With President Bush considering nominees a Supreme Court vacancy, a small group of teenagers and adults gathered for prayer July 14th in front of the White House. They knew they might be arrested and, as it turned out, that's what happened. "I am here to encourage the president to keep his promise and welcome the unborn in life and protect them in law," said James Conrad of Riverside Calif.

"I am here right now as a representative of my generation," Arianna Grumbine of the pro-life group, Survivors, said. "One-third of my generation was killed by abortion alone in the United States since 1973."

The young adults came from across America to pray for the president, specifically that he would choose pro-life Supreme Court justices. They began their prayer session across the street from the White House.

"We'll pray here," Brandi Swindell, of Generation Life told the group. "Then after that we will go across the street and kneel in prayer, and there are some members of our group that are willing to peacefully risk arrest."

That area closer to the White House is a restricted zone. The public is allowed to walk through, but not stop for long. As they prayed there, the U.S. Park Police moved in and roped off the area. The officers warned them three times to move.

Lt. Pat Smith of the U.S. Park Police announced to the group over a bull horn: "You must leave the enclosed portion of the White House sidewalk now. All persons remaining in the enclosed portion of the White House sidewalk will be arrested."

Eight of them were cuffed as they were praying and taken away, charged with "stationary demonstrating in a restricted area."

"It is the first freedom of the human soul, the right to speak the words that God places in our mouths. We must stand for that freedom in our country. We must speak for that freedom in the world."  ------------------------ President George W. Bush, 2001

The Washington Times quoted on the 15th an unnamed investigator as saying that there is symbolic significance in the fact that the bombers attempted to travel from a central location in the four different directions of the compass. "We think it was intended as an al Qaeda message--to seemingly blow up in the form [of] a fiery cross in the heart of the Christian infidels." The name of the station where the killers parted ways was "King's Cross." The story also noted that during publicity over alleged American abuse of the Koran, a group of protesting Muslims had burned a cross in front of the U.S. Embassy in London--an incident little reported or protested in this country.

A combination of secular blindness and political correctness continues to prevent many people from seeing or stating the obvious--these terrorist bombings, like those on September 11, did not happen because of poverty, high debt burdens, or other economic reasons. They happened because the practitioners of a particular radical form of Islam believe that their religion not only allows but encourages them to murder those who don't share their faith especially Christians and Jews

The Clinton Global Initiative slated for Sept. 15-17 is attracting some of the biggest names in politics and the private sector, including News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch, Time Warner chairman Richard Parsons, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac, and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

"I am thrilled that world leaders from both the public and private sectors have agreed to support me and come together to make a difference," said Clinton. "And what we begin during three days in September will not end with the closing session of our event. My foundation will take the ideas we develop and keep working with our Global Initiative participants and others to achieve tangible results." 

The Story You Didn't See? (Gary Bauer- Tuesday, June 21, 2005)

If you don't get the FOX News Channel then you didn't see any of the dramatic June 21^st footage of the Israeli army's arrest of a 21-year old, female Palestinian homicide-bomber, strapped with 25 pounds of high-explosives, just moments before she was to commit mass-murder by detonating herself inside an Israeli hospital. No other television network featured the story.

That only one network would air incredible footage of the seizure of a ticking human-bomb, just moments before she tried to murder hospital patients, means this story was not simply ignored by the mainstream media - it was boycotted by the mainstream media. Since nearly every aspect of this remarkable story contradicts everything the mainstream media has been trying to tell us about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they just opted for the easiest way to handle it - denying it ever happened.

Not covering it meant not having to show that Israel's planned unilateral withdrawal from Gaza next month will not decrease terror - it will increase terror. Had the Israeli army not been in Gaza, dozens of Israelis would have been killed and hundreds wounded at Beer Sheva's Soroka Medical Center.

Ignoring the story meant the networks didn't need to tell viewers that the homicide-bomber was not dispatched by terrorists of Islamic Jihad or Hamas, groups opposed to President Abbas, but was in fact working for the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade, which is controlled by the political party Fatah, whose chairman is none other than PA President Abbas himself!

Using the "gut and amend" tactic, California Assemblyman Mark Leno has managed to place language in support of gay marriage into a fisheries research bill, The Christian Post reported.

