APRIL 8th PREDICTION

[rollinTHUNDER]

21.05.2003 - 09:55 CET

Israeli foreign minister considers EU membership

One MEP claims support is growing in the European Parliament for Israel's membership. (Photo: thesetides.com)

The freshly appointed Israeli Foreign Minister, Silvan Shalom, is considering Israel's EU credentials, reports Israeli daily, Ha

[rollinTHUNDER]

Woe!! Talk about the blind leading the blind! It appears Israel is just begging for abuse, from the article above.

Although it sounds crazy, this is very possible. All we have to do is take a look back into the past, and you will find that Israel was under the authority of the Roman Empire during the time of Christ' first coming. The Jews hated the Roman authority so much that many were secretly plotting to overthrow them, while others were praying and begging God to send Messiah to rescue them from the Romans.

And then when Messiah did come, most of them didn't recognize Him. Then we found that His coming would be a dual fulfillment, coming the first time as a lowly humble servant, but the next time He will come as a mighty conquering King. It seems fitting too, that the Messiah would return to stamp out the same evil Empire that tried to stamp Him out, after all, vengeance belongs to Him. Israel, oh Israel!! How soon we forget!

Have they become so blind that they no longer learn from the mistakes of the past? The Bible says they have. It also shows how God will call the past into account, and that history repeats itself. Hmmmmmm?

Romans 11:25 - "For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in."

[rollinTHUNDER]

23.05.2003 - 10:15 CET

EU backs down on own role in Mid East

Council diplomats had previously called the deal

[rollinTHUNDER]

No Club Like Rome

Constance Cumbey brought this bit of information to my attention. Evidently, the Bush administration wants to put Prince Hassan of Jordan in charge of the International Atomic Energy Commission. This would also make Hassan the UN's chief weapons inspector for international nuclear disarmament. And, last friday Constane devoted most of her radio show to the subject. Why? Because, Hassan is the international president of the Club of Rome.

Here's part of the report: "US officials believe they have sufficient grounds for demanding Dr. ElBaradai

[rollinTHUNDER]

28.05.2003 - 17:59 CET

God kept out of constitution

The Vatican exerted great pressure to have a substantial religious reference in the Constitution (Photo: Lisbeth Kirk)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Those hoping for an explicit reference to God in the constitution will be disappointed at the long-awaited preamble to the Constitution which will be published this evening (Wednesday) and makes no mention of the deity.

The article, penned by Convention president Val

[rollinTHUNDER]

It also makes reference in quite lyrical language to the age of the Enlightenment and the rights of man.

Taken from the above article; this sure makes it appear that "New Age" will be the dominating religion in the tribulation, with these so-called enlightened ones.

2 Tim. 4:3 - "For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear."

[rollinTHUNDER]

Bush Urges an Alliance Against Terror

President Asks Europeans to Move Beyond Bitterness Over Iraq War

By Mike Allen and Susan B. Glasser

Washington Post Foreign Service

Sunday, June 1, 2003; Page A01

ST. PETERSBURG, May 31 -- President Bush implored the great powers of continental Europe today to overcome their bitterness about the war in Iraq and fall in behind his approach to fighting terrorism.

Hours after strolling somberly along a rail spur at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in an effort to evoke the perils of evil in any age, Bush told a crowd in Krakow, Poland, that the "enemies of freedom" would win if the West's divisions over the war persisted.

"This is a time for all of us to unite in the defense of liberty and to step up to the shared duties of free nations," he said in the sunny courtyard of Wawel Royal Castle, where Polish kings ruled for 600 years. "This is no time to stir up divisions in a great alliance."

In addition, Bush announced that his administration was undertaking a new initiative to foster international cooperation in seizing ships and aircraft suspected of carrying illegal weapons or technology.

The address marked a shift in rhetoric for the Bush administration, which is facing renewed criticism at home and abroad for the military's failure to find the weapons of mass destruction that Bush said was a chief reason for going to war in Iraq. Bush and his aides made clear, however, that he envisions an alliance dedicated to U.S. aims and that his stance today was more a matter of practicality than forgiveness.

"We believe in a transatlantic alliance to do the work that needs to be done," a senior administration official said.

France, Germany and Russia opposed the war and, by blocking U.N. authorization of the use of force in Iraq, left Bush with few major partners. As recently as a week ago, administration officials said they were studying possible retribution, especially against France.

Today, on the second day of a week-long diplomatic tour, Bush said the transatlantic allies must move beyond wartime squabbling to peaceful cooperation. He challenged the Europeans to put more money into AIDS prevention and famine relief, but terrorism was his chief reason for reconciliation.

