APRIL 8th PREDICTION

[rollinTHUNDER]

Thunder are you ever going to finish the Daniel thread?

Teri

I sure hope I get to finish it. But every time I get to a point where I think I'm almost done, the Lord takes me deeper still. It's a book for sure. Part Two is already twice as long as Part One. The Lord will know when it's done. I'm just the message boy.

I discovered a misconception when I started, but now I'm up to three of them. Now I'm not even sure what the title will be. It keeps changing as I go.

[rollinTHUNDER]

A Moment in Time

Commentary on the News

Monday, October 27, 2003

Jack Kinsella - Omega Letter Editor

The 'Quartet' -- never in tune anyway -- aren't even reading from the same music sheet when it comes to performing the composition that they allegedly wrote together. It looks like 'The Road Map to Peace' will be their final performance as a group.

It was doomed to failure from the beginning. European and Russian cultural antisemitism didn't leave with the fleeing Jews, as those few Jews who remain in Russia or Europe can attest.

When Maylasian Prime Minister Mathahir Mohammed concluded his speech to the Organization of the Islamic Conference Summit last week, he said, "Today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."

He added that 1.3 billion Muslims could not be defeated by a few million Jews.

When the European Union moved to officially condemn Mathahir's remarks, it was blocked by Jacques Chirac. Only after global criticism did Chirac send a letter to Mathahir 'condemning' his comments saying, "Although you and your government have taken care to rebut any accusation of anti-Semitism, these remarks can only be condemned by those who remember the Holocaust."

In other words, "you offended everybody else, but maybe you offended me, and maybe you didn't. Depends on how good my memory is."

Russian antisemitism is equally alive and well, although not nearly as organized. The United Nations antisemitic views are legendary, having once officially equated Zionism with racism.

After the Second World War and the sudden, forced conversion of millions of ardent antisemites by the victorious Americans, it became unfashionable to hate Jews. Those who only a decade before happily denounced their neighbors and had them sent to concentration camps were now in power in the new post-war Europe.

With the rebirth of Israel, antisemitism had a new outlet, with the problem of 'Zionist expansionism' replacing the 'Jewish Question' and the 'Final Solution' repackaged as the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Instead of the Europeans and Russians wiping the Jews out themselves, they backed the Arab efforts to do it for them.

The United Nations has passed more resolutions condemning Israel than it has all other Arab states combined -- including Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Antisemitic rhetoric is standard UN-speak.

The UN Conference on Racism at Durban, South Africa, shocked Americans with its open expressions of antisemitic hatred. What was even more shocking was that the majority of the global population saw nothing wrong with it.

These three entitities, together with the United States, form the Quartet that sought to bring a 'just and equitable' solution to the conflict. So it comes as no surprise that the road map led straight to a brick wall.

The United States has decided to quietly drop its opposition to Israel's security fence, a week after the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a non-binding, EU-backed resolution calling on Israel to halt construction.

Only four countries voted against it. It is always the same four; the US, Israel, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands.

Washington stood alone against the rest of the Quartet over Israel's security fence, which effectively rends the Quartet and leaves the US and Israel on one side, and the rest of the Quartet looking in from the other side of the fence with the Palestininans.

As we approach the end of the age, so many events are coming together at the same time that it is easy to grow numb to what we are witnessing.

For two thousand years, there was no such place as Israel. Europe spent that period in constant warfare with itself. There was no 'world community' and no Middle Eastern conflict. Until the 20th century, there was no 'Arab world', just the Turkish Ottoman Empire.

Suddenly, in a moment in time, a Jewish state was reborn on the 'mountains of Israel, which have been always waste . . .brought forth out of the nations' (Ezekiel 38:8)

At that same moment in time, (1948) the Soviets detonated an atom bomb and imposed the Berlin Blockade, beginning the Cold War and forcing a series of complex political events that led directly to the current alignment of nations. Among them was the European Union, born out of the 1948 Benelux Treaty as a buffer against the tide of communism eroding its borders.

In 1948, the United Nations issued its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a kind of 'Magna Carta' that outlined the framework for a global government.

