Watchman Newsletter

Ahmadinejad in Syria: Mideast states will foil U.S. plan to alter region’s politics

Haaretz (Link) - AP (September 18, 2010)

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday that Middle Eastern countries will disrupt American and Israeli efforts to change the political geography of the region, appearing to brush aside U.S. efforts to forge a regional peace deal between Israel and its neighbors.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the comments during a brief stop in Syria where he held talks with his Syrian counterpart, Bashar Assad.

The meeting comes two days after Assad sat down with the Obama administration’s special Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, in Damascus, to discuss starting separate Syria-Israel peace talks.

The back-to-back trips underscored the battle for influence in Syria between Washington and Tehran. Seeking to isolate Iran, U.S. President Barack Obama has tried - unsuccessfully, so far - to pry Damascus away from its alliance with Tehran.

Speaking in Damascus, Ahmadinejad appeared to dismiss U.S. efforts to forge a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians and a wider deal with its neighbors.

IDF kills Hamas military commander in West Bank

The Jerusalem Post (Link) (September 16, 2010)

IDF soldiers killed a Hamas military commander overnight Thursday during security operations east of the West Bank city of Tulkarm, the IDF spokesperson’s Unit said in a statement on Friday morning.

The statement said that the Hamas member, Iyad Abu Shalabiya, ran towards IDF soldiers in a threatening manner, and had ignored the IDF’s requests to cease his approach, resulting in him being shot.

Miltary sources said that Shalabiya spent several years in Israeli prisons and was wanted for questioning.

Twelve other suspects were arrested during the raid

The circumstances of the incident are under investigation.

The shooting comes two days after 10 rockets and mortar shells – including two containing phosphorus – were fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip as defense officials predicted that the violence would quiet down after Succot.

Rockets and shells pounded the Eshkol region throughout the day. One of the rockets – a 122-mm. Katyusha – hit just north of Ashkelon. No injuries or damage were reported.

Dueling demonstrations

WorldNet Daily (Link) - Henry Lamb (September 17, 2010)

The progressive world was shocked by the throngs of people who gathered at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28 in response to Glenn Beck’s call to attend his “Restoring Honor” rally. Crowd estimates ranged from 87,000 to more than 500,000, which liberal media talking heads discounted as little more than the number of tourists in Washington on any given day.

Across town, Rev. Al Sharpton complained about Beck’s attempt to hijack Martin Luther King’s dream – to a few hundred of his faithful followers.

Within hours of Beck’s event, the progressive world announced its bigger and better demonstration to be held at the Lincoln Memorial on Oct. 2, one month before Election Day. Their event is called “One World Working Together.” More than 150 organizations are promoting this event. Even a casual review of the mission statement of these groups, and the “what we stand for” statements, reveal that these organizations are the people who are promoting a socialist agenda in this country.

Rarely has there been an opportunity to see so vividly the political and philosophical division in this nation.

Glenn Beck’s rally called for a return to God and the principles of freedom set forth in the Constitution.

The “One Nation” rally, according to their website, will call for government to adopt a socialist agenda to control the work force, to control education and to achieve social equality.

New web address hints at Putin return to Kremlin

Reuters (Link) - Conor Humphries & Gleb Bryanski (September 17, 2010)

A Russian government agency has registered the web address Putin-2012.rf in a sign Prime Minister Vladimir Putin plans to run in a presidential election he would seem almost certain to win.

Russia’s Federal Bodyguard Service registered six domain names combining Putin’s name or initials with “2012,” according to the official Cyrillic domain database, stat.ref.ru. It did not do the same for President Dmitry Medvedev.

Putin says he has not decided whether to run in 2012, saying he and Medvedev will decide on a joint candidate closer to the time. But many diplomats and analysts expect him to return to the Kremlin, shunting Medvedev into a lesser post.

“Nobody believes any more that Medvedev will run, because Putin seems to have started his campaign already,” said Alexei Mukhin, an analyst at the Center for Political Information.

Putin was president from 2000-08 and is widely regarded as Russia’s leader, despite the formal presidential structure of the system. He handpicked Medvedev to succeed him after the end of his second consecutive Kremlin term, the maximum allowed by the constitution.

White House solves the problem of global warming overnight... by officially changing the phrase to ‘global climate disruption’

Daily Mail (Link) - Carol Driver (September 17, 2010)

Global warming could be a thing of the past, thanks to the Barack Obama administration.

No, the White House has not single-handedly managed to stop the apparent rising temperature – but it does think the terminology oversimplifies the problem.

