Watchman Newsletter

Three major earthquakes rattle Philippines

Gulf News (Link) (July 24, 2010)

Manila: Three major earthquakes measuring between magnitude 7.3 and 7.4 hit the southern Philippines early on Saturday, seismologists said, but there were no reports of damage and no tsunami warning was issued.

The underwater quakes struck at a depth of between 575 and 605 kilometres, just over 100 kilometres southwest of Cotabato, in Mindanao, said the US Geological Survey.

The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said no destructive tsunami was generated by the quakes, the first of which hit at 6:08am (2208 GMT Friday).

“It was kind of mild,” said Monisa Tulawie, a staff member at the Cotabato city mayor’s office, who told AFP she felt one of the quakes.

Other residents contacted by phone were unaware of what had happened, saying they had not been woken by the tremors.

Mass grave in northern Mexico contains 50 bodies

BBC News (Link) (July 24, 2010)

Most of the bodies were found in deep pits, and some had been burned.

The Mexican authorities say they have recovered more than 50 bodies from a clandestine cemetery in the northern state of Nuevo Leon.

The dead are thought to be victims of drugs gangs who have been fighting for control of smuggling routes into the United States.

Investigators have been using heavy machinery to dig for the bodies outside the city of Monterrey.

Forensic experts are working to identify the dead.

"The majority of the bodies have tattoos which could give us an indication about whether they belonged to one group or other and whether they were linked to organised crime" said state attorney general Alejandro Garza y Garza.

Some have bullet wounds, and some are badly burned. Almost all the victims were men.

Change we must believe in

The Jerusalem Post (Link) - Caroline Glick (July 23, 2010)

Change has come to the Middle East. Over the past several weeks, multiple press reports indicate that Turkey is collaborating militarily with Syria in a campaign against the Kurds of Syria, Iraq and Turkey.

Turkey is a member of NATO. It fields the Western world’s top weapons systems.

Syria is Iran’s junior partner. It is a state sponsor of multiple terrorist organizations and a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction.

Last September, as Turkey’s Islamist government escalated its anti-Israel rhetoric, Ankara and Damascus signed a slew of economic and diplomatic agreements. As Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu made clear at the time, Turkey was using those agreements as a way to forge close alliances not only with Syria, but with Iran.

“We may establish similar mechanisms with Iran and other mechanisms. We want our relationship with our neighbors to turn into maximum cooperation via the principle of zero problems,” Davutoglu proclaimed.

And now those agreements have reportedly paved the way to military cooperation. Syrian President Bashar Assad has visited Istanbul twice in the past month and then two weeks ago, on the Kurdish New Year, Syrian forces launched an operation against Kurdish population centers throughout the country.

U.S. upgrades diplomatic ties with Palestinians in bid to woo Abbas

Haaretz (Link) - Natasha Mozgovaya, Barak Ravid & Avi Issacharoff  (July 23, 2010)

The U.S. announced this week that it would upgrade its diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Authority by granting its mission in Washington - which is actually a PLO mission - the same status it enjoys in most European countries: that of a PLO “general delegation.”

This is still a lower status than an embassy and does not give them any diplomatic privileges or immunities - a status the PA mission does have in many African and Asian countries, as well as some European and South American states. But it is a major step above what the PA has had until now.

Prior to this decision, the PA mission in Washington was at a very low level from the point of view of protocol: It was not even allowed to fly the PLO flag at the entrance to its offices.

“This decision reflects our confidence that through direct negotiations, we can help achieve a two-state solution with an independent and viable Palestine living side by side with Israel,” said White House spokesman Thomas Vietor. “We should begin preparing for that outcome now, as we continue to work with the Palestinian people on behalf of a better future.”

Ga. School Forces Christian Student to Alter Beliefs to Graduate

The Christian Post (Link) - Nathan Black (July 22, 2010)

An Augusta State University student filed suit Wednesday after she was told to change her Christian beliefs or otherwise be expelled from the school’s graduate counseling program.

“A public university student shouldn’t be threatened with expulsion for being a Christian and refusing to publicly renounce her faith, but that’s exactly what’s happening here,” said David French, senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund. “Simply put, the university is imposing thought reform.”