"Every civilized nation has a stake in the outcome," he said. "By waging this fight together, we will speed the day of final victory."

Poland, which backed the U.S. military campaign in Iraq, is one of the few European countries where Bush is popular, and his overnight visit to cobblestoned, medieval Krakow was intended as a reward to Poland for the country's support. Bush said that Poland, which is managing a security sector in Iraq, "is a good citizen of Europe and Poland is a close friend of America -- and there is no conflict between the two."

Bush held separate meetings with President Aleksander Kwasniewski and Prime Minister Leszek Miller, the most attention lavished on any government during his seven-day, six-country swing.

Bush announced creation of a Proliferation Security Initiative, aimed at reaching agreements among nations to allow searches of planes and ships carrying suspect cargo and for the seizure of banned weapons or missile technologies.

"Over time, we will extend this partnership as broadly as possible to keep the world's most destructive weapons away from our shores and out of the hands of our common enemies," he said.

A senior administration official said the initiative is largely a result of the White House's frustration late last year when the United States and Spain seized a North Korean ship carrying Scud missiles to Yemen from North Korea, then had to release the vessel and its cargo when Yemen protested that the weapons were for defensive use.

As Washington and its allies seek ways to address North Korea's attempts at weapons proliferation and development of nuclear arms, an international initiative to allow interdiction has found considerable support. The administration said Poland, Britain, Spain and Australia, as well as some unnamed countries, had expressed interest in participating.

Bush also gave his most optimistic prognosis yet for the Middle East peace process, which he hopes to push along on Wednesday when he presides over a summit with prime ministers Ariel Sharon of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority.

"I will remind them that for peace to prevail, all leaders must fight terrorism and shake off old arguments and old ways," he said. "I will do all that I can to help the parties reach an agreement, and then to see that that agreement is enforced."

Shortly before the speech, Bush visited the Nazi death camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. He laid a wreath at the Death Wall, used by firing squads in a courtyard between two long barracks -- one of which held prisoners who had been sentenced to death by starvation.

First Lady Laura Bush placed a long-stemmed rose on a cast-iron gurney that was used to push bodies into ovens for incineration, and the president signed the guest book, "Never forget, George W. Bush." The Bushes also viewed stables that had been built for 52 horses but were crammed with more than 400 starving prisoners.

Pausing briefly in front of cameras after his tour, Bush looked shaken. He called the sites "a sobering reminder that when we find anti-Semitism, whether it be in Europe or anywhere else, mankind must come together to fight such dark impulses."

Bush landed in St. Petersburg tonight and traveled to Peterhof Palace, the grand summer estate of the czars, where Putin was his escort for an outdoor ballet performance and fireworks show celebrating the city's 300th anniversary.

On Sunday, Bush flies to the ski resort of Evian, France, for a summit of the Group of Eight industrial democracies, where few of the leaders will be toasting the U.S.-led military victory in Iraq. His speech today set a conciliatory tone for the private meetings he will hold with presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Jacques Chirac of France and for his encounter with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in a group setting.

Chirac told reporters in St. Petersburg that Franco-U.S. relations are good and that he is looking forward to meeting Bush. "International life is made up of differences that are accepted and mastered," he said.

But just a week ago, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell suggested to a French interviewer that Chirac might be punished. "We had a disagreement, and we have to review all of the policies that exist between our two nations to see if any modification is required because of that disagreement," Powell said.

In an interview Thursday that caused a stir in Europe, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told foreign reporters that the United States remains disappointed with France's behavior on Iraq. "There were times that it appeared that American power was seen to be more dangerous than, perhaps, Saddam Hussein," Rice said in the interview, which the White House released today. "I'll just put it very bluntly: We simply didn't understand it."

In his address today, Bush made no reference to European complaints that he insists on setting the agenda in every relationship, nor to issues that are of greater concern to Europe than they are to him. He touted an emergency fund that the United States is establishing for global famine relief and said the nations of Europe should create similar funds of their own.

Bush billed the speech as a successor to one he delivered in Warsaw on his first presidential trip to Europe, in 2001, before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, when he was a novice on the world stage. At the time, Bush reminded listeners of his father's dream of a Europe "whole and free" and gave his own commitment to "a Europe and an America bound in a great alliance of liberty -- history's greatest united force for peace and progress and human dignity."

