ARE YOU NOTICING THE NEWS ON YEMEN??
Well here's a "little" something about Yemen from the book "Decade of Fear" by Michelle Shephard
Understanding a "little" about YEMEN
From the book "Decade of Fear" by Michelle Shephard
In the summer of 2009, about four months before Yemen would
become the next pariah state, I went to Sanaa with Star
photographer Lucas Oleniuk to learn not just about al Qaeda's
past but its future. We were also interested in finding out more
about the bookishlooking U.S.-born cleric, Anwar al Awlaki, who
was living in Yemen and whose online preaching had inspired
members of the Toronto 18. Awlaki was not yet on the public
radar, but he was watched closely within the intelligence
community.
The main point of our trip, however - and how I sold it to my
editors - was Yemen's connection to Guantanamo. Barack Obama was
nine months into his presidency and the Guantanamo quagmire was
starting to dog his administration. He was still figuring out
what to do with the prisoners. Almost half of the camp's
detainees were from Yemen and there was concern about returning
these men into this impoverished nation. The Pentagon considered
some of the detainees too dangerous to release, but it did not
have enough evidence to prosecute them. Others may not have been
violent going in, but eight years in custody had given them time
to develop a serious grudge. Would they not become easy recruits
without proper monitoring or assistance? Yemen's government
promised that if it received financial help from the United
States, it could handle the returning detainees. Few believed
those assurances, especially since Yemen, the poorest of Arab
countries, was in trouble.
The statistics were horrifying. Yemen was suffering from
dwindling oil and water reserves. Poverty was crushing. Almost
half of the country's 23 million people survived on less than $2
a day. At least a quarter were unemployed, illiterate or
starving, and often all three at once. Government corruption was
rampant under President Ali Abdullah Saleh, "The Boss," as the
man who had ruled for three decades was known. The birthrate was
increasing steadily and the population's median age was
seventeen. In the mountains north of Sanaa, the "Houthi
rebellion" (named after a deceased rebel leader) had claimed
thousands of lives since 2004, as Shia insurgents clashed with
government soldiers in the Saada Province, near the border with
Saudi Arabia. In the south, a secessionist movement threatened to
pull the country apart. The prospect of civil war had loomed
constantly since the bloody days in 1994, when it had consumed
the country. These socioeconomic and domestic threats were far
greater concerns than al Qaeda, but as history had shown, fragile
states were perfect incubators for burgeoning terrorist
organizations.
Visiting Yemen as a national security reporter was like trekking
to Graceland as an Elvis fan. Dozens of men named on the U.S. and
UN terrorist lists lived freely in Sanaa, like bin Laden's
spiritual advisor, who ran the city's government-funded
university. Former Afghan jihadists and senior al Qaeda
lieutenants and countless low-level foot soldiers lived in
"retirement" in the mountainous tribal region, or in the
crumbling stone buildings of the ancient city, largely unnoticed.
Every household had at least one gun (according to the Small Arms
Survey, Yemen was second to the United States as the world's most
armed nation).
Saleh, who had once been nicknamed "Little Saddam" after his
former Iraqi ally, was the longest-serving ruler in the Middle
East after Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and Oman's Sultan Qaboos bin
Said. When he took power in 1979, the Washington Post quoted an
unnamed U.S. intelligence analyst who predicted that Saleh would
be lucky if he lasted six months. But Saleh was wily and
understood the need to dole out costly patronage to keep the
tribal and religious leaders onside. He famously said that
governing Yemen was as dangerous as "dancing on the heads of
snakes." If so, he had been the ultimate snake charmer for more
than three decades.
We picked up Abu Jandal on a street near his home in Saawan, a
dusty neighbourhood punctuated by concrete barricades, which made
it feel as if you were driving through a pinball machine. Abu
Jandal was standing on the street, checking his watch, as we
approached. He looked nothing like I had imagined, more business
executive late for a golf game than the fabled jihadist. He wore
a white polo shirt and khaki pants instead of the traditional
thawb, the growing. Abu Jandal and Hamdan knew little at the time
about the organization they were joining but were persuaded to
fight for the cause after spending three days listening to bin
Laden preach about America's creeping influence in the Gulf. Bin
Laden was an admirable and imposing figure, with his
six-foot-five frame towering above the men, his soothing voice
waxing poetic about the struggle ahead, and his avowal to live a
modest life despite his family's wealth. Abu Jandal and Hamdan
stayed.
More than a decade after this meeting, talking with us as he sat
in the Arabia Felix Hotel, Abu Jandal tried to recall what it was
like when he first met bin Laden. He was slightly defensive,
perhaps having been asked this question too often.
"Osama bin Laden is very normal person," he said with a shrug.
"Osama is your average father or friend or husband. Bin Laden
never treated us as followers ... he treated us like he was our
older brother and we his younger siblings. Really, he is a normal
guy but many people think otherwise because a lot of the media is
antagonistic to him. He is a man that believes he has a righteous
cause. So he defends his cause with all the means available."
He had been more effusive in his interview with Khaled years
earlier. "Our love for Sheikh Osama springs from the fact that we
went hungry together and were filled together," he said,
according to an English translation of their interview. "We felt
afraid with him and felt safe with him. We wept and rejoiced with
him. We were joined by a common destiny. We lived a full life
with him without discrimination. The man was very simple in all
his dealings and in everything in his life. Nevertheless he bore
the nation's concerns, and he did that very cleverly. In that
aspect of his character, he was very astute. His simple way of
dealing with others and his tolerance towards those who offended
him made everyone around him love him dearly.".....
Ali Soufan had a reputation as a shrewd interrogator. He was
fluent in both Arabic and English and well versed in al Qaeda's
hierarchy and its players. He had been part of the Cole
investigation, but he met Abu Jandal for the first time when
dispatched to Yemen in September 2001.
At first, Abu Jandal refused to cooperate, ranting to Soufan and
his partner from the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service
about the evils of the West. But slowly, through patience,
persistence and with the agents' extensive knowledge of al
Qaeda's inner workings (which Abu Jandal admitted to me impressed
him), he began to talk. It didn't hurt that Ali Soufan played to
Abu Jandal's ego and tried to befriend him. He noticed that Abu
Jandal never touched any of the biscuits they provided with tea,
and it dawned on Soufan that he was diabetic. So next time they
served sugar-free cookies, and Abu Jandal ate them heartily. It
was a small gesture, but it showed respect, and slowly, he began
to talk.
Abu Jandal's cooperation is credited as vital in the early days
following 9/11, when it was essential to prove to doubting allies
that al Qaeda had been involved. He was also reportedly the first
to confirm the identities of seven of the hijackers. "Through our
interrogation, which was done completely by the book, including
advising him of his rights, we obtained a treasure trove of
highly significant actionable intelligence," Soufan told a U.S.
Senate Committee in 2009. "Abu Jandal gave us extensive
information on Osama bin Laden's terror network, structure,
leadership, membership, security details, facilities, family,
communication methods, travels, training, ammunitions and
weaponry, including a breakdown of what machine guns, rifles,
rocket launchers and anti-tank missiles they used. He also
provided explicit details of the 9/11 plot operatives, and
identified many terrorists who we later successfully
apprehended.".....
..........
Did you notice it. The proof that bin Laden and terrorists hatched
and carried out the 9/11 attacks was given to the USA in detail.
The 9/11 was NOT some "conspiracy" stuff on the part of the USA
Government, as some want to tell you.
Well Yemen is in the news, and probably will be, until such nations gain their
freedom, and can start to form the union of the "king of the south" as they
must (Daniel 11:40-45) to bring end time Bible prophecy to the last 42
months of this age, and the return of our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus.
All expounded for you on my website.
..........
For entries of the Meltdown series before December 2010, visit www.keithhunt.com/meltdown.html.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
A "little" on Guantanamo prison
A "little" about GUANTANAMO prison
From the book "Decade of Fear" by Michelle Shephard
But Guantanamo is the sore that festers-the name itself became
synonymous with human rights abuses. "Gitmoize" became a verb to
describe how to toughen up a facility. It wasn't uncommon at
demonstrations around the world to hear handcuffed protesters
scream, "This is not Guantanamo" as police dragged them away.
There were really two fundamental issues: the conditions of
confinement and the law. Holding men in the outdoor pens of Camp
X-Ray for four months was inhumane. When new facilities were
built they complied with U.S. federal standards and, in the case
of Camp 4, offered living conditions superior to many
maximum-security prisons I had visited in the United States or
Canada. But some detainees in Camps 5 and 6 were still confined
to small cells with almost no human contact. Many were held like
that for more than nine years. I remember one day in 2006 just
staring at what seemed like a choreographed dance between
detainees and guards as the prisoners paced like caged cheetahs,
taking about five steps before hitting a wall or cell door and
swinging back. Guards paced side to side too, looking like
captives themselves as they peered into the cell windows every
three seconds. Even the most heinous of convicted criminals in
Western prisons are granted basic rights sometimes denied
Guantanamo prisoners, such as blankets, appropriate footwear and
toiletries (not to mention books, televisions, access to phones).
Then there were the interrogation methods, which again, in the
early years, fell short of any international standards. Aside
from the moral repugnancy of those practices, most experienced
interrogators would later agree that those methods just didn't
work. Having a female soldier reach into her pants and pretend to
smear menstrual blood on the face of a devout Muslim detainee
will elicit screaming, not cooperation. The intelligence
community remains divided on the effectiveness of the other
techniques colloquially called "torture lite," but most whom I
have interviewed over the years believe that depriving prisoners
of days, or weeks, of sleep will make them largely incoherent and
anything they say unreliable. In Guantanamo, keeping prisoners
awake by forcing them to stand in painful positions was common,
and moving them from cell to cell for days on end was known as
the "frequent flyer program."
But as the prison conditions improved over the years, the general
news coverage didn't. Critics of Gitmo would run shots of Camp
X-Ray's outdoor pens when describing Guantanamo's facilities, or
include complaints about the prison that had long since been
rectified. On the other end of the spectrum, some would dine out
on details about the improvements. THEY GET TASTY FOOD AND
HEALTHCARE! THEY GET ART CLASSES! SOME DETAINEES
DON'T WANT TO LEAVE! These were the screaming headlines about
the caloric count of prison meals, details about the top-notch medical facilities
and classes.
The truth was somewhere in between.
Detainees were well fed and did get better health care than most
Americans (or Canadians). But those military doctors providing
superior health care had also helped devise interrogation plans
to exploit a detainee's vulnerabilities and sanctioned the
force-feeding of hunger-striking prisoners - both considered by
many in the medical community as violations of a doctor's
Hippocratic Oath. I was always skeptical about the military's
claims that some detainees didn't want to leave.
Conditions were easier to write about but ignored the main
overriding issue: these men had not been convicted of any crimes.
Most hadn't even been charged. By 2011, only six detainees had
trials or pleaded guilty before military commissions. That meant
that less than I per cent of the more than 770 men who had been
at Guantanamo had had their guilt assessed in court. For the
first few years, the U.S. administration had also flouted
international treaties that grant detained foreign citizens the
right to consular access, putting the United States on par with
other regimes that routinely hold prisoners incommunicado, such
as Iran, Egypt and Syria. In wartime, international law does
permit the detention of battlefield captives. Many of
Guantanamo's detainees, however, were not caught fighting NATO
troops in Afghanistan, but were handed over by Pakistani forces
in return for lucrative bounties. Besides, the Bush
administration had declared that these were not POWs entitled to
Geneva Convention rights. POWs should be released at the end of
"active hostilities." When would the "war on terror" end?
There were indeed terrorists in Guantanamo. There were mass
murderers who celebrated 9/11 and people I hope are never
released. That is what made it so surreal. I have no doubt that
some of the "worst of the worst" detained on the other side of
the island were still hoping to slaughter us non-believers while
we played Scrabble and drank Scotch. Not everyone was a wrongly
captured goat farmer. One of the detainees was allegedly part of
a group that threw a grenade in Afghanistan at friends of mine,
Star photographer Bernard Weil and former Star correspondent
Kathleen Kenna. Kathleen barely survived the attack and Bernie
has never forgotten it. But in the ten years since 9/11, since
only a handful of detainees had gone on trial and hundreds were
swept up in this decade of fear, it was the stories of the goat
farmers that resounded around the world......
Kuwait's Ministry of Interior suggested to the country's U.S.
ambassador that Gitmo detainees should just be sent back to
Afghanistan "where they could be killed in combat." Slovenia was
pressed to "do more" if it wanted to "attract higher-level
attention from Washington." An official in Finland's prime
minister's office confided: "Chinese diplomats in Helsinki have
repeatedly warned them about the damage to bilateral relations
should Finland accept any Uighurs."
Those were the types of closed-door comments being made around
the world as the United States bartered for homes for the
remaining Guantanamo prisoners., Closed-door comments, that is,
until revealed as part of the 2010 WikiLeaks dump of thousands of
secret State Department documents. Reading through the classified
cables gave the impression that Obama was relying on his appeal
as the most popular kid in the playground and had his buddies
cajoling, begging, bullying and trading friendships for favours.
You want to sit at the cool picnic table? Take a Palestinian.
Enjoy your lunch money, do you? How about giving a home to an
Algerian and an Uzbek to keep buying fries at noon?
Each negotiation was unique, but one source of tension seemed to
be the American refusal to accept any detainees. Congress's NIMBY
measure to block the transfer of prisoners cleared for release
irked many American allies. A September 2009 cable from
Strasbourg, France, made that clear. "The U.S. could not expect
European countries to accept detainees from Guantanamo if the
U.S. were not willing to accept some on U.S. soil," said the
Council of Europe human rights commissioner, Thomas Hammarberg.
Canada refused to even entertain the notion of taking detainees,
making it unique among U.S. allies.
