Implications of measure could be far-reaching, and have repercussions for religious freedom in U.S

WASHINGTON, with all eyes on John Roberts’ Senate confirmation hearings, the House of Representatives passed a "hate crimes" measure Wednesday that would grant the victims of crimes allegedly motivated by bias – including bias based on "sexual orientation" – greater protection than other victims of violence. The measure passed by a vote of 223 to 199 after it was attached as an amendment to HR 3132, the "Children's Safety Act."

The amendment to the Act, sponsored by Michigan Democrat John Conyers, adds "sexual orientation" to federal "hate crimes" law. Thirty Republicans joined 192 Democrats and one Independent in voting for the "hate crimes" amendment, thereafter voting to pass the full bill.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins condemned the "stealth" measure. "Criminalizing thoughts as well as actions, and creating special categories of victims, are contrary to our entire system of laws," he said. "Furthermore, granting special protections based on one's ‘sexual orientation’ has repeatedly been rejected by Congress. It is shocking that a bill designed to protect children from sexual predators is now being used to protect the sexual preference of homosexuals."

Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee (CWALAC) urged the Senate to reject any "hate crimes" language in its version of the Children’s Safety Act. "The GOP-controlled House seems more interested in rewarding the homosexual lobby and following a left-wing liberal Democrat like John Conyers than in making sure dangerous laws like the ‘hate crimes’ amendment are defeated," said Robert Knight, Director of CWA’s Culture & Family Institute. "It’s up to the Senate to safeguard our liberties by rejecting this attempt to give homosexuals more protection under the law than other crime victims. The ‘hate crimes’ law, promoted for years by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and homosexual Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts), is a major strategic goal of the homosexual activist movement."

"A similar state law in Pennsylvania led directly to the arrests of 11 Christians in Philadelphia in a public park last year and the felony prosecution of five of those Christians," Knight explained. "Proponents claim that these laws are about protecting people, but they are really about creating a false new ‘civil rights’ category based on sex behavior, putting into place a system to suppress speech critical of homosexuality, and giving homosexuals more protection under the law than Christians get." The implications of the new bill could be far-reaching, and have repercussions for religious freedom in the U.S

See Role call of the vote
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll469.xml

President Bush's statement: "Hurricane Katrina was one of the worst natural disasters in our Nation's history and has caused unimaginable devastation and heartbreak throughout the Gulf Coast Region. A vast coastline of towns and communities has been decimated. Many lives have been lost, and hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans are suffering great hardship. To honor the memory of those who lost their lives, to provide comfort and strength to the families of the victims, and to help ease the burden of the survivors, I call upon all Americans to pray to Almighty God and to perform acts of service." 

As Senator Jon Kyl, the Chairman of the Republican Policy Commitee, has also noted, this bill would authorize the creation of a race-based government for those with Native Hawaiian blood. The bill does this by sticking Native Hawaiians (who live in all 50 states) into the federal Indian law system, creating a new race-based entity, and calling it a "tribe." However, unlike Indian tribes, this proposed Native Hawaiian government would be defined not by community, geography, and cultural cohesiveness, as every other Indian tribe is. Instead, the Native Hawaiian entity would be defined by the one distinction that is completely opposed to American law and civic culture -- that of race.

As Kyl wrote, "Congress should not be in the business of granting special governmental powers to racial subsets of the American family. We are a nation grounded in equality under the law regardless of skin color or ancestry. Our most violent internal conflicts, whether in the 1860s or the 1960s, have revolved around efforts to eliminate the law's racial distinctions and to encourage a culture where all citizens become comfortable as part of the American race."

No, we're not there yet, but "this is simply a message of racial division and ethnic separatism, and of rejection of the American melting pot ideal," says Kyl. "The bill is, therefore, profoundly counterproductive to the nation's efforts to develop a just, equitable, and color-blind society, and it must not become law."

If this bill is passed, there would be nothing to stop ISLAMISTS from declaring that THEY are a "tribe" and can therefore live in America, OUTSIDE of American law, and under Islamic "Sharia" law.

QUOTEWORTHY: -------------- "The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world." -- James Madison

Judge Karlton will sign a restraining order preventing the recitation of the pledge at the Elk Grove Unified, Rio Linda and Elverta Joint Elementary school districts in Northern California, where the plaintiffs' children attend, even though all schools are already legally required to permit children to opt out of reciting the Pledge if it offends their religion. 

