This article gives some key points in the book “Shadow World: Resurgent Russia, The Global New Left, and Radical Islam“. The book and this article points out in much detail the Marxist Leftist agenda that is successfully subverting the West. You will not understand what is going on in the United States and the world today without understanding these issues. The author concludes that once these global socialist elements achieve significant positions of power within the United States, they will proceed with their plans to destroy Western civilization.

I have news. They have already taken over our educational system and the mainstream media and through lies of thousands of leftist groups they have just convinced enough people in the United States to vote in a socialist national government. So obviously the rest of their agenda is now a foregone concussion especially since we see that our youth, the simple, the rebels, the covetous, the lazy, the criminal, the drug addicts, the TV addicts, the game addicts, the sports addicts, the sex addicts, the self centered religion addicts and so on and so forth are already indoctrinated. They are already actively subverting this nation and the West or are so blinded by their lusts or so bankrupt of values that they are totally apathetic toward the subversion that is taking place.

By the time most people in the West take notice they will be slaves of an all powerfully global collective ant farm run by elite fascist predators.

American Thinker: Shadow World: Resurgent Russia, The Global New Left, and Radical Islam

Shadow World: Resurgent Russia, The Global New Left, and Radical Islam
By Robert Chandler
Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2008
622 pp., $29.95

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 is viewed by the West as the end of the Cold War and the death knell for Communism. In reality, Communists continued to push for the same ultimate goal — creating a socialist world order — but their violent Marxist-Leninist revolutionary tactics were supplanted by an insidious cultural Marxism. Today, that push has evolved into a Moscow-led, global strategic quadrangle consisting of Russia, China, Iran and a collection of Latin American dictatorships.

The West is also threatened by a fifth column of global, radical Leftists with ideological connections to Russia and the theo-political-legal ideology of radical Islam. All of these antagonists, including the Russians, cultural Marxists and Salafists/Wahhabists, employ terrorist tactics but largely conceal their agendas. They use clandestine strategies of propaganda, disinformation, subversion and denial through their agents of influence and networks of organizations.

In Shadow World: Resurgent Russia, The Global New Left, and Radical Islam, Dr. Robert Chandler argues that the West is in the midst of a three-way global competition pitting the future of democratic republics against Marxist totalitarianism and Islamic fundamentalism. Despite their vast ideological differences, Communist Russia, the Far Left and Islamists embrace a common goal: destroying Western civilization.

In their adherence to the Gramsican formula for anti-capitalist social transformation, the progressive-socialist-Marxists have co-opted with the United Nations to advocate world governance in the interest of “world peace, human rights and environmental preservation.” This is the desired end result of their efforts to undermine American heritage, destroy Christianity and conspire against free-market democracy to achieve global taxation, the end of sovereignty, a world military and an international criminal court.

Gramscian Marxists aspire to a borderless global society under the aegis of the United Nations that will bring about a socialist utopian universe that protects the global environment, fosters universal human rights and world peace and offers global citizenship and international institutions for a better world. The sacrifice of individual liberty and the horrific failures of U.N. interventions to prevent worldwide genocide in Cambodia, Uganda, Rwanda and Darfur are not addressed.

Falsely stating that sovereign states cause war and unrest, globalists advocate world citizenship, global governance and legislation, universal gun control, an end to national sovereignty, economic redistribution and an international criminal court system. They malign the U.S. sovereignty and liberties enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence as obstacles to global peace.

The soldiers of this world-government ideology and the agents of the United Nations are the non-governmental organizations (NGO’s), accountable to no one but whose aim is to supplant national sovereignty with U.N. programs. Over 3,000 NGO’s take over where governments fall short. They have increasingly monopolized international meetings, rejected democracies and free market systems while pushing environmentalism, multiculturalism, wealth redistribution and nuclear disarmament. They have tried to shift the focus of world attention to humanitarian needs over national security concerns. But their real agenda of opposing the West is revealed by their attacks on Western militaries and their silence on de facto terrorist groups that provide terrorist training to children and indoctrinate them to hate.

The United States is at a critical juncture in its history faced with threats from international Marxists, an internal socialist movement and global jihadists. Once any of these elements achieves significant positions of power within the United States, they will proceed with their plans to destroy Western civilization. Our freedom, sovereignty and way of life could be extinguished by any of these forces that are acting against our democratic republic. Robert Chandler’s warnings in Shadow World must be heeded if we are to survive.

