The following articles are compiled by:

Leo Wong

Leo@WatchmenWatching.com

 

 

Governor Schwarzenegger pumps up green movement

Source: CNN.com

 

April 13, 2007 -- He's on a mission to save the planet. But first, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is trying to pump some sex appeal into environmentalists.

 

"You have to make it mainstream. You have to make it sexy. You have to make it attractive so that everyone wants to participate," the Republican governor said at Georgetown University Wednesday.

 

As a former bodybuilder and actor, Schwarzenegger says he's familiar with polishing images. And he says environmentalists could take a lesson from bodybuilders.

 

"Like bodybuilders, environmentalists were also kind of thought of as weird, strange and fanatic and kind of serious tree-huggers, as you know. Environmentalists were no fun," he said.

 

Schwarzenegger is trying to make them cool and edgy. He says just like his 1977 movie "Pumping Iron" made bodybuilding mainstream, the same can be done with environmentalists without sacrificing for the cause.

 

"We don't have to take away the cars from the people. The SUVs, the Hummers and the muscle cars. No, that formula is a formula for failure," he said to the Council on Foreign Relations Thursday. "Instead, what we have to do is make those muscle cars and those SUVs and those Hummers environmentally muscular."

 

His solution? Drive environmentally friendly Hummers like his that run on biofuel and hydrogen fuel. Before his Hummers went green, he was the target of protests for driving gas guzzlers.

 

He issued a warning to other politicians who don't follow his lead.

 

"Your political base will melt away as surely as the polar ice caps -- I can guarantee you of that," Schwarzenegger said. "You will become a political penguin on a smaller and smaller ice floe, drifting out to sea. Goodbye, my little friend."

 

Comments:  Pump it up, pump it up!  Beef up for green.  Arnold (the Terminator) Schwarzenegger is bullish about the environment and he doesn’t even work for Merrill Lynch.  For a former movie star who ravaged the movie studio environment with his bombs, hand grenades, semi-automatics, and fuel tank blow up bazookas in his movies “Terminator, Terminator 2 and Predator”, he has done a 180‑degree turn and is on Al Gore’s tree hugging program.  Save the earth from all these polluters and have fun doing it.  Drive your Hummers and SUVs as long as you green them first.  For Schwarzenegger, he’s the man!

 

The Green Movement is recruiting more and more high profile spokespersons to advance its agenda.  The movement is growing by leaps and bounds.  Everyone, it seems, wants Mother Earth to revert back to its once plush vegetated state.  That’s commendable and we should all respect God’s creation, however, mankind’s efforts leave God out entirely.  Mankind plans to be here on Earth for a very long time, but God has other plans starting with the imminent start of the 7‑year Tribulation Period of environmental disasters so dreadful that there will be silence in Heaven.  Revelation 8:[1] And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.

 

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Billy Graham's stature defies age

Source: The Detroit News

 

April 13, 2007 -- He is 88, bent by age and ailments, spending his days sitting with his beloved bedridden wife, Ruth, at their home in the mountains of North Carolina.

 

Yet the stature of the Rev. Billy Graham continues to grow. In December, the Gallup Poll named him among the 10 most admired men in the world.

 

Graham, who has made only a few personal appearances in the past years, rarely grants interviews. He spoke to the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune -- by e-mail, because of his poor health -- and reflected on his desire to see heaven soon, his concerns about the war in Iraq and the changes taking place in American evangelism.

 

Comments:  Billy Graham longs to go Home to be with Jesus.  He has served his Savior for over 50 years and with his advanced Parkinson Disease and his old age, he yearns to leave this world.  No matter what you think of Mr. Graham, he has probably done more to serve Jesus than you and I have or ever will.  But, in the eyes of God, it’s not about the length of service or how many souls were led to Christ, it’s about obedience to His Word.  1 Samuel 15:[22] And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.

 

Media reports have pinpointed Mr. Graham’s compromising the Gospel of God to please men.  His efforts to not offend the Roman Catholic Church have not gone unnoticed.  His propensity to advise converts to return to their local Roman Catholic churches is reprehensible and he has often praised Pope John II as one of the most godly Christians (the pope a Christian?) he has ever met and fellowshipped with.  Mr. Graham’s passion for ecumenism was undeniable.  For all these things that displease the Lord, perhaps the Lord will take him home before he does any more spiritual harm.  I know many of you don’t agree with me on this, but all the good things we do for the Lord will be offset by the negatives such as being a stumbling block to our fellow believers, preaching a watered down gospel, kowtowing to the Vatican, helping further ecumenism, being friends to presidents of different political stripes, saying on TV that all roads lead to God, leading people to believe that Muslims pray to the same God as Christians, etc.  For all that, Mr. Graham will have to answer to God.  Romans 14:[12] So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.

 

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Record number of Holocaust survivors seek counselling

Source: Jerusalem Post

 

April 14, 2007 -- A growing number of Israel's Holocaust survivors are seeking professional psychological counselling and support services, according to data released this week by Amcha, the national center for psychosocial support of survivors of the Holocaust and the second generation.