According to U.S. science adviser John Holdren, the public should start using the phrase ‘global climate disruption’ because it makes the situation sound more dangerous.

During a speech in Oslo, Norway, Mr Holdren said global warming is a ‘dangerous misnomer’ and is not an accurate description of the issues facing the planet.

It comes as Congress prepares to adjourn for the season without completing work on the stalled climate bill, which, after facing a barrage of obstacles, was declared effectively dead in the Senate in July.

The Roots of Obama’s Anticolonialism

The Trumpet (Link) - Stephen Flurry (September 17, 2010)

Dinesh D’Souza’s controversial Forbes article, “How Obama Thinks,” adds one more name to the president’s long list of disturbing associations—his own father. Over the course of his life, Barack Sr. fathered eight children by four different wives. The Harvard-educated Kenyan was a notorious womanizer and reckless reveler. He died in 1982 after getting drunk in a Nairobi bar and ramming his car into a tree.

One of his sons has since accused Barack Sr. of child abuse and wife beating. This charge is also implied in the president’s own memoir Dreams From My Father. As has been widely reported, Barack Sr. deserted America’s future president when he was a baby in Hawaii.

And yet, despite these many prodigious flaws, President Barack Obama has elevated the father he never knew to a larger-than-life mythical hero. President Obama’s dream, judging by his memoir, is his father’s dream. And his father’s dream, D’Souza says, was rooted in anticolonialism.

Russia to supply missiles to Syria, despite Israel protest

The Jerusalem Post (Link) (September 17, 2010)

Russia still intends to go through with an arms deal with Syria including the sale of advance anti-ship rockets, despite recent attempts by Israeli and US officials to thwart the planned deal, Russian Defense Minster Anatoly Serdyukov said on Friday according to state news agency RIA Novosti.

The deal includes the sale of advanced P-800 Yakhont supersonic cruise missiles to the Syrian military.

Israel considers this weaponry capable of posing a significant threat to its navy vessels in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Russian defense minister indicated that Russia would go ahead with the contract that was formulated in 2007, saying that “the matter of missile sales to Syria was raised during the talks with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and undoubtedly, the Russian side of the contract would be fulfilled.”

Foreclosures Rise; Repossessions Set Record

CNBC (Link) - Joseph Pisani (September 16, 2010)

US foreclosure activity rose in August from the previous month, and banks and lenders took ownership from homeowners at a record pace, according to a new report released Thursday.

Bank repossessions, often the final step in the foreclosure process after a home fails to sell at auction, increased about 3 percent from the month before to 95,364, a record high. At the same time the number of properties that received default notices—the first step in the foreclosure process—decreased 1 percent from a month ago and fell 30 percent from a year ago, a sign that lenders are focusing on their backlog of foreclosure inventory before tackling new distressed loans, according to foreclosure listing website RealtyTrac, which released the report.

Overall, foreclosure fillings rose 4.18 percent in August from the previous month, and were down 5.48 percent from a year ago. In all, 338,836 properties were in the foreclosure process. One in 381 U.S. households received a foreclosure notice in August. (Foreclosure notices are defined as a default notice, auction sale notice or bank repossession.)

Israel considers prisoner release, ceding territories to PA

YNet News (Link) - Ali Waked (September 15, 2010)

Israel and the Palestinians have yet to reach a compromise on settlement construction, but Jerusalem is nonetheless considering a number of gestures, including releasing prisoners and transferring areas in the West Bank to Palestinian control, western officials familiar with peace talks told Ynet Tuesday night.

The second round of direct negotiations began in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt on Tuesday and will continue Wednesday when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will meet in Jerusalem.

The two leaders may also attend another summit in New York later this month.

According to officials who took part in the talks, the Israeli negotiation team suggested holding one of the meetings between Netanyahu and Abbas in Ramallah, as a goodwill gesture to the Palestinians. It remains unclear whether the Israeli security establishment will approve such a meeting or suggest it be held in Jericho instead.

According to the western officials, no progress was made during the Sharm summit on the settlement construction issue. The construction moratorium is set to expire on September 28, but the US is pressing Israel to extend it.

Israel analysts see Turkey radicalizing, becoming ‘Iran No. 2’

World Tribune (Link) (September 15, 2010)

Israel’s defense community has assessed that Turkey was moving toward becoming a radical and nuclear Islamic state.

Officials and leading analysts asserted that the government of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan was rapidly dismantling the secular Turkish state. They said Erdogan could turn Turkey into another Iran, a radical Muslim state with nuclear weapons.

“There could be a deep strategic change,” Amos Gilad, a senior Defense Ministry official, said.