QUOTEWORTHY: -------------------------"The 'wall of separation between church and state' is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned." Chief Justice William Rehnquist, from his dissent in Wallace v. Jaffree, 1985

Speculation On Second Supreme Nominee Concerns Conservatives

(Bill Fancher Sept. 8, 2005 Agape Press)

On Monday, following the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist two days earlier, President Bush chose to name John Roberts -- whom he had nominated to replace the retiring Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor -- as Rehnquist's replacement. That move caused Roberts' confirmation hearings to be delayed until next Monday. Not surprisingly, the president expected there would lots of speculation regarding who he might nominate to replace O'Connor.

Bush specifically named Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as one name that likely would be tossed around by political pundits. Others thought to be under consideration include Edith Hollan Jones, Priscilla Owen, Emilio Garza, and Michael Luttig. But the mention of Gonzales bothers some of the president's pro-life supporters.

Gary Bauer of the Campaign for Working Families admits he has heard talk about Gonzales. "I hope that's idle speculation," Bauer says.

The attorney general is considered to be moderate, especially on social issues. For example, pro-lifers do not think Gonzales would vote to repeal Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion in the United States. But activist Manny Miranda does not appear overly concerned, saying he expects the president to be consistent in his choice.

"He has shown that he has put politics aside, named a conservative in the way that he promised to do, but without faith considerations," Miranda says, "and I expect that he will do the same [this time]."

But Ken Connor of the Center for a Just Society says recent past Republican presidents do not have a good record when it comes to nominations to the high court. As he puts it: "[H]istory is not in our favor."

On the whole, Connor says, GOP presidents have made poor choices that often have resulted in putting liberal activist judges on the bench. "Eisenhower, you'll recall, nominated Earl Warren; Nixon, Harry Blackmun; Mr. Reagan gave us Justice O'Connor and Justice Kennedy. [And] George Bush, Sr. gave us Justice Souter," he says.

The president, says Connor, now has a chance to change the Republican record when it comes to filling Supreme Court vacancies. But "... to get it right will require some serious and careful review and consultation by the president," he cautions, "and a real commitment to his campaign promises to appoint strict constructionists who will construe the Constitution in accordance with its original intent."

LAFAYETTE, La., September 9, 2005, (LifeSiteNews.com) – City-Parish President Joey Durel is warning individuals who are set on parading through his city streets in celebration of "Southern Decadence" that they will be arrested by police.

Encompassing 5 days of parades, pub crawls and the most public nudity and sexual activity of any North American gay event, the Southern Decadence festival is a New Orleans phenomena hosted by the city’s gay community. This year’s celebration was definitively cancelled just days before its beginning by Hurricane Katrina. Though a few dozen tried to celebrate in New Orleans in spite of the damage and death around them, official organizers wanted to relocate to Lafayette instead.

Durel, quoted in The Advertiser, said that they did not have a permit and one would not be issued even if they ask. "I don’t think anybody would get a parade permit now," he said. "There’s enough of a strain on our police department." Durel said "I don’t consider anything that’s got the word decadence in it to be normalcy."

QUEBEC CITY, Sept. 9, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a measure that deprives Christian parents the constitutionally guaranteed right to religious schooling, Quebec lawmakers "quietly" passed a law over the summer that effectively eliminates all religious instruction from public schools in the province.

On June 15, the province passed a law eliminating all religious education in public schools, to be replaced by 2008 with a course in ethics or religious culture if desired. In 1997, Quebec enacted a constitutional amendment that eliminated denominational religious schools – an institution guaranteed in the country’s founding document, the British North America Act of 1867. The 1997 measure allowed denominational religious instruction to continue within the public school system – until now.

The Catholic News Agency also reported that there were no press releases from the Ministry of Education on the decision, nor were there any reports in the secular English press.

Education Minister Jean-Marc Fournier introduced Bill 95 in May, claiming the new rule would more effectively meet "the current social challenges and the needs of Quebec youth today."

QUOTEWORTHY ------------------"A diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty." -- James Madison, 1825

Attorney Says Legal Battle Over Mt. Soledad Cross Not Over

SAN DIEGO- The legal battle over a war memorial, a 43-foot cross, and the surrounding land began in 1989 -- and despite an overwhelming vote on a recent ballot measure, the matter is still not settled.