In 2000, voters passed Proposition 22 to ban gay marriage. Leno argues Prop 22 only applies to marriages from other states.

Karen England of Capitol Resource Institute said Leno's attempt is nothing more than trickery. "We are appalled that the majority of committee members decided to ignore the will of the people they represent," England said. "Assemblyman Mark Leno has engaged in some legislative maneuvering to keep the gay marriage bill alive."

If approved, Leno's bill would change the states definition of marriage from "a man and a woman" to "two persons."

Conservatives have formed the Voter's Right to Protect Marriage Initiative and intend to place a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage on the next statewide ballot.

Due to hard work by Senator Troy Fraser and Representative Phil King, the state Senate has just passed a bill that will bring Texas telecommunications laws into the 21st century and inject competition into the cable industry. The legislation—S.B. 21—reforms archaic franchise laws that make it difficult for new companies to enter the market. This critical plan will let providers offer consumers more innovative service, as well as more competition to keep prices in check. S.B. 21 is now on its way to the state House of Representatives.

Right now, franchise laws act as barriers that limit the number of providers that can serve consumers in a given area. Texas consumers are surely the real victims of these unnecessary monopolistic restrictions; cable rates have soared 40 percent since 2000. Moreover, these same franchise laws keep amazing new technologies out of the hands of Texans. The good news is that S.B. 21 allows phone and Internet companies to provide video services and compete with existing cable businesses. These reforms would go a long way towards creating a free and competitive market for video programming.

This legislation will allow consumers to choose among cable, satellite, telephone, Internet, and perhaps power companies for their video provider, allowing Americans to enjoy the benefits of greater competition: more choices, access to new technologies, and better prices.

The U K Government pressed ahead Friday 17^th with plans to outlaw incitement to religious hatred despite warnings from Christians that the move would worsen relations between different faiths.

The bill, creates a maximum seven-year jail sentence for anyone convicted of intending to stir up religious hatred. The fear is that as the Bill has failed to define religion, it could be used to protect Satanists. The move follows concern that otherwise, people could take offence at comments in a public meeting or even in a church, and simply seek to arrest the speaker.

Representatives of more than 1,000 individual churches across the country - including Anglican, Roman Catholic and Presbyterian faiths - handed in a petition to Downing Street, urging Tony Blair to ditch the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill. Gathered in just five days to match the speed with which the Government is pushing through the plans, the petition says: "The mere quoting of texts from both the Koran and the Bible could be captured and criminalized by this law." It adds: "Extremists have shown themselves willing to use malicious prosecution to further their purposes and this law would present such prosecution opportunities against all religious communities."

The churches' petition warned that criminalizing religious hatred "could well have the opposite effect to that intended" and would infringe freedom of speech.

The churches' fears were supported by Danny Nalliah, 40, a Pentecostal pastor, who last year was found to have breached a religious vilification law in the Australian state of Victoria after complaints from Muslims.

Mr Nalliah came to the Commons to warn MPs that they were about to make the same unintended mistakes as Australian politicians. Mr. Nalliah and his co-defendant, Daniel Scot, have now appealed to the Australian Supreme Court after being ordered to apologize to the Islamic Council and to spend about £30,000 on newspaper advertisements explaining the ruling.

Mr Nalliah, who faces up to six months in jail if his appeal fails and he continues to defy the ruling, warned that in Australia, "This sort of law has caused severe tensions between Christians and Muslims".

Quoteworthy: ---------- "Religion in a Family is at once its brightest Ornament & its best Security."

------ Samuel Adams (letter to Thomas Wells, 22 November 1780)

A handful of Representatives are trying to pass a national law to give special treatment to a group of people defined solely by their behavior.

They have introduced legislation in Congress which would make it illegal to discriminate against this group.  As you already have figured out, the group they want special treatment for is homosexuals.

During the Clinton administration, Special Counsel Elaine Kaplan—a practicing lesbian—inserted "sexual orientation" in the Office of Special Counsel guidelines despite having no authority to do so.  This elevated homosexuality to a protected status such as race, color, creed or religion.

