Jesus is Lord, A Worshipping Christian’s Blog

In recent weeks, there’s been an explosion of intelligence information that all seems to point toward an impending war of annihilation between Israel and Syria. The accidental explosion at a Syrian base near Aleppo that Damascus attributed to hot weather detonating a stockpile of explosives was really a chemical weapons accident.

It’s since been established by multiple sources that the explosion killed ‘dozens’ of Iranian weapons engineers and their Syrian counterparts whom they were assisting in mounting chemical warheads on Scud-C missiles.

The explosion released VX gas, sarin gas and mustard gas blistering agent throughout the area.

VX gas is one of the most dangerous chemicals ever created by man. It can be inhaled, or absorbed through the skin. It takes less than a single drop to kill a human being. VX is so adhesive that it is virtually impossible to remove from the surface that it is in contact with.

VX has extremely low votility, which means it does not evaporate or decompose. An area oversprayed with VX in a military attack stays stuck to surfaces, with the potential to kill anyone who comes near them.

VX kills by cutting off the nervous system. It binds to the enzyme that transmits signals to the nerves and inhibits them. Therefore the nerves become isolated and uncontrollable.

In the movie, “The Rock,” Nicolas Cage’s character describes the effect in graphic Hollywood fashion, saying, the victim “convulses until he snaps his own spine.”

Sarin is a clear, colorless, and tasteless liquid that has no odor in its pure form. Sarin rapidly evaporates into a gaseous vapor that spreads rapidly into the atmosphere.

It can be inhaled, or absorbed through exposed eyes or skin. It mixes easily with water. Contaminated water will kill anyone touching or drinking it. Sarin also contaminates and poisons food.

Exposure to even tiny amounts of sarin results in loss of consciousness, convulsions, paralysis and respiratory failure. Severe exposure means certain death.

The third chemical agent being fitted to Syrian missiles is reportedly a “mustard gas blistering agent.” Since mustard gas has been around since the 1st World War, it somehow doesn’t sound as ominously lethal as VX or sarin.

In its pure form, mustard blistering agent is colorless, odorless, viscous liquid. In its gaseous form, it is yellow-brown in color and smells a bit like mustard plants or horseradish.

Mustard gas is ranked a Schedule 1 chemical weapon by the UN Chemical Weapons Convention, the same classification as VX and sarin. Those exposed usually suffer no immediate symptoms.

Within 4 to 24 hours the exposure develops into deep, itching or burning blisters wherever the mustard contacted the skin; the eyes (if exposed) become sore and the eyelids swollen, possibly leading to conjunctivitis and blindness.

At very high concentrations, if inhaled, it causes bleeding and blistering within the respiratory system, damaging the mucous membrane and causing pulmonary edema.

Blister agent exposure over more than 50% body surface area is usually fatal.

These are three of the weapons that Syria is preparing, with Iranian assistance, for use against the Israeli population.

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As usual, the pali terrorist think they actually deserve not only their own country (which will quickly become a terrorist state bent on the total destruction of Israel and the genocide of the Jewish people), but that they deserve Jerusalem as well.
And the world is actually stupid enough to give it to them.

As an American-hosted Middle East summit approaches, Palestinian Arabs are hardening their positions: An aide to the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, said yesterday that the Palestinians will demand sole Arab control over Judaism’s holiest site in Jerusalem, the Western Wall.

Mr. Abbas’s adviser on religious affairs, Adnan al-Husseini, made the new demand in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv, sparking an outcry from many Israeli politicians who complained that recent reports about the Olmert government’s proposal to transfer Arab-dominated neighborhoods in Jerusalem to the jurisdiction of a Palestinian state have led to further Arab demands.

As the last remnant of the ancient Second Temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 of the common era, the Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, is considered Judaism’s holiest site. Muslims, who call it Al-Burak, also venerate it as the place where they believe the prophet Muhammad tied his horse before ascending to the heavens.