Officials cited Turkey’s referendum that would revise the secular constitution. They said the 26 amendments approved by 58 percent of voters on Sept. 12 would significantly increase the authority of Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party while marginalizing Turkey’s military.

Leading officials expressed concern over Erdogan’s growing power in Turkey and his success in intimidating the once-powerful Turkish military, Middle East Newsline reported. They said Erdogan could use his referendum victory to expand Turkey’s alliance with neighboring Iran and Syria while fomenting another crisis with Israel.

The West’s unholy alliance

YNet News (Link) - Shaul Rosenfeld (September 14, 2010)

When philosophy professor Tom Hickey, one of the initiators of the British academic boycott on Israel, was asked why he refrained from imposing a boycott on the US and Russia too over their actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Chechnya, he responded without flinching that these states are too big and powerful, making such boycott ineffective.

Indeed, too often size dictates one’s position, even when it comes to philosophy professors, who on normal days would be horrified by the very thought that their students would seek to apply ethical principles based on considerations of size, power, and effectiveness.

And so, the greater the Islamic threat becomes, the more we see the Free World growing silent on the moral front. The clear tendency of Hickey and his ilk is to endorse almost any Islamist fanatic just to elicit some moderate tunes; for example, the growing Obama Administration’s tendency to “understand” the Muslims, among other things because “Islam is part of promoting global peace,” because “Jihad is about purifying,” and because “there is no connection between Islam and the murder of innocents.”

The above explains why people all over the world in recent days became so horrified by the pyromaniac fantasies of some crazy Florida minister, while completely ignoring Islamic threats to reignite America and the rest of the West, nine years after the September 11 attacks.

U.S. Border Patrol Agents in ‘Firefight’ With Mexican Gang

Fox News (Link) - AP (September 14, 2010)

U.S. Border Patrol agents fired gunshots into Mexico after coming under attack during a half-ton drug bust and giving chase to a truck along the Rio Grande, U.S. authorities said Monday.

No Border Patrol agents were hurt during the “fire fight” early Saturday in Mission, agency spokeswoman Rosalinda Huey said. She did not say whether Border Patrol gunfire hit anyone, citing the ongoing investigation.

“The firing they received came from the Mexican side,” Huey said.

Huey said several Border Patrol agents, at least some of whom were patrolling in boats, were seizing a half-ton of marijuana when they came under gunfire. Federal officials said the shots from Mexico began when a truck that was being chased by another group of Border Patrol agents entered the area.

FBI special agent Jorge Cisneros said the truck, which was on the U.S. side, appeared to be connected to the drug seizure. He said the gunfire from Mexico was a “direct result” of Border Patrol agents doing their jobs.

Cisneros described the shootout as brief.

100,000 children attend radical Hamas summer camps

The Jerusalem Post (Link) - Yaakov Katz (September 14, 2010)

Hamas continued to gain strength this past summer as about 100,000 youngsters underwent radical anti-Israel indoctrination at dozens of summer camps run by the terrorist group – which also attacked United Nations camps, its main competition – according to a report released on Tuesday by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center According to the report, more than 100,000 children and teenagers participated in the Hamas camps, which included paramilitary training and military parades. The Islamic Jihad terrorist organization also opened 51 different summer camps for over 10,000 children.

In contrast to the Hamas camps, the United Nations has been running summer camps throughout the Gaza Strip for 250,000 children. These camps, run by UNRWA, are being held at over 150 locations in Gaza. The participants engage in arts and crafts, sports and other cultural activities, and are mostly between the ages of six and 15.

On several occasions during the summer, however, groups of masked men believed to be affiliated with Hamas ransacked a number of UNRWA camps and in one case burned down the facility and all of its contents.

CNN Poll: Only quarter of public trusts government

CNN Politics (Link) - Paul Steinhauser (September 14, 2010)

 A new poll indicates that only one in four Americans say they trust the government to do what is right always or most of the time, one explanation for the anti-incumbent sentiment in the country today.

According to CNN/Opinion Research Corporation national survey released Tuesday, 25 percent of the public indicates that they trust the government in Washington to do what’s is right most or all of the time, with 66 percent saying they trust the government to do what’s right only some of the time and eight percent saying they never trust the government.

Full results [pdf]

“That lack of trust in government is not a recent phenomenon - except for a brief spike fueled by patriotism immediately after 9/11, a majority have not trusted the government since the early 1970s,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

But the recession appears to have made matters worse.

