Watchman Newsletter

U.N. Anti-Blasphemy Proposal Meets Firm Resistance

The Christian Post (Link) - Ethan Cole (November 20, 2010)

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and Open Doors are just some of the people and groups that have publicly denounced the proposed U.N. anti-blasphemy resolution that is expected to be voted on next week.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference, which sponsored the draft resolution, recently changed the term from “defamation of religions” to “vilification of religions.” But USCIRF chair Leonard Leo said the change is minor and “a distinction without a difference.”

“Having lost support on this issue over the past few years, the OIC is now trying to fool delegations into believing that the resolution has improved when it has not,” said Leo in a statement Thursday. “It … still erroneously conflates blasphemy or criticism of religious ideas with incitement to acts of discrimination or violence against individuals.”

Critics of the resolution compare it to a global anti-blasphemy law. They point to countries like Pakistan, where a Christian woman was recently given the death sentence for alleged blasphemy against the Muslim Prophet Muhammad, as example of how such laws are regularly grossly abused to target religious minorities.

Are Religious Troops Changing Israel’s Military?

Newsweek (Link) - Dan Ephron (November 20, 2010)

Among the elite troops of the Israeli military’s Maglan special-forces unit, Naftali Bennett was an oddity. As an officer in the unit in the early 1990s, he commanded more than 80 young men, all of them secular and many from kibbutzim communities aligned with the left-center Labor Party. Bennett is an observant Jew, and among combat officers throughout the military he was one of the few who wore a yarmulke, didn’t travel on Saturdays, and never ate cheeseburgers because of the Jewish ban on mixing milk and meat.

Now long a civilian, Bennett had a chance recently to visit with new recruits in his old unit. Two things struck him: the large number of religious Jews among the young men, and the Army’s extraordinary efforts to accommodate them. “In my day, no one gave it a thought,” he says.

A transformation is sweeping the Israeli military: deeply religious Jews are now filling leadership positions in numbers far exceeding their share of the general population. Given that religious Israelis tend to be more hawkish than most, the trend raises a real question about whether Israel can rely on the Army to implement the toughest parts of any future peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Poll: Most Palestinians view talks as precursor to 1 state

YNet News (Link) - Yitzhak Benhorin (November 20, 2010)

The majority of Palestinians support direct talks and the two-state solution, but ultimately want the entire area between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea to turn into one Palestinian state, a poll sponsored by The Israel Project, a Jewish-American organization, shows.

The data, collected by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research in October, shows that the Palestinians blame Hamas for the current state of affairs in the Gaza Strip, and are hostile not only towards the Islamic organization but also towards Iran.

According to the poll, 61% of Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank support direct negotiations with Israel, and 60% accept the two-state solution. A 54% majority also agree peace is possible with Israel.

23%: Israel is Jewish homeland

A closer look, however, reveals a different picture: According to the poll, most Palestinians refuse to reconcile with the idea of Israel as a Jewish state. While 23% accept the statement that “Israel has a permanent right to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people,” two-thirds prefer the alternative statement that “over time Palestinians must work to get back all the land for a Palestinian state.”

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn urges leaders to cede more sovereignty to EU

The Telegraph UK (Link) - Philip Aldrick (November 19, 2010)

In what are likely to prove controversial proposals, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF managing director, called on the European Union to move responsibility for fiscal discipline and structural reform to a central body that is free from the influences of member states.

In a speech in Frankfurt addressing the sovereign debt crisis engulfing Europe once again, he said: “The wheels of co-operation move too slowly. The centre must seize the initiative in all areas key to reaching the common destiny of the union, especially in financial, economic and social policy. Countries must be willing to cede more authority to the centre.”

Europe is plagued by crisis because member states put too much faith in banks and let their public finances run out of control. Greece has already been bailed out and Ireland is expected to agree a €100bn (£85bn) rescue within days. Portugal is also at risk.

Mr Strauss-Kahn did not name any individual eurozone members, but warned: “The sovereign crisis is not over.”

Smart grids line up in fight against climate change

EU Observer (Link) - Andrew Willis (November 19, 2010)

Smart grids are increasingly seen as a crucial weapon in the world’s fight against climate change, with the EU among those rallying behind the new technology.

With global energy consumption set to rise dramatically over the next fifteen years, not least as an additional 350 million Chinese citizens move into cities, the need to use electricity more efficiently has never been higher, say industry experts.

“Smart grids are a lot about empowering us to engage with energy,” says Scott Lang, CEO of SilverSpring Networks, a California-based company leading the way in developing technology that allows customers to view their electricity usage at any given point, including from individual appliances.