 

Information released in time for Holocaust Remembrance Day, which will be marked here on Monday, puts at 6,826 the number of survivors who turned to the trauma counselling organization in 2006, a rise of 13 percent over the previous year.

 

"I've met many Holocaust survivors over the years who have been able to live relatively normal lives without the need for psychological treatment but in recent years - as they grow older or experience life-changing events such as losing their spouse or becoming ill - they begin to need psychotherapy," Nathan Durst, a trained clinical psychologist and clinical director of Amcha, told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday.

 

With the average age of Israel's estimated 250,000 Holocaust survivors falling somewhere between 80 and 90, Durst said the rise in the number of those seeking therapy last year was mainly caused by the aging process.

 

"As people get older, they begin to lose their short-term memory but their long-term memory is still strong, even if they do not suffer from Alzheimer's or senile dementia; the past for many Holocaust survivors never goes away," he said.

 

Comments:  The nightmare that was the WW2 Holocaust just won’t go away.  The memories are forever seared in the minds of the survivors of Hitler’s death camps. Images will crop up in their minds when they least expect them.  They’re traumatized and it seems that counselling is the only way to alleviate their ordeals somewhat.  Psychotherapy is man’s way of trying to heal an injured mind.  The theories (yes, it’s all theory) of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung will be tested on these victims and hopefully they’ll respond to such therapy.  Some won’t be healed and there’s nothing else that can be done. Medications will augment the psychotherapy, but it’s not a panacea.  Only Jesus can heal a mind that’s not right.  (See Mark 5:15 where Jesus cast out the demons and the man finally was in his right mind.)

 

If these Jewish survivors think their persecution is in their past, they will be further traumatized when at the mid-point of the 7-year Tribulation Period (called the Great Tribulation [Matthew 24:21] and also the time of Jacob’s trouble: Joel 30:7), they will again experience a Nazi-like genocide at the hands of the Antichrist.  He may appear imminently and he’ll befriend the Israeli Jews for 3.5 years and will suddenly turn on them, round them up and kill them.  History will repeat itself in this instance, but thank God that 1/3 of worldwide Jewry will come through the Great Tribulation alive.

 

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Israel and Vatican spar over WW2 Pope Pius XII

Source: Associated Press

 

April 14, 2007 -- The Vatican and Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial got into a public spat Thursday over the wartime conduct of Pope Pius XII during the Nazi genocide, threatening to upset fragile relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Jewish state.

 

Separately, church officials announced new developments Thursday in the Vatican's case to make Pius a saint. A massive dossier on Pius' virtues - some six volumes of 3,000 pages - was handed over to a panel of bishops and cardinals earlier this month to study, they said.

 

At issue in the Yad Vashem-Vatican dispute is a photograph of Pius in Yad Vashem's museum in Jerusalem with the caption: "Even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the pope did not protest," refusing to sign a 1942 Allied condemnation of the massacre of Jews during World War II.

 

Pius "maintained his neutral position" with two exceptions, the caption reads, criticizing "his silence and absence of guidelines." The exceptions were appeals to the rulers of Hungary and Slovakia toward the end of the war, the caption says.

 

The Vatican's ambassador to Israel, Monsignor Antonio Franco, confirmed Thursday that he would not attend Yad Vashem's annual memorial service for Holocaust victims next week because of the Pius photograph.

 

"I don't intend to go to Yad Vashem if things remain the way they do," he said.

 

Comments:  Pope Pius XII, through his deafening silence, was in complicity with Hitler’s genocide of some 6 million Jews in Poland’s concentration camps.  Being that Hitler was a Roman Catholic, the pope wielded some influence over this madman.  He could at least met with Hitler and pleaded with him that the Jews were God’s chosen people and whoever would harm them, God’s wrath will fall on him.  Instead, the pope looked the other way as the anguish and wailing of Jews being herded into the basement of the death camps for gassing and eventual cremation could be heard in the hallways of the Vatican.  Was the pope afraid of Hitler arresting him and putting him to death?  That could be it.  The fear of man is nothing compared to the wrath of God who can kill both physically and spiritually (see Luke 12:5).

 

There is an impasse between Jews and the current pope because of Pius.  To make Pius into a saint (a futile procedure since the man is probably in Hell right now) slaps the Jews in the face.  Instead of begging forgiveness for Pius’s sin of omission, the Vatican wants him canonized.  The Vatican’s denial, lies and other indiscretions reek of a cover-up for which it’s totally unacceptable for Israel.

 

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Saying sorry to be made less costly?

Source: Winnipeg Free Press

 

 April 15, 2007 -- It’s a sad world where a simple "I'm sorry" can get you sued, but Liberal Leader Jon Gerrard has a solution.

 

Gerrard will introduce his Apology Act today in the Manitoba Legislature. It mirrors similar legislation in British Columbia that makes an apology inadmissible in court as proof of guilt or liability.

 

"We're particularly concerned about the health care sector," said Gerrard. "Whether it be doctors or nurses or health care administrators, they should be able to say 'I'm sorry' without that having legal implications in terms of court judgments."