Scott Bloch, who now heads OSC, removed the words "sexual orientation" because Congress had never authorized the addition.  Pro-homosexual leaders attempted to get Bloch fired, but failed.

Now these Congressmen, many of them practicing homosexuals, are trying to change the law to include "sexual orientation."  Homosexuals are already protected against discrimination just as any other employee.  What the Congressmen are asking for is special treatment for a group of people who can be identified only by their sexual behavior.

Take Action! Send an email to your Representative today. 

Ask him or her to oppose H.R. 3128, the Clarification of Federal Employment Protection Act Send Email Here

OTTAWA, July 15, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Dr. John Patrick, Director of Public Policy for the Canadian Christian Medical and Dental Society, Professor of History of Science and Medicine at Augustine College spoke to the Senate hearing on the imposition of gay 'marriage,' and its potential impact on Canadian society. His organization represents approximately 1500 Canadian physicians.

Canada, he says, is facing demographic collapse. "We are, of course, only just managing to stay afloat. Our abortion rate more or less exactly matches our immigration rate."

He said that the discussion on same-sex "marriage' and the invention of marriage as a right, is a product of emotionalism and not reasoned thought. One cannot but feel sympathy for anyone who feels alienated from public acceptance, as is the case with homosexuals, but creating a right to call their relationships 'marriage' requires rigorous thought rather than warm feelings."

Dr. Patrick, a lecturer in ethics, culture, faith and public policy, said that Canada is on its way to establishing a radically secularized state intolerant of any public expressions of religion. He pointed out, in fact, that Secularism, which is lauded as neutral, non-religious and tolerant, is in fact, becoming the established state religion in Canada and many other countries of the formerly Christian west.

He characterizes the fight over marriage as a clash of rights where the rights of Christians and other religious groups are being overridden because of secularist bias in government. "It is a very strange irony," he said, "that what is proposed to ease the pain of perhaps a million homosexuals - of whom no more than 10,000 will marry, if we take the Scandinavian experience as an example - if we extend that right, we will alienate about half of the population, 15 million or so, by taking away their perceived rights."

In a culture that holds perception higher than objective truth, he said that no matter what is intended, people with traditional morals will see the change as a violation of their rights. "After all," he says, "that is the way the homosexuals have argued their case."

MEXICO, July 15, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Mexico's president, Vincente Fox, has been blasted by the country's bishops for allowing abortifacient drugs to be distributed at government-funded clinics.

The morning-after Pill, (MAP) has been available in Mexican pharmacies for years, but this week was made available for free in health clinics that aid Mexico's poor. The pill is in fact, a massive dose of the same kinds of hormones found in ordinary birth control pills. Its effect in part is to make the lining of the uterus inhospitable to an already formed embryonic child which then dies. The long-term health effects of MAP on women using it have not yet been fully assessed but the regular birth control pill is associated with stroke, heart attack and certain types of cancer.

NEW YORK, July 19, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - More than 460,000 US women have used the abortion drug, RU-486, to kill their unborn children since the US Food and Drug Administration approved sale of the drug in 2000, the abortifacient's manufacturer, Danco Laboratories, boasted in a press release Monday.

"Mifeprex® has been available in the U.S. for almost 5 years, and more than 460,000 women in this country have chosen it for early abortion since FDA approval in September 2000," the Danco press release stated.

Campaign Life Coalition spokesman Rhonda Wood told LifeSiteNews.com, "I've been involved in the pro-life movement for 17 years," adding, "it still blows me away that no one is considering the life that is being killed."

Most parents would agree that vile sexual references don't belong on television, but would you believe that such content has not only appeared on television, it was included in a cartoon?

Fox's raunchy Family Guy made a strong come back after being off the air for three years, thanks to the success of DVD sales and heavy promotion on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim program block. And although the content is decidedly not for children, children are tuning-in in droves. According to USA Today, Family Guy was the fifth-highest-rated show among 2-11-year-olds, averaging nearly a million viewers in that age group. Among teens ages 12-17, it is the second most popular show on television.

It is a sad irony that producers seem to be able to get away with more outrageous content because it's a cartoon - but because it's a cartoon, children are more likely to watch.