The global economy was officially born with the 1948 passage of the General Agreements on Tarrifs and Trade (GATT) which eventually became the World Trade Organization.

In 1947, the prophecies of the Book of Daniel made little sense. How could the antichrist confirm a 'covenant' with Israel and her enemies, when there was no Israel? How could he come out of a revived Roman Empire when it lay in the ashes of a destruction of its own making? How could the antichrist control all buying or selling?

Think about this for a second. In 1947, Europe was in ashes, the Cold War was just beginning, and Israel did not exist. But Daniel spoke of a revived Roman Empire and a literal state of Israel.

Ezekiel described Israel as a 'land of unwalled villages.' (Ezekiel 38:8) In today's world, that pretty much describes the whole world, which should render it meaningless in any prophetic sense.

Except that right now, in 2003, Israel is literally walling up its villages, setting the stage for them to come back down again, just as literally, when the Roman leader confirms the covenant between Israel and her enemies.

John spoke of a global government and total control of a global economy. All this was unimaginable in John's day, or in Daniel's day. Or in my dad's day.

Are you getting a sense of the enormity of it all?

In a moment in time, Israel was restored out of all the nations; the old Roman Empire began taking steps to revive itself and the European concepts of a global government and global economy were introduced via the United Nations. The religious war between Islam and Judeo-Christianity began with the first shots fired in Israeli War of Independence.

In 1947, Daniel and John and Ezekiel were largely mysterious books describing nations and events nobody could imagine. By the end of 1948, they were describing headline news. And have been, ever since.

"And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed TILL THE TIME OF THE END." (Daniel 12:9)

http://www.omegaletter.com/articles.asp?ArticleID=1961

[rollinTHUNDER]

30.10.2003 - 17:41 CET

Poll controversy as Israel and US labelled biggest threats to World peace

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Over half of Europeans think that Israel now presents the biggest threat to world peace according to a controversial poll requested by the European Commission.

According to the same survey, Europeans believe the United States contributes the most to world instability along with Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

The specially commissioned poll which asked citizens 15 questions on "the reconstruction of Iraq, the conflict in the Middle East and World peace", has caused controversy in Brussels.

The European Commission is coming under fire for publishing the results of a number of questions - relating to Iraqi reconstruction - while failing to publish the results which revealed the extent of mistrust of Israel and the United States in Europe, according to Spanish daily El Pais.

A Commission spokesperson today (30 October) denied that the decision to withhold some of the results until next Monday was politically motivated, adding that some of the results not yet published are still "unstable".

He did, however, add that a decision was made to publish a preview of the questions pertaining to the reconstruction of Iraq, to coincide with the Iraqi donors conference in Madrid, which took place at the end of last week.

This admission has raised questions about whether the Commission sought to suppress the results which would have came at a particularly sensitive moment.

One pollster involved in the survey told the EUobserver that some questions being raised about the poll were unfounded.

"The questions were decided upon by both the polling organisations and the European Commission", the source said.

Israeli officials dismissed the results of the poll as propaganda.

According to El Pais, a massive 59 percent of Europeans said they believed that Israel is the biggest obstacle to world peace.

The poll, conducted by Taylor Nelson Sofres/ EOS Gallup Europe, was conducted between 8 and 16 of October.

Press Articles La Libre Belgique

Written by Andrew Beatty

http://euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=13324

[rollinTHUNDER]

30.10.2003 - 09:07 CET

EU-Syria rapprochement worrying US

The EU's efforts to establish closer ties with Syria are worrying the US and are increasing tension in the transatlantic alliance.

According to the Washington Times, the EU is on the verge of signing an economic cooperation agreement with the government of President Bashir Assad, aimed at creating a free-trade zone in the Mediterranean area.

US President George W. Bush proposed a US-Middle East free trade agreement (MEFTA) earlier this year, which would overlap substantially with the EU-Mediterranean proposal, encompassing many North African states.

However, the first meeting to discuss the potential MEFTA, which took place in June this year, did not include Syria or Libya.

But the US continues to accuse Syria of harbouring terrorist organisations and has recently voted to impose economic and diplomatic sanctions on Syria.