“We are talking about full control” over Jerusalem, Mr. Husseini, a scion of one of the most prominent Palestinian Arab families, told Ma’ariv. “The Wailing Wall,” he said, “is a Muslim waqf,” or sacred endowment, “and therefore cannot be abandoned.” He cited a 1928 British mandate white paper that called for the area to be under Muslim control where Jews would be allowed to worship.

Mr. Husseini’s demand “is a direct result of the unilateral appeasement policies of the Olmert-Barak government,” according to a statement released by the right-of-center Likud Party, referring respectively to the prime minister of the centrist Kadima Party, and the left-of-center Labor Party leader, Ehud Barak, who is the defense minister. These policies, the statement said, would “abandon Jerusalem to the threats of Hamas.”

Some Laborites were also angry. “The Wall is a remnant of our Temple, the holiest place for Jews,” Labor’s Knesset member Danny Yatom told Ma’ariv. He said the November 26 summit in Annapolis, Md., is bound to fail if the Palestinian Arabs raise such extreme ideas.

On Tuesday, Mr. Abbas for the first time made public his vision on the size of the future Palestinian Arab state, saying Israel would have to withdraw from all of the territories it has held since the 1967 war with Jordan, which at the time controlled the West Bank and Egypt, which held the Gaza Strip.

Original Link.

Our insightful friend from Israel, Michael, has this to say about the upcoming Middle East “Peace” Conference.

Flipping through the online Jerusalem Post this morning, I found an interesting follow-up article about the upcoming “peace conference.” Apparently, the PA will now graciously accept the offers made to them 7 years ago, at Camp David and Taba. Here are some excerpts:

The Palestinian Authority would accept concessions made by Israel in the Taba discussions that took place six years ago, a senior Palestinian official told Israel Radio early Friday morning.
…
At Taba both sides presented, for the first time, their own maps of the West Bank as a basis of discussion. Reportedly, the points of contention that ultimately proved insurmountable were the refugees and the final status of Jerusalem’s holy sites.

All of this strikes me as particularly absurd. The current terrorist campaign being waged against Israel got its official kickoff back in the fall of 2000, when Yasser Arafat rejected those offers. The PA “leadership” chose to launch a terrorist war, instead of trying to build a state. The main results of that war are thousands dead, thousands injured, and thousands more incarcerated. The large majority of these casualties are palestinians. In addition, while Israel’s economy has continued to grow, the PA has turned into an economic basket case, full of corruption, and almost completely dependent on UN handouts for daily survival.

The PA “leaders” gambled an offer of statehood against their ability to wage a terroist war, and they lost. When in history have the losers in a war ever been the ones to gain? When has the winner ever been the one to offer concessions? This peace conference needs to start from a clean slate, and the Israeli diplomats need to state, unequivocally and unapologetically, that they are in a position of strength compared to the PA, and that the talks will proceed accordingly. Otherwise, we’re just looking to have a repeat of 2000 and 2001 “negotiations.”

But what were the stumbling blocks then, and now? The article states:

Regarding Jerusalem, both sides reportedly agreed that the Arab neighborhoods would form a Palestinian capital.
…
Further, the official said that Israel must allow Palestinian refugees to “return to the Palestinian state” and claimed that if Israel were to allow a symbolic number of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel, the PA would be willing to compromise on other issues.

Oddly enough, I actually think that the proposal on Jerusalem is reasonable. Those eastern neighborhoods don’t include the Old City, and if the palestinians want to put a capital there, close to some historic mosques, why should we care? Those neighborhoods are also 20th Century creations, and are not part of “historic Jerusalem.”

The refugee issue is another matter. Once a “State of Palestine” is formed, if they want to allow the palestinian refugees in, that’s their business, not Israel’s. But why should Israel let in any of the “refugees?” Especially when it’s realized that the PA’s official policy is to create a Judenrein state. Perhaps that “symbolic number” of palestinian refugees could be permitted, if, for example, the residents of Gush Katif can have their towns back….