Full Article

Is the war of Psalm 83 and a enlarged Israel imminent as in the book “Isralestine”?
One of the great mysteries for those who study Bible prophecy is the timing of the wars mentioned in Psalm 83 and the war described in Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39. They are obviously different wars but which war occurs first and when? Are they pretribulational wars or tribulation wars? How can Israel be living in peace and security prior to the Ezekiel war as the prophecy clearly indicates? That is the ongoing debate.

Bill Salus in his book “Isralestine” offers a solution but the thesis is very difficult to accept in light of real world realities but that does not mean the thesis he offers based on his selection and interpretation of certain scriptures is wrong. I have had a very difficult time reconciling the issues in his book and think that you really need to read the book and judge the merit of this hypothesis for yourselves and not just rely on my review.

The thesis of the book is that the war of Psalm 83 is imminent. It occurs before the tribulation. The war brings about the defeat of the Arab nations and it allows a very large territorial expansion of Israel into the Arab states by conquest. After the war of Psalm 83 the greatly expanded Israel then lives in peace and security until the war of Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39 where Gog (Russia) comes against Israel with Iran and other allies. At that time God intervenes for Israel and Israel expands to the entire land area promised to Abraham. Bill Salus also believes the Ezekiel war is before the “Day of the Lord” and that the rapture could be before or after the war of Psalm 83 but will be before the “Day of the Lord”.

Full article

This is the kind of religious freedom you get in Russia under Putin’s fascism. The religions get liquidated if they do not file annual reports on activities and it seems that they still get liquidated if they do file annual reports of activity and the State and the Russian Orthodox church does not like the religious activities. Basically, this means that all religion outside of the Russian Orthodox Church will not be allowed to exist in Russia. Even if this is just a scare tactic as some imply, what makes anyone think this liquidation will not eventually take place under Putin?

Anatoly Pchelintsev,  believes the responsible officials are unaware of the complicated international ramifications of their actions but I think they know what they are doing. Putin wants a Church State that will support everything he does. Putin sees himself as a czar.

ReligiousLiberty.TV | BREAKING NEWS - Russia Moves to Liquidate Fifty-Six Religious Groups

On October 15 the Russian Ministry of Justice took steps to begin liquidating 56 non-Russian Orthodox religious organizations. The groups face dissolution, Russian news sources reported, because they failed to file required annual reports on their activities. Those targeted include a range of non-Russian Orthodox organizations and churches but hardest hit were various Christian groups, both Protestant and Catholic. Baptist groups were prominent on the list, but Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Seventh-day Adventist and Pentecostal groups were also included. Well known humanitarian groups such as World Vision and Youth with a Mission were also named, as was the Russian branch of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Non-Christian organizations were also named, including Muslim and Buddhist associations.

According to the Slavic Legal Center in Moscow, many of the organizations believe they are in full compliance with filing requirements and are surprised to be included in the list. They are unsure if the posting is a scare tactic or if the Ministry of Justice indeed intends to pursue liquidations on a massive scale. Anatoly Pchelintsev, an attorney for the Slavic Center for Law and Justice, remarked that “such actions fly in the face of official Russian state policy on the freedom of worship and creed.” Pchelintsev believes the responsible officials are unaware of the complicated international ramifications of their actions and cites the possibility of “chaos and destabilization in church-state relations.” He added that in the case of most of the affected organizations, the threatened punishment goes too far. “In Russia there already are more than a dozen cases in which courts rendered decisions in favor of religious organizations since the punishment for their failure to submit information did not formally fit the crime committed.” Moreover, he added, “liquidation for failure to submit information is equivalent to sentencing a jaywalker to the death penalty. After all, liquidation means that the organization’s life is put to an end.” In addition, said Pchelintsev, “such actions are inconsistent with the policy of the Russian government, which guarantees freedom of conscience and religious confessions for each person. The widespread liquidation of religious associations for petty violations will lead to the crudest infringement of human rights in our country and to the self-isolation of the government.”

Full article

I believe Hal Lindsey will be correct that Russia will now actively seek to regain its former empire. It might not be all the same nations of the former USSR at least at first. But Russia will intimidate the nations of Eastern Europe to join a regional alignment of states to counter the West. Especially if the West is mired in the economic and Islamic caused turmoil that looks almost certain to come. These Eastern nations were not in the original Roman Empire and they will not be in the revived.