Gitmo remains open and will be for the foreseeable future. By
2011, there were 171 detainees remaining, and Obama had lifted
the suspension on military commissions. Civil rights advocates
continue to denounce Guantanamo's military tribunals as
inherently unjust, with flawed rules allowing hearsay evidence
and crafted to ensure convictions. The nearly sixty Yemeni
detainees, not slated for prosecution, but considered too
dangerous to be returned to the impoverished and unstable Arab
nation, are being held indefinitely. President Obama's first act
as president was to issue an order to close the prison. Five
months later, in that National Archives speech, he talked again
about regaining the "moral high ground" and mentioned the prison
twenty-eight times. In his January 2011 State of the Union
address he did not once utter the word Guantanamo.
Four months later, on April 4, 2011, U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder announced that, against his better judgment, KSM and his
co-accused would be prosecuted in Guantanamo. On the same day,
Obama officially launched his re-election campaign......
YOU NEED TO READ "DECADE OF FEAR" by Michelle Shephard
If you want to know the INSIDE story of this decade of fear and fight against
terrorism, then Michell Shephard lays it all out for in in detail as someone who
has been there and interviewed ones you'd never think would be interviewed.
And you talk about being brave to do all this......my she gets a solid gold medal
from me.
..........
From the book "Decade of Fear" by Michelle Shephard
But Guantanamo is the sore that festers-the name itself became
synonymous with human rights abuses. "Gitmoize" became a verb to
describe how to toughen up a facility. It wasn't uncommon at
demonstrations around the world to hear handcuffed protesters
scream, "This is not Guantanamo" as police dragged them away.
There were really two fundamental issues: the conditions of
confinement and the law. Holding men in the outdoor pens of Camp
X-Ray for four months was inhumane. When new facilities were
built they complied with U.S. federal standards and, in the case
of Camp 4, offered living conditions superior to many
maximum-security prisons I had visited in the United States or
Canada. But some detainees in Camps 5 and 6 were still confined
to small cells with almost no human contact. Many were held like
that for more than nine years. I remember one day in 2006 just
staring at what seemed like a choreographed dance between
detainees and guards as the prisoners paced like caged cheetahs,
taking about five steps before hitting a wall or cell door and
swinging back. Guards paced side to side too, looking like
captives themselves as they peered into the cell windows every
three seconds. Even the most heinous of convicted criminals in
Western prisons are granted basic rights sometimes denied
Guantanamo prisoners, such as blankets, appropriate footwear and
toiletries (not to mention books, televisions, access to phones).
Then there were the interrogation methods, which again, in the
early years, fell short of any international standards. Aside
from the moral repugnancy of those practices, most experienced
interrogators would later agree that those methods just didn't
work. Having a female soldier reach into her pants and pretend to
smear menstrual blood on the face of a devout Muslim detainee
will elicit screaming, not cooperation. The intelligence
community remains divided on the effectiveness of the other
techniques colloquially called "torture lite," but most whom I
have interviewed over the years believe that depriving prisoners
of days, or weeks, of sleep will make them largely incoherent and
anything they say unreliable. In Guantanamo, keeping prisoners
awake by forcing them to stand in painful positions was common,
and moving them from cell to cell for days on end was known as
the "frequent flyer program."
But as the prison conditions improved over the years, the general
news coverage didn't. Critics of Gitmo would run shots of Camp
X-Ray's outdoor pens when describing Guantanamo's facilities, or
include complaints about the prison that had long since been
rectified. On the other end of the spectrum, some would dine out
on details about the improvements. THEY GET TASTY FOOD AND
HEALTHCARE! THEY GET ART CLASSES! SOME DETAINEES
DON'T WANT TO LEAVE! These were the screaming headlines about
the caloric count of prison meals, details about the top-notch medical facilities
and classes.
The truth was somewhere in between.
Detainees were well fed and did get better health care than most
Americans (or Canadians). But those military doctors providing
superior health care had also helped devise interrogation plans
to exploit a detainee's vulnerabilities and sanctioned the
force-feeding of hunger-striking prisoners - both considered by
many in the medical community as violations of a doctor's
Hippocratic Oath. I was always skeptical about the military's
claims that some detainees didn't want to leave.
Conditions were easier to write about but ignored the main
overriding issue: these men had not been convicted of any crimes.
Most hadn't even been charged. By 2011, only six detainees had
trials or pleaded guilty before military commissions. That meant
that less than I per cent of the more than 770 men who had been
at Guantanamo had had their guilt assessed in court. For the
first few years, the U.S. administration had also flouted
international treaties that grant detained foreign citizens the
right to consular access, putting the United States on par with
other regimes that routinely hold prisoners incommunicado, such
as Iran, Egypt and Syria. In wartime, international law does
permit the detention of battlefield captives. Many of
Guantanamo's detainees, however, were not caught fighting NATO
troops in Afghanistan, but were handed over by Pakistani forces
in return for lucrative bounties. Besides, the Bush
administration had declared that these were not POWs entitled to
Geneva Convention rights. POWs should be released at the end of
"active hostilities." When would the "war on terror" end?
There were indeed terrorists in Guantanamo. There were mass
murderers who celebrated 9/11 and people I hope are never
released. That is what made it so surreal. I have no doubt that
some of the "worst of the worst" detained on the other side of
the island were still hoping to slaughter us non-believers while
we played Scrabble and drank Scotch. Not everyone was a wrongly
captured goat farmer. One of the detainees was allegedly part of
a group that threw a grenade in Afghanistan at friends of mine,
Star photographer Bernard Weil and former Star correspondent
Kathleen Kenna. Kathleen barely survived the attack and Bernie
has never forgotten it. But in the ten years since 9/11, since
only a handful of detainees had gone on trial and hundreds were
swept up in this decade of fear, it was the stories of the goat
farmers that resounded around the world......
Kuwait's Ministry of Interior suggested to the country's U.S.
ambassador that Gitmo detainees should just be sent back to
Afghanistan "where they could be killed in combat." Slovenia was
pressed to "do more" if it wanted to "attract higher-level
attention from Washington." An official in Finland's prime
minister's office confided: "Chinese diplomats in Helsinki have
repeatedly warned them about the damage to bilateral relations
should Finland accept any Uighurs."
Those were the types of closed-door comments being made around
the world as the United States bartered for homes for the
remaining Guantanamo prisoners., Closed-door comments, that is,
until revealed as part of the 2010 WikiLeaks dump of thousands of
secret State Department documents. Reading through the classified
cables gave the impression that Obama was relying on his appeal
as the most popular kid in the playground and had his buddies
cajoling, begging, bullying and trading friendships for favours.
You want to sit at the cool picnic table? Take a Palestinian.
Enjoy your lunch money, do you? How about giving a home to an
Algerian and an Uzbek to keep buying fries at noon?
Each negotiation was unique, but one source of tension seemed to
be the American refusal to accept any detainees. Congress's NIMBY
measure to block the transfer of prisoners cleared for release
irked many American allies. A September 2009 cable from
Strasbourg, France, made that clear. "The U.S. could not expect
European countries to accept detainees from Guantanamo if the
U.S. were not willing to accept some on U.S. soil," said the
Council of Europe human rights commissioner, Thomas Hammarberg.
Canada refused to even entertain the notion of taking detainees,
making it unique among U.S. allies.
Gitmo remains open and will be for the foreseeable future. By
2011, there were 171 detainees remaining, and Obama had lifted
the suspension on military commissions. Civil rights advocates
continue to denounce Guantanamo's military tribunals as
inherently unjust, with flawed rules allowing hearsay evidence
and crafted to ensure convictions. The nearly sixty Yemeni
detainees, not slated for prosecution, but considered too
dangerous to be returned to the impoverished and unstable Arab
nation, are being held indefinitely. President Obama's first act
as president was to issue an order to close the prison. Five
months later, in that National Archives speech, he talked again
about regaining the "moral high ground" and mentioned the prison
twenty-eight times. In his January 2011 State of the Union
address he did not once utter the word Guantanamo.
Four months later, on April 4, 2011, U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder announced that, against his better judgment, KSM and his
co-accused would be prosecuted in Guantanamo. On the same day,
Obama officially launched his re-election campaign......
YOU NEED TO READ "DECADE OF FEAR" by Michelle Shephard
If you want to know the INSIDE story of this decade of fear and fight against
terrorism, then Michell Shephard lays it all out for in in detail as someone who
has been there and interviewed ones you'd never think would be interviewed.
And you talk about being brave to do all this......my she gets a solid gold medal
from me.
..........
A "little" on Afghanistan and Pakistan
The block-buster new book "Decade of Fear" by Michelle Shephard has much to say on the hot beds of Afghanistan and Pakistan: here's just a sample -
UNDERSTANDING AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN
From the book "Decade of Fear" by Michelle Shephard
If international pressure over the war in Afghanistan and domestic political and economic woes weren't enough, floods of biblical proportions cemented Pakistan's reputation as a cursed country. Impacting the devastation of the August 2010 floods was the fact that little international aid followed. After Haiti's earthquake in January 2010, $31 million in donations poured into the Red Cross due to a successful campaign in which 3.1 million Americans used their mobile phones to donate $io each. The same campaign for the floods in Pakistan? About $10,000 was collected, despite the fact that the loss caused by the floods affected more people than were affected by the Haitian earthquake, the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan and the 2004 tsunami in South Asia, combined. There were a variety of reasons for the apathy: donor fatigue; Mr. Ten Percent being president (he visited his father's chateau in France as his nation suffered); lack of access to affected areas and therefore lack of crucial media footage; timing (the flood happened during the slow summer months when journalists are on vacation); the flood's devastation by nature being more insidious than the immediacy of an earthquake, tsunami or tornado; or perhaps because Pakistan was simply considered the bad boy on the block and, sadly, there was little international sympathy.
Before I arrived, the White House had just pledged another couple of billion to Pakistan over the next five years in its fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban. But of course the fighting was no longer against the traditional concepts of al Qaeda and Taliban that had existed ten years earlier, nor was it limited to the border region. The WikiLeaks cables underscored Pakistan's deceitful role in fighting the war in Afghanistan. The documents alleged that certain players within the ISI had never stopped supporting groups like the Afghan Taliban, the warlords (such as those belonging to the notorious Haqqani network), the border bandits from Waziristan, or local jihadi groups, including Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). LeT had been officially designated a terrorist entity in Pakistan in 2002 but continued to operate freely under various names and charities. Even after the group was implicated in the 2008 Mumbai attack, in which Pakistani militants killed more than 160 during a sixty-hour siege of luxury hotels, a train station and Jewish centre, many ofthe group's members roamed free. LeT originally was formed to fight for the independence of the disputed Kashmir region, and there were factions within Pakistan's military and the is ISI that regarded the group as an important reserve force for future conflicts with India-much to the ire of Pakistan's nuclear-armed neighbour, and of the United States.....
Entire books are devoted to understanding Pakistan, and in the past decade there have been many. One of the best is by respected Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid. Rashid writes in "Descent Into Chaos" that the U.S. and NATO forces failed to understand that the Taliban is not a monolithic body but a "lumpen population, the product of refugee camps, militarized madrassas, and the lack of opportunities in the borderland of Pakistan and Afghanistan."
The West's failure to understand the Taliban or its distinction from al Qaeda, coupled with Pakistan's ill-advised military actions, such as the raid on the Red Mosque, only fuelled a new generation of hate and distrust for both local and foreign governments, and gave rise to a new Taliban bent on attacking Pakistan. There was no doubt by 2011 that the propaganda war had been lost in the region, and the United States had failed in its purported battle for the hearts and minds of its populace. Pakistanis were fed up by the level of violence in their country and by their government's corruption, but equally hated the Taliban. The failure to follow through with promises of nation building in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, however, did lead to disillusionment and easy pickings for al Qaeda and the Taliban.
By the spring of 2011, the CIA's drone attacks in the border region were stirring incredible controversy. Unmanned predator aircraft that fired hellfire missiles and were piloted half a world away were a terrifying presence in the sky. Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann of the New America Foundation had been vigilantly tracking the drone strikes and estimated that from 2004 until April 2011, between 1,439 and 2,290 people had been killed. At this rate, it was conceivable that by the ten-year anniversary of 9/11 the drone attacks in Pakistan alone may have killed as many as those who died on September 11, 2001.
The drone program substantially increased under the Obama administration. In 2009 alone, there were fifty-one U.S. attacks, while there were only fifty-four during Bush's eight years in power. There were militants among the dead-most famously, TTP leader Baitullah Mehsud (believed to have been the mastermind of Benazir Bhutto's killing). Mehsud was getting a massage on the roof of his compound in South Waziristan when a drone smashed his hideout in August 2009, also killing one of his wives. But more often it was civilians who were killed. According to Bergen and Tiedemann's analysis, only a dozen of the more than one hundred drone attacks in 2010, which killed between six hundred and one thousand people, hit the intended targets.
Drone attacks may be preferred over foreign boots on the ground, but when they are based on shoddy intelligence, the effect can be devastating. A joint poll between the New America Foundation and Terror Free Tomorrow (funded by the United States Institute of Peace) in the FATA region in 2010 showed that nine out of every ten people opposed the U.S. pursuit of al Qaeda and Taliban. Only 16 per cent said they believed the drone strikes accurately targeted militants.
The beginning of this decade was a delicate time in Pakistan's history. Religious extremists killed two high-profile politicians who dared to speak out against the country's blasphemy laws, and President Zindari was criticized for his apathetic reaction. U.S. troops were scheduled to begin withdrawing from Afghanistan in July 2011. Mistrust between the United States and Pakistan was at an all-time high, as was the world's cynicism and rhetoric.
There was a shortage of easy solutions and an abundance of complex problems. Then a May 2011 raid on a high-walled compound, in a quiet military town near Islamabad, would make things even more complicated in Pakistan.....
..........
More on Feast of Trumpets
I guess I do have more to talk about on this Feast of Trumpets day.
Most, the vast majority in North America (Canada included) have not much clue about Germany and the city of Berlin, unless you are watching BBC news like I do.
Last evening they showed the city of Berlin, 22 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the city East and West was UNITED once more. What Germany has done to rebuild the East Berlin in 22 years is truly remarkable. Berlin has today got to be one of the most glorious cities on earth, just a jewel of a crown in the land of Germany.