Jennifer Keeton, 24, has been enrolled in the College of Education’s School Counselor masters degree program since fall 2009. She has expressed her Christian beliefs in class discussions and written assignments, but it was her views regarding gender and sexuality that irked faculty.

According to the filed complaint, “She has stated that she believes sexual behavior is the result of accountable personal choice rather than an inevitability deriving from deterministic forces. She also has affirmed binary male-female gender, with one or the other being fixed in each person at their creation, and not a social construct or individual choice subject to alteration by the person so created. Further, she has expressed her view that homosexuality is a ‘lifestyle,’ not a ‘state of being.’”

Historic financial overhaul signed to law by Obama

Yahoo! News (Link) - AP - Jim Kuhnhenn (July 21, 2010)

Reveling over a new milestone in his presidency, a triumphant Barack Obama on Wednesday signed into law the most sweeping overhaul of lending and high-finance rules since the Great Depression, adding safeguards for millions of consumers and aiming to restrain Wall Street excesses that could set off a new recession.

The president’s signing ceremony capped nearly two years of intense and partisan debate over how to avoid a recurrence of the 2008 financial meltdown that buckled the U.S. economy and left sharp, lasting imprints on the nation’s politics and in Americans’ homes.

“Because of this law, the American people will never be asked again to foot the bill for Wall Street’s mistakes,” Obama said.

In a heated midterm election season that has dented his public support, Obama sought to put the complex law in pocketbook terms. Emphasizing provisions that guard borrowers from abusive lenders, he claimed “the strongest financial protections for consumers in the nation’s history.”

Not everyone agreed. Republicans portrayed the bill as a burden on small banks and the businesses that rely on them and argued that it will cost consumers and impede job growth.

Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, a member of the House GOP leadership, on Wednesday joined House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio in calling for the law’s repeal.

Gold Coin Sellers Angered by New Tax Law

ABC News (Link) - Rich Blake (July 21, 2010)

Those already outraged by the president’s health care legislation now have a new bone of contention -- a scarcely noticed tack-on provision to the law that puts gold coin buyers and sellers under closer government scrutiny.

The issue is rising to the fore just as gold coin dealers are attracting attention over sales tactics.

Section 9006 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will amend the Internal Revenue Code to expand the scope of Form 1099. Currently, 1099 forms are used to track and report the miscellaneous income associated with services rendered by independent contractors or self-employed individuals.

Coin Dealers Flipping

Starting Jan. 1, 2012, Form 1099s will become a means of reporting to the Internal Revenue Service the purchases of all goods and services by small businesses and self-employed people that exceed $600 during a calendar year. Precious metals such as coins and bullion fall into this category and coin dealers have been among those most rankled by the change.

This provision, intended to mine what the IRS deems a vast reservoir of uncollected income tax, was included in the health care legislation ostensibly as a way to pay for it. The tax code tweak is expected to raise $17 billion over the next 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Uniting Religions for World Change: The G8 World Religions Summit

Crossroads (Link) - Exerpts from Forcing Change Volume 4, Issue 6 by Carl Teichrib (July 21, 2010)

Points to Ponder About Christian Interfaith Involvement:

1) The interfaith approach is rationally directionless. If all religions are equally valid or hold some common level of spiritual authenticity, as the interfaith movement asserts, then all religions are ultimately baseless. Therefore, the nonbeliever can logically reject Christianity as a meaningless sect among many meaningless faiths. For by acknowledging another religion as a vehicle that proclaims the revelation of God, even tentatively, the exclusive nature of God as revealed in the Bible (Isaiah 45:18-22; John 14:6-7) can no longer be viewed as exclusively true. The door has now been opened to consider any other spiritual claim as legitimate; and to not accept these other claims would demonstrate an intolerant exclusivity.

Either Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be, the great I AM – the only true God – or He’s only one way among many and His claim is false. It’s an all or nothing position (see Joshua 24:14-24).

2) The interfaith position muddies the Christian mission of bringing the good news of Jesus Christ as God incarnate come to redeem sinful humanity. Inter-religious bridge building bolsters the idea (continued on page 17)

America’s Fast Track to the Third World

American Thinker (Link) - Dan Gorski (July 21, 2010)

The Department of Defense has sounded an alarm about our access to a strategically vital group of metals called the rare earth elements. A report on the problem prepared by the GAO is not pretty. It concludes that the Chinese now control the production, processing, and manufacture of final products of these vital metals and now own the patents for many of these processes.