So there’s a little food for thought. Shabbat shalom, u’l'hitraot!

Original Link.

An open letter issued by a group of 138 Muslim scholars, clerics and academics issued an “invitation” to the Vatican, the archbishop of Canterbury and other Christian leaders to “make peace” with Islam.

At least, that is the way most mainstream news reports styled it – “an invitation to make peace.” It was actually more of an ultimatum than it was an invitation. Boiled down to its essence, the letter warned Christians to “make peace with us or we’ll kill you.” The letter just phrases it more nicely.

“As Muslims, we say to Christians that we are not against them and that Islam is not against them – so long as they do not wage war against Muslims on account of their religion, oppress them and drive them out of their homes.”

It was hard to know what to make of that statement. If it refers to the war on terror, it was Osama bin Laden who declared this a war of religions, in which he identified his enemies as Christian Crusaders and Jews.

The so-called “invitation” to make peace with Islam suggests that the price of peace is Islamic freedom to make war on others without fear of retaliation. At no point in the conflict has anyone other than Islam defined it as a conflict between Christians and Jews against Islam.

The statement was timed to coincide with the end of the Islamic month of Ramadan and one year after the pope inflamed the sentiments of the Religion of Perpetual Outrage by quoting the words of an obscure 14th century Byzantine emperor.

The letter was hailed by Newsweek as “something of a miracle” – treating it as if were an olive branch being offered by the victim to the aggressor, if only the aggressor were humane enough to accept it.

Gushed Newsweek in it’s column headlined, “Give Peace a Chance” – as if it were the West who opposed peace and had suddenly run amok attacking innocent Muslims everywhere – “It is addressed to Christianity’s most powerful leaders, including the pope, the archbishop of Canterbury and the heads of the Lutheran, Methodist and Baptist churches, and, in 15 pages laced with quranic and biblical scriptures, argues that the most fundamental tenets of Islam and Christianity are identical: love of one (and the same) God, and love of one’s neighbor.”

I hardly know where to begin to address that statement. In the first place, if it were true, then no Muslim could make a credible argument to his co-religionists based on the most fundamental tenets of Islam that there is any eternal reward to be had for killing one’s enemy in jihad.

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Have you heard? Now you can spread lies and propaganda and be recognized as an international hero. (I think I might puke.)

Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their efforts to spread awareness of man-made climate change and lay the foundations for counteracting it.

“I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize,” Gore said in a statement. “We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.”

Gore won an Academy Award this year for his film “An Inconvenient Truth,” a documentary on global warming, and had been widely expected to win the prize.

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Is it just me or does anyone else think this world gets scarier by the day?

The University of Maastricht in the Netherlands is awarding a doctorate to a researcher who wrote a paper on marriages between humans and robots.

David Levy, a British artificial intelligence researcher at the college, wrote in his thesis, “Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners,” that trends in robotics and shifting attitudes on marriage are likely to result in sophisticated robots that will eventually be seen as suitable marriage partners.

Levy's conclusion was based on about 450 publications in the fields of psychology, sexology, sociology, robotics, materials science, artificial intelligence, gender studies and computer-human interaction.

The thesis examines human attitudes toward affection, love and sexuality and concluded that the findings are just as applicable to human interaction with robots of the future as they are to the relationships between humans of today.

Original Link

Nothing gets a journalist’s attention like a subpoena. While authoritarian regimes silence critics by murdering or jailing them, journalists (and other critics) in the United States face gentler, but still effective, intimidation: libel lawsuits. Over the last few years, Islamists have tried silencing reporters, scholars, and citizens by suing them for defamation, often successfully. But recent legal cases in California, Massachusetts, and Minnesota suggest that the tactic may finally be backfiring, at least in the United States, if not in Britain, where libel laws overwhelmingly favor plaintiffs. The American lawsuits’ outcomes—poorly covered by the media—represent victories for the free expression and public participation that the First Amendment guarantees.