Germany is the steam engine - the rocket ship - the power-house of the European Union!!
She is the one to bail out the troubled Europe Union; if any nation can do it it is Germany; but many of its people do not want to bail out Europe and the trouble new Europe money that was adopted by many of its nations in the union.
Germany is yet to play one of the most important parts of end time prophecy. The religious leaders of the West - the Protestant funny-mental prophets (as I sometimes call them) have no clue about end-time prophecy. They have no clue for TWO reasons. First, they cannot have any clue because they will not obey the commandments of the Lord; they will not obey and teach the 4th commandment - the 7th day Sabbath; hence it is only those who obey the commandments of God that can have understanding of the truths of the Almighty and the prophecies of the Bible (see Ps.111:7-10). It is just that simple. Second, the Protestant fundamental prophets WILL NOT search or acknowledge who the nations of the world are today. All nations are tribes of people grown great. All nations came from somewhere, many of those tribes of nations migrated to the lands they now have. The Germany people so did. They came from the Middle East, migrated through Europe into what is now known as the land of Germany.
The German people were the very Assyrian people of the Old Testament Bible. The people who took most of Israel (and that includes tens of thousands of Judah - the Jews) into captivity from 745 to 718 B.C.
The German nation will yet be the SPEAR-HEAD (it already is) of a mighty (but iron mixed with clay - strong but weak) Beast Power of Europe - a resurrected last Holy Roman Empire - the 7th and last Holy Roman Empire, that will take this world into the horrific last 42 months of the end of this age and the coming of Jesus Christ back to this earth, to establish the Kingdom of God on earth for the first 1,000 years.
On my website I have expounded for you all the prophets of the Bible. I have told you in advance what SURELY WILL COME TO PASS!!
You need to read, study those studies, keep an eye on Germany, Europe, the Arab world, as well as the East. The East will play a part in end time prophecy but not in the way that most would have you believe. Russia and China (they are on the road to set up their own space station and they say maybe a man to the moon) and India, are moving along to their destiny in end time prophecy.
I HAVE TOLD YOU WHAT WILL COME TO PASS!!
Most, the vast majority in North America (Canada included) have not much clue about Germany and the city of Berlin, unless you are watching BBC news like I do.
Last evening they showed the city of Berlin, 22 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the city East and West was UNITED once more. What Germany has done to rebuild the East Berlin in 22 years is truly remarkable. Berlin has today got to be one of the most glorious cities on earth, just a jewel of a crown in the land of Germany.
Germany is the steam engine - the rocket ship - the power-house of the European Union!!
She is the one to bail out the troubled Europe Union; if any nation can do it it is Germany; but many of its people do not want to bail out Europe and the trouble new Europe money that was adopted by many of its nations in the union.
Germany is yet to play one of the most important parts of end time prophecy. The religious leaders of the West - the Protestant funny-mental prophets (as I sometimes call them) have no clue about end-time prophecy. They have no clue for TWO reasons. First, they cannot have any clue because they will not obey the commandments of the Lord; they will not obey and teach the 4th commandment - the 7th day Sabbath; hence it is only those who obey the commandments of God that can have understanding of the truths of the Almighty and the prophecies of the Bible (see Ps.111:7-10). It is just that simple. Second, the Protestant fundamental prophets WILL NOT search or acknowledge who the nations of the world are today. All nations are tribes of people grown great. All nations came from somewhere, many of those tribes of nations migrated to the lands they now have. The Germany people so did. They came from the Middle East, migrated through Europe into what is now known as the land of Germany.
The German people were the very Assyrian people of the Old Testament Bible. The people who took most of Israel (and that includes tens of thousands of Judah - the Jews) into captivity from 745 to 718 B.C.
The German nation will yet be the SPEAR-HEAD (it already is) of a mighty (but iron mixed with clay - strong but weak) Beast Power of Europe - a resurrected last Holy Roman Empire - the 7th and last Holy Roman Empire, that will take this world into the horrific last 42 months of the end of this age and the coming of Jesus Christ back to this earth, to establish the Kingdom of God on earth for the first 1,000 years.
On my website I have expounded for you all the prophets of the Bible. I have told you in advance what SURELY WILL COME TO PASS!!
You need to read, study those studies, keep an eye on Germany, Europe, the Arab world, as well as the East. The East will play a part in end time prophecy but not in the way that most would have you believe. Russia and China (they are on the road to set up their own space station and they say maybe a man to the moon) and India, are moving along to their destiny in end time prophecy.
I HAVE TOLD YOU WHAT WILL COME TO PASS!!
Feast of Trumpets 2011
Today - September 29th 2011 is the Feast of Trumpets.
I have brought you some messages in the past on this day. They are on my website.
The great meaning of this Feast Day is also fully explained on my website in various studies.
I have today not brought you a specific message on this feast day as such, but I have uploaded some new studies to my website under "Christian Living" section.
Those studies are to do with war and killing as pertaining to remembering September 11th and the Muslim people. You should read them.
We need to remember that the true Christian is not of this world. We are under the New Covenant to be a much different (in some respects) person in our living (in some respects) than what God ALLOWED His people under the Old Covenant.
Yes the New Covenant is NOT the Old Covenant, or it would not have been called a NEW covenant. There ARE SOME CHANGES made under the New Covenant as to how the New Testament Christian is to conduct his/her mind and life.
If you remember Jesus' debate with the religious leaders of his day over the issue of "divorce and re-marriage" you will remember an answer He gave them at one point they raised - it was "for the hardness of your heart it was permitted, but from the beginning it was not so."
God ALLOWED some things under the Old Testament because of the HARDNESS of the heart!! It was never God's intent from the beginning for it to be this way. Under the New Testament you will remember Matthew 5,6,7, and Jesus saying, "you have heard..." this or that, but "I say unto you....." and Jesus MAGNIFIED the law (as it was foretold He would in Isaiah) ....He did in effect CHANGE some things as they were now to be under the New Testament.
So you may wonder about divorce and re-marriage; you may wonder about war, should a Christian fight in a nations war machine?; you may wonder about polygamy; you may wonder about how to observe God's festivals today; you may wonder about if the Sabbath commandment (the 4th of Exodus 20) has been changed from the 7th day to the 1st day of the week; you may wonder about how the calendar works today as compared to in Jesus' time ..... and you may wonder about many other things.
On my website the above questions are answered in detail. And some wonder about all the laws in the Bible, and how on earth do we figure which ones are for today. Well then you need to go to my two part study on my website called "Living by Every word of God - How?" That study will give you the keys to figuring it all out.
So for you who are still in the hours of the Feast of Trumpets, continue to enjoy. Those who have finished the keeping of the Feast of Trumpets, I hope it was a blessing to you.
....................
I have brought you some messages in the past on this day. They are on my website.
The great meaning of this Feast Day is also fully explained on my website in various studies.
I have today not brought you a specific message on this feast day as such, but I have uploaded some new studies to my website under "Christian Living" section.
Those studies are to do with war and killing as pertaining to remembering September 11th and the Muslim people. You should read them.
We need to remember that the true Christian is not of this world. We are under the New Covenant to be a much different (in some respects) person in our living (in some respects) than what God ALLOWED His people under the Old Covenant.
Yes the New Covenant is NOT the Old Covenant, or it would not have been called a NEW covenant. There ARE SOME CHANGES made under the New Covenant as to how the New Testament Christian is to conduct his/her mind and life.
If you remember Jesus' debate with the religious leaders of his day over the issue of "divorce and re-marriage" you will remember an answer He gave them at one point they raised - it was "for the hardness of your heart it was permitted, but from the beginning it was not so."
God ALLOWED some things under the Old Testament because of the HARDNESS of the heart!! It was never God's intent from the beginning for it to be this way. Under the New Testament you will remember Matthew 5,6,7, and Jesus saying, "you have heard..." this or that, but "I say unto you....." and Jesus MAGNIFIED the law (as it was foretold He would in Isaiah) ....He did in effect CHANGE some things as they were now to be under the New Testament.
So you may wonder about divorce and re-marriage; you may wonder about war, should a Christian fight in a nations war machine?; you may wonder about polygamy; you may wonder about how to observe God's festivals today; you may wonder about if the Sabbath commandment (the 4th of Exodus 20) has been changed from the 7th day to the 1st day of the week; you may wonder about how the calendar works today as compared to in Jesus' time ..... and you may wonder about many other things.
On my website the above questions are answered in detail. And some wonder about all the laws in the Bible, and how on earth do we figure which ones are for today. Well then you need to go to my two part study on my website called "Living by Every word of God - How?" That study will give you the keys to figuring it all out.
So for you who are still in the hours of the Feast of Trumpets, continue to enjoy. Those who have finished the keeping of the Feast of Trumpets, I hope it was a blessing to you.
....................
Monday, September 26, 2011
The movie "Dolphin Tale"
The recent true life movie called "The Dolphin Tale" is very fine indeed. It is the true story of a dolphin that looses its tail, and how a boy and special adults give it a false tail and teach it to again live. Without a tail used correctly a dolphin would eventually die, they must wave their tail up and down, not side to side, which would cripple their back in time, and so die.
A very fine FAMILY movie. Definitely one to see and to own when it comes out on DVD.
The dolphin is to the human, the "dog" of the sea - they have a natural liking towards humans. Interesting I think that God created them with a smile on their face. This movie will put a smile on your face, and one of my very favorite gals in it - Ashley Judd - she has that pretty face and warm smile - yes an altogether warm and inspiring movie.
..........
A very fine FAMILY movie. Definitely one to see and to own when it comes out on DVD.
The dolphin is to the human, the "dog" of the sea - they have a natural liking towards humans. Interesting I think that God created them with a smile on their face. This movie will put a smile on your face, and one of my very favorite gals in it - Ashley Judd - she has that pretty face and warm smile - yes an altogether warm and inspiring movie.
..........
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Dying from obesity!
This is a shocking up-to-date fact, on the news tonight. More people in the world are dying from eating too MUCH than from starvation.
Who would have thought it would come to this startling statistic? But when all the health problems that come from obesity are figured in, the death toll from obesity is higher than death from starvation, for the world at large.
And when it is all boiled down it comes to the fact we have known for decades - eat less, eat more healthy, eat much less fast foods and junk foods, and EXERCISE MORE!!
It does take will-power for sure. Sometimes gaining too much weight can creep up on you, I know for it did with me, and before I knew it I was 25 pounds heavier than I'd ever been in my entire life. This was just last February 2011. I was shocked, and set about to do something about it - the will-power has to be there. I've lost that 25 pounds as of July 2011. And people have noticed, and commented, and I'm sure feeling like an athlete preparing for the Olympics.
I now eat less, go swimming twice a week, going as fast as I can for 10 minutes, then medium fast, then slow, with Charles Atlas dynamic tension exercises between laps. Bike riding in low gear to make those legs work and the heart, is another good exercise. Walking fast, stepping it out, for a mile or so is very good for you. Well whatever it is, just get exercising, make it a part of your regular life.
Whatever action you need to do, do it, and get within your boundary for your height and bone structure. You can find the charts etc. online. Then SET YOUR MIND - get into your weight rage - it will take determination and yes it probably will have to become your way of life - a new way to physically live so you do not become over-weight and especially obese.
Now you know the truth of the matter - more people in the world today die from obesity ( and all the problems in health it brings) than from starvation!
..........
Who would have thought it would come to this startling statistic? But when all the health problems that come from obesity are figured in, the death toll from obesity is higher than death from starvation, for the world at large.
And when it is all boiled down it comes to the fact we have known for decades - eat less, eat more healthy, eat much less fast foods and junk foods, and EXERCISE MORE!!
It does take will-power for sure. Sometimes gaining too much weight can creep up on you, I know for it did with me, and before I knew it I was 25 pounds heavier than I'd ever been in my entire life. This was just last February 2011. I was shocked, and set about to do something about it - the will-power has to be there. I've lost that 25 pounds as of July 2011. And people have noticed, and commented, and I'm sure feeling like an athlete preparing for the Olympics.
I now eat less, go swimming twice a week, going as fast as I can for 10 minutes, then medium fast, then slow, with Charles Atlas dynamic tension exercises between laps. Bike riding in low gear to make those legs work and the heart, is another good exercise. Walking fast, stepping it out, for a mile or so is very good for you. Well whatever it is, just get exercising, make it a part of your regular life.
Whatever action you need to do, do it, and get within your boundary for your height and bone structure. You can find the charts etc. online. Then SET YOUR MIND - get into your weight rage - it will take determination and yes it probably will have to become your way of life - a new way to physically live so you do not become over-weight and especially obese.
Now you know the truth of the matter - more people in the world today die from obesity ( and all the problems in health it brings) than from starvation!
..........
Friday, September 23, 2011
USA jobs given to China!
So for 3 years now we have heard President Obama talking about putting USA people back to work. And so far it has just been that...just talk.
Tonight on ABC news they showed that some very large construction jobs (some brand-new, some reconstruction), have been going to the Chinese tradesmen. When it came to the bottom line it was the usual bottom line .... the Chinese do it for less money than what USA contractors and workers will do it for. As they say when the rubber hits the road, money talks, or in this case less money talking gets the job.
Still lots of uncertainty on the world's economic situation - Europe in a mess, USA in a mess, while China and India seem to be moving along pretty good in the overall of it all. Here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada our major was down to Toronto this last week, trying to drum-up getting Toronto people (out of work there) to come to Calgary, as we have plenty of jobs with not enough workers to fill them. And then I was talking to a man who has a small (employs 5 people) construction company in Calgary, who told me if he went to Regina or Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, he could employ 15 people - 3 times the work there....just booming along. I asked him why the huge boom....answer....they've found OIL there, lots of it.
..........
The Palestinians want their own country, they made their bid to the United Nations today. Natty boy from Israel says there has to be peace first between them and his country, which is not happening any time soon by the mark of history. On the other hand some young Palestinians say there should just be one country, where everybody gets along with everybody, but the radical fanatics will make sure that does not happen. And of course the Palestinians want East Jerusalem as their capital city for their country, as if the Jews are going to hand over half the city of Jerusalem to them, I do not think so.