Last Friday San Diego Superior Court Judge Patricia Yim Cowett issued a temporary restraining order that could eventually overturn Proposition A, an initiative approved by 197,125 voters in the city of San Diego. The initiative, passed on July 26 with more than 75 percent of the vote, would have allowed the city to transfer the Mount Soledad site in La Jolla (a suburb of San Diego) to the federal government. Proposition A sanctioned the transfer of the war memorial, a 51-year-old cross, and land to the U.S. Department of the Interior to become a national war memorial. The Mount Soledad cross was constructed at its present site in 1954 to commemorate veterans of the Korean War.

Judge Cowett indicated in her decision that the war memorial and cross, in their present form, represent "an unconstitutional aid to the Christian religion." Her decision reverses the vote of the supermajority of San Diegans who overwhelmingly approved the transfer.

In an exclusive interview with AgapePress, the attorney involved in many of the recent legal battles involving the cross, says the judge displayed a bias even before making the ruling.

"Obviously we were quite disappointed with Judge Cowett's ruling," says Charles LiMandri, West Coast regional director of the Thomas More Law Center. "We believe she telegraphed her hostility towards the cross when she required a two-thirds vote on Prop. A to prevail, and then would not relinquish jurisdiction over the constitutionality issue to the federal court that first retained jurisdiction of that issue."

Berger stole the documents while preparing for his testimony before the 9/11 Commission in an effort to cover up the Clinton administration’s mishandling of terrorism investigations. 

On September 8, a federal magistrate judge ordered Berger to pay a $50,000 fine and surrender his security clearance for three years.  He should have received the maximum sentence (one year in prison and a $100,000 fine), along with the permanent loss of his security clearance. 

The Bush Justice Department, in another instance of coddling Clintonite criminality, had only asked for a $10,000 fine.  Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson rejected this cozy deal and quintupled the fine, which is the only bright spot in this outrageous tale. 

Judicial Watch filed a formal bar complaint against Berger with the Office of Bar Counsel for the District of Columbia Bar, asking that they revoke Berger’s law license. 

NEW YORK, September 13, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A 37 year old woman who suffered a pulmonary embolism after using the Ortho Evra contraceptive patch for seven months has filed a lawsuit against the patch’s manufacturer, Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical, Inc., a division of Johnson and Johnson Inc.

Recent reports have indicated that the risk of developing blood clots, pulmonary embolism, heart attack and stroke may be significantly higher with the Ortho Evra patch than with other hormonal contraceptives.

Pulmonary embolism is a potentially fatal condition triggered by a blood clot that obstructs an artery in the lungs, often leaving victims with chronic health problems requiring long-term anticoagulant medications. Reports show that the deaths of at least seventeen young American women over the past two years may be related to Ortho Evra patch use.

For the first time, the Food and Drug Administration has succeeded in forcing off the market an antibiotic used to treat animals because of concerns that it will make similar antibiotics less effective in treating people. After a five-year battle, Bayer Corp. said yesterday that it would immediately stop selling its poultry antibiotic, Baytril, a close relative to its widely used human antibiotic, Cipro. The company could have appealed the FDA ban on the drug to a federal court but Lester M. Crawford instead decided to comply.

"We disagree with the FDA's conclusion about our drug," said Bayer spokesman Robert Walker. "But we understand they made a scientific decision, and courts tend to defer back to the agency. . . . It seemed like the chances that we would be successful in court were small."

The resolution of the Baytril case opens the door to FDA action against other animal antibiotics. The agency has already told the makers of at least three types of penicillin used on farm animals that their products might raise similar concerns, and regulatory action might be needed.

Public health advocates hailed Bayer's decision and the FDA actions that precipitated it. "We applaud Commissioner [Lester M.] Crawford for defending the public's health and Bayer for finally recognizing the need to comply with the FDA's ruling," said Karen Florini, senior lawyer at Environmental Defense and chairwoman of the Keep Antibiotics Working coalition. "Cipro is a critical antibiotic for treating human illness. It simply makes no sense to allow its effectiveness to be squandered by continued use of near-identical drugs in poultry flocks."

A campus watchdog group says a dissenting professor at Brooklyn College in New York is being unfairly targeted by administrators for accusing faculty members of indoctrination and viewpoint discrimination.

