Steel on Steel - Donald McElvaney (July 1, 2011)
Watchman Newsletter
What I say unto you I say unto all, watch. Mark 13:37
June 26, 2011 - July 2, 2011
July 01, 2011
U.S. Reaches Out to Islamist Parties
The Wall Street Journal (Link) - Matt Bradley & Adam Entous (July 1, 2011)
The Obama administration is reaching out to Islamist movements whose political power is on the rise in the wake of Arab Spring uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa.
The tentative outreach effort to key religious political groups—the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Ennahdha in Tunisia—reflects the administration’s realization that the spread of democracy in the region requires it to deal more directly with Islamist movements the U.S. had long kept at arm’s length.
Speaking to reporters during a visit Thursday to Budapest, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the Obama administration is now seeking “limited contacts” with Muslim Brotherhood members ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections slated for later this year.
“It is in the interests of the United States to engage with all parties that are peaceful and committed to nonviolence,” Mrs. Clinton said. “We welcome, therefore, dialogue with those Muslim Brotherhood members who wish to talk with us.”
Iran Arrests Christians as More Muslims Convert
CBN News (Link) - Gary Lane (July 1, 2011)
Hundreds of Christians in Iran have been arrested and imprisoned since the beginning of this year.
The crackdown has led to 285 believers in 35 cities being arrested in Iran in the past six months, according to Elam Ministries, an organization that serves Christians in that country.
Many of those Christians have spent weeks and even months in prison, often serving long stretches in solitary confinement. They also have endured interrogations and psychological abuse.
Iranian Pastor Hormoz Shariat is with International Antioch Ministries. He hosts a satellite television show that is broadcast into Iran.
“Most often the Revolutionary Guards arrest and don’t even tell their family. They can’t have a lawyer, not even a formal charge. Sometimes they get killed without even a formal charge,” he explained.
Continue reading "Iran Arrests Christians as More Muslims Convert" »
Who Is The Muslim Brotherhood?
Israel National News (Link) (July 1, 2011)
The MB has has tried to portray itself as moderate and democratic. But at its core it is anything but. The Brotherhood is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Israel National News thanks StandWithUs for helping bring the Muslim Brotherhood to our readers in its own words:
The Muslim Brotherhood logo fits its motto:
“Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur’an
is our law.
Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope. Allahu akbar!”
The Brotherhood’s goal is to turn the world into an Islamist empire. The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, is a revolutionary fundamentalist movement to restore the caliphate and strict shariah (Islamist) law in Muslim lands and, ultimately, the world. Today, it has chapters in 80 countries. “It is in the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.” -Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna
June 30, 2011
U.S. recognizes Muslim Brotherhood
Politico (Link) - Tim Mak (June 30, 2011)
The U.S. has decided to formally resume contact with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood group - which does not recognize Israel – in a move that could further alienate some Jewish voters already skeptical of President Barack Obama, it was reported.
One senior U.S. official said the Brotherhood’s rise in political prominence after the forced departure of former President Hosni Mubarak earlier this year makes the American contact necessary.
“The political landscape in Egypt has changed, and is changing… It is in our interests to engage with all of the parties that are competing for parliament or the presidency,” said the official, who confirmed the news to Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The Muslim Brotherhood - founded in 1928 to promote a conservative version of Islam in politics, culture and society – has previously had some communication with the U.S. through Brotherhood Members of Parliament who had been technically elected as independents. U.S. diplomats had been instructed only to deal with Brotherhood members in their role as Members of Parliament.
Economic WMD? US fears OPEC’s next move after shocking display of disunity among cartel members
Al Arabia News (Link) - Mary E. Stonaker (June 30, 2011)
Three weeks after OPEC’s shocking display of disunity over oil pricing, mainly an argument between long-time foes Saudi Arabia and Iran, the daily basket price has increased to $103.59 per barrel on 28 June, up from $101.56 the previous day. This is still significantly lower than recent peaks of S113.59 on 14 June and 120.91 on 28 April. US fears sparked a significant drop in oil demand in the US, alleviating some, but not all, upward pressure on oil prices.
Recent announcements of US emergency stockpile sales and resumed drilling in the Gulf of Mexico echo this line of attempting to lower prices as well as reduce dependency on foreign sources. However, recent reports of storage space disappearing quickly and surplus supplies also contributed to US President Obama’s announcement.
If overfilled, underground storage in the US – currently holding around 727 million barrels – will leak oil into the soil surrounding it, which will eventually lead to an environmental disaster. While announcements to release stockpiled oil nicely coincide with OPEC’s disagreement, talks to this end were taking place well before this month.
June 29, 2011
Austerity Riots - A Glimpse Of America’s Future?