The latest victory came in August, when an Islamic charity, KinderUSA, and its board chairman, Laila Al-Marayati, dropped the libel suit they had filed in April in California state court against former Treasury Department official Matthew Levitt, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (which now employs him), and Yale University Press. In 2006, Yale published Levitt’s book on Hamas, which Washington says supports terrorism. Levitt never mentioned Al-Marayati in his book, but he did assert that KinderUSA, founded to raise money for Palestinian children, had ties to terrorist groups.

Al-Marayati and KinderUSA charged that Levitt had made “false and damaging” charges that caused “irreparable harm to its reputation,” and they sought at least $500,000 in damages, a public retraction, and a halt to the book’s distribution. But Levitt and his codefendants stood by his claims. In June, they filed a motion against the charity and its chairman, seeking to quash the libel suit and demanding that the plaintiffs pay all legal fees. They cited a California law that bans “SLAPP”—or “strategic litigation against public participation”—suits, which aim not at winning in court, but at intimidating into silence a group or a publication raising issues of public concern. “California enacted anti-SLAPP legislation to get rid of inappropriate lawsuits like this one,” they wrote in a 15-page brief.

Less than six weeks later, Al-Marayati and KinderUSA dropped the suit. Todd Gallinger, who represented the plaintiffs, insisted that the charity had sued not to intimidate or silence Levitt, but rather to force him to correct charges that it still considers libelous. “They were trying to suppress the charity’s legitimate activities,” he said. But KinderUSA underestimated the costs involved, he acknowledged, and the defendants’ anti-SLAPP motion was a factor in its decision to drop the suit.

“Anti-SLAPP laws are a very powerful tool,” agreed Roger Myers, an attorney who specializes in using the law to defend journalists in libel claims. “There has been a fairly dramatic decline in the number of libel cases being filed here in California.”

Original Link.

Well, only one thing I can say about this: Ouch!!
Here at Worshipping Christian, we are most assuredly Christian Zionist. We believe what the Bible says about God’s covenant with His chosen people, the Jews. I believe that the covenant that God made with the Jews is still very much in force today.
For those who have not heard, Ann Coulter made a comment yesterday that basically says that Jews should Christians. Here is the dialog between her and Donny Deutsch:

COULTER: Well, OK, take the Republican National Convention. People were happy. They’re Christian. They’re tolerant. They defend America, they —

DEUTSCH: Christian — so we should be Christian? It would be better if we were all Christian?

COULTER: Yes.

DEUTSCH: We should all be Christian?

COULTER: Yes. Would you like to come to church with me, Donny?

Later on she said:

COULTER: No, we think — we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.

DEUTSCH: Wow, you didn’t really say that, did you?

COULTER: Yes. That is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws. We know we’re all sinners —

DEUTSCH: In my old days, I would have argued — when you say something absurd like that, there’s no —

COULTER: What’s absurd?

DEUTSCH: Jews are going to be perfected. I’m going to go off and try to perfect myself —

COULTER: Well, that’s what the New Testament says.

DEUTSCH: Ann Coulter, author of “If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans,” and if Ann Coulter had any brains, she would not say Jews need to be perfected. I’m offended by that personally. And we’ll have more “Big Idea” when we come back.

(BREAK)

DEUTSCH: Welcome back to “The Big Idea.” During the break, Ann said she wanted to explain her last comment. So I’m going to give her a chance. So you don’t think that was offensive?

COULTER: No. I’m sorry. It is not intended to be. I don’t think you should take it that way, but that is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews. We believe the Old Testament. As you know from the Old Testament, God was constantly getting fed up with humans for not being able to, you know, live up to all the laws. What Christians believe — this is just a statement of what the New Testament is — is that that’s why Christ came and died for our sins. Christians believe the Old Testament. You don’t believe our testament.

DEUTSCH: You said — your exact words were, “Jews need to be perfected.” Those are the words out of your mouth.