..........
Turkey is not liking Syria right now - getting some high tension between the two of them.
And we have Yemen now going on the offensive (the people that is) to throw out their dictator. Hummmm...come to think of it I have not heard much about Libya and if they have found Madghafi yet. Other things are taking the news right now, especially the plight of the world's economy, and this large satellite thing that is supposed to crash to earth in the next day or so. If your outside better keep on eye on the sky and get ready to run if parts of it come your way.
..........
ABC had a full program on 20/20 about Youtube and the 6 years since it came into being, and how it has made some average joe or Jill with some kind of talent or wacky whatever, into very rich people as they became "famous" and then the big companies want them to be PR for them, and etc. Yes many on Youtube have become famous worldwide in just one or two days..... that's the modern world we live in today, which means more and more are becoming Youtube junkies, kinda drugged on "must see what's the latest on Youtube" - wake to it, have morning and afternoon coffee breaks, lunch breaks, dinner breaks, bedtime breaks ... maybe yet up in the middle of the night breaks, with Youtube.
Oh must say I do use it to upload some Bible sermonette studies, and some of my favorite singers and some of my guitar CDs. You can go to my sermon studies from my website: keithhunt.com and if you want to know my favorite singers of all time, just type in: 1horsesrcool
..........
Tonight on ABC news they showed that some very large construction jobs (some brand-new, some reconstruction), have been going to the Chinese tradesmen. When it came to the bottom line it was the usual bottom line .... the Chinese do it for less money than what USA contractors and workers will do it for. As they say when the rubber hits the road, money talks, or in this case less money talking gets the job.
Still lots of uncertainty on the world's economic situation - Europe in a mess, USA in a mess, while China and India seem to be moving along pretty good in the overall of it all. Here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada our major was down to Toronto this last week, trying to drum-up getting Toronto people (out of work there) to come to Calgary, as we have plenty of jobs with not enough workers to fill them. And then I was talking to a man who has a small (employs 5 people) construction company in Calgary, who told me if he went to Regina or Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, he could employ 15 people - 3 times the work there....just booming along. I asked him why the huge boom....answer....they've found OIL there, lots of it.
..........
The Palestinians want their own country, they made their bid to the United Nations today. Natty boy from Israel says there has to be peace first between them and his country, which is not happening any time soon by the mark of history. On the other hand some young Palestinians say there should just be one country, where everybody gets along with everybody, but the radical fanatics will make sure that does not happen. And of course the Palestinians want East Jerusalem as their capital city for their country, as if the Jews are going to hand over half the city of Jerusalem to them, I do not think so.
..........
Turkey is not liking Syria right now - getting some high tension between the two of them.
And we have Yemen now going on the offensive (the people that is) to throw out their dictator. Hummmm...come to think of it I have not heard much about Libya and if they have found Madghafi yet. Other things are taking the news right now, especially the plight of the world's economy, and this large satellite thing that is supposed to crash to earth in the next day or so. If your outside better keep on eye on the sky and get ready to run if parts of it come your way.
..........
ABC had a full program on 20/20 about Youtube and the 6 years since it came into being, and how it has made some average joe or Jill with some kind of talent or wacky whatever, into very rich people as they became "famous" and then the big companies want them to be PR for them, and etc. Yes many on Youtube have become famous worldwide in just one or two days..... that's the modern world we live in today, which means more and more are becoming Youtube junkies, kinda drugged on "must see what's the latest on Youtube" - wake to it, have morning and afternoon coffee breaks, lunch breaks, dinner breaks, bedtime breaks ... maybe yet up in the middle of the night breaks, with Youtube.
Oh must say I do use it to upload some Bible sermonette studies, and some of my favorite singers and some of my guitar CDs. You can go to my sermon studies from my website: keithhunt.com and if you want to know my favorite singers of all time, just type in: 1horsesrcool
..........
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Your Love Never Fails - movie
Came across this movie recently. Very fine family movie. Beautiful scenes. Fine horse scene. Well acted by those who are not that well known -Elisa Donovan - brad Rowe - John Schneider - with Fred Willard and Tom Skerrit.
It's about a split up family that can in this modern world often happen. So it has that personal touch, and shows how both sides have to give some to make something good be good once more.
Anchor Bay Entertainment. Certainly worth seeing.
..........
It's about a split up family that can in this modern world often happen. So it has that personal touch, and shows how both sides have to give some to make something good be good once more.
Anchor Bay Entertainment. Certainly worth seeing.
..........
Saturday, September 17, 2011
AMOS' words to us!!
From "Thy Kingdom Come" - a publication of The Association of the
Covenant People - Burnaby, B.C. Canada.
AMOS' WORDS TO US
Editor's Comments: In his September offering, Mr. Robson, our
senior correspondent, has presented us with a message that should
be circulated far and wide. Why, oh why, we refuse to see the
punishment being meted out upon our once great nations is so
very, very puzzling. You know, after warning that the end is come
(four times), that the time is come and the day of trouble is
near, the prophet Ezekiel made this prophetic statement that has
sadly come to pass, "Now will I shortly pour out my fury upon
thee, and accomplish mine anger upon thee: and I will judge thee
according to thy ways, and will recompense thee for all thine
abominations. " Yet, here we are, our nations being battered by
all forms of natural disasters and instead of turning back to
God, we are, as Mr. Robson points out, seeking other reasons.
Well, God's words, as written by Ezekiel, "ye shall know that I
am the LORD," will someday soon be fully understood. In the
meantime, our Israel nations will undergo more senseless pain.
.......
by Don Robson
Lately I have been reading material from various sources and I
realized that I was not read ing the Bible nearly enough. I
started wondering what gems of truth were tucked away in the Word
that are meant for me. For some reason, I decided to start by
reading the short book of Amos. Although he wrote centuries ago,
he had a message for our times and I shall bring it to your
attention in this article.
Chapter 2 details the Lord's complaint against Israel and after
saying that the trans gressions cannot go unpunished,
he finishes by describing the punishment that was to be assigned
to them. Then, at the beginning of the next chapter we read these
words, "Hear the Word that the Lord hath spoken against you, 0
children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up
from the land of Egypt, saying, you only have I known of all the
families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your
iniquities."
"You only have I known......" God sees the little sparrow fall;
therefore, He is aware of all the life on the planet.
So what is the meaning of, "You only have I known"? Throughout
the Bible, the verb "to know" is used in relation to marriage. An
example might be, Jacob knew Leah and she bore him a son Reuben.
In my own opinion, I am suggesting that the Lord is here
referring to the marriage arrangement He concluded with Israel at
mount Sinai where the Lord delivered the law through Moses to the
people and they said, "All that the Lord hath spoken we will do."
By this oath, the marriage contract was consummated and the Lord
was King of the Kingdom that was founded. They were to be a holy
people, a servant people, precious to the Lord.
Verse 3 asks the question, "Can two walk together, except they be
agreed?" Amos is asking the obvious! So, because the Israelites
disobeyed God's law, He was forced to divorce them. We know now
that the Lord had provided redemption for the Israelites through
the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus and that through His death
re-marriage could occur. But, even that process required
repentance on the part of the Israelites.
Without detailing the calamities that have befallen the
Anglo-Saxon nations, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia,
Canada and the United States, we are deeply concerned about these
tragedies and explain them by the term, "global warming" to which
we see no relief in the near future. Amos has another answer.
After announcing their exile in spite of the offerings which are
according to their likes (not God's) he says the following in
verse six," And I have also given you cleanness of teeth in all
your cities, and want of bread in all your places; AND YET HAVE
YE NOT RETURNED UNTO ME, SAITH THE LORD.
And also have I withholden the rain from you, when there were yet
three months to the harvest; and I caused it to rain upon one
city, and caused it not to rain upon another city; one piece was
rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered. So
two or three cities wandered unto one city, to drink water; but
they were not satisfied; YET HAVE YE NOT RETURNED UNTO
ME, SAITH THE LORD.
I have smitten you with blasting and mildew; when your gardens
and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees
increased, the palmerworm devoured them; AND YET HAVE YE NOT
RETURNED UNTO ME, SAITH THE LORD.
I have sent among you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt;
your young men have I slain with the sword, and have taken away
your horses; and I have made the stink of your camps come up unto
your nostrils; YET HAVE YE NOT RETURNED UNTO ME,
SAITH THE LORD.
I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and
Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning;
YET HAVE YE NOT RETURNED UNTO ME, SAITH THE LORD.
Therefore, thus will I do unto thee, 0 Israel; and because I will
do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, 0 Israel."
Now this leads to a very big question. Do we believe that
the Creator of the universe has power over the elements? Wasn't
it Jesus who calmed the raging storm by saying, "Peace, be
still."? Didn't God discuss His storehouses of snow with Job?
Didn't Jesus say in His revelation to John that He would subdue
resisting nations by withholding rain? If we are of this world,
it is easy to agree with the scientists that the unusual in
nature is a result of global warming, but Jesus told Pilate that
His followers were not of this world. We believe and love Jesus.
We try to implement His commandments in our daily living. We
trust in Him.
Five times Jesus asks us (Israel) to return to Him. He is
pleading with us! Now how do we encourage our leaders to call for
a national day of prayer of repentance? God is anxious to bless
us and is weary of trying to coax us to repentance as a nation.
Must we wait until Jesus comes? Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
..........
Covenant People - Burnaby, B.C. Canada.
AMOS' WORDS TO US
Editor's Comments: In his September offering, Mr. Robson, our
senior correspondent, has presented us with a message that should
be circulated far and wide. Why, oh why, we refuse to see the
punishment being meted out upon our once great nations is so
very, very puzzling. You know, after warning that the end is come
(four times), that the time is come and the day of trouble is
near, the prophet Ezekiel made this prophetic statement that has
sadly come to pass, "Now will I shortly pour out my fury upon
thee, and accomplish mine anger upon thee: and I will judge thee
according to thy ways, and will recompense thee for all thine
abominations. " Yet, here we are, our nations being battered by
all forms of natural disasters and instead of turning back to
God, we are, as Mr. Robson points out, seeking other reasons.
Well, God's words, as written by Ezekiel, "ye shall know that I
am the LORD," will someday soon be fully understood. In the
meantime, our Israel nations will undergo more senseless pain.
.......
by Don Robson
Lately I have been reading material from various sources and I
realized that I was not read ing the Bible nearly enough. I
started wondering what gems of truth were tucked away in the Word
that are meant for me. For some reason, I decided to start by
reading the short book of Amos. Although he wrote centuries ago,
he had a message for our times and I shall bring it to your
attention in this article.
Chapter 2 details the Lord's complaint against Israel and after
saying that the trans gressions cannot go unpunished,
he finishes by describing the punishment that was to be assigned
to them. Then, at the beginning of the next chapter we read these
words, "Hear the Word that the Lord hath spoken against you, 0
children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up
from the land of Egypt, saying, you only have I known of all the
families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your
iniquities."
"You only have I known......" God sees the little sparrow fall;
therefore, He is aware of all the life on the planet.
So what is the meaning of, "You only have I known"? Throughout
the Bible, the verb "to know" is used in relation to marriage. An
example might be, Jacob knew Leah and she bore him a son Reuben.
In my own opinion, I am suggesting that the Lord is here
referring to the marriage arrangement He concluded with Israel at
mount Sinai where the Lord delivered the law through Moses to the
people and they said, "All that the Lord hath spoken we will do."
By this oath, the marriage contract was consummated and the Lord
was King of the Kingdom that was founded. They were to be a holy
people, a servant people, precious to the Lord.
Verse 3 asks the question, "Can two walk together, except they be
agreed?" Amos is asking the obvious! So, because the Israelites
disobeyed God's law, He was forced to divorce them. We know now
that the Lord had provided redemption for the Israelites through
the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus and that through His death
re-marriage could occur. But, even that process required
repentance on the part of the Israelites.
Without detailing the calamities that have befallen the
Anglo-Saxon nations, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia,
Canada and the United States, we are deeply concerned about these
tragedies and explain them by the term, "global warming" to which
we see no relief in the near future. Amos has another answer.
After announcing their exile in spite of the offerings which are
according to their likes (not God's) he says the following in
verse six," And I have also given you cleanness of teeth in all
your cities, and want of bread in all your places; AND YET HAVE
YE NOT RETURNED UNTO ME, SAITH THE LORD.
And also have I withholden the rain from you, when there were yet
three months to the harvest; and I caused it to rain upon one
city, and caused it not to rain upon another city; one piece was
rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered. So
two or three cities wandered unto one city, to drink water; but
they were not satisfied; YET HAVE YE NOT RETURNED UNTO
ME, SAITH THE LORD.
I have smitten you with blasting and mildew; when your gardens
and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees
increased, the palmerworm devoured them; AND YET HAVE YE NOT
RETURNED UNTO ME, SAITH THE LORD.
I have sent among you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt;
your young men have I slain with the sword, and have taken away
your horses; and I have made the stink of your camps come up unto
your nostrils; YET HAVE YE NOT RETURNED UNTO ME,
SAITH THE LORD.
I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and
Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning;
YET HAVE YE NOT RETURNED UNTO ME, SAITH THE LORD.
Therefore, thus will I do unto thee, 0 Israel; and because I will
do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, 0 Israel."
Now this leads to a very big question. Do we believe that
the Creator of the universe has power over the elements? Wasn't
it Jesus who calmed the raging storm by saying, "Peace, be
still."? Didn't God discuss His storehouses of snow with Job?
Didn't Jesus say in His revelation to John that He would subdue
resisting nations by withholding rain? If we are of this world,
it is easy to agree with the scientists that the unusual in
nature is a result of global warming, but Jesus told Pilate that
His followers were not of this world. We believe and love Jesus.
We try to implement His commandments in our daily living. We
trust in Him.
Five times Jesus asks us (Israel) to return to Him. He is
pleading with us! Now how do we encourage our leaders to call for
a national day of prayer of repentance? God is anxious to bless
us and is weary of trying to coax us to repentance as a nation.
