Hagee added: "We must stop Iran's nuclear threat and stop it now and stand boldly with Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East." A few weeks earlier, Hagee had met with Senator John McCain, a leading contender for the Republican Party's 2008 presidential nomination. Hagee has been leading the charge of conservative Christian evangelicals urging President George W. Bush to deal more forcefully with Iran. As the launching of the Iraq War approaches its fourth anniversary, it is worth remembering that during the lead-up to the invasion, a number of conservative evangelicals voiced their support for the war.

Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, maintained that Bush's action met criteria for a just war. The National Association of Evangelicals, which represents several dozen denominations encompassing more than 30 million U.S. evangelical Christians, openly supported the war. And Mike Evans, who heads the aggressively pro-Israeli Jerusalem Prayer Team, pointed out that war with Iraq could be a "dress rehearsal for Armageddon," the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.

In January, during a trip to the Middle East, Rosenberg said that he "briefed several hundred Arab and Iranian pastors and evangelical leaders on the latest geopolitical developments in the region," and that he taught "on Ezekiel 38 and 39? prophecies that most Christian leaders in the region are unfamiliar with."

"Will there be a war in the region this year or next?" While acknowledging that "it's too early to say," Rosenberg claimed that 2007 is "the Year of Decision." President Bush and Congressional leaders "will need to decide soon just how they're going to handle the Iranian nuclear threat, [and] Church leaders also need to decide just how they are going to handle the Iranian threat, as well ... after all, time is short, and the stakes are high."

Last July, at Christian United for Israel's coming out party in Washington, Hagee stated that "The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West... a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation [...] and [the] Second Coming of Christ."

In a statement given to IPS by Jane Hunter and Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak, co-founders of the website JewsOnFirst.org, they said that "Hagee's call in his speech for victory for Israel and America (which appears to refer to Iran) is not necessarily the call for military victory which his audience might have heard (a chilling prospect nonetheless). Hagee's 'victory' is coded language for Armageddon, which Christian Zionists see as the end-times battles set in Israel, when Christians are raptured to heaven and Jews lose -- unless they're happy to convert."

If President Bush unleashes a pre-emptive military strike against Iran, there is little doubt that Pastor Hagee will be by his side.

Several prominent Christian right and conservative Jewish leaders have teamed up to found organisations that have provided millions of dollars to Israeli charities, lobbied in support of policies advanced by right wing leaders in Israel, opposed President George W. Bush's so-called "Road Map" to peace in the Middle East, and have helped defray the costs of the immigration of Russian Jews to Israel, among other activities.

As Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's popularity has plummeted since the end of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, Christian Zionists in the United States view the outcome not only as a defeat for Israel, but also as a prelude to a much wider war. In fact, they think the conflict might be a sign of impending Armageddon.

"The end of the world as we know it is rapidly approaching," Hagee wrote in his most recent book, "Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World". "Just before us is a nuclear countdown with Iran," he wrote, "followed by Ezekiel's war (as described in Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39), and then the final battle -- the battle of Armageddon."

And some have started to train their sights on Tehran. In a recent blog post datelined Jerusalem, Rosenberg wrote: "The buzz here in the last few days is that Israel is seriously considering a preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities and ballistic missile sites."

Given Israel's less than sterling performance against Hezbollah this past summer, Rosenberg was not convinced that Israel "has the capacity -- or the will -- at the moment to neutralise the Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile threat."

However, with "a new Hitler rising in Iran", it is up to U.S. President George W. Bush, who met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Washington in mid-November, to deal with the Iranian threat: "If President Bush believes Iran needs to be neutralised (and I believe he does), and he is convinced that military action is the only way (I don't believe he is there right now), then the U.S. should take the lead."

After all, wrote Rosenberg, "If anyone is going to stop Iran from threatening the world with nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, it has to be soon, perhaps no later than the end of 2007. After all, 2008 is an American election year. 2009 will be the start of a new administration. By then it may be too late. The thermonuclear genie may be out of the bottle."

In one recent appearance, Rosenberg said that he had made several visits to "speak at a White House Bible study" and had conversations with "a number of congressional leaders and Homeland Security, Pentagon [officials] about my novels, which are based on Bible prophecy."

Rosenberg said that "the question that's been most interesting among these various administration and congressional officials is, 'Are you saying that the Bible talks about an alliance between Iran, Russia, and a group of Middle Eastern countries to attack Israel at some point?' And the answer is yes."