 

Gerrard, a doctor himself, said he's heard from many people over the years who felt aggrieved that they failed to get a simple apology from a doctor or nurse even though their conduct had been condemned by a professional association or even the courts.

 

The B.C. legislation, enacted last year, also mandates that an apology should not affect insurance coverage.

  

Dr. Craig Hildahl, a family doctor for more than 25 years, said Gerrard's measure is good for patients who often feel the health care system is mysterious and less than forthcoming with the real truth.

 

"That interferes with healing by the patient or the family and it interferes with good relations," said Hildahl. "If we're wrong we should be able to admit we're wrong."

 

Comments:  They say, “Love is never having to say you’re sorry”.  Well, in the business world (including medical), saying sorry might cost you thousands perhaps millions of dollars due to your negligence and mistakes that injured another party.  Hello Virginia!  Who taught you when you were growing up not to apologize if you’ve hurt somebody?  As children, many if not all were instructed by our parents/teachers to be responsible for our transgressions toward others yet we learned upon working a number of years not to get into a liability situation by admitting culpability.  Executives, professionals and general administrators all learn to deny, deny and deny until the judge or jury declares the plaintiff statement of claims has been proven beyond a preponderance of doubt that the defendant is liable for damages due to negligence.  Or if the case is settled out of court, a gag order is inserted into the settlement agreement which prevents the plaintiff from discussing the case further. It used to be that an inadmissible guilt would arise if a person read an attorney prepared statement “IF I had offended anyone, I apologize.”  This article attempts to convince people to say sorry without their apology being used to prove their wrong doing.  This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  A genuine apology means that person has done something they shouldn’t have and the right thing to do is to pay up.  Talk the talk but not walk the walk seems to mark  this corrupt world that we live in.

 

In the situation where a sinner has caused the Lord Jesus to be hung on the cross of Calvary, if he/she doesn’t say “I’m sorry for my sins, Lord.  Please forgive me and save me”, that person continues to irk God and is in deep peril of ending up in Hell.  Pride prevents many a person from admitting guilt never mind the monetary penalty that will ensue.  Pride will send many to the Lake of Fire.

 

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Report: Berezovsky calls for Russian coup

Source: CNN.com

 

April 15, 2007 -- Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky called for the use of force to oust President Vladimir Putin's government and claimed he has support from members of the country's political elite, a British newspaper reported Friday.

 

Russia reacted swiftly to the prominent Kremlin foe's remarks. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Berezovsky was abusing his asylum status in Britain and renewed calls for his extradition, while the chief prosecutor ordered a new criminal case opened against him, Russian news agencies reported.

 

In an apparent effort to foment political unrest ahead of elections, the exiled billionaire claimed he was funding influential insiders who are conspiring to take power, according to the Guardian newspaper.

 

"We need to use force to change this regime, because ... this regime is unconstitutional," Berezovsky said in an audio excerpt posted on the Guardian's Web site.

 

Berezovsky -- a former Kremlin insider who fell out with Putin and fled to Britain, where he was granted asylum -- accused the Russian president of creating a totalitarian regime. In the audio clip, he said that "there is no chance to change that through elections, and (the) only way (is) to use power."

 

According to the Guardian, Berezovsky claimed to be in contact with unidentified members of Russia's political leadership and had offered them financial aid as well as "my understanding of how it could be done."

 

He did not identify any individuals or groups, but the Guardian said Berezovsky claimed to be in contact with people inside the Kremlin who were conspiring to mount a palace coup. In the past, Berezovsky has said he has bankrolled opposition forces rather than government insiders.

 

"If one part of the political elite disagrees with another part of the political elite -- that is the only way in Russia to change the regime. I try to move that," the Guardian quoted Berezovsky as saying.

 

The Guardian interview comes amid rising tensions ahead of parliamentary elections in December and a presidential vote next March to replace Putin. Under the constitution, Putin is barred from seeking a third consecutive term.

 

Comments:   Russia has never had a democracy.  The Communists and the czars before them ruled the Russian Federation with autocratic totalitarianism.  The working class and peasants wouldn’t know democracy if it hit them squarely on the head.  Berezovsky’s business savvy and opportunism made him a billionaire.  Russian President Putin and his cronies dislike him with a passion because of what he represents, i.e. capitalism and individualism.  He’s been targeted for elimination.   Being that he’s also Jewish makes him doubly hated for anti-Semitism is thriving in Russia like crabgrass in an untreated lawn.

 

Putin’s past was his involvement in the much feared and hated KGB.  Even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the KGB was never decommissioned.  Its deadly spy network casts its net worldwide.  You can take Putin out of the KGB, but you can’t take the KGB out of Putin it seems.  Berezovsky ought to watch his back very carefully and make sure his bodyguards and food tasters are trustworthy.

 

Bible prophecy seems to indicate that democracy won’t spawn in Russia because it was be Gog (the godless leader of Russia) who will lead an invasion against Israel with its ally Persia (modern day Iran, the leader of dictatorial Islam) and a host of undemocratic Muslim nations.  They say “Birds of a feather flock together”.

 

 

 

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Keep watching (Matt 24:42)!

 

Until next time,

Shalom!

 

 

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