My advice to the U.S. and Israel is not to wait too long to take out Iran’s nuclear capabilities because within a very short time Iran will be protected under a Russian nuclear umbrella (thou hast been to them for a guard., Ez 38:7, YLT) and then we will not be able to take them out without a nuclear war with Russia. The cold war between East and West is coming back fast. If NATO can claim that an attack on any of their alliance of states is an attack on them all, then Russia feels it can and will do the same with the nations in their sphere of influence.

Right now the U.S. can delay a nuclear Iran by 10 to 20 years by almost complete destruction of Iran’s nuclear and missile facilities. Israel cannot do this alone. The most Israel can do is set them back is a few years and there will not be any second chance because of the Russian umbrella that is about to open. If we get a weak president like Obama you will see Russia open this nuclear umbrella near the start of his term. If McCain gets elected they might not risk it just yet.

Oh, my Gog! (Hal Lindsey)

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, most of these republics broke with Russia to form new alliances with NATO and the West – an event for which I was widely ridiculed at the time.

How could most of Magog, like Ukraine, Georgia and Turkey, all firmly allied with the West, also be part of Russia’s Gog alliance?

I didn’t know. But I didn’t pen Ezekiel’s prophecy. I only reported it.

Now, Gog has evidently decided to reclaim its former Soviet empire, starting with Magog. Despite weeks of promising to withdraw almost any minute, the Russian military continues to dig in and consolidate its forces in and near the Georgian port of Poti on the Black Sea.

The Russians introduced tight restrictions of movement on Georgian citizens, refusing to accept anything except Russian documents. Despite agreements to the contrary, the Kremlin now says that “Russian forces will leave in their own time.”

When Poland was contemplating an agreement that would allow the U.S. to deploy missile interceptor batteries in its territory, Russia warned them that by entering the treaty agreement they ran the risk of a Russian nuclear attack. When the Poles signed the treaty in defiance of the Kremlin, Russia promised its response would “rise above the level of diplomacy,” a reference to the principle that “war is the result of failed diplomacy.”

The Russian invasion and apparent occupation of Georgia is feared by many analysts, particularly those from former Soviet republics, that Vladimir Putin plans to re-conquer and restore the former empire.

Full article

Russia is obviously now making its move against NATO expansion and has plans to show the nations around them that this NATO tiger will not venture out of its cage. The invasion of Georgia was well planned by Russia in advance. Russia simply could not have moved this quickly otherwise.

It looks to me like Russia was behind the unrest knowing that the Georgian President would have to react. When he did Russia started putting their expansion plans into motion. The main objective is not Georgia it is first reasserting itself in the former USSR states that have a Russian speaking population. They also intend to stop NATO expansion and to counter U.S. influence in what they believe to be their Russian Empire. The major immediate threat probably always was and now is to the Ukraine.

After Russia controls the Russian speaking areas she will expand elsewhere and form alliances with nations like Serbia and Iran. The Gog of Ezekiel is now rising to control this region of the world. NATO will do nothing but bluster and provide arms for any resistance. Old Europe and the U.S. are not going to risk their own necks for Eastern Europe. Those nations in Eastern Europe that are joining NATO and the EU thinking that the West will fight Russia for them are living under a very false hope.

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide

Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) — Now that Russia has humiliated Georgia with a punishing military offensive, it may shift its attention to reining in pro-Western Ukraine, another American ally in the former Soviet Union.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s first order of business likely will be to try to thwart Ukraine’s bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Medvedev, 42, and Putin, 56, say Russia began the offensive in response to a drive by Georgia to restore control over the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Now Russia has ousted Georgian forces from there and from Abkhazia, another separatist region, and destroyed much of the central government’s military.

Russia may find it convenient to raise the level of tension with Ukraine in the run-up to the December NATO review,” Citigroup Inc.’s London-based David Lubin and Ali Al-Eyd wrote in a note to clients. “If the conflict with Russia decelerates or reverses Georgia’s integration with the West, a similar fate could also affect Ukraine.”

Divided Country

Ukraine, a country of 46 million people that’s almost as big as France, has a large Russian-speaking population in the south and east that opposes NATO entry and looks to Moscow. Russian officials warn that if President Viktor Yushchenko pushes Ukraine into NATO, the nation may split in two.