In the "Apostolic Exhortation" Benedict said all believers had to defend what he called fundamental values but that the duty was "especially incumbent" on those in positions of power.He said such values included "respect for human life, its defense from conception to natural death, the family built on marriage between a man and a woman, the freedom to educate one's children and the promotion of the common good in all its forms".

"These values are not negotiable," he said. "Consequently, Catholic politicians and legislators, conscious of their grave responsibility before society, must feel particularly bound, on the basis of a properly formed conscience, to introduce laws inspired by values grounded in human nature," he said.

Gay marriage is legal in several European countries, including predominantly Catholic Spain, and Italy is severely divided over the issue of whether to give more rights to unmarried couples, including homosexuals.
The Pope's words were also applicable to countries like the United States, where some Catholic politicians have said they are opposed to abortion but feel bound to support pro-choice legislation because they represent many people.

In the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, when Democratic candidate John Kerry, a Catholic, supported abortion rights. The Pope implied local bishops could not turn a blind eye to such politicians. "Bishops are bound to reaffirm constantly these values as part of their responsibility to the flock entrusted to them," he wrote.

Some bishops in the United States have refused to give communion to Catholic politicians who back abortion rights. Benedict re-affirmed that Catholics who divorce and remarry cannot receive communion. The Church does not recognize divorce. In another section, Benedict lamented that many Catholic priests did not know Latin, the official language of the Church.

He said Latin should be used in parts of large open-air masses held at international gatherings "to express more clearly the unity and universality of the Church". He said he wanted to see more Latin and more Gregorian chant used in Church services. "Certainly, as far as the liturgy is concerned, we cannot say that one song is as good as another," he said.

In what CWA called a "shocking and brazen act of government abuse of parental rights," the school's officials required the 14-year-olds to attend a "Gay Straight Alliance Network" panel discussion led by "gay" and "lesbian" upperclassmen during a "freshman advisory" class which "secretively featured inappropriate discussions of a sexual nature in promotion of high-risk homosexual behaviours."

"This goes to the heart of the homosexual agenda," Barber said. "The professional propagandists in the 'gay-rights' lobby know the method all too well. If you can maintain control of undeveloped and impressionable youth and spoon-feed them misinformation, lies and half-truths about dangerous, disordered and extremely risky behaviours, then you can control the future and ensure that those behaviours are not only fully accepted, but celebrated."

He said not only is forcing students to be exposed to the pro-homosexual propaganda bad enough, but then school officials further required that students sign the "confidentiality agreement" through which they promised not to tell anyone including their own parents about the seminar.

It's not the first situation where WND has reported on schools teaching homosexuality to children.
In Massachusetts after a school repeatedly advocated for the homosexual lifestyle to students in elementary grades, several parents sued, only to have the federal judge order the "gay" agenda taught to the Christians.

The conclusion from U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf found that it is reasonable, indeed there is an obligation, for public schools to teach young children to accept and endorse homosexuality.
"Wolf's ruling is every parent's nightmare. It goes to extraordinary lengths to legitimize and reinforce the 'right' (and even the duty) of schools to normalize homosexual behaviour to even the youngest of children," said a statement from the pro-family group Mass Resistance.

The judge concluded that even allowing Christians to withdraw their children from classes or portions of classes where their religious beliefs were being violated wasn't a reasonable expectation.
"An exodus from class when issues of homosexuality or same-sex marriage are to be discussed could send the message that gays, lesbians, and the children of same-sex parents are inferior and, therefore, have a damaging effect on those students," he opined. "Under the Constitution public schools are entitled to teach anything that is reasonably related to the goals of preparing students to become engaged and productive citizens in our democracy," the judge wrote. "Diversity is a hallmark of our nation. It is increasingly evident that our diversity includes differences in sexual orientation."

Concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and other gases (all of which add to the greenhouse effect that creates a warming blanket over the Earth) have increased sharply over the last century ? by 35 percent for CO2, and by more than 100 percent for CH4. This is overwhelmingly due to human industrial and agricultural activity.

The conclusions from theoretical studies, direct observations and models are all quite clear and show that these rising concentrations have led to a warming of the planet over the last century. This warming can be seen in the weather station records, ocean temperatures, disappearing mountain glaciers, melting permafrost and retreating Arctic ice, and is beginning to be felt in the statistics of extreme events.