The Brooklyn College School of Education (SOE) has begun to implement a policy requiring education students to have the school's view of diversity and "social justice" in order to graduate. After history professor KC Johnson criticized the policy as unconstitutional, the SOE demanded that he stop his attacks, and then threatened to investigate him with an "Integrity Committee."

David French is president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which has written to Brooklyn College on Johnson's behalf. French maintains the educator is on solid ground in criticizing the new "litmus test" for education students.

"What Professor Johnson is doing is criticizing an unconstitutional policy -- and they're claiming that his criticism is censorship," French explains. "No, his criticism is free speech; investigating him with an integrity committee, because he engaged in free speech -- now that truly threatens censorship."

FIRE is calling on Brooklyn College to fully respect Johnson's First Amendment rights and to reject any calls for an investigation into his exercise of those rights. Thus far, the university has ignored those appeals.

Doctors Kill Patients Rather Than Leave Them To Looters (LifeSiteNews.com)

A doctor from hurricane-ravaged New Orleans has admitted to euthanizing patients, rather than leaving them to potential death at the hands of looters.

In an interview with the UK's The Mail on Sunday, a doctor, whose name was protected by the euthanasia-supportive Daily Mail media, claimed that those who were killed were killed out of "compassion."

"This was not murder, this was compassion," the doctor emphasized. "They would have been dead within hours, if not days. We did not put people down. What we did was give comfort to the end."

The doctor admitted to giving lethal injections of morphine. "If the first dose was not enough, I gave a double dose. It came down to giving people the basic human right to die with dignity."

The report was corroborated by other witnesses, including local government officials and a hospital orderly. Emergency worker William 'Forest' McQueen supported the move by the doctors. "Those who had no chance of making it were given a lot of morphine and lain down in a dark place to die," he said.

Commenting on the news, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition Executive Director Alex Schadenberg said, "Not to mitigate the extreme nature of the circumstances, but the euthanasia cases in New Orleans unveils the very problem with legalizing euthanasia: Who makes the decision?"

"Hippocrates recognized the fact that physicians are capable of being healers and they are capable of being killers," Schadenberg explained. "In order to protect patients, Hippocrates declared that a physician must 'do no harm' to their patients. Euthanasia in New Orleans proves to the world how easy it is for people who consider euthanasia as an option, to go from being healers to killers."

"Dr. Jack Kevorkian proved to have a problem that several Dutch physicians seem to have," Schadenberg continued. "They actually like euthanasia. Once euthanasia becomes an acceptable practice, it actually becomes the preferred practice of the few, who soon make the decision to die for their patients."

Catholics, evangelicals and mainline Protestants join in fight for poor.

As the political sphere assembles this week in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, the religious world is demanding that politicians uphold their promises to alleviate the plight of the poor.

At the urgent call of the Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of Cape Town, South Africa, religious leaders from both hemispheres gathered to plot strategy at the Washington National Cathedral during a three-day summit (Sept. 11-13) on the church's role in ending severe global poverty.


Ndungane strategically scheduled the event to precede Wednesday's (Sept.
14) opening of the U.N. assembly, which will take stock of the 2000 U.N. Millennium Development Goals.

With 2015 as a target, the U.N. objectives include cutting poverty in half, providing universal primary education, and combating diseases such as AIDS and malaria. Ndungane has said 2005 is a "make or break" year for the goals.

"We have the resources; all we are lacking is political will," said Ndungane, the successor of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. "It's important for the (political) leadership to know where the religious leadership stands on this and also for us to use our moral authority to try and influence change in the right directions."

A consensus statement -- drafted by Anglicans, evangelicals, Eastern Orthodox, Catholics, mainline Protestants and representatives of Islam and Judaism -- was scheduled to be delivered to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on Tuesday.

The British Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has recently given the green light for the creation of designer babies to be used as tissue farms, the creation of cloned human beings for various research projects and the eugenic selection and destruction of "unfit" human embryos. The HFEA uses utilitarian principles of bioethics that are now standard in the international research community which admit of no inherent dignity to the embryonic human being.

The eugenic bioethics principles are the foundation of all such regulatory bodies as can be seen in last week’s decision by the California stem cell research agency to begin allotting money to research groups. The first installments of the US $3 billion in grants allowed by the California legislature are being doled out to UCLA, UC Irvine, Stanford and other leading universities to begin training embryo researchers.