COULTER: No, I’m saying that’s what a Christian is.

DEUTSCH: But that’s what you said — don’t you see how hateful, how anti-Semitic —

COULTER: No!

DEUTSCH: How do you not see? You’re an educated woman. How do you not see that?

COULTER: That isn’t hateful at all.

DEUTSCH: But that’s even a scarier thought. OK —

COULTER: No, no, no, no, no. I don’t want you being offended by this. This is what Christians consider themselves, because our testament is the continuation of your testament. You know that. So we think Jews go to heaven. I mean (Jerry) Falwell himself said that, but you have to follow laws. Ours is “Christ died for our sins.” We consider ourselves perfected Christians. For me to say that for you to become a Christian is to become a perfected Christian is not offensive at all.

I think it’s a classic case of “open-mouth, insert-foot”.

Original Link.

More rumblings on the prophetic front. Christians, time is getting so short. Stay faithful and keep looking up.

The “survival of the world” is at stake if Muslims and Christians do not make peace with each other, leaders of the Muslim world will warn the Pope and other Christian leaders today.

In an unprecedented open letter signed by 138 leading scholars from every sect of Islam, the Muslims plead with Christian leaders “to come together with us on the common essentials of our two religions” and spell out the similarities between passages of the Bible and the Koran.

The scholars state: “As Muslims, we say to Christians that we are not against them and that Islam is not against them - so long as they do not wage war against Muslims on account of their religion, oppress them and drive them out of their homes.”

The phrasing has echoes of the New Testament passage: “He that is not with me is against me” - a passage used by President George Bush when addressing a joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11.

The Muslims call instead for the emphasis to be on the shared characteristics of world’s two largest faiths.

The letter, addressed to Pope Benedict XVI, to the Orthodox Church’s Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew 1 and all the other Orthodox Patriarchs and to the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams and the leaders of all other Protestant churches worldwide, will be rolled out around the world this morning in a series of press conferences beginning in Jordan. It is supported by the Bishop of London, the Right Rev Richard Chartres.

It is expected to be followed by a joint conference between Muslim and Christian world leaders at on “neutral” ground, such as at an American university.

“Finding common ground between Muslims and Christians is not simply a matter for polite ecumenical dialogue between selected religious leaders,” the Muslim scholars say, noting that Christians and Muslims make up over a third and a fifth of humanity respectively.

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During Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s recent visit to New York, he made the statement “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country”. I suppose he said that to try to prove the moral superiority of Iran. Apparently, he has now chnaged his story. The truth is that homosexuality in Iran is punishable by death (so maybe they don’t have as many homosexuals there because they kill them?) What I cannot understand is that prominent homosexual activists (Rosie O’Donnell for instance) continue to preach tolerance of Islam and side with Muslims in the war effort, yet these same Muslims would kill them for their sexual choices. Pretty crazy if you ask me.

Iran has conceded that it does have homosexuals - but not as many as in the United States.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad caused a worldwide storm last month when he insisted there were no gays in the Islamic country.

Addressing New York’s Columbia University, Mr Ahmadinejad was emphatic when asked about whether Iran was home to homosexuals.

“In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country,” he maintained.

Speaking through a translator, he added: “In Iran we don’t have this phenomenon.”

But a presidential aide has now said the meaning of Mr Ahmadinejad’s reply had been lost in translation.

Iran does in fact have homosexuals, he conceded.

“What Ahmadinejad said was not a political answer,” presidential media adviser Mohammad Kalhor explained.

“He said that, compared with American society, we don’t have many homosexuals.”

Mr Kalhor said because of historical, religious and cultural differences, homosexuality was less common in Iran and the Islamic world than in the West.

Homosexuality is punishable by death in the Islamic Republic Of Iran.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said in May the last person known “with reasonable certainty” to have been sentenced to execution in Iran for consensual homosexual conduct was in 2005.

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