The worries of the DoD are well-justified; missile guidance systems, smart bombs, night vision gear, unmanned aircraft, and much more are dependent on the rare earth elements in some way. Without these metals, our weapons technology would be approximately that of the Korean War. Battery-powered tools, hybrid vehicles, the environmentalists’ precious windmills, and almost everything else electric cannot get by without them.

Rare earth elements have been described as the vitamins of modern technology. It took Beijing approximately twenty years to strip this technology from its birthplace in the United States and move it to China.

‘Call Them Racists’

The Wall Street Journal (Link) - James Taranto (July 20, 2010)

The “Journolist” scandal has deepened with new revelations that participants in the now-defunct email list for ideologically approved journalists--no conservatives allowed--engaged in efforts to suppress news damaging to then-candidate Barack Obama.

The Daily Caller reports ABC News’s “tough questioning” of Obama at a 2008 debate with Hillary Clinton “left many of [the Journolist participants] outraged:”

“George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”

Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

Most damning is a long quote from a Spencer Ackerman, who worked for something called the Washington Independent:

I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.

And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them--Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares--and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.

Tisha B’Av and Sovereignty on the Temple Mount

Koinonia House (Link) - Chuck Missler (July 20, 2010)

All public transportation silenced, all restaurants closed in Jerusalem on Monday evening as the sun set. The Hebrew day of great tragedies, Tisha b’Av, fell at sundown. In remembrance, tens of thousands of Jews gathered at the Western Wall to pray and petition the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel.

Tisha b’Av is simply Hebrew for the 9th day of the month of Av, and it completes the Three Weeks of mourning that began with the Fast of Tammuz. Many disasters have befallen the Jews on the 9th of Av throughout history. According to Jewish tradition, this was the day that God told the Children of Israel they were prohibited from entering the Promised Land because of disbelief. They were forced to wander in the desert forty more years until that adult generation had died out. That tragic day was just the beginning…

On the 9th of Av in:

• 586 BC, Solomon’s Temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and the Babylonian captivity began;

• AD 70, the Second Temple, which stood during Christ’s ministry, was destroyed by the Romans precisely as Jesus predicted in Luke 19;

• AD 135, the famous Bar Kokhba revolt was squelched when Bethar, the last Jewish stronghold, fell to the Romans;

• AD 136, the Roman Emperor Hadrian established a heathen temple to Jupiter on the site of the Jewish Temple. Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as a pagan city, and renamed the land as Palestina, to distance its Jewish heritage. The date when the Temple area was plowed under by the Romans was the 9th of Av.

The day has continued to be associated with grief for the Jewish people throughout history. For example, Pope Urban II declared the Crusades on the 9th of Av in 1242. The Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 on this day, and in 1942, the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were mass deported to the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland. Thus the 9th of Av, Tisha B’Av, has become a symbol of all the persecutions and misfortunes of the Jewish people, for the loss of their national independence and their sufferings in exile. Above all, it is a day of intense mourning for the destruction of the Temple.

Israeli Jews Returning to Palestinian Areas?

The Media Line (Link) - Arieh O’Sullivan (July 20, 2010)

Israel is considering allowing Palestinian security forces to join Israeli troops at checkpoints and letting its Jewish citizens back into the Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank for the first time in nearly a decade.

The move is seen not only as a show of confidence the Israeli defense establishment has in the improved Palestinian security forces, but also as a good-will gesture that could enhance the Palestinian economy and be a step toward direct negotiations.

The Israeli Army’s Central Command told The Media Line their staff is making necessary arrangements to allow Israelis back into cities under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

Israel barred its citizens from entering the Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank at the outbreak of the Palestinian Intifada uprising in 2000, due to attacks on Israelis, including lynchings. Three years ago, Israel eased the ban by allowing Israeli Arabs to enter Palestinian-controlled areas areas to shop and visit relatives, but non-Arab Israelis are still barred.

“This is more than just a headline,” an Israeli military official in the Central Command told The Media Line. “It is something that we are seriously looking into and is the result of requests we have had in meetings with the Palestinians.”