Regardless of future actions, some continued warming is inevitable since the planet is still playing catch-up with what has already been added to the atmosphere. Changing emission patterns and technology will take decades and so we are going to be adding significantly to the warming "in the pipeline" over coming decades. We don't know exactly what will happen. We don't know exactly where the thresholds are. But the more warming there is, the more chances for something surprising and possibly dangerous to occur.

Extreme weather events are ever present, and there is no evidence of systematic increases. Sea levels have been rising since the end of the last ice age, most rapidly about 12,000 years ago. In recent centuries, the average rate has been relatively uniform. The rate was higher during the first half of the 20th century than during the second. At around a couple of millimeters per year, it is a residual of much larger positive and negative changes locally. The risk from global warming is less than that from other factors (primarily geological).

The impact on agriculture is equivocal. India warmed during the second half of the 20th century, yet agricultural output increased markedly. The impact on disease is dubious. Infectious diseases, like malaria, are not so much a matter of temperature as of poverty and public health. Malaria remains endemic in Siberia, and was once so in Michigan and Europe. Exposure to cold is generally more dangerous.

Our so-called "crisis" is thus neither a product of current observations nor of projections. But does it matter if global warming is a "crisis" or not? Aren't we threatened by a serious temperature rise? Shouldn't we act anyway, because we are stewards of the environment?

Herein lies the moral danger behind global warming hysteria. Each day, 20,000 people in the world die of waterborne diseases. Half a billion people go hungry. A child is orphaned by AIDS every seven seconds. This does not have to happen. We allow it while fretting about "saving the planet." What is wrong with us that we downplay this human misery before our eyes and focus on events that will probably not happen even a hundred years hence? We know that the greatest cause of environmental degradation is poverty; on this, we can and must act.

The global warming "crisis" is misguided. In hubristically seeking to "control" climate, we foolishly abandon age-old adaptations to inexorable change. There is no way we can predictably manage this most complex of coupled, nonlinear chaotic systems. The inconvenient truth is that "doing something" (emitting gases) at the margins and "not doing something" (not emitting gases) are equally unpredictable.

Climate change is a norm, not an exception. It is both an opportunity and a challenge. The real crises for 4 billion people in the world remain poverty, dirty water and the lack of a modern energy supply. By contrast, global warming represents an ecochondria of the pampered rich.
We can no longer afford to cling to the anti-human doctrines of outdated environmentalist thinking. The "crisis" is the global warming political agenda, not climate change.

The shell companies at times have presented themselves as acting on behalf of the Waqf, the Muslim custodians of the Temple Mount, WND has learned. Sheik Azzam Khateeb, who was installed last month as the new manager of the Waqf, is known to be close to the Jordanian monarchy. The previous Waqf manager, Sheik Adnon Husseini, was loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party and had relations with Israel and some Jewish groups. "Khateeb answers directly to Jordan," a Fatah official told WND.

The Israeli and Palestinian officials said Jordan recently placed a bid to purchase Jerusalem's Intercontinental Hotel, which is situated on an important road that leads to an ancient cemetery on the Mount of Olives, adjacent to the Temple Mount. Jordan the past few months has boosted its public profile on the Temple Mount. The appointment of Khateeb as the new Waqf manager for the Temple Mount was widely seen as a nod to Jordan.

In January, Israel granted Jordan permission to replace the main podium in the Al Aqsa Mosque from which Islamic preachers deliver their sermons. The podium is considered one of the most important stands in the Muslim world. Muslims believe it marks the "exact spot" their prophet Muhammad went up to heaven to receive revelations from Allah.

The new stand bears the emblem of the Jordanian Kingdom. It replaces a 1,000-year-old podium believed to have been shipped to Jerusalem by the Islamic conqueror Saladin. That stand was destroyed in 1969, when an Australian tourist set fire to the Al Aqsa Mosque.

Last month WND first reported Prime Minister Ehud Olmert granted permission to Jordan to construct a large minaret at a site on the Temple Mount where Jewish groups here had petitioned to build a synagogue.
A top leader of the Waqf told WND Olmert's granting of permission to build the minaret in the synagogue's place "confirms 100 percent the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount) belongs to Muslims."

"This proves Jewish conspiracies for a synagogue will never succeed and solidifies our presence here. It will make Muslims worldwide more secure that the Jews will never take over the Haram al-Sharif," the Waqf official said.

"The trouble is this emboldens the state again, only now it's at a higher level, and the courts still are agreeing with them. This could put Melissa back into the psychiatric system where she could disappear from sight entirely," he said. The family's five other children also are endangered now because of potential court rulings that could be based on any evaluation of the parents, he said.