It is also accusing it of holding in its banks an estimated three billion dollars of Iraqi funds, which US officials say could be used to finance terrorist attacks by Palestinian extremists, the newspaper added.

The Washington Times said that although several European government and business leaders refer to Mr Assad as a reformer, human rights organisations still consider the Syrian regime to be oppressive.

Press Articles Washington Times

Written by Sharon Spiteri

http://euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=13316

[Guest Teri]

Rolling do you see this as the beginning of the nations coming together against Israel. It would only make sense on a world wide logic. Get rid of the few to protect the masses. The burning question for me is where will the US stand when that day comes?

In Yeshua's love

Teri

[rollinTHUNDER]

Rolling do you see this as the beginning of the nations coming together against Israel. It would only make sense on a world wide logic. Get rid of the few to protect the masses. The burning question for me is where will the US stand when that day comes?

In Yeshua's love

Teri

Hi Teri,

I don't believe this is the beginning, and it's not the end. God says that He will bring (all) nations against Israel. I believe this will take place in the middle of the tribulation, however.

Joel 3:2 - "I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land."

Notice that God says the land is His. Wisdom says choose another land to settle in, but then again, the world and the Palestinians wisdom is only foolishness, so they will continue on the path to their own destruction.

When we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, we are actually praying for the second coming of Messiah, the true Prince of Peace, unless of course we want the false peace, NOT!

[rollinTHUNDER]

04.11.2003 - 09:42 CET

US attacks EU over international court

The ICC has permanent jurisdiction over the most serious breaches of international human rights law (Photo: Court of Justice)

Washington has renewed its criticism of European Union efforts to block immunity agreements that would prevent US citizens from being subject to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

According to the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, John Bolton, the EU is imposing an unfair choice on future EU member states by insisting that they do not undermine the ICC.

An EU Common Position, agreed last year, lays out 'bottom line' principles in case current and new member states do sign a bilateral agreement with the US.

Speaking at the conservative think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute, Mr Bolton yesterday (3 November) said that the US will press ahead with the immunity agreements - the so-called Article 98 exemption agreement - and will cut off military aid to countries which do not comply, according to media reports.

The ICC has long been a bone of contention between the EU and the US. While the EU has been a champion of the Court, which was set up to prosecute war criminals, the US has refused to sign up.

It fears that its citizens will be subject to politically motivated prosecutions.

The whole debate centres around the crucial Article 98 which allows for exemptions from ICC jurisdiction. The EU is not opposed in principle to article 98, but the scope of its application.

It objects to US attempts to secure exemption from the Court for all US citizens and not just officials.

However, the US is forging ahead with the agreements which exempts its citizens. Mr Bolton said that exemption agreements have been signed with 70 countries - of which 50 belong the Court's 90 signatories.

The latest to sign are Antigua and Barbuda, Botswana, Ghana, Malawi, Uganda and East Timor.

Rejecting the ICC was one of the first acts of the Bush Administration when it came to power in 2001. It withdrew America's signature, one of Bill Clinton's final acts as US President, from the Treaty of Rome, which established the ICC.

Press Articles Financial Times Yahoo France Independent

Website American Enterprise Institute ICC

Written by Honor Mahony

http://euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=13357

[rollinTHUNDER]

03.11.2003 - 17:39 CET

Israeli anger as relations hit new low

Despite their outrage the Israeli government will not make a formal complaint to the Commission (Photo: EU Commission)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The Israeli government has reacted angrily to an EU sponsored poll which labelled the country the biggest threat to world peace.

In an exclusive interview, the Israeli Ambassador to the EU, Oded Eran, told the EUobserver that the affair "questions the ability of Europe to play a legitimate role in the [Middle East] peace process".

The poll, which was conducted last month, asked 7515 Europeans which country posed the biggest threat to world peace. Israel came top of a list of 15 which included Iran, North Korea, the US and the EU itself.

The Israeli government has been angered by the way the question was posed, which Mr Eran described as "guiding".

Fallout

Following the publication of the poll, which formally came out today, the Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom has made several phone calls with his European counterparts, including the Italian government which currently chairs the European Council.

"I cannot deny that there has been damage done", said Mr Eran.