Iran diplomat Farzad Farhangian defects to Norway

BBC News (Link) (September 14, 2010)

An Iranian diplomat based in Brussels has said he is seeking asylum in Norway.

Farzad Farhangian is the third diplomat in Europe to defect from Iran this year in protest at the government’s crackdown on opposition groups.

His defection follows that of a senior official at Iran’s embassy in Finland, who said on Monday he was seeking asylum there.

Norway granted asylum to another diplomat in February.

There has been no reaction from Iranian officials on Mr Farhangian’s asylum claim, but the previous two defections have been met with statements that the diplomats’ postings had come to an end.

Speaking in Oslo, Norway, Mr Farhangian said he wanted to “take a stand in support of the Iranian people and the [opposition] movement,” Associated Press reported.

Palestinian ‘all or nothing’ strategy paralyzing peace talks, Israeli officials warn

Haaretz (Link) - Barak Ravid and Reuters (September 14, 2010)

The Palestinians’ “all or nothing” strategy of insisting on a total freeze on West Bank settlement construction risks paralyzing Middle East peace talks in their infancy, officials close to the heart of negotiations warned Tuesday.

As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas arrived in Egypt for a second round of negotiations, senior officials inside Netanyahu’s office said they expected the Palestinians to avoid extreme responses that could derail the U.S.-sponsored peace process.

“This attitude of all or nothing has over the past year led to a stagnation, with the result that in nine months of construction freeze, there were no negotiations,” one high-ranking official told Haaretz.

Under international pressure, Israel in late 2009 declared a 10-month freeze on settlement building in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem. But that is due to expire in late September, less than a month after talks kicked off in Washington, and the Palestinians have repeatedly vowed to walk out if building resumes.

Indonesian Christians beaten, stabbed by Muslims

One News Now (Link) - AP - Irwan Firdaus (September 13, 2010)

Indonesia’s president ordered police to arrest the assailants who stabbed a Christian worshipper in the stomach and beat a minister in the head with a wooden plank as they headed to prayers. Neither of the injuries appeared to be life-threatening.

Indonesia, a secular country of 237 million people, has more Muslims than any other in the world. Though it has a long history of religious tolerance, a small extremist fringe has become more vocal in recent years.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who relies heavily on Islamic parties in parliament, has been widely criticized in the media for failing to crack down on hard-liners. But he immediately called on authorities to investigate and to hold accountable those responsible.

No one claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attacks, but police have said they know who the perpetrators were, though they would not comment further. Suspicion immediately fell on Muslim hard-liners who have repeatedly warned members of the Batak Christian Protestant Church against worshipping on a field housing their now-shuttered church.

Referendum for Islam Puts Turkey and Syria Back on ‘Peace Table’

Israel National News (Link) - Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu (September 13, 2010)

Turkey wasted no time after its “referendum for Islam” and promoted its alliance with Syria as the key for a regional Middle East peace.

Gloating after a strong majority voted for reforms that satisfy European Union demands for democratization while weakening the power of the secular-oriented judicial and military institutions, the Islamic government said the vote boosts Ankara’s diplomatic position.

President Abdullah Gul said, “All the articles in the constitutional amendment package are about bringing Turkey’s standards to the European level under Turkey’s European Union membership process.” Turkey has been seeking membership in the EU, a move that would allow Ankara more political clout to force a Syrian-Israeli peace accord based on Israel’s surrendering the strategic Golan Heights.

After an informal meeting with EU ministers, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu made clear his country’s objectives. “We have been involved in intense activity in the Middle East with mediation between Israel and Syria, in Lebanon and Iraq...and in the Caucasus,” he said in a report by the Turkish English language newspaper Today’s Zaman.

Crisis Forces Europe to Unite on Financial Reform

Der Speigel (Link) - Hans-Jürgen Schlamp (September 13, 2010)

The euro crisis scared European Union members enough that they have finally put aside national interests to push through Europe-wide financial reforms. In doing so, they are handing more power over to Brussels.

Austrian Finance Minister Josef Pröll felt tired but jubilant when he returned to his hotel on Place Jourdan in Brussels late last Monday evening. For hours on end, he and his European counterparts had been given a detailed presentation by European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and his task force on how the shaky monetary union could be stabilized and crisis-ridden Europe could be put back into shape.

The finance ministers listened attentively before going on to discuss the issue. But instead of rushing headlong into the usual squabbling session, a cozy feeling of harmony spread through the conference room.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble found words of praise for his new “highly constructive” British counterpart, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. Osborne, who has a reputation as a euroskeptic, in turn described Brussels’ plans, which London had until then rigorously opposed, as “not bad.”