Just under $39 million is being awarded in this first stage of the California plan to make the state a leader in destructive embryo research and human cloning. The criterion most commonly employed by the agencies making the funding decisions in California and Britain is to ask, ‘will the research work?’ Any suggestion that human embryos are persons to be protected is ignored, the legislation having already established that they are not.

Jesse Reynolds is program director of the Center for Genetics and Society and was quoted by the Los Angeles Times on the ethics of funding embryo research at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Reynolds maintained that funding ought to be withheld until it could be proved that the research would work. "It’s irresponsible for anyone to promise something you're not sure you can deliver," Reynolds said.

In the meantime, funding for ethical and often successful disease research using adult stem cells, those derived from the patient’s own body, are left to go looking for funding. In Australia, one of the most important stem cell breakthroughs in the history of the field came from a group running on a shoestring, partially funded by the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney.

Funded with a mix of public money and private cash, (including a $500,000 grant from Teresa Heinz's far-Left Heinz Endowments) the winning design, titled the "Crescent of Embrace," features a grove of maple trees ringing the crash site in the shape of an unmistakable red crescent. The crescent, New York University Middle East Studies professor Bernard Haykel told the Johnstown, PA, Tribune-Democrat "is the symbol of ritual and religious life for Muslims."

Some design contest jury members reportedly raised concerns about the jarring symbol of the hijackers' faith implanted on the hallowed ground where the passengers of Flight 93 were murdered. But their recommendations to change the name of the memorial (to "Arc of Embrace," or some such whitewashing) were ignored.

Let's set aside the utter boneheaded-ness of using a symbol that, inadvertently or not, commemorates the killers' faith instead of the victims' revolt. The soft-and-fuzzy memorial design of "Crescent of Embrace" still does injustice to the steely courage of Flight 93's passengers and crew. It evokes the defeatism embodied by those behind a similar move to turn the 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero in New York City into a pacifist guilt complex.

This is no way to fight a war or to remember those who have died fighting it. A proper war memorial stirs to anger and action. We all remember passenger Todd Beamer's last heard words as he and his fellow Americans prepared to take back the plane from al Qaeda's killers, don't we? The phrase wasn't "Let's meditate." It was "Let's roll."

What? A State It Will Be (Sept. 13 2005 By Gary Bauer)

The European Union, the United Nations and, sadly, even the Bush Administration continue to push for the creation of a Palestinian state that, we are told, will live "side by side with Israel in peace." Meanwhile, did anyone take the time to check out what the "citizens" of this future state did in the last 24 hours, as Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza? Mobs carrying Hamas and Islamic Jihad flags rampaged through Gaza looting, shooting guns in the air, and then burning Jewish synagogues to the ground. The frenzy wasn't completely unexpected given the culture of death that has prevailed in the Palestinian territory for years. Bodies even had to be exhumed from Jewish graves during the evacuation, because everyone knew that once the Palestinians were in control the graves would be desecrated. There has not been one word of condemnation for this behavior from Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Secretary Rice, while congratulating both the Israelis and the Palestinians for "their effective coordination," sadly failed to even mention the torching of the synagogues. Moreover, our State Department unbelievably issued a statement criticizing Israel for not demolishing the synagogues. According to the diplomats at State, leaving them standing put the poor Palestinian Liberation Organization in the untenable position of either guarding the synagogues or allowing their destruction by the mobs!

In short, these thugs are doing what everyone knew they would do. The new baby nation of Palestine straining to be born shows all the early signs of being a deformed monster - a new terrorist state, built on radical Islam, and controlled by murderers and thieves.

President Bush supports major efforts to combat HIV/AIDS, and at the same time opposes sex trafficking and prostitution. So when Congress approved an HIV/AIDS package in 2003, it prohibited funds from going to groups that support sex trafficking and prostitution.

This week, over 40 members of Congress signed a letter by Rep. Steve King (R-IA) to President Bush outlining their concerns that U.S. grants are in fact going to groups that support these sex crimes in violation of U.S. law.

The 2003 law states that no funds can be issued to groups that "promote or advocate" prostitution and sex trafficking, and requires that organizations seeking federal funds have a policy "explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking." The letter points out that this law was reiterated in 2004, and that the State Department must report to Congress on compliance. Unfortunately, the State Department has not reported to Congress, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has refused to answer repeated questions from the Government Reform Committee as to whether the funded organizations are in legal compliance.

