U.S. and NATO dissolve rather than participate alongside Israel with another pointed tweak at Jerusalem. Syrian Defense Minister Ali Habib told a news conference on Tuesday that Damascus and Ankara will hold their own joint military exercises next week.

In a rebuke to the Turks, U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said it is “inappropriate for any nation to be removed from an exercise like this at the last minute," but stopped short of framing the American position in terms of the Arab-Israeli conflict or in terms of the specific affront to Israel. Turkey’s decision to ban Israel from the annual air force exercises was reportedly in response to pressure to punish the Jewish state for its military incursion into the Gaza Strip last January. Israel’s military manufacturers fear its industry is rapidly losing one of its best customers. Numerous reports of negotiations over arms deals drying up are being heard.

'Now we have proof' jihadis infiltrating D.C.

WorldNet Daily (Link) - Art Moore (October 14, 2009)

In the wake of the sensational ACORN video sting operation by two young investigators, an even more daring and devastating undercover investigation – this one infiltrating the nation's most aggressive Muslim "civil rights" organization for six months – has produced stunning revelations about the supposedly "moderate" group, backed up by 12,000 pages of documents obtained during the secret op.

As revealed in a new book detailing the operation and its findings, the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, is not the beneficent Muslim civil-rights group it claims to be. Indisputable evidence now shows CAIR and other "mainstream" Islamic groups are acting as fronts for a well-funded conspiracy of the Muslim Brotherhood – the parent of al-Qaida and Hamas – to infiltrate and destroy the American system.

Until now, CAIR has remained a powerful force in the nation's capital and across the country, from demanding the Obama administration stop FBI counter-terrorism tactics to compelling a school district to apologize to Muslims.

That influence, many believe, may be coming to an end, as a result of the undercover investigation – which included the son of a veteran counter-terrorism investigator, who grew a beard and converted to Islam, as well as two veiled female interns.

"Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America," a WND Books publication by counter-terrorism investigator P. David Gaubatz and "Infiltration" author Paul Sperry, documents CAIR's ultimate purpose to transform the United States into an Islamic nation under the authority of the Quran. The book already has prompted action on Capitol Hill.

Report suggests Solana’s term will be extended beyond October — What Holly Thinks

Fulfilled Prophecy (Link) - Holly Pivec (October 13, 2009)

For those of us who have been following the theory that the 70th Week of Daniel began Jan. 1, 2007, things keep getting more interesting.

First, Javier Solana — the chief architect of the new European Neighbourhood Policy which launched Jan. 1, 2007 — announced that he planned to retire October 17. Now with this date only days away, he has been asked to extend his term until the end of October and possibly — according to a new report released yesterday by the Brookings Institution — until at least the end of December. The purpose for the extension is so EU leaders can sort out all the legal issues involved with the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty, if and when it is fully ratified. Read the report here.

Second, Solana’s term as the secretary general of the Western European Union is also set to expire Nov. 24, and certain EU leaders would like to see the entire WEU dissolved. Yet, according to the same Brookings report, the WEU is “unwilling to be dissolved.” This news is fascinating to those of us who have considered the possibility that the 10 WEU nations may be the 10-nation military alliance foretold in Bible prophecy.

Third, Solana announced his retirement at a very ironic time — when he was poised to become the High Representative for Foreign Security and Defense under the Lisbon Treaty — a position with many increased powers. Did he perhaps hope that, by retiring from his current post, he would be appointed to that new position when the Lisbon Treaty finally went into force?

So, what will be the fate of Solana, the WEU and the Lisbon Treaty? All we can do is continue to wait and see.

Dollar loses reserve status to yen & euro

New York Post (Link) - Paul Tharp (October 13, 2009)

Ben Bernanke's dollar crisis went into a wider mode yesterday as the greenback was shockingly upstaged by the euro and yen, both of which can lay claim to the world title as the currency favored by central banks as their reserve currency.

Over the last three months, banks put 63 percent of their new cash into euros and yen -- not the greenbacks -- a nearly complete reversal of the dollar's onetime dominance for reserves, according to Barclays Capital. The dollar's share of new cash in the central banks was down to 37 percent -- compared with two-thirds a decade ago.

Currently, dollars account for about 62 percent of the currency reserve at central banks -- the lowest on record, said the International Monetary Fund.

Bernanke could go down in economic history as the man who killed the greenback on the operating table.

After printing up trillions of new dollars and new bonds to stimulate the US economy, the Federal Reserve chief is now boxed into a corner battling two separate monsters that could devour the economy -- ravenous inflation on one hand, and a perilous recession on the other.

Meet the 'father of world currency'

WorldNet Daily (Link) - Jerome R. Corsi (October 13, 2009)

A plan to replace the dollar with a world currency originated with Columbia University economics professor Robert Mundell, who won a Nobel Prize in economics in 1999 for creating the euro and is now widely regarded as "the father of the euro."

Mundell, currently an economic consultant to China, is the originator of the suggestion that the International Monetary Fund should utilize Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, to replace the dollar as a new standard for holding foreign exchange reserves in international trade transactions.

SDRs are international reserve assets calculated by the IMF in a basket of major currencies allocated to the IMF's 185 member nation-states in relation to the capital. The assets are largely in gold or widely accepted foreign currencies the members have on deposit with the IMF.