While this enables households to cut bills by using energy-consuming devices at low-rate times of day, it also enables utility companies to cut peak-time demand and avoid costly blackouts.

Persecution Update

Steel On Steel - Donald McElvaney, www.missionbarnabas.org (November 18, 2010)

1. Legal Status Foreseen for Christianity in Buddhist Bhutan

2. After Fatwa, Pastor in Pakistan Beaten with Bricks

3. Lao Officials to Expel More Christian Families from Village

4. Orissa, India Christians Still Face Boycott, Forced Conversion

5. Pakistani Woman Appeals Death Sentence for ‘Blasphemy’

6. Christian Jailed in Afghanistan to Face Judge on Sunday

7. Pakistani Mother Condemned for ‘Blasphemy’ Stunned, Shattered

U.N. Official Admits: We Redistribute World’s Wealth by Climate Policy

The Blaze (Link) - Meredith Jessup (November 18, 2010)

“This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy.”

Is this quote from a) a climate change skeptic, or b) an official from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?

Climate change skeptics have long theorized about ulterior motives behind attempts to legislate and regulate man-made global warming. This speculation reached a fever pitch after data from the University of East Anglia — widely referenced by the United Nations — was found to be flawed and private emails pointed to a broader conspiracy to falsify the so-called evidence.

But this speculation is only likely to grow after a leading member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) told a German news outlet, “[W]e redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.” Via the Media Research Center, Germany’s NZZ Online Sunday interviews Ottmar Edenhofer of the U.N. (emphases mine):

Russia and Iran try to mend historic rift in ties

Hindustan Times (Link) - AFP (November 17, 2010)

The Presidents of Russia and Iran will meet in the Azerbaijani capital Baku on Thursday hoping to mend an unprecedented breakdown in relations between the two traditional allies.

The Caspian Sea Summit of leaders of five littoral states seeks to address overlapping claims that the region’s powers have to the vast energy riches believed to be buried offshore.

But the encounter in Baku between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is sure to overshadow a summit that has a history of ending with little progress.

“This represents Iran’s last chance to come to terms with the international community,” said Dmitry Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

“It is an extremely important meeting that comes amid an unprecedented deterioration of the bilateral relations,” agreed Rajab Safarov of the Contemporary Iranian Studies Centre in Moscow.

Phoenix Rising: Part 1 - Ashes to ashes

The Devil Is In The Details (Link) - JD (November 16, 2010)

On November 3, 2010 the Federal Reserve Bank made perhaps the single most important announcement concerning monetary policy in the history of the United States of America. Ben Bernanke and the Federal Open Market Committee announced that the Fed would be embarking on a round of quantitative easing. In reality what the Fed was telling the populace was that they would be purchasing $600 billion of Treasury Bonds. In simpler terms yet, they agreed to purchase debt of the United States by pumping a extra $600 billion in freshly minted bills into the monetary supply, or, they agreed to monetize the debt.

Simple economics states that when you increase the amount of a currency in circulation without proper growth in whatever material backs said currency, you decrease it’s intrinsic value. In this case, they are trading debt, for a even bigger pile of debt plus interest. The public spin on this, is that with more currency in circulation, more would be available to be spent, thus stimulating the economy. What is not being discussed here in the U.S. is that with devaluation of the currency comes inflation, given the $600 billion tag attached, I would suggest Hyperinflation. I would even suggest that this was the real intent of Bernanke and the gentlemen from Jekyll Island, more on this in a moment.

Palestinian Economy Is Booming, Thanks to Foreign Aid

The Media Line (Link) - David Rosenberg (November 16, 2010)

In a sign of the new prosperity, the West Bank gets it first five-star hotel – and Gaza’s in line to get one, too

In the lobby, a pair of workers is hanging large portrait photographs of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, while outside a construction scaffolding sits close by the front entrance, but otherwise the West Bank’s first five-star hotel is open for business.

Banners advertising the Palestinian stock exchange’s annual conference in the grand ballroom adorn centerpieces, while smartly dressed women and men in dark business suits mingle over drinks. Indeed, the demand for conference space is so strong that the Ramallah-based Movenpick Hotel began hosting them before weeks before its first guests checked in.

The peace talks with Israel have stalled, and Hamas and Fatah remain at loggerheads over who is the legitimate ruler of the Palestinian areas. But, the economies of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are shrugging off their uncertain political future and booming. Yet, economists warn, the boom is a precarious one.