Must we wait until Jesus comes? Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
..........
Don't be Fooled - It's not Over !
It's NOT Over! (Taken from "Thy Kingdom come" - September 2011 - a publication of The Association of the Covenant People, Burnaby, B.C. Canada)
by Kent Purvis
by Kent Purvis
Beware friends; we are not out of the financial wilderness yet. Despite what we are being told we are very close, once again, to financial destruction worldwide.
If this is worrisome, as Al Jolson sang, "You Ain't Heard Nothing Yet". What is happening in the United States and especially Greece as I write this could be far worse! In the United States the Senate is debating (translated arguing) about raising the debt ceiling of $14 trillion so that the American government can continue doing business.
Without raising this ceiling, the public employees, pensioners, and unemployed will not be paid. And for the world economy the United States will be in default of their bonds and debts around the world. At present it is strictly a political tug-of-war, with the Republicans wanting to cut costs and the Democrats wanting tax increases. Both sides are pandering to their political base in this colossal game of chicken. They are likely to come to some kind of agreement as soon as one side blinks. If they don't, the United States faces concern by investors as to how reliable their treasury bills and bonds will be in the future. In the interim, stock markets are fluctuating because of the uncertainty. This could have major implications on the world financial markets. Fortunately for the United States their financial fate is in their own hands. The same cannot be said about Greece.
In Europe, the concerns are over what has become known as the "PIIGS" (an acronym for Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain); the biggest concern at present is Greece. On the precipice of bankruptcy, how Greece handles a much needed turnaround of their financial crisis will affect how the rest of the PIIGS and Europe will react and respond. Greece is very close to defaulting on their foreign debt and bonds. In an attempt to receive a bailout package, again, from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU) the Greek government, led by George Papandreou, has had to pass a series of austerity measures, including tax increases and cost cuts in the short term. They are also being forced into the privatization of many public assets, such as power companies, railways, and ports, which in the long term will only increase costs to a population already suffering from the austerity measures. The population of Greece is rioting in the streets against such measures. But, to receive the funds the IMF and the EU are calling the tune and Greece is expected to dance. As Proverbs 22:7 says: "The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender."
When the privatization of Greek national assets, such as those mentioned above, occurs even the experts say it will be a fire sale of a large portion of the Greek infrastructure. And who can afford the prices of such large assets except huge companies? Don't be surprised if China is not at the table wanting to stabilize a large trade partner (the EU). China is one of the few, if not the only one, with huge financial reserves to buy such assets, and China is still buying Greek bonds and slowing the purchase of U.S. bonds and treasury bills. Greece faces the prospect of the EU tiring of the Greek mismanagement and simply asking Greece to leave the EU for stability. There have been reports of such meetings between the other EU members. Perhaps Greece will simply withdraw from the EU and try to fend for themselves.
The French and German governments are trying to propose a "soft" rollover of the debt to the banks, but considering Greece's penchant for overspending this may be a tough sell and may not satisfy the financial markets. A soft roll over would be a simple acceptance of deferred payments or restructuring of the debt, still it would likely be seen as a default by the world markets. It all has the makings of a Greek tragedy in which the entire world may feel the pain.
Do not be fooled, this is not a bail out of Greece, but a bail out of the Banks of Europe. If Greece defaults there will be another rash of bank failures around Europe, especially France and Germany; the banks of France and Germany hold almost 100 billion Euros worth of Greek debt on the books and no one knows how much may be hidden in derivatives and other financial gymnastics. All of Europe is destabilized because of this situation. If the EU doesn't help, it weakens confidence in the member states. In helping they may be postponing the inevitable. With the mood of the citizens of Greece, the Papandreou government has no chance of winning the next election and the next government may not follow the austerity measures agreed to now. Thus the EU may be going through this dance again in a couple of years. And as a result the rest of the PIIGS could simply follow Greece's lead and follow the same path or just simply default. This will leave the world markets in a terrible state for a long time.
Proverbs 4:7 says: "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding." Perhaps Greece will get understanding, but perhaps the rest of the EU should get understanding with all their giving. Because, if all nations do not learn the lessons that have been thrust upon Greece, they will find themselves in the same situation of great debt without the ability to pay.
..........
DECADE OF FEAR!!!
JUST HAVE TO GIVE YOU THIS PART OF THIS NEW BLOCKBUSTER BOOK - YOU NEED TO READ IT!!
SOMETIMES IT is hard not to picture terrorists holed up in caves, with AK-47s resting against the muddy walls and generators powering broadcasts of Fox News, around which they all huddle. Giggling. Rubbing their hands. "This is making our job too easy," one would exclaim. Gifts for al Qaeda recruiters: the Iraq war, the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the burning of Qur'ans, the tortured death of an Afghan taxi driver in Bagram, waterboarding, misguided predator drones, faulty intelligence. In this theme of disastrous reactions to disastrous events comes the next chapter in Somalia's history.
U.K.-born, Canadian-raised analyst Matt Bryden, who has lived much of his adult life in Somalia and neighbouring countries and speaks Somali fluently without a trace of an English accent, was among those who tried to warn what would happen if fears about the ICU led to their removal by force. "After more than a decade of political disengagement from Somalia, the United States has plunged back in with an approach that threatens to produce precisely the scenario it seeks to avoid: a militant Islamist movement that serves as a magnet for foreign jihadists and provides a platform for terrorist groups," Bryden wrote in an essay for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in December 2006.
Arguing that since 9/11 Washington has viewed Somalia through a narrow counterterrorism lens, with almost no political engagement and little humanitarian aid, Bryden stated that Washington's new policy of pledging its unconditional support for Somalia's Transitional Federal Government and for longtime rival Ethiopia is ".not just self-defeating: it is inflammatory." He wrote: "Washington appears to have designated the Courts as a strategic adversary, elevating Somalia from a simmering regional problem to a global issue. The Courts are now likely to attract support from a far broader range of anti-American and anti-Western interests than they have so far, and the flow of foreign funds and fighters to the ICU seems bound to increase dramatically."
Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed's transitional government had lost credibility among Somalis partly due to the corruption among the government's ranks. But as so often is the case with dizzyingly complicated Somalia, the struggle for power between the Transitional Federal Government and the ICU was oversimplified in the West. The ICU and all its members: terrorists. The TFG: good guys.
Behind the scenes, the Bush administration was focused on three men hiding in Somalia who were wanted in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. According to New Yorker journalist Lee Anderson, Michael Ranneberger, U.S. Ambassador to Kenya, had attempted to negotiate with ICU leader Sharif, telling him that if he would eschew terrorism and take action against the three high-value targets, they could work together. "He listened and nodded and seemed to understand. But then he went back to Mogadishu and I never heard from him again. I guess he had no traction there," Ranneberger told Anderson.
Further attempts for diplomatic solutions were abandoned. Ethiopia, Somalia's neighbour, had long been wary of Islamic uprisings, fearing that any movement in Somalia would radicalize Ethiopia's sizable Muslim population. Ethiopian tanks rolled across the border into Somalia on Christmas Eve 2006, with Washington's blessing. No one believed the ICU could withstand Ethiopia's army, but the speed and ease with which it captured Mogadishu was surprising. Within two days, the capital of Somalia belonged once again to the TFG. Back in Toronto, I watched these events unfold and knew that it would be a long time before there would be a peaceful scene at the Peace Hotel again.
THE TAXI DRIVER couldn't believe what he was hearing. Stop the car? Now?
It was a few months after Ethiopia's invasion, in March 2007, and the fighting in Mogadishu was at its worst in years. Ethiopian troops were battling a fractured Islamic insurgency, clans warred with clans, and criminals and warlords were fighting everyone. As always, thousands of impoverished civilians with nowhere to go were caught in between. The taxi was speeding away from the chaotic Bakara Market, until the passenger, a bespectacled, gentle forty-seven-yearold Somali-born Canadian named Sahal Abdulle, insisted that they stop. Actually, he was yelling, and Sahal almost never yelled.
Ambling across the street, unaware of the war raging around him, was a massive, crusty tortoise. He was going as fast as he probably could, which wasn't very fast at all.
Sahal had thought he had seen everything in Mogadishu, but spotting a tortoise near the concrete jungle of the market and this far from the city's rocky coastline was like finding a moose striding across Toronto's Bay Street, or a bear ambling across Park Avenue in Manhattan. Sahal knew it was crazy to stop. He also knew he had to. "I just need to protect something," he thought.
Minutes earlier, Sahal had been near the Damey Hotel, reporting on what the mortars and Ak-47s and RPGs and bombs had left behind. In military terms, it was called "collateral damage," civilians caught in the fighting. In real terms, it was dead children, women and civilian men, and severed limbs. Sahal was passionate about his duty as a journalist, but sometimes his work just seemed futile. Especially when no one seemed to care. And it often seemed that no one cared about Somalia.
Sahal yelled to the driver, his friend Hussein, "Give me a hand and open the trunk."
"No. We're not doing this," Hussein replied, but he was already out of the car, bobbing and weaving, flinching with every crackle of gunshots.
Together they lifted the tortoise, struggling with its weight despite their adrenalin-fuelled strength. The mighty beast retracted his head and limbs and defecated on them.
The second-oldest of ten children, Sahal was born Abdullahi Abdulle in the Somali town of Galkayo on a Friday in 1962. His mother was in labour for four days giving birth to his older brother, but Sahal was delivered in less than two hours and that's why, everyone called him Sahal-Somali for easy. Sahal's early childhood, however, was anything but. As a toddler, he developed a condition that doctors could not diagnose but which had similar symptoms to hemophilia, and his nose bled profusely if he was too active. Most of his childhood and teenage years were spent indoors with the elders, drinking tea. His pillow was covered in plastic so his blood wouldn't ruin the fabric.
His only relief was a concoction made by his grandmother, a traditional medicine woman. Every morning, Suban Isman Elmi would rise before dawn and brew a soup made of roots, filling the house with the smells of her magic. Sahal loved his grandmother and admired her grit and otherworldly wisdom. "Whatever I had, I would eat that soup and I would be okay," Sahal said. "I don't know if it was psychological or physiological but that taste, even forty years later, is kindness." When he was seventeen, he went to Nairobi, and the cooler climate cleared up his problem. Two years later, a Somali doctor gave him an injection and miraculously, mysteriously, he was cured.
But those early years shaped Sahal. He was different from other kids his age; perceived as weak, he never learned to ride a bike or play soccer. Other children called him "Sahal Oday," Sahal the Old. He never forgot that feeling of others looking down on him, or worse, not noticing him at all. It was the main reason he became a journalist. He wanted to empower the weak. As he often told others, "I want to speak for the voiceless."
In the late 1980s, with his life's savings-a Nikkormat EL2 camera-hanging around his neck, and his passport stamped with a U.S. visa, Sahal left Africa for the first time, in the hopes of becoming a photographer in San Francisco. He had always expected to return to Somalia, but in 1990, when the fighting that would eventually topple the dictatorship of General Mohamed Siad Barre started, Sahal decided instead to travel north. In November 1990, he drove to Buffalo, crossed the border and asked Canada to accept him as a refugee.
He would not visit his homeland until three years later, with a better camera, a new perspective, and a desire to tell Somalia's story.
Sahal lived the life of many Somali-born Canadians, with one foot in each world, their hearts aching for their homelands, their fingers freezing in Canadian winters. His children were born in Toronto and he loved his adopted home. But as a journalist, he struggled with a need to "fix" Somalia, and after 9/11 he feared his homeland would only be considered as an incubator of terrorism; the underlying basic problems such as poverty, education and government corruption would be overlooked.
I had become friends with Sahal in Toronto, but it was during my trips to Kenya and Somalia that I really got to know him. In Toronto, we often rushed through a meal or coffee, apologizing that we didn't have longer to talk. Yet in Africa we were on Somali time, and one tea led to the next as we apologized for having kept each other so long.
Sahal was working for Reuters while the war with Ethiopian forces was raging in 2007. He had a large home in Mogadishu, across the street from the Shamo Hotel, which was a hub for foreign journalists who were brave or crazy enough to make repeat trips. They liked to tease Sahal about his quirky habits, even though they all had their own ways of coping with war. Sahal had four.
On days when the fighting would wake him before dawn, Sahal, the Constant Gardener (yet another nickname), would seek solace in the cool dirt ofhis yard, where he had managed to cultivate more than seventy-two different flowers and vegetables. He even grew ginger, which he required for his special brew of Kenyan Ketepa tea. Working in the garden as the sun rose-weeding, watering, caring for these fragile crops-calmed him. At night, he would put on earphones and blast John Coltrane while he smoked a cigar-coping mechanisms two and three. Foreign journalists were his main cigar suppliers and would bring Sahal boxes of Cubans each time they visited.
The rescued tortoise became Sahal's fourth passion. He didn't have a name. He became, simply, "Tortoise." Often when Sahal came home to edit and send photos and articles to his bosses in Nairobi, he was still numb. The lens offered a small measure of detachment in the field, an ability to document but not fully absorb the horrors he was witnessing. But once the fatigue set in and the laptop displayed the reality in full colour, allowing Sahal to zoom in and out and crop ... well, that's when Tortoise would start his slow walk. "I would be looking at my computer and I would be stressed out," Sahal recalled. "Then out of the corner of my eye, I'd see him on one side of the computer, just slowly, slowly walking." It would take about twenty minutes for Tortoise to make his trek, disappearing for a time behind the laptop screen, before emerging out the other side. "By the time he got there," said Sahal, "whatever you were doing, you would just think of him."
I heard news of the war mostly through Sahal, Ali Sharmarke or local journalists and their reports. Increasingly there was talk of al Shabab. When the ICU was in power, a violent splinter group that called itself the Harakat al-Shabab al-Mujahideen was vying for control. More commonly known as "al Shabab," meaning "the youth," the group's origins likely pre-date 2006, but that was when they became an organized force. Aden Hashi Farah, or "Ayro," was one of the original founders and had reportedly been appointed to this youth militia by Aweys, the Blundstone - boot-loving Red Fox. Shabab were ruthless and had little support among Somalis until Ethiopia's invasion gave them the recruitment pitch they needed, not only among young, impoverished Somalis, but also among neighbouring Kenyans and disenfranchised Somali youth living around the world just as analyst Matt Bryden had predicted. Those giggling cavedwellers had another gift they could spin endlessly. Christian crusaders were trying to take over Somalia. This was a war against Islam.