Effort to bypass Electoral College gains momentum

One News Now (Link) - Chad Groening (July 20, 2010)

An author and political analyst reports an effort is afoot by well-funded liberal activists to effectively get rid of the Electoral College in its present form, without having to use the constitutional amendment process.

A group called National Popular Vote (NPV) is pushing state legislatures to enter into a compact that calls for them to allocate their electoral votes in a particular presidential election to the candidate who gets the most votes nationwide rather than to the contender who gets the most votes in their state. NPV argues that the legislation “would reform the Electoral College so that the electoral vote reflects the choice of the nation’s voters” for president.

However, Tara Ross, author of Enlightened Democracy: The Case for the Electoral College, cautions that under such a plan, the 11 largest states -- with a total of 271 electoral votes -- could band together and elect the president.

“If you got those 11 biggest states to all agree to do that, you would be switching to a direct election system,” she explains. “By contrast, if you were to try to formally get rid of the Electoral College through a constitutional amendment, that would take 38 states, which is a much higher hurdle to climb and one they think they can’t climb, which is why they’re trying to do it through this kind of end-run around the constitutional process.”

Obama Moves away from ‘Freedom of Religion’ toward ‘Freedom of Worship’?

Catholic Online (Link) - Randy Sly (July 19, 2010)

The change in language was barely noticeable to the average citizen but political observers are raising red flags at the use of a new term “freedom of worship” by President Obama and Secretary Clinton as a replacement for the term freedom of religion. This shift happened between the President’s speech in Cairo where he showcased America’s freedom of religion and his appearance in November at a memorial for the victims of Fort Hood, where he specifically used the term “freedom of worship.” From that point on, it has become the term of choice for the president and Clinton.

In her article for “First Things” magazine, Ashley Samelson, International Programs Director for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, stated, “To anyone who closely follows prominent discussion of religious freedom in the diplomatic and political arena, this linguistic shift is troubling: “The reason is simple. Any person of faith knows that religious exercise is about a lot more than freedom of worship. It’s about the right to dress according to one’s religious dictates, to preach openly, to evangelize, to engage in the public square. Everyone knows that religious Jews keep kosher, religious Quakers don’t go to war, and religious Muslim women wear headscarves-yet “freedom of worship” would protect none of these acts of faith.”

In the administration’s defense, Carl Esbeck, professor of law at the University of Missouri, is quoted by Christianity Today as saying, “The softened message is probably meant for the Muslim world. Obama, seeking to repair relations fractured by 9/11, is telling Islamic countries that America is not interfering with their internal matters.”

How Do You Spell “California”? M-e-s-s

Human Events (Link) - Peter Hannaford (July 19, 2010)

California’s budget for 2010-2011 was due on June 15. By law it is to be passed by the end of June. It wasn’t. In recent years it has taken anywhere from two to four months beyond the deadline to get a budget, usually done with a combination of bookkeeping legerdemain, delayed spending, a few cuts, new bonds and, in general, a kick-the-can-down-the-road approach to the problem.

The underlying problem is that too many wants are chasing too few dollars. During the recession, state revenue has declined. California’s high-tax, heavy-regulation climate has had the effect of driving some businesses out of the state and discouraging others from coming in.

A large component of the budget problem is the size of the state’s public employee pensions.

In 1999, during flush times, the legislature’s perpetual Democratic majority and then-Gov. Gray Davis, gave large increases in pension benefits to all state employees. Most counties and cities followed suit. Now, virtually every government body in the state is facing a deficit.

A Stanford University estimate puts the size of California’s unfunded pension liability at close to half a trillion dollars.

Over the years, most counties and cities abandoned their own pension systems and joined CALPERS, the California Public Employees Retirement System. It is the nation’s largest pension fund. For years it enjoyed a golden reputation, turning in steady annual gains from its investments. That has turned to ashes. Over the last two years, CALPERS has been under the gun for risky investments in real estate projects and evidence of questionable practices.

Sun surges: Yet another apocalyptic theory to worry about

Macleans (Link) - Kate Lunau (July 19, 2010)

In March 1989, six million Quebecers lost power for nine hours after a massive solar flare—an explosion of magnetic energy from the sun—created electric ground currents here on Earth, collapsing the power grid. Another geomagnetic storm, in 1921, brought ground currents 10 times as strong. But the fiercest one ever recorded, called the Carrington Event of 1859, electrified telegraph lines—even setting telegraph papers on fire—and created northern lights visible as far south as Cuba and Hawaii. If such a storm were to strike today, the consequences would be devastating. But NASA researchers say severe space weather could be on the way.