A month ago, about 1,000 U.S. soldiers joined 600 Georgians and 100 from Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Armenia in joint exercises at the Vaziani military base near Tbilisi. Russia repeatedly bombed the base during this month’s war.

“The American role in the region has been weakened,” Jan Techau, a European and security affairs analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, said in a telephone interview. “It’s a reassertion of Russia’s dominant role in the region.”

It’s somewhat reminiscent, in 1939, when Stalin attacked Finland,” former U.S. national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told Bloomberg Television. “I think this kind of confrontation is the best kind of answer as to why they are seeking to be members of NATO.”

This is a very good analysis of the Russian Georgian conflict by Terry James. I also think that this is the turning point with Russia to achieve its manifest destiny. From now on you will see Russia act militarily or at least forcefully on conflicts that support their national interest of building a counter force to the West and in doing so Russia will attempt to achieve control over much of Europe’s energy. Yes, Russia is now totally controlled by the old KGB and thugs and Putin’s groomed fascist brown shirts will soon be put into positions of power. There has been no real change in Russia since the cold war. They just got a fresh start thanks to the West and don’t use the term communism anymore. They never were pure Communists anyway they have been and are again very much Fascists.

The next major step for Russia may be the Ukraine. The people in the Ukraine are torn with many wanting to join NATO and many of the Russian ethnics wanting to join with Russia. Russia will prevail. I doubt if NATO will have the guts to really oppose a nuclear power like Russia. After the Ukraine goes to Russia expect other dominoes near Russia to again fall into the sphere of a new Russian Fascist Union.

By the way, Check out this Bible prophecy Today Blog as often as you can. This Blog actually does have the best collection of the very latest thinking of astute Bible prophecy teacher/thinkers. I have a link to Bible Prophecy Today Blog on my sidebar.

Bible Prophecy Today • Bible Prophecy News And Commentary By Today’s Leading Bible Prophecy Scholars • News and Commentary From A Biblical Perspective

Gog And The Magog Chess Match

By Terry James

Russian moves, begun this past Friday in the Caucasus region and other parts of what was the former Soviet Union, should sound the siren alarm of things to come for the spiritually attuned Bible prophecy student.

We have watched Iran’s posturing and repositioning during the past months, with the area of ancient Persia coming into focus as a predicted player on the regional chess board that will be part of the end game, as foretold by Ezekiel the prophet. Now, the nation-state that is at the heart of the coalition foretold to storm toward the oil-rich Middle East and Israel seems to be demonstrating intention to achieve its manifest destiny.

The Georgian’s are not in a good position. The U.S. really cannot help them. Geographically they simply live where Russia is going to do what they want. In the end I think they are going to have to realize that Russia has annexed their province and to fight them will turn out to be suicide. They better now hope the Russian’s don’t use this war as an excuse to re-annex all of Georgia. All of this of course will further deteriorate Russia’s relations with the U.S. Other former USSR countries have similar problems and might have similar fates they also have geographical areas in their sovereign nations that are now mostly populated by Russians.

FOXNews.com - U.S. Calls for Russia to Halt Attacks as Fighting in Breakaway Georgia Province Escalates - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili is expected to declare martial law within hours, according to the Georgian security council chief, Reuters reported.

This comes after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on Russia Friday to halt attacks in South Ossetia, after Georgian troops entered the breakaway province in an attempt to crush separatist forces seeking control.

Rice’s announcement came as the European Union was working on a cease-fire with Georgia and South Ossetia separatists to end the violent conflict.

Georgia, a staunch U.S. ally, launched a surprise military offensive to retake South Ossetia and reportedly killed hundreds of people, triggering a ferocious counterattack from Russia that threatened to plunge the region into full-scale war.

Democracy is not in the future of the world. People always demand a king. God wanted ancient Israel to have a representational republic with the leaders following Him through the words of His prophets but the people said give us a King. Nothing has changed. All the nations will demand their king and reap the consequences. The vast majority of the population of the world today is not ruled by a republic or a democracy and those people who think they are in a democracy are usually living under a great illusion. The whole world will soon choose a king the book of Revelation calls him the Beast.

Democracy – a flickering star?

In a survey of 24 countries by Pew Research Center, the nation that emerged as far and away first on Earth in the satisfaction of its people was China. No other nation even came close.

“Eighty-six percent of Chinese people surveyed said they were content with the country’s direction, up from 48 percent in 2002. … And 82 percent of Chinese were satisfied with their national economy, up from 52 percent,” said the Times.