Besides the other children in the family, there are further ramifications, too, with the decision raising questions of larger government attacks on homeschoolers in Germany, where that choice of education is illegal because the government wants to stamp out any "parallel" societies utilizing a worldview different from the state's.
Even those German families who already have fled to other countries because of Germany's homeschool ban are moving into hiding because of the possibility they could be returned to face German fines or jail time for homeschooling, Thornton said.

Members of the German homeschool community previously have taken their battle for the right to teach their children Christian basics to the Human Rights Court for the European Union, asking for affirmation of the statement in the European Convention on Human Rights that: "In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions."

However, that court just last year affirmed a German court which had ruled the parental "wish" to have their children grow up without anti-Christian influences "could not take priority over compulsory school attendance."

US State Department spokesman Tom Casey said "they had a useful exchange of views on Iraq refugee issues". The US had previously refused direct high-level diplomatic contact with Syria, which it accuses of seeking to destabilise Lebanon and supporting fighters in Iraq.

Washington withdrew its ambassador to Damascus after Syrian authorities were implicated in the February 2005 assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, in Beirut. Sauerbrey had been expected to meet Meqdad together with a representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), allowing US officials to play down any appearance of bilateral discussions.

Afterwards, Meqdad said he expressed to Sauerbrey his wish to schedule bilateral talks with the US on all Middle East issues. "We said that all concerns in Arab region are linked and it is necessary to engage in a global dialogue on all of them," he told reporters. "It is impossible to find lasting solutions [to these problems] without such a dialogue."

In May 2000 this aim was achieved, thanks largely to the success of the party's military arm, the Islamic Resistance. In return, the movement, which represents Lebanon's Shia Muslims - the country's single largest community - won the respect of most Lebanese.

Hezbollah was formed primarily to offer resistance to the Israeli occupation. It also dreamed of transforming Lebanon's multi-confessional state into an Iranian-style Islamic state, although this idea was later abandoned in favour of a more inclusive approach that has survived to this day.

The party's rhetoric calls for the destruction of the state of Israel. It regards the whole of Palestine as occupied Muslim land and it argues that Israel has no right to exist.

The party was long supported by Iran, which provided it with arms and money. Hezbollah has always sought to further an Islamic way of life. But the party emphasises that its Islamic vision should not be interpreted as an intention to impose an Islamic society on the Lebanese.

"The Chinese military is less transparent than any significant military in Asia outside of North Korea," says Kenneth Lieberthal, a former White House China expert who's now at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. That doesn't serve China's interests, he says, because "when you are not very transparent, people assume you have something to hide."

Says General Tetsuya Nishimoto, Japan's former military chief of staff: "We should consider the build-up as a threat, because their goals and intentions are unclear." The official $45 billion defence-spending level for 2007 is less than 10 percent of the $622 billion the U.S. will spend on its military this year. U.S. officials and analysts say China habitually under-reports its true budget by a factor of two to three; whatever China spends, some of its senior commanders say, it still isn't enough.

China has also been able to alter the balance in the arena that matters most to its policy makers: Taiwan, which the government in Beijing regards as an integral part of China territory. In 1995, the U.S. faced down China by sending two aircraft- carrier groups into the area. Since then, China has steadily increased its military edge over the Taiwanese, while gaining the ability to inflict considerable damage on any U.S. force coming to Taiwan's aid in a crisis, say military experts.

Countries carrying out the most trade with China are among those expressing concern about Chinese military intentions. Last year, the U.S. was mainland China's biggest trading partner, with $262.6 billion in commerce, while Japan was second at $207.3 billion and Taiwan fourth at $107.8 billion, according to data from China's Customs General Administration.

While China is beefing up its military capabilities, Madeiros says, "what you don't see is China buying a long-range bomber force, long-range heavy-lift capabilities, things that would indicate that it's trying to develop global power projection." That hasn't stopped some top U.S. officials from ringing alarm bells. In a Feb. 23 speech in Sydney, Vice President Dick Cheney said China's buildup and the satellite shoot-down "are not consistent with China's stated goal of a peaceful rise."