The emails I received from Ali Sharmarke during the war sounded more desperate by the week. "You don't know who's attacking you," he would write, since the ICU, al Shabab and the Ethiopian-backed TFG were critical of any negative press. Few foreign journalists covered Somalia that year, but local reporters were dogged and for their efforts they were being targeted and assassinated in record numbers.
ON AUGUST 11, 2007, a large group of Somali journalists, including Sahal and Ali, gathered at the funeral of one of their own. They were burying Mahad Ahmed Elmi, a popular talk show host on HornAfrik. Mahad didn't mince words, and, despite death threats, he was relentless in holding the warlords, the Islamists and government officials accountable. Mahad was shot three times in the head on the way to work that morning and was buried the same day, as is customary in the Islamic faith. Before going to the funeral, Ali had called Ahmed Abdisalam Adan, one of his HornAfrik co-founders, who was visiting Canada. "I'm just worried about the young reporters," he told his friend in a weary voice. "The risk is getting so great."
Hours later Ali spoke passionately at the gravesite. He lamented the loss of Mahad, and another blow to journalism in Somalia, and the dwindling hope for peace in the country. "We are in the crossfire-all of us journalists," he said. "The killing was meant to prevent a real voice that described the suffering in Mogadishu to other Somalis and to the world. He was a symbol of neutrality... The perpetrators want to silence our voices in order to commit their crimes." This was uncharacteristic of the usually cautious Ali. But he was mad and feeling guilty. He had inspired a generation of journalists who were now being slaughtered at the rate of one a month.
Ali left the funeral exhausted, and slumped in the front seat of a black Toyota Land Cruiser. Duguf, who had been our fixer, was driving. Sahal sat in the back with Falastine, Ahmed's wife. They were only eight kilometres from Sahal's home near the Shamo Hotel, where they could mourn their colleague behind guarded walls, where the garden and cigars, John Coltrane and Tortoise waited.
Bang. Darkness. Dust.
It was never determined if Shabab had detonated the remotecontrolled improvised explosive device or if the Ethiopians or TFG were behind the killing. As Ali had said, everyone wanted journalists dead. The Land Cruiser passengers stumbled out bleeding and deaf. Ali had to be pulled out. He lay motionless on the road. He was fifty.
At first I didn't believe the news when I heard it a day later. I remember the call; I remember that it was my birthday. But I can't remember who called me. There were always rumours from Somalia, and besides, Ali was just one of those guys who didn't die. A picture of his body on the Internet confirmed it and I sat at our kitchen table crying and hating Somalia. Thinking back to the corridors of Horn-Afrik's newsroom, where Ali had proudly hung the international awards his radio station had received, I remembered the dozen of sayings and words of inspiration taped on walls or sitting frame on desks. One hanging near Ali's office read: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
Sahal was not sure if he would ever return to Mogadishu after Ali's death. Reuters offered to put him up in a Nairobi hotel after the bombing. He chose a modest one in the town centre and rarely ventured out. When he did, he would see Ali walking the streets. "I knew it was a matter of time before something happened; statistically the chances were there," he told me years later, still tearing up at the thought. "But my sons, Liban and Abdul Aziz, what would they think if anything happened to me? Would they think, 'That son of a gun abandoned us because he was there, selfish, looking after his career and Somalia instead of us?' But I wanted them to have a part of their heritage-the gift of what I had of my father. But now I feel like that gift was taken away," he paused, then repeated, "Now I feel like that gift was taken away."
Liban, Sahal's eleven-year-old son, helped him heal and find the courage to return to Toronto, and then eventually back to Somalia. Liban later conveyed his pride in his father's work to a room packed with Canada's top journalists who had gathered at a gala dinner in Toronto to honour Ali posthumously. Standing on a box to reach the microphone, his voice unwavering, Liban read a speech that reduced the cynical, grizzled crowd to tears. "Reporters have a lot of courage and determination. All they want is to make a difference, to educate people on what's going on in the world. That's exactly what my uncle Ali Imam was trying to do," Liban told the crowd. "Can you believe someone could be killed because they wanted a better world, a more educated society?" After his speech, Liban ran around the ballroom collecting business cards from the journalists, later beaming as he showed me the stack like they were precious and rare hockey cards.
While recovering from his wounds in Toronto, Sahal had left his Mogadishu home, his garden and Tortoise in the care of a trusted cousin, who carefully tended to the plants and animals. But one day in the summer of 2008, cleaners scrubbed the concrete patio outside Sahal's home with a mixture of chlorine and chemicals. The toxic brew pooled in one of Tortoise's favourite cool afternoon resting places. Tortoise died later that afternoon, and the death of that stubborn reptile felt like Ali's death all over again for Sahal.
Tortoise had somehow survived traffic, the power-hungry warlords, insurgents, clan warfare, disease, misguided foreign policies, neglect and starvation, only to die a senseless death. Somehow, Tortoise's death seems like an apt metaphor for Somalia itself.
THE YEAR AFTER Ali died, a young Somali girl named Asho Duhulow went missing from a refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya. No one remembers the exact date in August 2008 that Asho disappeared. Her disappearance was barely noticed outside her immediate family, which is not surprising since Dadaab is one of the world's oldest and largest refugee camps, where stories of loss are more plentiful than bread. Alive, young Asho was just one of 230,000 refugees, about go per cent Somali, who lived in the United Nations camp in the desert like northern Kenya region near the border of Somalia. Dead, she would become an international story about Shabab's brutality.
While the details of her disappearance remained murky, the details of her death were not. She died in the Somali port town of Kismayo on October 27, around 4 PM, after she had one last tearful conversation with her father and after her captors buried her legs so she could not escape. A small group of men stoned her to death with large rocks.
Al Shabab had killed Asho as punishment for the crime of "adultery." It was a public execution before hundreds, and local reports said some onlookers tried to intervene, running forward in protest until Shabab's militia fired into the crowd. A young boy was reportedly killed. Rock after rock struck Asho's head and chest. A break only came when someone, reportedly a nurse, stepped forward to see if she was dead. Asho had a pulse; the stoning resumed. Pictures surreptitiously taken with a cellphone recorded the gruesome aftermath.......
END OF QUOTE
WE HERE IN THE WEST MOSTLY SIT IN OUR IVORY CASTLES, IN PEACE, WITH OUR MANY TOYS OF IPADS, BOATS, CARS, BIG SCREEN HD TVs AND OTHER JOYS. BUT OUT THERE IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD.......WELL YOU'VE JUST READ ABOUT IT......AND SOME HAVE THE COURAGE TO GO OUT AND REPORT IT.......OH HOW WE NEED TO KEEP PRAYING "THY KINGDOM COME FATHER, THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS DONE IN HEAVEN."
..............................
Thursday, September 15, 2011
5 BIG Banks/China trade with Europe
The world's 5 Central BIG banks have come together to help the banking world in general, to try and stop the bleeding of Europe and small banks around the world from going under.
UBS bank of Switzerland has lost 2 BILLION from and by a rouge employee who has lost that amount of money by shady practices....he's been arrested and will probably get some jail time. He's not the first to do this kind of scheme and not get away with it. And people in the Banking world say there is really not much can be done about such employees. There cannot be enough laws imposed or "watch dogs" to regulate all those who work for banks.
......
Danmark has elected its FIRST woman President or Prime Minister (whichever they go by in that country), and she has promised to roll back some of the things brought in by the previous Government party in the last 10 years. So go to it gal, and let's see what a lady can do with Danmark.
The last day of the World Economic Forum in China - 150 or so business-men from 85 countries meeting to try and work together to move the world economy back into the plus zone. China is wanting to do some serious trading with Europe - yes a down Europe but it has certain specialties and commodities that China wants. So Europe in a weak state and China (a huge population and country) desiring more trade with the union. Wait until Europe is riding high - yes it will yet be the mighty trading power of the world, as Bible prophecy tells us in no uncertain way.
......
The British Prime Minister and the French President were/are in Libya to praise them for defeating the dictator Madghafi. The British and French have said they are in with the new Libya for the long-haul, but the old black stuff (oil) has a bearing on why they have said they are. Canada has also promised the new Libya it will back and help them also.
......
The book I'm reading called "Decade of Fear" by Michelle Shephard, is indeed quite the eye opening book and I'm only about 1/5 the way through it. Right up front it shows what a dangerous life those kinds of reporters have chosen for themselves, to bring us the nitty-gritty in the nations of war, and some literally loose their life doing that job.
......
Floods in Pakistan are taking a large toll of people away with it, just as it did last year.
......
Greece and Italy have huge troubles with money and economy. If they go under they say it will have massive bad effects of course on Europe and then the entire world. The USA is and has been in real economic woes since 2008. So with China looking to invest in Europe so they can then go after the mighty Asian market, we see a world economic shift.
......
The gigantic smart phone, ipad world, is turning this way and that way among the big players, well the ones who were in the past the big players, which some of them (unless they do quick moves up) may not survive the moves of others. So time will tell if that market leaves only a few in the playing field or on the smart screen of the smart phones.
......
Time will also tell if President Obama can get the political leaders of his country to agree on how to create jobs, re-doing the roads and bridges of the nation to start with. The money to put out - 1/2 Billion dollars - is once more the thorn in the flesh. Got to put out billions to get millions back to work. Kind of a contradiction, hence the trouble for politicians to agree.
......
UBS bank of Switzerland has lost 2 BILLION from and by a rouge employee who has lost that amount of money by shady practices....he's been arrested and will probably get some jail time. He's not the first to do this kind of scheme and not get away with it. And people in the Banking world say there is really not much can be done about such employees. There cannot be enough laws imposed or "watch dogs" to regulate all those who work for banks.
......
Danmark has elected its FIRST woman President or Prime Minister (whichever they go by in that country), and she has promised to roll back some of the things brought in by the previous Government party in the last 10 years. So go to it gal, and let's see what a lady can do with Danmark.
The last day of the World Economic Forum in China - 150 or so business-men from 85 countries meeting to try and work together to move the world economy back into the plus zone. China is wanting to do some serious trading with Europe - yes a down Europe but it has certain specialties and commodities that China wants. So Europe in a weak state and China (a huge population and country) desiring more trade with the union. Wait until Europe is riding high - yes it will yet be the mighty trading power of the world, as Bible prophecy tells us in no uncertain way.
......
The British Prime Minister and the French President were/are in Libya to praise them for defeating the dictator Madghafi. The British and French have said they are in with the new Libya for the long-haul, but the old black stuff (oil) has a bearing on why they have said they are. Canada has also promised the new Libya it will back and help them also.
......
The book I'm reading called "Decade of Fear" by Michelle Shephard, is indeed quite the eye opening book and I'm only about 1/5 the way through it. Right up front it shows what a dangerous life those kinds of reporters have chosen for themselves, to bring us the nitty-gritty in the nations of war, and some literally loose their life doing that job.
......
Floods in Pakistan are taking a large toll of people away with it, just as it did last year.
......
Greece and Italy have huge troubles with money and economy. If they go under they say it will have massive bad effects of course on Europe and then the entire world. The USA is and has been in real economic woes since 2008. So with China looking to invest in Europe so they can then go after the mighty Asian market, we see a world economic shift.
......
The gigantic smart phone, ipad world, is turning this way and that way among the big players, well the ones who were in the past the big players, which some of them (unless they do quick moves up) may not survive the moves of others. So time will tell if that market leaves only a few in the playing field or on the smart screen of the smart phones.
......
Time will also tell if President Obama can get the political leaders of his country to agree on how to create jobs, re-doing the roads and bridges of the nation to start with. The money to put out - 1/2 Billion dollars - is once more the thorn in the flesh. Got to put out billions to get millions back to work. Kind of a contradiction, hence the trouble for politicians to agree.
......
Pat Robertson - Alzheimer's disease and Divorce
Well according to Pat (the 50 year ordained Baptist minister) Robertson, it's okay to divorce and get on with your life, if your mate gets Alzheimer's disease, so it was announced on the news today - September 15th 2011.
Now, indeed divorce is, according to the NT and to Jesus, allowed at times. But for Alzheimer's? Nope do not think so.....now that is from Keith Hunt (30 year ordained minister).
Why would a loving couple....with decades maybe of marriage (usually Alzheimer's is in your old age) NOT want to stay together till the death of the one with Alzheimer's. It blows me away to think someone would just divorce and get on with life (which I take that to mean look for another partner in marriage) because Alzheimer's has taken hold of your mate. Surely you would want to be with them, take care of them, even if they got to NOT know who YOU were. Come on, YOU know who THEY are!!
No, like many things, this Baptist minister Pat Robertson, has got it WRONG! Just like they have (the Baptists that is) a lot of things wrong in theology!!
YOU WANT THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER ON DIVORCE - go to my website keithhunt.com
There you will find an in-depth study on the matter of divorce and re-marriage.
..........
Now, indeed divorce is, according to the NT and to Jesus, allowed at times. But for Alzheimer's? Nope do not think so.....now that is from Keith Hunt (30 year ordained minister).
Why would a loving couple....with decades maybe of marriage (usually Alzheimer's is in your old age) NOT want to stay together till the death of the one with Alzheimer's. It blows me away to think someone would just divorce and get on with life (which I take that to mean look for another partner in marriage) because Alzheimer's has taken hold of your mate. Surely you would want to be with them, take care of them, even if they got to NOT know who YOU were. Come on, YOU know who THEY are!!
No, like many things, this Baptist minister Pat Robertson, has got it WRONG! Just like they have (the Baptists that is) a lot of things wrong in theology!!
YOU WANT THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER ON DIVORCE - go to my website keithhunt.com
There you will find an in-depth study on the matter of divorce and re-marriage.