And Family Guy isn't the only outrageous cartoon on television. On July 31, Nickelodeon - a network that supposedly caters to young viewers -- is bringing back The Ren & Stimpy Show. This adult-cartoon series regularly features crude humor and sexual content. For more info about Family Guy and other primetime TV shows check out PTC's Family TV Guide at
http://www.parentstv.org/ptc/shows/main.asp?shwid=504

If concern about the rampant sex and violence on television doesn't convince you of the need to get the TVs out of your children's bedrooms, perhaps this will: Three new studies published this week in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine have linked excessive television viewing by children to diminished academic achievement.

Researchers in New Zealand studied TV viewing and long-term academic achievement and found that individuals who watched more than three hours of television a day as children or as teens were more likely to not finish school or get a university degree by the age of 26, regardless of the individual's socioeconomic status or intelligence. An indication, researchers said, that excessive television viewing can impact an individual's well-being in the long-run.

Researchers at the University of Washington tested 1,800 first graders and found that children who watched more than two hours of television a day as toddlers scored lower on reading and intelligence tests. From: Children's Television Viewing and Cognitive Outcomes

Finally, a study of 348 California third-graders found that children with television sets in their bedrooms performed worse on standardized tests than peers without television sets in their bedrooms. From:  The Remote, the Mouse, and the No. 2 Pencil

Three Christian housewives in Indonesia have been charged with endangering children and face a possible five years in prison after teaching a kid’s Sunday school class, a human-rights group reports. 

According to International Christian Concern, which helps persecuted believers worldwide, the criminal charges stem from three Sunday school lessons the women – Rebecca Laonita Z, Rama Mala Bangun and Etty Pangesti – taught in 2003 and 2005. 

The activities the women led included: telling stories and teaching from the Bible, teaching Christian prayers, providing prizes like pencils for memorizing Bible verses, giving children towels with a picture of Jesus, and giving kids blue sport shirts that bore a cross and the logo of their church. The women also allegedly invited a child to attend a church service and lent a girl a Bible to read, International Christian Concern reported. 

While most of the children involved went to the women's church, the kids had invited some of their Muslim friends to the classes – and that's when the trouble began.  Indonesia has a child-protection criminal statute that states:  Any person who purposely uses deception, lies or enticement to make a child choose another religion not of his own free will ... will be prosecuted by imprisonment for five years and/or a fine of Rp.100,000,000.

In the last several years, Indonesia has seen the destruction of entire Christian villages by Muslim mobs.

Nearly six in 10 U.S. counties report methamphetamine use is their No. 1 drug problem, according to a National Association of Counties survey of 500 counties in 45 states.

A similar survey indicates children are often the victims of the increased use of the drug, not only at the hands of parent-users who neglect and abuse their kids, but also because the toxins used to make Meth permeate children's skin and cause them severe health problems.

"The methamphetamine epidemic in the United States is having a disastrous effect on our country," said Larry Naake, executive director of the National Association of Counties. "The increasingly widespread production, distribution and use of meth is now affecting urban, suburban and rural areas throughout the country."

Still, David Murray, special assistant to the White House drug czar, said the problem is not an epidemic.

"The notion of epidemic," he said, "to the degree to which it signals something out of control and unstoppable, is erroneous."

Even though marijuana is far and away the most abused drug in America,

Murray said the violent and toxic nature of meth makes it a front-line concern.

"For the local and rural police, this is one of the primary things that they confront," he explained. "They are very right to be concerned about it."

According to National Association of Counties President-Elect Bill Hansell, children are often the chief victims.

"It's a drug that isn't done in isolation. It's a very social drug," he noted. "So when you have children present, most likely both parents are doing drugs. Both parents have methamphetamine issues. So you can't place that child with one of the parents."

Hansell is asking Congress and the Bush administration to provide a more comprehensive approach to fighting the meth problem.

The House Appropriations Committee's approval of a 46% cut in Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB, which oversees the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio) funding raised the hopes of fiscal conservatives who believe the publicly funded network can successfully thrive separated from the taxpayer-funded spigot. Hopes that fiscal discipline had finally returned to Washington were quickly dashed when the full House of Representatives voted to return $100 million to CPB, and now a Senate Appropriations subcommittee plans on increasing the funding by an additional $111 million. Since the "Republican Revolution" of 1994, trumpeted as a triumph for fiscal discipline and eliminating wasteful spending, federal non-defense spending has increased in record numbers. In the case of PBS, fiscal independence can be promoted if PBS is allowed to share in the profits from the programs and characters they have made successful over the years.