According to the German Chancellor's Office's internal schedule, the final negotiations should begin April 23 and be terminated around June 1. As a prelude, Berlin will launch a large-scale PR campaign, culminating in a "Europe Festival" at the end of March before it proceeds on an "Information Tour" that will take it to more than 50 German cities. The estimated costs of this undertaking are in the double-digit millions. Among the cooperating partners of this propaganda endeavour, which also targets children and youth, are sectors of the German armed forces (Bundeswehr), including one institution specializing in psychological warfare operations.

Nearly all of the states that had initially rejected the proposed draft of the EU constitution, that had been solicited by Berlin, have, over the past few weeks, given up their resistance to many aspects. At the beginning of February, the governments of Great Britain and the Netherlands made known that they are in agreement with a radically abridged version of the contract. It is supposed to regulate the rationalization of the EU's institutions, in order to prepare for a more hard-hitting foreign policy and possibly introduce majority-rule decisions on central policies.

Great Britain still refuses to accept such decisions.

Cahuasquí said that most of the 1,000 foreign military bases on the planet belong to the United States, which has 737 in different countries. Others belong to Russia, China, the United Kingdom and Italy. "And these do not include secret military bases, like the four operated by the U.S. in Iraq," she said.

"But the United States doesn't only have bases in developing countries. It has 81 bases in Germany and 37 in Japan," she added. In Latin America and the Caribbean there are 17 U.S. military bases, located in Colombia, Peru, El Salvador, Aruba, Curaçao, Honduras, Ecuador, and Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, she noted.

Wilbert van der Zeijden, of the Transnational Institute in the Netherlands, said he wanted the meeting to foster "a broad global campaign" against foreign military presence and bases all over the world. "If we can't shut down all the bases, we may at least be able to weaken the U.S. military network which allows them to attack when and where they wish," he said.

Her new "secret" isn't very new at all. In fact, it's the oldest lie in the history of the world. It is that you and you alone are master of your own universe a kind of "god," if you will. Whatever you want in life will be yours if only you visualize it and claim it earnestly in your heart. Oprah is peddling this lie to millions on her TV show.

I was once ambivalent about Oprah Winfrey not really quite sure to what to make of her. Today, I can honestly say that she is leading people into spiritual darkness. The book she is touting, by an Australian talk-show producer named Rhonda Byrne, makes some extraordinary claims.

"Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and Jesus were not only prosperity teachers, but also millionaires themselves, with more affluent lifestyles than many present-day millionaires could conceive of," she writes.
Now let's put aside the dangling preposition for a moment and deal with the substance of this outrageous claim. Jesus was a millionaire? What did Jesus tell the rich young man who asked him how to inherit eternal life? He told him to sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor.

That's not the gospel Oprah is peddling today. The false and dangerous gospel she is promoting contends: "The energy you put into the world both good and bad is exactly what comes back to you. This means you create the circumstances of your life with the choices you make every day."

Here's another ugly aspect of this prosperity gospel: "The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts." Why should we ever help the destitute, the orphans, the widows, the victims of tragedy and illness? After all, according to Oprah and Byrne, they've brought these problems on themselves.

If you think I'm exaggerating the dangerous, deceiving claims of "The Secret," here's another, specifically dealing with those who contract diseases: "You cannot 'catch' anything unless you think you can, and thinking you can is inviting it to you with your thought."

I guess it's a sign of the times as we're told in II Timothy. Oprah is just doing what she's always done, I suppose: "Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth."

Michael Marcavage, director of Repent America and Pike both had alerted their constituencies earlier to H.R. 254, or the David Ray Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which could create "anti-hate" restrictions and penalties.
Marcavage told WND that plan would invert American justice, and instead of requiring evidence it would leave it to someone who claims to be offended to determine whether a "crime" has been committed.

"Truth is not allowed as evidence in hate crimes trials. A homosexual can claim emotional damage from hearing Scripture that describes his lifestyle as an abomination. He can press charges against the pastor or broadcaster who merely reads the Bible in public. The 'hater' can be fined thousands of dollars and even imprisoned!" Marcavage said.

Worse yet, there are some key phrases that open doors wide that many people don't want opened. For example, Pike said, the bill is to "prevent and respond to alleged violations," meaning "the government does not even have to wait until a hate crime has been committed but may act pre-emptively to 'prevent' crime."

Repent America, some of whose members already have served jail time simply for proclaiming the biblical message, is joining in sounding the alarm. "Having been charged under Pennsylvania's hate crimes law for declaring the truth about homosexuality, I can assure you that if this bill is passed and signed into law, it will be used to put Christians behind bars," said Marcavage.