Every 11 years, for reasons that aren’t completely understood, our sun hits what’s called its solar maximum: an especially active period when sun spots, solar flares and “coronal mass ejections—these clouds of plasma that flow out of the sun at millions of kilometres an hour,” as astronomer Sten Odenwald puts it, are more likely to occur. The resulting streams of particles and pulses of electromagnetic energy create what’s called space weather, which can have all sorts of impacts here, throwing the Earth’s magnetic field into disarray and disrupting everything from GPS systems to the power grid. We’re now coming out of a quiet period for the sun, as it wakes up and moves toward the next solar maximum, expected in 2013, and experts say we should be preparing for the worst.

Coming to a Doctor’s Office Near You? The New Abortion Strategy

AlbertMohler.com (Link) - Albert Mohler (July 19, 2010)

The tragedy of abortion remains one of this nation’s greatest reasons for shame, and the fact that over a million abortions are performed each year is nothing less than horrifying. In light of this tragedy, it is at least encouraging to know that abortion, though an industry of death, is not a growth industry. At least for now.

All that may change if a new movement meets with success. As reported by Emily Bazelon, a new movement seeks to move abortions from abortion clinics to your local hospital, medical school, and physician’s office. In other words, those behind this new movement intend to mainstream abortion as medical practice, and to hide it behind a facade of medical respectability.

Bazelon’s report, “The New Abortion Providers,” appears as the cover story in the July 18, 2010 edition of The New York Times Magazine. As she reports, this new movement is training family physicians and other doctors to perform abortion as a standard part of their medical practice. As the cover of the magazine states, “They are doctors seeing patients in their offices. They have quietly learned how to terminate pregnancies.”

The story of how and why this is happening is important, and Bazelon’s cover article demands attention. If this movement is successful, abortion will become institutionalized within American medical practice.

EU to hold atheist and freemason summit

EU Observer (Link) - Leigh Phillips (July 19, 2010)

Brussels is to hold an EU summit with atheists and freemasons in the autumn, inviting them to a political dialogue parallel to the annual summit the bloc holds with Europe’s religious leaders.

While the EU is a secular body, the three European presidents, of the commission, parliament and EU Council, alongside two commissioners, on Monday met with 24 bishops, chief rabbis, and muftis as well as leaders from the Hindu and Sikh communities. The annual dialogue, which has taken place since 2005, is for the first time this year made legally obligatory under Article 17 of the Lisbon Treaty.

Under pressure from Belgium, which constitutionally protects and financially supports humanist organisations as well as churches, the EU has been forced to hold a mirror-image summit, but of atheists, scheduled for 15 October.

However, in a move that perplexed and annoyed humanist groups, the EU atheist summit will also welcome under the rubric of ‘non-religious groups’, the Freemasons, the secretive fraternal organisation, according to commission spokeswoman Katharina von Schnurbein.

“I find it rather odd,” David Pollock, president of the European Humanist Federation, told EUobserver. “Some of the Grand Lodges are secularist organisations, and strongly for separation of church and state, but they also retain all sorts of gobbledygook and myths such as the Great Architect of the Universe.”

Half the Public Wants to See Holy Temple Rebuilt

Israel National News (Link) - Hillel Fendel (July 18, 2010)

Half the Israeli public wants the Holy Temple (Beit HaMikdash) to be rebuilt. This is the main finding of a poll commissioned by the Knesset Television Channel and carried out by the Panels Institute.

The poll was taken in advance of this Tuesday’s national day of mourning, known as Tisha B’Av, on which the two Holy Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed, 2,000 and 2,500 years ago, respectively.

Forty nine percent said they want the rebuilding of the Holy Temple, while 23% said they do not. The remainder said they were unsure.

The public is about evenly split on whether they believe it will happen, with a slight edge – 42% to 39% – to those who believe the Third Holy Temple will be rebuilt.

Should the State of Israel take active steps towards the reconstruction? Forty-eight percent said no, while 27% said yes.