According to USA Today, Nike has become the first major corporation in America to publicly endorse homosexual "civil unions," a back door move to legalize homosexual marriage.

Nike endorsed a bill in their home state of Oregon which would legalize "civil unions." Homosexual activists are using the "civil union" approach as a back door approach to the legalization of homosexual marriage. Once they get their "civil union" approved, they will then go to court to secure the right to marry.

While Vermont and Connecticut have adopted "civil unions" at the state level, Nike is the first major corporation in America to publicly approve this approach to secure homosexual marriage.

Homosexual activists are working to get other corporations to follow the lead of Nike. Many corporations are already donating large sums to homosexual organizations to support their agenda.

For the complete Barna study results, click the hyper-link above.

A report being released this week shows America's divorce numbers seem to be going down. However, one of the key reasons for that decline is one that many Christians will find troubling.

The report is called "The State of Our Unions 2005" and is put together by New Jersey's Rutgers University using U.S. Census Bureau statistics and other data. The report shows the U.S. divorce rate is now.
17.7 percent per 1,000 married women, compared to 22.6 percent in 1980. But the authors of the report indicate this drop probably has little to do with more stable marriages. Instead, they say it can be attributed mostly to a huge jump in the number of couples cohabitating without benefit of marriage.

In fact, the report says the U.S. marriage rate has plummeted 50 percent since 1970.

Meanwhile, it would seem that, as one of the report's authors, David Popenoe, noted recently in an interview with USA Today, "Co-habitation is here to stay." And that is not good news, he added, especially not for children. Popenoe says as society shifts from marriage to co-habitation, family instability only increases.

175 Percent Increase Of “Other-Than-Mexicans” Captured On Southern Border (FAIR)

Over 919,000 illegal aliens have been apprehended so far this year, but the most troubling trend is the increasing number of Other-Than-Mexican's or OTM's. In fact, 14% of all immigrants captured are OTM's and a significant portion of these come from special interest countries that support terrorism.

The overall number of OTM's caught coming through the southern border is a 175 percent increase over last year's figures. There are insufficient detention spaces to hold these illegal aliens, resulting in the widely criticized "catch and release" policy. Apprehended Mexican illegal aliens are returned promptly to Mexico, but the OTM's are simply released once given a date for a deportation hearing 90 percent never attend. Not surprisingly they just simply disappear into the sea of illegal aliens and join the ranks of almost half a million other absconders.

In September 2002, James Gilles was simply and joyfully sharing his faith by distributing literature to those passing by on a bike trail running between the campus of Goshen (Indiana) College and a set of railroad tracks.

Even though Gilles was on public property which allowed him to freely express his views, local police quickly arrived and prohibited him from continuing to share the Gospel.  The police said they had received complaints from individuals at the college who disagreed with his views. (So much for freedom of speech…)

After attempts to settle were exhausted ADF attorney Nate Kellum filed a lawsuit against the city on behalf of Mr. Gilles’ “freedom of speech”.  Early last month, (June 08), the city agreed to settle the lawsuit and adopt a policy that will defend the free speech of all who wish to speak the Truth on public property.  The Goshen chief of police will issue a departmental directive on the matter.

Nate comments: “This case was about the right of Americans to share their faith based viewpoints on public property.  City officials are not allowed to discriminate against people simply because they, or someone, doesn’t like their Gospel message.”

Alliance Defense Fund
15333 N. Pima Road Suite 165
Scottsdale, AZ 85260 (480)444-0020
info@alliancedefensefund.org

Russia plans to expand nuclear and defense relations with Iran in wake of the election of a new president accused of the killing of dissidents.
Russian officials said President Vladimir Putin has decided to continue efforts to expand economic and security relations with Iran in wake of the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June. They said Moscow plans to send high-level officials to discuss defense and energy cooperation over the next few months. Ahmadinejad has been accused of participating in the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Teheran as well as the killing of Kurdish dissidents in Austria in 1989.