As far back as June 2008, Mundell was telling Reuters a major dollar crisis would come within five years, and China was discussing with him proposals to reform the global monetary system.

"There's no doubt about it that inside the Chinese government there's a lot of discussion going on," Mundell told Reuters. "I'm not sure how they're doing it, but I know they're going to get input from me."

In the interview, Mundell went so far as to speculate the Chinese-recommended solution would involve the IMF.

Aspiring to be the father of a global currency, Mundell has argued, "What you need to have is an International Monetary Fund that's going to take some of these excess dollars (such as held by China in foreign exchange reserves), put them into a substitution account inside the IMF or some other institution and then use that to create what is a new international currency."

Mundell stressed to Reuters that such a proposal would be "very acceptable" to China.

Jews in Israel Preparing for Service in the Rebuilt Jewish Temple

Bible Prophecy Today (Link) - Jimmy DeYoung (October 12, 2009)

A group of religious Jews who live in the Jordan Valley near the ancient city of Jericho are taking practical steps to prepare for the building of the third temple in Jerusalem by preparing descendants of the Kohanim, the priests, and the Levites for service in this next temple. These Jewish leaders have established a training center where temple priests can learn exactly how to conduct the daily temple services and offer the required sacrifices as dictated by the Jewish laws from the Biblical book of Leviticus.

The training center will include an exact replica of the temple where the student-priests can learn to do their duties which are required and this training center, the organizers believe, comes at an historic time marking the beginning of the work for the third temple.

Report: Arms ship stopped on way from Iran to Syria

YNet News (Link) (October 12, 2009)

A German merchant ship was stopped by US war ships in the waters of the Suez Bay in early October, on suspicion of carrying Iranian weapons bound for Syria, Berlin's Der Spiegel magazine reported Monday.

The shipment is a violation of a UN Resolution 1747, which ordered an arms embargo on both Tehran and Beirut, and has become a source of embarrassment for Berlin.

A German official described the incident as an "embarrassing affair," adding it was potentially damaging to trans-Atlantic relations.

According to the report, US soldiers stopped the vessel, Hansa India, at the beginning of October. Upon boarding the freighter, they found seven containers full of 7.62 millimeter ammunition suitable for AK-47 rifles and eighth container full of cartridges suitable for the manufacture of additional rounds.

The arms are believed to part of an Iranian shipment bound for either the Syrian army or Hezbollah.

The Hansa India is registered to the Hamburg-based shipping company Leonhardt and Blumberg. According to the company, the 297-foot long ship was leased to Iran's state-owned shipping company several years ago.

The US ships eventually allowed the freighter to continue on its reported destination in Malta only after the German government intervened. Upon its arrival, the containers were secured.

Nearly 1 in 4 people worldwide is Muslim, report says

CNN (Link) - Richard Allen Greene (October 12, 2009)

Nearly one in four people worldwide is Muslim -- and they are not necessarily where you might think, according to an extensive new study that aims to map the global Muslim population.

India, a majority-Hindu country, has more Muslims than any country except for Indonesia and Pakistan, and more than twice as many as Egypt.

China has more Muslims than Syria. Germany has more Muslims than Lebanon. And Russia has more Muslims than Jordan and Libya put together.

Nearly two out of three of the world’s Muslims are in Asia, stretching from Turkey to Indonesia.

The Middle East and north Africa, which together are home to about one in five of the world’s Muslims, trail a very distant second.

There are about 1.57 billion Muslims in the world, according to the report, “Mapping the Global Muslim Population,” by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. That represents about 23 percent of the total global population of 6.8 billion.

There are about 2.25 billion Christians, based on projections from the 2005 World Religions Database.

EU makes its mark on the world stage

Guardian UK (Link) - Javier Solana (October 11, 2009)

This is a landmark year for the European Union's role in the world. It marks 10 years of European security and defence policy (ESDP), during which the EU has become a global provider of security, making a real difference to people's lives all over the world. At the same time, we are on the threshold of a new era when the Lisbon treaty enters into force and provides fresh impetus for our external action.

In 10 years, we have deployed 20 operations on three continents to help prevent violence, restore peace and rebuild after a conflict. From Kabul to Pristina, from Ramallah to Kinshasa, the EU is monitoring borders, overseeing peace agreements, training police forces, building up criminal justice systems and protecting shipping from pirate attacks. Thanks to our achievements, we are receiving more and more calls to help in a crisis or after a war. We have the credibility, the values and the will to do this.

The EU was ahead of its time in 1999. The comprehensive, multi-faceted nature of our approach was novel. And the EU remains the only organisation that can call on a full panoply of instruments and resources that complement the traditional foreign policy tools of its member states, both to pre-empt or prevent a crisis and to restore peace and rebuild institutions after a conflict.

This is where the EU's unique added value lies. We combine humanitarian aid and support for institution-building and good governance with crisis-management capacities, technical and financial assistance, and political dialogue and mediation. The EU's joint civilian-military approach makes us flexible and able to offer tailor-made solutions to complex problems. Today's conflicts demonstrate more clearly than ever that a military solution is neither the sole nor the best option, particularly during the stabilisation of a crisis – a truth President Barack Obama has also emphasised.