Incredibly, USAID recently told the Committee that it is waiting until October 31 to provide complete information. In other words, USAID wants to distribute their funds for this fiscal year before it certifies that the recipients are in compliance.

We trust the President will respond to Congress and ensure that American's money is going to treat HIV/AIDS, not to organizations that promote practices that spread it.

So, what do you think is going to happen with the relief bills coming up for Hurricane Katrina victims? How likely is it that Congress will be able to keep its hands out of our pockets once again, and add tons of "pork" on top of legitimate relief? They WILL go pork-crazy -- unless we can rein them in.

Thankfully, Citizens Against Government Waste has unveiled a "Hurricane Katrina No Pork Pledge" they're asking members of Congress to sign. By signing the pledge, they vow to oppose any project or provision that is not directly related to the impact of Hurricane Katrina in any supplemental appropriations bill that provides funds for hurricane relief.

By signing the pledge, members of Congress are making sure that every cent of recovery spending goes to the victims of this terrible tragedy. Click below to send a FREE message to YOUR Congressman, asking him or her to SIGN the "Hurricane Katrina No Pork Pledge."

CBS sister-company MTV aired a puff piece about Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie last Wednesday night, as the United Nations begins its World Summit in New York.

Jolie, a movie star who makes more than $15 million a film, has served as a "Goodwill Ambassador" for the world body and even got a "Citizen of the World" award from the U.N. Correspondents Association. She will put a pretty face on the U.N., which has been badly damaged by corruption.

But the MTV program will serve another purpose—to divert attention from the world body's hidden agenda to force U.S. taxpayers to spend tens of billions of more dollars on foreign aid programs that don't work. Apparently, the U.N. has to replace the money that has been stolen. Titled, "The Diary of Angelina Jolie and Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa," the program will follow the actress as she conducts an anti-poverty tour to some villages in Kenya. She is joined by Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, who runs Columbia University's Earth Institute and serves as a top adviser to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the drive for more spending on the U.N. and foreign aid. His most recent target has been new U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, who has been standing in the way of having the World Summit document formally approve global taxes.

The world body's push for massive amounts of new revenue is quite serious. The U.N. has just published its annual "Human Development Report," which suggests a variety of "international taxation mechanisms" to generate billions of more dollars for the U.N. and other international agencies. If it were up to the U.N., Americans would be paying global taxes on airline travel, energy, and currency transactions to reach the "Millennium Development Goals" that the U.N. has set for us. According to Sachs, who runs the U.N.'s "Millennium Project," the U.S. would owe an additional $845 billion, beyond what we already pay in foreign aid, over a 13-year period.

The Sept. 2 report is accessible only to government officials on the Global Information System (GIS) database. Cybercast News Service obtained the report on the same day as its release. It warns of planned attacks in Western Europe, Russia and perhaps the continental U.S. The specific targets are believed to include airports at Schiphol in the Netherlands and Fiumicino in Italy.

The al Qaeda official's threat, according to the report, wasn't delivered until the jihad forces were organized and ready to strike.

The attacks, planned to coincide with the Muslim observance of Ramadan and dubbed the "Great Ramadan Offensive," are designed to create a "fateful confrontation" with the U.S. and Israeli forces in the Middle East, according to a May 30 letter from Zarqawi to bin Laden. The contents of the letter are referenced in the report written by Yossef Bodansky, the former director of the U.S. Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare.

Bodansky's report states that "concrete preparations for the consolidation of Islamist-jihadist springboards against the heart and lair of the Great Satan are being completed -- for Western Europe in the Balkans, for Russian and Eastern Europe in Chechnya, and for the United States in the tri-border area in Latin America."

Gregory R. Copley, president of The International Strategic Studies Association in Washington, D.C. told Cybercast News Service that, "I think Europe is going to be a prime target, but I think there's no question the U.S. is very much on the schedule." There will be big things happening over the next few months," he added.

Ramadan, a religious observance which includes a period of fasting, is scheduled according to the Islamic calendar. This year it is scheduled from Oct. 4 to Nov. 2. Muslim soldiers on the battlefield are exempt from Ramadan.

In an open letter to the media, James Abraham, a pastor and former director of Gospel for Asia's India operations, accuses GFA's founder and president of numerous lies.