"An intergovernmental agreement regulates our cooperation with Iran and the change of leadership will not affect Russian-Iranian cooperation," Russian Federal Agency for Nuclear Power director Alexander Rumyantsev said.

Rumyantsev, co-chairman of the Russian-Iranian intergovernmental cooperation commission, said on July 12 that Russia wants to launch Iranian satellites. Iran has developed the Zohreh communications satellite that was expected to be launched in 2005.

Bashing Israel - At Church? (American Values by Gary Bauer)

What in the world is wrong with some of the so-called "mainline" Protestant denominations in our country? Many of them have embraced the moral relativism of the popular culture, rather than the Bible's Truth, as their guide in modern America. On foreign policy these same denominations increasingly sound like anti-American filmmaker Michael Moore in their pronouncements.

The latest fad among the "mainline" church crowd is to incessantly attack Israel, one of our best allies, while turning a blind eye to the Islamofascists who threaten all free societies - including our own. For example, the United Church of Christ is considering three anti-Israel resolutions at its upcoming annual meeting in a few weeks. Two resolutions will push for "divestment," or an economic boycott, of Israel. Another condemns the security fence Israel built to stop homicide-bombers. Apparently Israelis must allow themselves to be routinely killed to satisfy the UCC leftists.

There has been much talk about terrorism's "root causes" following London bombings the week before last, but I have yet to hear anyone mention the most important cause of all: the fact that terrorism has thus far proven extremely effective – thereby encouraging the terrorists to continue.

If you accept the West's formulation of the terrorists' goals, that may sound counterintuitive. The Israeli "occupation," for instance, could have ended in 2000, when Israel offered to uproot most settlements and establish a Palestinian state, with east Jerusalem as its capital, in some 97 percent of the territories. But since the Palestinians responded by launching a terrorist war, not only is there still no Palestinian state, but Israel has re-conquered areas it vacated in 1995. Thus the terror would seem to have been counterproductive.

The same is true of the 9/11 attacks. At the time, al-Qaida's main stated grievance against America was its troops' presence in Saudi Arabia. But not only did American troops not leave Saudi Arabia after 9/11, they invaded two other Muslim countries, Afghanistan and Iraq. And again, a seeming defeat for the terrorists.

Yet if you examine the terrorists' real goals, rather than the West's starry-eyed interpretation of them, it turns out that terrorism has scored tremendous achievements over the past five years.
In Israel's case, for instance, Hamas, which pioneered suicide bombings inside Israel, has never concealed the fact that its goal is Israel's eradication. And many Palestinians share this goal: Opinion polls repeatedly found that while 40-50 percent of Palestinians viewed the intifada's goal as expelling Israel from the territories, the other 40-50% (exact proportions varied) viewed the goal as "liberating all of historic Palestine," including pre-1967 Israel.

Rephrasing the question produced even larger majorities: In a Pew Research poll published in June 2003, 80% of Palestinians said their "rights and needs" cannot be met as long as Israel exists.

Toward this goal, terrorism has produced substantial progress – because a necessary precursor to eradicating Israel is destroying its international legitimacy, which is precisely what has been occurring over the last five years. For the first time since Israel's founding, the question of whether Israel has a right to exist has become an open and acceptable topic of debate in the West. And even when not discussed explicitly, the idea of Israel's illegitimacy is gaining ground implicitly – as in the Christian divestment campaign, or the famous December 2003 poll in which 59 percent of Europeans deemed Israel the greatest threat to world peace.

Clearly, eradicating a major threat to world peace would be less objectionable than eradicating a harmless nation. And this change in the West's view of Israel has occurred not despite, but because of the terrorist attacks against it: Israel is viewed not as the victim, but as the cause of the violence. Hence Israel, not the terrorists, is the major threat to world peace; hence Christian churches are divesting from Israel rather than from the Palestinian Authority, which has consistently refused to act against terrorists.

In fact, as polls, media reports and diplomatic pronouncements reveal, Israel is viewed as the cause twice over. First, it provoked the terrorists via "the occupation": That the violence erupted in response to Israel's offer to end the occupation appears to have been completely forgotten. Then, it provoked the terrorists again by responding to their attacks with military action that succeeding in drastically reducing Israel's body count.