..........
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
USA POVERTY!
So the news today - the USA has 1 in 6 or about 46 Million living BELOW the USA poverty line of 22,000 dollars a year.
No new jobs, a standstill with Democrats and Republicans over "creating jobs" and the money Obama wants to try and do so - half a Trillion, yes with a "T"
Canada is coming to a no growth after leading the Western world in being better off through the last 3 years. Bank of Nova Scotia yes Canada is going to go into recession that it has till now mainly escaped.
For every dollar a Canadian has as income they are $1.49 in debt.
On CBC tonight they had 4 "expert" economists. One question was about the "recession" word - going into it again. ONE of the four said what I've been saying to you for 3 years - "I don't believe we were ever really out of the recession." I agree entirely with that man.
The facts are in - the gap between the rich and the poor has increased since 1980. One lady says 70 percent of all people are living in countries where the gap between the rich and the poor is widening all the time.
Then we have right now in China "The World Economic Forum" and the China Primer giving the opening address. China in the last 10 years has had constant growth, education, and millions brought out of poverty. It was all in the positive for China. In many ways for India also. So the East may become the West, the powerhouse of the world economy.
Europe, with Greece going to default ..... all countries of the EU in trouble but Germany, who finds it may have to be the one to hold Europe together.
So we are truly in interesting times for the world economy and who will end up on the top as most countries are it seems are going down and not up.
..........
Well I figured it, actually way before I figured it. If you want to know what Jackie Kennedy and those 8 hours of recorded interview tapes have to say, it is all out in a book. Jackie Kennedy was way more than the quiet background lady we all thought she was. She had lots to say - 8 hours worth of talk to say now let open, without editing. Correctly her daughter said she thought it would not be right to edit anything. Jackie needs to go down in history as she put it down, even if she may have thought afterwards she should not have said this or that. I mean she did not give high marks to Martin Luther King, the French (though she spoke French), Linden Johnson, and other world figures of the time. I do not know if it is in the book, but it is a fact many of the Kennedy men were sexual womanizers, including her husband. The Kennedy women (married to Kennedy men) all had to live with knowing their husbands had other women (in bed with them) at times.
..........
The Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan have again shown they can get into the heart of anything even if they end up being killed. It happened today once more. It's not as one man said, the victory the Taliban are looking for, it's the showing that they are still around and able to strike at the heart of whatever they want to strike at.
..........
Are you noticing the RIFT between Turkey and Israel? Yes, it will be so, prophecy says so. I've expounded the prophecy in the end times about Turkey. Go to my expounding of Obadiah in the prophet section of my website.
..........
No new jobs, a standstill with Democrats and Republicans over "creating jobs" and the money Obama wants to try and do so - half a Trillion, yes with a "T"
Canada is coming to a no growth after leading the Western world in being better off through the last 3 years. Bank of Nova Scotia yes Canada is going to go into recession that it has till now mainly escaped.
For every dollar a Canadian has as income they are $1.49 in debt.
On CBC tonight they had 4 "expert" economists. One question was about the "recession" word - going into it again. ONE of the four said what I've been saying to you for 3 years - "I don't believe we were ever really out of the recession." I agree entirely with that man.
The facts are in - the gap between the rich and the poor has increased since 1980. One lady says 70 percent of all people are living in countries where the gap between the rich and the poor is widening all the time.
Then we have right now in China "The World Economic Forum" and the China Primer giving the opening address. China in the last 10 years has had constant growth, education, and millions brought out of poverty. It was all in the positive for China. In many ways for India also. So the East may become the West, the powerhouse of the world economy.
Europe, with Greece going to default ..... all countries of the EU in trouble but Germany, who finds it may have to be the one to hold Europe together.
So we are truly in interesting times for the world economy and who will end up on the top as most countries are it seems are going down and not up.
..........
Well I figured it, actually way before I figured it. If you want to know what Jackie Kennedy and those 8 hours of recorded interview tapes have to say, it is all out in a book. Jackie Kennedy was way more than the quiet background lady we all thought she was. She had lots to say - 8 hours worth of talk to say now let open, without editing. Correctly her daughter said she thought it would not be right to edit anything. Jackie needs to go down in history as she put it down, even if she may have thought afterwards she should not have said this or that. I mean she did not give high marks to Martin Luther King, the French (though she spoke French), Linden Johnson, and other world figures of the time. I do not know if it is in the book, but it is a fact many of the Kennedy men were sexual womanizers, including her husband. The Kennedy women (married to Kennedy men) all had to live with knowing their husbands had other women (in bed with them) at times.
..........
The Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan have again shown they can get into the heart of anything even if they end up being killed. It happened today once more. It's not as one man said, the victory the Taliban are looking for, it's the showing that they are still around and able to strike at the heart of whatever they want to strike at.
..........
Are you noticing the RIFT between Turkey and Israel? Yes, it will be so, prophecy says so. I've expounded the prophecy in the end times about Turkey. Go to my expounding of Obadiah in the prophet section of my website.
..........
Monday, September 12, 2011
Europe/USA economy - Jackie Kennedy revealed!
Greece may default, Italy in trouble, Spain, and Germany not pleased. Then the USA is still in deep trouble, though they've tried to say it was out of the recession......a big joke on that idea. Canada's economy now facing a slow down, though the one of the few well off countries in the West.
Obama still talking about a plan to create jobs, waving his document for all to see that is supposed to create jobs......time will tell if he gets the green light to implement it.
Ford Motor company doing fine, and moving into other countries. Their new car will have all kinds of technology in it - space age stuff - well in the 21st century that should be the case - all kinds of space-age stuff. Let's see how fast they and others will move away from the old fuel engine and into electric and solar
power cars.
I did not realize, until talking to a man with a construction company, that Saskatchewan Province, the one East to Alberta, is BOOMING and booming more. The fellow told me he could move to Saskatchewan and have 3 times the amount of work.
So we do have some parts of North America BOOMING away.
..........
So the secret life, well words recorded of Jackie Kennedy (locked away) have been opened up for all to hear, and it shows a side of Jackie that most never knew existed. She was no shy quiet gal, had much to say about many people. Did not like or gave a big zero to Martin Luther King. Thought the USA would be in real bad shape if Linden Johnson ever became President. Well I'm sure more of her words and opinions will hit the fan of newspapers and probably a book. All these years later she may well be a hornet's nest towards many people she spoke about.
..........
Obama still talking about a plan to create jobs, waving his document for all to see that is supposed to create jobs......time will tell if he gets the green light to implement it.
Ford Motor company doing fine, and moving into other countries. Their new car will have all kinds of technology in it - space age stuff - well in the 21st century that should be the case - all kinds of space-age stuff. Let's see how fast they and others will move away from the old fuel engine and into electric and solar
power cars.
I did not realize, until talking to a man with a construction company, that Saskatchewan Province, the one East to Alberta, is BOOMING and booming more. The fellow told me he could move to Saskatchewan and have 3 times the amount of work.
So we do have some parts of North America BOOMING away.
..........
So the secret life, well words recorded of Jackie Kennedy (locked away) have been opened up for all to hear, and it shows a side of Jackie that most never knew existed. She was no shy quiet gal, had much to say about many people. Did not like or gave a big zero to Martin Luther King. Thought the USA would be in real bad shape if Linden Johnson ever became President. Well I'm sure more of her words and opinions will hit the fan of newspapers and probably a book. All these years later she may well be a hornet's nest towards many people she spoke about.
..........
Saturday, September 10, 2011
TRUTH AND LIES - Last days of bin Laden
CBCNEWS.CA/binLADEN.
From the "Fifth Estate" - TRUTH AND LIES
Aired September 9th 2011
Bin Laden undetected for 9 and 1/2 years - was he really?
Hiding out in plain sight.
Killed? No photo - no DNA released - ex President General of Pakistan asks "why?" Why indeed hide the killing and burial of this fellow, the USA says it has its reasons.
Even two CIA guys say "How can this be?" And some say it was known where he was 4 years earlier!!
There are "gaps" in the official story!!
USA men say the United States wanted to portray this Laden fellow as some mad-man, insane nut-case, but the truth is his legacy, intelligence, astuteness, prove he was far from insane.
A VERY INTERESTING DOCUMENTARY DONE BY THE CANADIAN "FIFTH ESTATE" INVESTIGATING PROGRAM.
YOU NEED TO SEE IT!!!
The "Fifth Estate" has many other interesting and revealing investigative programs of the past - go to:
cbc.ca/fifth/past_programs
..........
From the "Fifth Estate" - TRUTH AND LIES
Aired September 9th 2011
Bin Laden undetected for 9 and 1/2 years - was he really?
Hiding out in plain sight.
Killed? No photo - no DNA released - ex President General of Pakistan asks "why?" Why indeed hide the killing and burial of this fellow, the USA says it has its reasons.
Even two CIA guys say "How can this be?" And some say it was known where he was 4 years earlier!!
There are "gaps" in the official story!!
USA men say the United States wanted to portray this Laden fellow as some mad-man, insane nut-case, but the truth is his legacy, intelligence, astuteness, prove he was far from insane.
A VERY INTERESTING DOCUMENTARY DONE BY THE CANADIAN "FIFTH ESTATE" INVESTIGATING PROGRAM.
YOU NEED TO SEE IT!!!
The "Fifth Estate" has many other interesting and revealing investigative programs of the past - go to:
cbc.ca/fifth/past_programs
..........
Friday, September 9, 2011
Egypt and Israel on the war-path again
Killings from both sides, both nations, in the recent week or so, have led to the Israeli Embassy by Egyptians - looting, files scattered, fires and etc.
So troubles could be coming once more for both of these countries that in the past have gone to war against each other.
..........
The Libya rebels or revolutionists are moving in on the last town of Madghafi loyalists. Where the dictator is know-body seems to know, or we are not being told.
..........
Tony Blair (past Prime Minister of Britain) says the world is a much safer place since 9/11 but the present Prime Minister of Britain says there is still a huge problem that could come from fanatical Islam groups. Bush along with Blair started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush has admitted that after 9/11 he was emotionally wanting to "kick some ass." And as we know he set about to do so, the problem is that tens of thousands of those "ass kicking" were the killing of the innocent people during the ten year war with Iraq/Afghanistan.
..........
Europe has banned Syrian oil .... a statement to Syria that it does not like what the dictator is doing, and the killing of unarmed innocent people. 3.2 Billion dollars come into Syria from oil each year. Hence Europe is giving Syria an economic spanking. Europe will continue to flex its muscles when it thinks it needs to do so. She will in time be a mighty power that will play THE major part of end-time prophecy.
..........
Israel people (some estimate 400 thousand) have taken to the streets to protest the cost of living and that economic reforms are taking way too long.
..........
So troubles could be coming once more for both of these countries that in the past have gone to war against each other.
..........
The Libya rebels or revolutionists are moving in on the last town of Madghafi loyalists. Where the dictator is know-body seems to know, or we are not being told.
..........
Tony Blair (past Prime Minister of Britain) says the world is a much safer place since 9/11 but the present Prime Minister of Britain says there is still a huge problem that could come from fanatical Islam groups. Bush along with Blair started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush has admitted that after 9/11 he was emotionally wanting to "kick some ass." And as we know he set about to do so, the problem is that tens of thousands of those "ass kicking" were the killing of the innocent people during the ten year war with Iraq/Afghanistan.
..........
Europe has banned Syrian oil .... a statement to Syria that it does not like what the dictator is doing, and the killing of unarmed innocent people. 3.2 Billion dollars come into Syria from oil each year. Hence Europe is giving Syria an economic spanking. Europe will continue to flex its muscles when it thinks it needs to do so. She will in time be a mighty power that will play THE major part of end-time prophecy.
..........
Israel people (some estimate 400 thousand) have taken to the streets to protest the cost of living and that economic reforms are taking way too long.
..........
Generosity of GANDER people on 9/11
On 9/11 many planes with a total of 7,000 people had to land in Gander, Newfoundland, Canada. This was the population of Gander itself.
The Gander people showed unlimited kindness, love, friendship, by taking in the USA people, in their homes etc. They provided food and beds and total friendship - unlimited love and friendship. Ten years later that friendship continues, between both the USA and Canadian people.
Yes, should not be a surprise, we are brother peoples, and the people of Newfoundland are by nature a down to earth friendly people.
The Canadian CBC have made a film on the Gander friendship, it goes on Canadian TV this coming Sunday (9/11) evening.
..........
The Gander people showed unlimited kindness, love, friendship, by taking in the USA people, in their homes etc. They provided food and beds and total friendship - unlimited love and friendship. Ten years later that friendship continues, between both the USA and Canadian people.
Yes, should not be a surprise, we are brother peoples, and the people of Newfoundland are by nature a down to earth friendly people.
The Canadian CBC have made a film on the Gander friendship, it goes on Canadian TV this coming Sunday (9/11) evening.
..........
Canadian survivor of 9/11 speaks
Canadian Brian Clark was in Tower 2 on 9/11 2001. The plane hit, things fell all around him, the building swayed towards the Hudson River about 6 to 8 feet. He thought it would fall. It came back and with a pop of iron on iron stood still. Clark was only one of four people to survive who were ABOVE the plane crash.
He does not spend hardly any time thinking on the "why"of it all.
His family and faith support him.
Asked what we can learn from 9/11 he replies:
Life is precious - use your life - love others - use your abilities and gifts to love and give to others - life is precious - make sure you do something good with your life.
..........
He does not spend hardly any time thinking on the "why"of it all.
His family and faith support him.
Asked what we can learn from 9/11 he replies:
Life is precious - use your life - love others - use your abilities and gifts to love and give to others - life is precious - make sure you do something good with your life.
..........
DECADE OF FEAR - Reporting from the Terrorism's Grey Zone
A NEW BLOCK-BUSTER BOOK!!!!
"Michelle Shephard hauntingly describes the rage that followed
September 11, and how fear affected the many victims of the
decade of terror. Through her outstanding reporting, Michelle
recounts how the 'war on terror' has yet to be won and bears
witness to the consequences of a decade in which justice was not
blind, and the world was only viewed through the prism of fear."