The American Dream (Link) - Michael (June 29, 2011)
Are the austerity protests and riots happening in Greece right now a glimpse of America’s future? The truth is that both nations are absolutely drowning in debt. It is just that the “day of reckoning” has already arrived for Greece but it has not arrived for the United States yet. Yes, there are some important differences between the situation in Greece and the situation in the U.S., but there are also some important similarities. Budget cuts and other austerity measures are being promoted by the political leaders of both countries. Greek citizens have reacted very negatively to the economic austerity programs that have been implemented in that nation. As budget cuts on the federal, state and local levels in the United States start to really become painful, will we eventually see the same kind of austerity riots in this country that we are currently seeing in Greece?
There is a price to pay for living way, way beyond your means for decades. The citizens of Greece are now feeling that economic pain. In the United States, the pain of austerity is not being felt that severely yet.
So exactly what are austerity measures? Well, in Greece they include tax increases, budget cuts and “privatization measures.” The Greek government is swamped under an unpayable debt load and without international assistance the Greek government will default.
But all of that “international assistance” comes with strings. The EU and the IMF are insisting on the implementation of very strict austerity measures, and the Greek people are not thrilled about this.
Continue reading "Austerity Riots - A Glimpse Of America’s Future?" »
June 28, 2011
The Divided States of Europe
Stratfor Global Intelligence (Link) - Marko Papic (June 28, 2011)
Europe continues to be engulfed by economic crisis. The global focus returns to Athens on June 28 as Greek parliamentarians debate austerity measures imposed on them by eurozone partners. If the Greeks vote down these measures, Athens will not receive its second bailout, which could create an even worse crisis in Europe and the world.
It is important to understand that the crisis is not fundamentally about Greece or even about the indebtedness of the entire currency bloc. After all, Greece represents only 2.5 percent of the eurozone’s gross domestic product (GDP), and the bloc’s fiscal numbers are not that bad when looked at in the aggregate. Its overall deficit and debt figures are in a better shape than those of the United States — the U.S. budget deficit stood at 10.6 percent of GDP in 2010, compared to 6.4 percent for the European Union — yet the focus continues to be on Europe.
That is because the real crisis is the more fundamental question of how the European continent is to be ruled in the 21st century. Europe has emerged from its subservience during the Cold War, when it was the geopolitical chessboard for the Soviet Union and the United States. It won its independence by default as the superpowers retreated: Russia withdrawing to its Soviet sphere of influence and the United States switching its focus to the Middle East after 9/11. Since the 1990s, Europe has dabbled with institutional reform but has left the fundamental question of political integration off the table, even as it integrated economically. This is ultimately the source of the current sovereign debt crisis, the lack of political oversight over economic integration gone wrong.
June 27, 2011
Towards a sovereign union
Press Europ (Link) - Andrzej Talaga (June 27, 2011)
On June 2 in Aachen, Jean-Claude Trichet, the President of the European Central Bank, announced that the EU should only have one finance minister. At the same time, he also called for the transformation of the EU into an unprecedented confederation of states with a common budgetary policy — a vision that amounts to a severe blow to national sovereignty.
A “super-finance” ministry, with the power to veto certain public spending decisions and to control the budgetary policies and competitiveness of Europe’s member states, as well as an EU financial sector that is fully compliant with European rules: this would amount to establishing a system for the control of national budgets, at least for those countries that have adopted the euro. According to Trichet’s proposal, those states would then become semi-independent, perhaps to the point where they only retained territorial autonomy. Nowhere in any dictionary of politics has such a state been defined.
However, these proposals are not exactly new. In response to the Greek crisis, the plan is to make aid to the Athens government contingent upon strict supervision of the country’s finances by the supranational troika of experts from the European Commission, the ECB, and the IMF.
This is something that has never been seen before in the EU. Certainly, Ireland and Portugal have been obliged to rein in their public spending, but it has yet to fall under external control. On the other hand, Greece, which has come under pressure for the mishandling of its financial affairs, is being forced to handover control of its budgetary policy to foreigners: yet another step in the loss of sovereignty which began when it joined the euro and relinquished control of its monetary policy.
The Real Ramifications of the Unraveling NATO Alliance
The Trumpet (Link) - Jeremiah Jacques (June 27, 2011)
The ongoing involvement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Libya’s civil war has revealed the alliance to be an increasingly imbalanced and fictitious military organization.
NATO started off strong enough. In the Cold War’s aftermath, the organization was dubbed “the most successful alliance in history” because it had prevented the Russian Army from crossing into Western Europe. The organization has defined security in the Western Hemisphere for around 60 years, but the last few of those years have revealed deep fissures in its integrity.
Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on June 10 that NATO risks “collective military irrelevance” because most of its members put so little toward defense spending that the organization is not even able to defeat a tin-pot dictator like Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi. The heart of NATO’s problem, according to Gates, is a staggering imbalance in the defense contributions of the member states.
“The mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country—yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the U.S., once more, to make up the difference,” Gates said in Brussels earlier this month.
Continue reading "The Real Ramifications of the Unraveling NATO Alliance" »
Steel On Steel Persecution Update
Steel on Steel - Donald McElvaney (June 27, 2011)
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I'm a watchman for Christ, looking on the horizon in expectation for the fulfillment of God's Word.
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