The same paradigm holds for al-Qaida's attacks on America. While initially America was viewed as the victim that view quickly shifted. Even in the West, opinion polls in recent years have consistently ranked America second only to Israel on the list of most hated countries and greatest threats to world peace. Just last month, a Pew poll found that most Europeans – even in Britain, America's closest ally – view repressive China more favorably than America. Moreover, while Europe once largely accepted America's global leadership, it now overwhelmingly rejects it.

Again, this shift has occurred not despite but because of the terrorist attacks: America is widely accused of provoking terrorism by invading Afghanistan and Iraq. As with the intifada, the fact that 9/11 preceded these invasions appears to have been completely forgotten. And this shift constitutes major progress toward al-Qaida's ultimate goal of global Muslim dominance – because for this purpose, a divided West, immersed in blaming itself or parts of itself rather than focusing on the real enemy, and with its leading power discredited and de-legitimized, is essential.

Now, this same process is occurring with the London attacks: A growing number of media pundits and politicians, both in Britain and abroad, have already shifted the blame from the terrorists to Britain's "provocative" presence in Iraq. Even Tony Blair has proclaimed that Arab-Muslim grievances must be addressed.

While these intangibles are their greatest success, the terrorists have also reaped some tangible achievements. One, obviously, was the upset victory for Spain's socialists and the subsequent withdrawal of Spanish forces from Iraq produced by the 2004 Madrid bombings. Another is Israel's withdrawal from Gaza without getting anything in exchange, which 72 percent of Palestinians rightly deem a victory for terror.

But no such concession will ever end terrorism, because new grievances can always be found. Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 offers a prime example: Hizbullah, instead of ending

Their attacks on Israel, invented a new bit of "occupied Lebanese territory," the Shaba farms, to justify their continuation. And true to form, despite Hizbullah's refusal to honor the UN-certified international border, the EU still has not declared it a terrorist organization – while media reports routinely term Shaba "disputed territory," forgetting the UN's determination that the area is not Lebanese.

Individual terrorists may be irrational, but terrorist organizers and leaders generally are not: They launch attacks out of a cold-blooded calculation that such attacks serve their goals.

And terrorism will continue to serve their goals for precisely so long as the world, despite its lip-service condemnations, responds by blaming the victims and seeking to address the terrorists' "grievances."

The date has been set for August 17, the date that the Israeli government claims it will begin withdrawing from the Gaza strip and the Northern West Bank. A mid-East visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condi Rice this week will attempt to enforce this date and to keep Israel locked onto its scheduled pullout. U.S. policy still appears dead set on dividing the land of Israel. While the region has reached its boiling point in recent weeks, things could get even uglier as the pull out looms on the horizon.

It is possible that the Israeli government may unleash its military forces against Israeli citizens who disagree with the disengagement as it is planned. As reporter David Dolan stated in his latest news update from Israel: "Without exaggeration, I can testify that the situation is as explosive as I have ever seen in my nearly 25 years living and reporting in Israel."

From a political standpoint, the pullout is a raw deal: Israel has made concession after concession with their Palestinian neighbors and Israel has nothing to ‘show’ except it’s dead and maimed. Israel is being betrayed!

From a moral standpoint, the pullout is ludicrous. Anyone with an unbiased knowledge of the history of the Middle East understands that the Arabs will never peacefully coexist with Israel -- NEVER. The Muslim goals are crystal clear: Destroy the Jews, conquer the infidel, and spread Allah's glory throughout the earth. Don't believe the ‘media hype’ that America is being hand fed by the politically correct networks and media outlets: Islam is not a religion of peace, it never was and it never will be.

It is also becoming crystal clear that the people of God need to pray for the peace of Jerusalem as never before!

"Without Christ, we can do nothing." - John 15:5

Texas BMA Churches can now receive  weekly Watchman Reports, the monthly Moral Action Newsletter, and MAC Alerts by sending your contact information, which includes:

(Your Church: name/city, Contact person’s name, and Email address) to:

Howard Wilson hwilson@texasmoralaction.org

The Church contact person should be: the pastor or a Church member of his choice.