Today, Bush's reference to the row over Iraq was oblique. He said the Atlantic alliance had been tested as it expanded and that each country had faced difficult decisions about keeping peace. "We have seen unity and common purpose," he said. "We have also seen debate -- some of it healthy, some of it divisive."

Before Bush's arrival here, Putin hosted European leaders at Konstantinovsky Palace, a 1,000-room colossus given a complete makeover at a cost of $280 million and finished just last week. Despite divisions over the war in Iraq and Russia's long-running conflict with separatists in Chechnya, the summit's most contentious issue was one raised by Putin: the European Union's eastward expansion and what that will mean for Russia.

The planned EU expansion will include Russian neighbors such as Poland and Lithuania, and Putin has argued that without visa-free travel, further Russian integration into Europe won't be possible.

But he failed to secure more than a polite promise from his European guests of more talks on the matter at the next Russia-EU summit in November. The European leaders insisted on including mention of the ongoing Russian war in Chechnya but stopped short of open criticism of Putin.

The rest of the day, Putin treated his guests to such spectacles as a solo by Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti and a private tour of the recreated Amber Room, missing since it was stolen by the Nazis in World War II and painstakingly reconstructed for more than two decades by Russian craftsmen.

Putin used the chance, as he has throughout the extravagant, $1.3 billion birthday party for his native city, to stress its historic role as Russia's "window on the West."

[rollinTHUNDER]

31.05.2003 - 21:38 CET

Ratification problems loom over Convention

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Once the Convention on Europe's future and then the governments manage to thrash out an EU constitution, an even bigger hurdle awaits them: ratification of the treaty by member states.

The draft constitution unveiled at the beginning of the week by Convention president Val

[rollinTHUNDER]

03.06.2003 - 09:47 CET

Vatican accuses Convention of secularism

The Vatican has criticised the fact that the Preamble of the draft EU Constitution only indirectly mentions Christianity.

"Disastrous", writes Monsignore Jean-Louis Tauran, Vatican "foreign minister", on the wording of the Preamble of the Draft Constitution, which refers to the "Hellenic and Roman civilizations", "the spiritual force" which has run through Europe and "the Enlightenment".

According to Monsignore Tauran, quoted by Le Monde, the "spiritual force" refers to Christianity, and the lack of direct mention of this fact indicates that "it is about an ideological operation which reveals an imperialistic attempt to re-write history".

However the Vatican welcomes the mention of the "cultural, humanist and religious heritage" of Europe as well as the confirmation of the Amsterdam provisions to respect the existing status of Churches according to national legislation, according to Le Monde.

In a press release, quoted by Le Monde, the Roman Catholic Bishops' Committee (Comece) and the Conference of European (Protestants, Orthodox and Anglican) Churches (CEC) declare that "a Europe which denies its own past and disowned the role of religion would be impoverished to a considerable degree".

The insistence of the Vatican and certain bishops on introducing "Christian values" into the text of the EU Constitition Draft has, according to le Monde, so far led to the opposite of the desired effect.

Press Articles Le Monde L'Osservatore Romano

Website CEC Comece

Written by Luise Hemmer Pihl

Edited by Andrew Beatty

http://euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=11577

[tsth]

I really wasn't sure just where to post this. Hope this is ok here?

I thought this was very noteworthy. The first deployment of the EU Army.

The London Daily Telegraph reports: "The European Union agreed yesterday to deploy the new Euro-army for the first time outside NATO command, taking charge of a high-risk United Nations mission to stop the slaughter of civilians in the Congo.

The French-led force, authorized by the United Nations last week, will now come under the European Rapid Reaction Force.

Most of the 1,400-strong force will be made up of French troops wearing EU insignia, backed by British specialists, and Belgian, Canadian and African troops.

They will start moving into action next week, with artillery and fighter jet support, ready to fight pitched battles if necessary.

Up to 400 villagers have already been killed in the Congo's eastern Ituri region over the last three weeks, many by roving rebel groups under the sway of neighboring Rwanda. The feuding militias have overwhelmed the UN's lightly-armed garrison in Bunia, which is mostly cooped up in its own compound.

Glenys Kinnock, a Labour MEP, said: 'All the signs are that this could tip over into terrible bloodshed and become another genocide.

'The French have been itching to go in but they're not the most loved in the region, so if it's an EU force, with the Brits on board, it has far less political baggage.'

The EU deployed elements of its 60,000-man rapid reaction force for the first time in Macedonia two months ago, but the mission relies on a NATO 'extraction force' if anything goes wrong. Diplomats say the Congo is much more dangerous terrain