Earlier, in an exceptionally tough statement, his government said that they were "not only sad but outraged" by the poll, adding that "Europeans seem blind to Israeli victims and suffering".

Rupture

But despite the strong rhetoric the Ambassador was keen to play down talk of a lasting rupturing of relations and ruled out making a formal complaint.

"This disagreement should not damage basic fundamental relations", he said, adding that although damage had been done, "it is not our intention to exacerbate this damage".

The gap between Israel and Europe has widened in the recent months despite overtures from the Israeli Foreign Minister when he visited Brussels in July this year.

With a lack of progress being made in the path towards peace, many issues have recently looked like boiling over, not least over the question of the Israeli's construction of a "security fence".

Mr Eran said that there were "legitimate concerns" held by both sides on this issue, adding that there was a need for an "intimate and constructive" dialogue between Europe and Israel to stop relations becoming more polarised.

He also said that he would be willing to see "a delegation from the Israeli defence establishment" travel to Brussels "tomorrow morning" to explain Israeli policy to EU diplomats.

Related Article Financial Times Die Welt Handelsblatt Yahoo France Gazeta Wyborcza

Written by Andrew Beatty

http://euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=13353

[rollinTHUNDER]

'I believe Europe will have its own September 11'

(Filed: 25/10/2003)

Rachel Sylvester talks to Robert Cooper, Tony Blair's foreign policy guru

If there is one man who can explain why Tony Blair went to war in Iraq, sent troops to Afghanistan and wants to join the euro, it is a tall, cultured man in Brussels called Robert Cooper.

He is the foreign policy guru who, on secondment to No 10 in the years before the September 11 attacks, influenced much of the Prime Minister's thinking on international affairs.

Robert Cooper retains close links with No. 10

It was also Mr Cooper who, five years ago, persuaded Mr Blair to push for a European military capability. Then, presciently, in the months before the World Trade Centre attack, he started badgering the Prime Minister to think seriously about the terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.

When the war on terrorism began, he was made Britain's special representative on Afghanistan. Later, with military action against Iraq looming, he argued for a new form of imperialism, based not on territory but on western values such as human rights, democracy and Coca-Cola.

Now he has been posted to Brussels as right-hand man to Javier Solana, Europe's foreign and security policy supremo. But he retains close links with Downing Street, where his ideas are held in great respect.

With his flamboyant cufflinks and designer ties, Mr Cooper, 56, is an unusual career diplomat. He is more likely to be seen careering through the traffic on his bicycle than folding his long legs into a diplomatic car.

In Whitehall and beyond, he is valued for his independence of mind. Unusually for a civil servant, he has a licence to print as well as to think: next week he is publishing a book, The Breaking of Nations, that sets out his ideas.

Some are horrified by his influence on Mr Blair; Tam Dalyell, the Left-wing Labour MP, once described him as a maniac. But the Prime Minister greatly values his ability to "think out of the box".

"I am an idealist," he says, as he stride towards a Brussels cafe. "I still have my Sixties instincts. I do not understand why people would want to fight each other - or sometimes why they would not."

Although Europe has so far escaped a terrorist attack on the scale of the September 11 tragedy, he fears that one is almost inevitable.

"There are enough disaffected people in the world and there are enough weapons," he says. "The image of what you can do as a terrorist - pictures of planes crashing into the twin towers - will live in people's memories."

Terrorist groups have not yet acquired a nuclear weapon, he says. "They have tried and you have to guess that if they try for long enough they are going to succeed."

He believes that the risks to world peace are greater now than they were in the first half of the 20th century, when thousands of people were killed in two world wars.

"Individuals will have a potential destructive capacity which they have not had since the Middle Ages. The risk is that the liberation that we have all experienced over the past 200 years - from the state, the Church and so on - is going to turn out to be a very nasty joke."

This is a frightening vision, particularly coming from a mild-mannered civil servant who was astute enough to see the danger that the power vacuum in Afghanistan posed to the wider world. The point now, Mr Cooper says, is to work out what can be done to stop the unthinkable from happening.

"You stop it by spreading civilisation, by creating good government. We have to try to put ourselves into the situation where there has been another major terrorist incident - using biological weapons in a European city, for example. Imagine what you might do, then do it in advance."