LT.General (Ret) Senator Romeo Dallaire - author of "Shake Hands
with the Devil" and "They Fight Like Soldiers. They Die Like
Chrildren."
......
"Reading Decade of Fear is essential to understanding the
post-9/11 world. Well-written, intelligent and informative - I
couldn't put it down. If you care about the world you live in and
can only read one book this year, this should be it."
Marina Nemat - author of "Prisoner of Tehran and After Tehran."
......
"Decade of Fear is so thrilling and terrific I wish it wasn't
true. You know any book that opens with an ex-ClA director using
beer nuts to illustrate torture techniques is going to be wild,
and it only gets more gripping from there. Michelle Shepherd is a
rock'm-sock'm storyteller and an absolutely heroic reporter."
Christopher McDougall - author of "Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe.
Superathlete, and the greatest Race the World Has Never Seen."
......
"Michelle Shephard is one of the great national security
reporters of our time. In this age of 'journalists' embedded in
their air-conditioned offices, she is a rare exception: a real
reporter, guided by that old-fashioned idea that the job of a
journalist is simple: being there. And in her case, 'there' is
often the most violent, hellish places the world has to offer."
Jeremy Scahill - author of "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's
Most Powerful Mercenary Army."
......
"Michelle Shephard has delivered a wide-ranging, well-written,
witty account of the war that began on 9/11 that is also a
serious, knowledgeable and empathetic journey through many of the
countries in the Muslim world where that war has been fought. She
takes the reader on quite a ride. My advice: Go along!"
Peter L. Bergen - author of "The Longest War: The Enduring
Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda."
......
INSIDE THE FRONT COVER:
DECADE OF FEAR is a darkly entertaining journey through the
complicated, often bizarre world of national security since 9/11.
On that night, Toronto Star journalist Michelle Shephard watched
the remains of New York's World Trade Center fall from the sky,
wondering what much of the world was asking: "Why?" So began a
ten-year search for answers that took her through the streets of
Mogadishu and Karachi, into the mountains of Waziristan and
behind the wire of Guantanamo Bay two dozen times.
Shephard conducted hundreds of interviews across the globe, and
with sharp insight and an appreciation for the absurd, she weaves
together stories of war-lords, presidents, spies, grieving widows
and global terrorists, to describe the historic decade where all
too often the West's "solutions" for terrorism only served to
exacerbate the problem. She meets Somali radical Hassan Dahir
Aweys, who denies having any ties to al Qaeda before
complimenting her on her beat-up Blundstone boots. She cruises
with former CIA bosses, meets victims of terrorism who leave her
devastated and earns enough stamps on her Gitmo Starbucks card
for a free latte. One of only a handful of journalists to
experience the Arab Spring from the streets of Sanaa, she runs
alongside student protestors to escape fire from Yemen's security
services.
A gripping non-fiction tale that is both heartbreaking and
infuriating, Decade of Fear broadens our understanding of a
decade that was all too often described through panicked
rhetoric.
......
MICHELLE SHEPHARD is the Toronto Star's national security
correspondent. She has won Canada's top journalism honours: the
National Newspaper Award for investigations and beats and the
Governor General's Michener Award for Public Service Journalism.
Her first book, "Guantanamo's Child: The Untold Story of Omar
Khadr," was voted by Embassy magazine as one of the twenty most
influential books of the year.
......
I was driving home and listening to the half hour interview on
CBC with Michelle and her book. I drove straight to our local large
book store and bought her book. It sounds like it will be a
block-buster and an eye-opener. I will bring you my comments on
the book down the road, as I read through it.
It's a book that you may want to purchase, just as I did.
Keith Hunt
......
"Michelle Shephard hauntingly describes the rage that followed
September 11, and how fear affected the many victims of the
decade of terror. Through her outstanding reporting, Michelle
recounts how the 'war on terror' has yet to be won and bears
witness to the consequences of a decade in which justice was not
blind, and the world was only viewed through the prism of fear."
LT.General (Ret) Senator Romeo Dallaire - author of "Shake Hands
with the Devil" and "They Fight Like Soldiers. They Die Like
Chrildren."
......
"Reading Decade of Fear is essential to understanding the
post-9/11 world. Well-written, intelligent and informative - I
couldn't put it down. If you care about the world you live in and
can only read one book this year, this should be it."
Marina Nemat - author of "Prisoner of Tehran and After Tehran."
......
"Decade of Fear is so thrilling and terrific I wish it wasn't
true. You know any book that opens with an ex-ClA director using
beer nuts to illustrate torture techniques is going to be wild,
and it only gets more gripping from there. Michelle Shepherd is a
rock'm-sock'm storyteller and an absolutely heroic reporter."
Christopher McDougall - author of "Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe.
Superathlete, and the greatest Race the World Has Never Seen."
......
"Michelle Shephard is one of the great national security
reporters of our time. In this age of 'journalists' embedded in
their air-conditioned offices, she is a rare exception: a real
reporter, guided by that old-fashioned idea that the job of a
journalist is simple: being there. And in her case, 'there' is
often the most violent, hellish places the world has to offer."
Jeremy Scahill - author of "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's
Most Powerful Mercenary Army."
......
"Michelle Shephard has delivered a wide-ranging, well-written,
witty account of the war that began on 9/11 that is also a
serious, knowledgeable and empathetic journey through many of the
countries in the Muslim world where that war has been fought. She
takes the reader on quite a ride. My advice: Go along!"
Peter L. Bergen - author of "The Longest War: The Enduring
Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda."
......
INSIDE THE FRONT COVER:
DECADE OF FEAR is a darkly entertaining journey through the
complicated, often bizarre world of national security since 9/11.
On that night, Toronto Star journalist Michelle Shephard watched
the remains of New York's World Trade Center fall from the sky,
wondering what much of the world was asking: "Why?" So began a
ten-year search for answers that took her through the streets of
Mogadishu and Karachi, into the mountains of Waziristan and
behind the wire of Guantanamo Bay two dozen times.
Shephard conducted hundreds of interviews across the globe, and
with sharp insight and an appreciation for the absurd, she weaves
together stories of war-lords, presidents, spies, grieving widows
and global terrorists, to describe the historic decade where all
too often the West's "solutions" for terrorism only served to
exacerbate the problem. She meets Somali radical Hassan Dahir
Aweys, who denies having any ties to al Qaeda before
complimenting her on her beat-up Blundstone boots. She cruises
with former CIA bosses, meets victims of terrorism who leave her
devastated and earns enough stamps on her Gitmo Starbucks card
for a free latte. One of only a handful of journalists to
experience the Arab Spring from the streets of Sanaa, she runs
alongside student protestors to escape fire from Yemen's security
services.
A gripping non-fiction tale that is both heartbreaking and
infuriating, Decade of Fear broadens our understanding of a
decade that was all too often described through panicked
rhetoric.
......
MICHELLE SHEPHARD is the Toronto Star's national security
correspondent. She has won Canada's top journalism honours: the
National Newspaper Award for investigations and beats and the
Governor General's Michener Award for Public Service Journalism.
Her first book, "Guantanamo's Child: The Untold Story of Omar
Khadr," was voted by Embassy magazine as one of the twenty most
influential books of the year.
......
I was driving home and listening to the half hour interview on
CBC with Michelle and her book. I drove straight to our local large
book store and bought her book. It sounds like it will be a
block-buster and an eye-opener. I will bring you my comments on
the book down the road, as I read through it.
It's a book that you may want to purchase, just as I did.
Keith Hunt
......
Thursday, September 8, 2011
9/11 - 10 years on/USA jobs from Obama
All this week and for the next few days leading up to the 10th anniversary of 9/11, you should be finding all kinds of articles, studies, history, on this now infamous day in the world's history. We must remember that many people from different nations lost their lives in the fanatical terrorists attacks on USA soil on September 11th 2001.
And if you are so inclined you can go to my website and study the articles on the so-called "conspiracy arguments" and how I and others have answered them.
Oh and as some have reminded me, some things were good on September 11th - I was born....hope you think that is good. Yes born September 11th 1942 - I'll be 69!
..........
President Obama has once again tried to bring a speech to the Democratic and Republican parties to "get jobs created" and get the USA people back to work and to try and fire-up the USA economy. Time will tell if he gets anywhere, for the last 3 years he has not, and the USA is still a ship half sunk in the water.
..........
Most people (I was one of them) probably had no idea the south Philippines was home to terrorists that had connections with the plots of 9/11. The CBC.ca (the CBC TV station of Canada) has a short documentary on the subject - a real eye opener.
..........
Texas is burning up! Yes literally! The smoke from the forest fires can be seen from outer-space. Then in other parts of the USA we have floods from the hurricanes coming in. In Alberta, Canada, we are having way above normal temperatures - hot and more hot for this time of the year, after a summer of not many really hot days at all. The hot summers have been the normal for 11 years out of the 13 years I've been here in Calgary. Now we are having the heat we should normally get in July and August. Strange up-side-down weather in many parts of the world - all a part of end time prophecy. The draught and famine in the horn of Africa is the worst in 60 years.
..........
The new movie out "The Debt" is an interesting and suspenseful movie - a thrilling drama about an Israel trio after a Nazi doctor of madness, after the Second World War. A story that had a truth that might well have happened if all the truths about World War Two were given out, certainly we know Israel and other nations of the West were after the Nazi monsters that got away when that world war came to an end.
..........
So the world waits to see where Mad-ghafi of Libya is hiding out, as the last days of his power and army will surely come to its end by the end of next week. But what is coming to light now is the secret "workings with" this mad-man over the past decades by Britain and USA secret service agencies. Documents now being found by Libya's freedom fighters could prove to be an embarrassment to Britain and the USA. What goes on behind closed doors for the expedient present (of yesterday now past) as it was in the past present ... well they have a way of coming out eventually. It's kinda like, "which of the evils do we work with to contain what we consider a greater evil." Such are the ways of the carnal minded Governments of this world, or the Western world as it perceived in the past which were its greater enemies.
..........
And if you are so inclined you can go to my website and study the articles on the so-called "conspiracy arguments" and how I and others have answered them.
Oh and as some have reminded me, some things were good on September 11th - I was born....hope you think that is good. Yes born September 11th 1942 - I'll be 69!
..........
President Obama has once again tried to bring a speech to the Democratic and Republican parties to "get jobs created" and get the USA people back to work and to try and fire-up the USA economy. Time will tell if he gets anywhere, for the last 3 years he has not, and the USA is still a ship half sunk in the water.
..........
Most people (I was one of them) probably had no idea the south Philippines was home to terrorists that had connections with the plots of 9/11. The CBC.ca (the CBC TV station of Canada) has a short documentary on the subject - a real eye opener.
..........
Texas is burning up! Yes literally! The smoke from the forest fires can be seen from outer-space. Then in other parts of the USA we have floods from the hurricanes coming in. In Alberta, Canada, we are having way above normal temperatures - hot and more hot for this time of the year, after a summer of not many really hot days at all. The hot summers have been the normal for 11 years out of the 13 years I've been here in Calgary. Now we are having the heat we should normally get in July and August. Strange up-side-down weather in many parts of the world - all a part of end time prophecy. The draught and famine in the horn of Africa is the worst in 60 years.
..........
The new movie out "The Debt" is an interesting and suspenseful movie - a thrilling drama about an Israel trio after a Nazi doctor of madness, after the Second World War. A story that had a truth that might well have happened if all the truths about World War Two were given out, certainly we know Israel and other nations of the West were after the Nazi monsters that got away when that world war came to an end.
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So the world waits to see where Mad-ghafi of Libya is hiding out, as the last days of his power and army will surely come to its end by the end of next week. But what is coming to light now is the secret "workings with" this mad-man over the past decades by Britain and USA secret service agencies. Documents now being found by Libya's freedom fighters could prove to be an embarrassment to Britain and the USA. What goes on behind closed doors for the expedient present (of yesterday now past) as it was in the past present ... well they have a way of coming out eventually. It's kinda like, "which of the evils do we work with to contain what we consider a greater evil." Such are the ways of the carnal minded Governments of this world, or the Western world as it perceived in the past which were its greater enemies.
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Monday, September 5, 2011
USA - no new jobs/Postal Service in BIG trouble!
So as I've been telling you, no new jobs created in the USA and so is proof the USA has not come out of recession as they have been trying to tell you for a year or more.
Pres.Obama is still trying to figure how to create jobs. What he's mentioned you'd have thought he would have brought in many moons ago......words words and words, anyone can say anything, the proof of the pie is in the eating, we'll see if this time he puts action back of his words.
The USA postal service is in deep and deeper trouble. ABC news said they were not asking for money but many ways to cut things and save lots of money. If not they are saying the USA may not have postal service by December. Talk about bringing in things the Canadian Postal service did decades ago. But the Canadian system went still one step further, they privatized local Post Offices. The facts are that of course in today's space age technology, the Post Office cannot be what it once was, all the modern ways of fast communication via email, and etc. has to take an ever larger slice of the Post Office cake.
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The last days of Libya's Mad-ghafi is not far away. The horrific facts coming out of Syria are sickening, and Nato needs to take action to put down this latest mad-dog dictator, on the world scene.
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Pres.Obama is still trying to figure how to create jobs. What he's mentioned you'd have thought he would have brought in many moons ago......words words and words, anyone can say anything, the proof of the pie is in the eating, we'll see if this time he puts action back of his words.
The USA postal service is in deep and deeper trouble. ABC news said they were not asking for money but many ways to cut things and save lots of money. If not they are saying the USA may not have postal service by December. Talk about bringing in things the Canadian Postal service did decades ago. But the Canadian system went still one step further, they privatized local Post Offices. The facts are that of course in today's space age technology, the Post Office cannot be what it once was, all the modern ways of fast communication via email, and etc. has to take an ever larger slice of the Post Office cake.
..........
The last days of Libya's Mad-ghafi is not far away. The horrific facts coming out of Syria are sickening, and Nato needs to take action to put down this latest mad-dog dictator, on the world scene.
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