Abraham says he tried to confront K.P. Yohannan "for many years," but was unsuccessful in getting him to be more accountable with the organization's finances.

Although Abraham admits that GFA keeps his "accounts and books perfectly in the West," Yohannan's promise that 100% of each donation goes 'to the mission field' simply means that it reaches Yohannan's family members in India, who "control all the money and power" of both the GFA ministry and the Believers Church in India.

Abraham claims that "literally millions of dollars... is used to buy businesses or transferred again to off-shore private bank accounts."

In his letter, Abraham tells Yohannan to "Be honest about the marble palaces you build for you and all your immediate and extended family members." And he questioned Yohannan about the "millions of dollars in private savings accounts in India and off-shore banks."

Abraham forwarded his 'open letter' to various Christian ministries, religious and secular media, the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. State Department, Interpol and other government officials in the United States, Canada and India.

Churches Vulnerable To Eminent Domain Land Grab (Sept. 14 2005)

Sacramento, CA -- The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on eminent domain has raised concern over the power of local government to take private property. In Kelo v. New London the high court ruled that a city has the authority to take a home and give it to a private party for economic development.

The results of the decision were so sobering that Justice Stevens, writing for the majority, practically invited the States to protect citizens from the transfer of property without their consent stating, "We emphasize that nothing in our opinion precludes any State from placing further restrictions on its exercise of takings power."

As a result of the Court’s decision, lawmakers from both parties have introduced laws to strengthen private property rights. "The responsibility now falls on the various states to reassert and restore the property rights of their citizens," said California State Senator Tom McClintock.

Churches are particularly vulnerable to the type of eminent domain in Kelo because, as nonprofit organizations, they are exempt from many of the tax burdens that residential and commercial properties shoulder. Because of this, there is significant incentive for local government to take church-owned land and transfer it to private parties which will develop it into property that generates tax revenue. Excluding nonprofit properties from protection under the eminent domain laws has the potential of increased targeting of churches by cities and counties.

Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute, commented, "Our office is representing a church that has recently had its property taken via eminent domain. If your church faces eminent domain or other land use issues, contact Pacific Justice Institute for assistance."

Christians in the Holy Land have handed a dossier detailing incidents of violence and intimidation by Muslim extremists to Church leaders in Jerusalem, one of whom said it was time for Christians to "raise our voices" against the sectarian violence.

The dossier includes 93 alleged incidents of abuse by an "Islamic fundamentalist mafia" against Palestinian Christians, who accused the Palestinian Authority of doing nothing to stop the attacks.

The dossier also includes a list of 140 cases of apparent land theft, in which Christians in the West Bank were allegedly forced off their land by gangs backed by corrupt judicial officials.

From the birthplace of Christ at Bethlehem to the site of his Crucifixion in Jerusalem, Christian Church leaders have long been desperate not to upset the delicate ethnic and sectarian balance in the region by blaming either Jews or Muslims for the decline of their once robust religious community. That self-imposed silence now appears to be crumbling.

"The problem exists," said Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Jerusalem's senior Franciscan, known as the Custos of the Holy Land. "The Christian community has always suffered in the last few years because we are a minority. Many have the temptation to leave, so the community is shrinking."

While he stressed that "we are not talking about a confrontation with all Muslims", he added that "we don't want to see violations of the law - sometimes we have to raise our voices".

The alleged attacks on Christians have come despite repeated appeals to the Palestinian Authority to rein in Muslim gangs.

A spokesman for the Apostolic Delegate, the Pope's envoy to Jerusalem, said nothing had been done to tackle the problem. "The Apostolic Delegate presented a list of all the problems to Mr. Yasser Arafat before he died," he said. "He promised a lot but he did very little."

In the offices of his tiny Christian television station in Bethlehem, Samir Qumsieh said this week that Christian appeals to Mr Arafat's successor as Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, had also gone unheeded.

Israel threatened on Saturday to deliver an unprecedented harsh response to any attacks from Gaza after Israeli troops quit the territory and hand it over to the Palestinians.

"An hour after we leave the field, there will be a strategic change...in the nature of our response to even an attempt at terror," Maj.-Gen. Yisrael Ziv, the military's chief of operations, told Israel Radio. "We shall have a far more extreme reaction to any attempt."

While Israel has in the past used air strikes and tank assaults against militants, it declared a policy of relative restraint after a February cease-fire.