Although he rejects the analysis that there is a "clash of civilisations" between Christianity and Islam, he thinks the West has still not sufficiently understood the new threat.

"In the Cold War, we were dealing with a civilisation which was very similar to ours. The people we are dealing with now are much more foreign. Maybe we need more anthropologists."

The Cooper theory is that there are three types of country: pre-modern, defined by chaos and lack of state control, such as pre-war Afghanistan; the modern nation state within clear boundaries, such as Saddam Hussein's Iraq; and post-modern, in which the nation state is collapsing into a bigger order - the European Union for example.

The post-modern world, which prefers diplomacy to war, must realise that pre-modern countries are dangerous not because they are strong but because they are so weak that they can become ciphers for people such as Osama bin Laden. It must also understand that the modern and pre-modern worlds operate in different ways.

"You cannot treat people like Saddam Hussein the way you treat your neighbours," Mr Cooper says. "If we have a problem with France and Germany, we negotiate. But there are leaders you cannot negotiate with."

He argues that the attack on Iraq was justified to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups. He still thinks that such weapons may be found. Even if they are not, he says, "I find it difficult to regard the fall of Saddam as a bad thing".

As an aside, Mr Cooper has an interesting theory that it is particularly difficult for oil-rich countries to become democracies. "If you have a state that does not have to raise taxes because the money flows out of the ground, it can survive without democracy."

It was the realisation that the chaos of the pre-modern world could so easily destroy the order of the post-modern one that prompted Mr Cooper to develop his ideas about a new imperialism.

"Decolonisation left the world with a lot of weak states," he says. "For a while they lived on the capital that had been left behind then survived because the Cold War gave the superpowers a reason to prop them up.

"But now we have seen states collapse and in Afghanistan we saw how dangerous that can be. If you want to avoid havens for terrorists, you have to bring these countries back under control."

Although he appears to share some of the American neo-conservative views, he rejects the idea that there is an "axis of evil" that must be neutralised one country at a time. Iran and North Korea should be dealt with in different ways, he says.

Mr Cooper believes that cost will limit the number of imperial adventures. "In the old days, the imperialists used to exploit people; now they pay for them. The temptations of imperialism are very limited as a result."

Mr Cooper is concerned by America's global dominance. "I would be more comfortable in a world where power was less concentrated," he says. Mr Blair, caught between Europe and America, is in an awkward position.

"He finds himself as the main advocate of Europe in the United States and that is unhealthy for him and it is unhealthy for the US. I think Blair is a European basically."

The transatlantic tensions over Iraq, Mr Cooper argues, can be explained by the fact that, as a post-modern concept, the EU is based on multi-national negotiations and the rule of law, while the US, a modern state in his definition, sees the world in terms of power. That is why the Americans have less time for the United Nations than does Europe.

While the US would benefit from taking the rule of law, symbolised by the UN, more seriously, the EU also "needs to think a bit more in terms of power," he says. "We cannot just sit back and leave the rest of the world to America."

That is why he supports the idea of a European defence force as a support, rather than a rival, to Nato. The Americans are far from happy about the idea. Mr Cooper, foreign policy guru first in Britain and now in Europe, says with candour: "Influencing foreigners is really difficult."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../ixnewstop.html

[rollinTHUNDER]

03.11.2003 - 17:28 CET

[Comment] The draft EU Constitution: An unfortunate start

The draft EU Constitution: "Instead of devolving power to the people, it continues to hoard it in the centre", writes Jonathan Kallmer (Photo: EUobserver.com)

EUOBSERVER / COMMENT - The European Union has been one of the most successful creations in the history of political science. For the past half-century, harmonization of the policies of many European countries has helped make war in Western Europe unthinkable, enhanced the living standards of hundreds of millions of people, and enshrined into law a vast array of important social, political, and human rights.

Integration has fundamentally altered the way Europeans think about their relationships to one another, to their governments, and to the outside world.

In recent years, following the consolidation of the single market and the creation of a common currency, Union leaders have undertaken a good bit of collective soul searching. The objective of this self-examination has been nothing less than to redefine and clarify the organization's raison d'