Yet, China has a regime that punishes dissent, severely restricts freedom, persecutes Christians and all faiths that call for worship of a God higher than the state, brutally represses Tibetans and Uighurs, swamps their native lands with Han Chinese to bury their cultures and threatens Taiwan.

China is also a country where Maoist ideology has been replaced by a racial chauvinism and raw nationalism reminiscent of Italy and Germany in the 1930s. Yet, again, over 80 percent of all Chinese are content or even happy with the direction of the country. Two-thirds say the government is doing a good job in dealing with the issues of greatest concern to them.

And what nation is it whose people rank as third most satisfied?

Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Moscow is today more nationalistic, less democratic and more confrontational toward the West than it has been since before the fall of communism. Power is being consolidated, former Soviet republics are hearing dictatorial growls from Moscow, and a chill reminiscent of the Cold War is in the air.

Contrast, if you will, the contentment of Chinese and Russians with the dissatisfaction of Americans, only 23 percent of whom told the Pew poll they approved of the nation’s direction. Only one in five Americans said they were satisfied with the U.S. economy.

Other polls have found 82 percent of Americans saying the country is headed in the wrong direction, only 28 percent approving of President Bush’s performance and only half that saying they approve of the Congress. In Britain, France and Germany, only three in 10 expressed satisfaction with the direction of the nation.

Liberal democracy is in a bear market. Is it a systemic crisis, as well?

I wrote these articles on imminent dangers to the United States a couple of years ago and they are on my website but I think in light of the world and national situation and the fact that many do not read my website it may be appropriate to post a review to these articles on this blog.

Imminent Danger for the United States of America Superpower

Nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) - Imminent danger to the US # 1

Massive oil and gas disruptions - Imminent Danger to the U.S. # 2

Total economic collapse in the U.S. - Imminent danger to the U.S. # 3

Coordinated nuclear terrorist attack - Imminent danger to the US # 4

WMD Attack on the U.S. by Russia or China - Imminent danger to the U.S. #5

Break Up of the United States of America and Civil Upheavals - Imminent Danger #6

Father Alphonse de Valk is one of the small minority of religious leaders that is speaking the truth about the fascist takeover in Canada and he is now being persecuted for it. Fascism is socialist state control over everything. It is obvious that Canada is now run by secular godless socialists. But it is also coming to the U.S. from the Left and it has already arrived in much of Europe. Not to mention the Chinese, Islamic and Russia fascism. Hitler and Stalin would be so proud of the world today.

Priest warns fascism has arrived in schools

In a column at Catholic Insight, de Valk writes under the headline “Fascism has come to Canada” that the Department of Education in British Columbia plans in September to “introduce the mandatory teaching of SSM [same-sex marriage] from kindergarten to grade 12 in provincial schools.

“It is a first for a province in Canada to claim the right to determine moral teaching in schools when the vast majority of its citizens reject it as unscientific and contrary to the common good,” he wrote.

“So we move from [former Prime Minister Pierre] Trudeau’s 1967 slogan ‘there is no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation’ – falsely used to destroy traditional morality – to the new slogan that the state will determine people’s moral thinking.”

Further, he said, the Quebec Department of Education also intends, as of September, “to replace Christian Ethics in its schools with a secular mish-mash invented by its staff in which Judeo-Christianity is trivialized as only one religion among many.”

He said the “suppression” is called “normative pluralism.”

“Under this title the state dismisses parental rights and the formative role of Christian culture, and replaces it with secular sociology. Again, then, the temporal authority, the state, dismissed the spiritual authority and usurps its role. In history this is called ’statism,’ better known as fascism,” de Valk wrote.

“Some people may think that use of the term ‘fascism’ must be an exaggeration,” de Valk wrote. “Surely, Canada is not that far down the political slippery slope! But remember, fascism is little more than the political notion that the state – through its various organs – is the final authority in all things human.

“Several years ago, Canada’s chief justice claimed that she and the Supreme Court now take the place formerly allotted to the church. Today, some provincial departments of education as well as human rights commissions believe that they, too, share this authority,” he wrote.

Another significant factor in all this is that Russia’s economy is only thriving because of the high price of gas and oil in the world. Russia’s national wealth is totally dependent on the export of its vast natural resources. That also could be the very reason why Russia marches to the Middle East like Ezekiel says to take a spoil. The day may soon come when a powerful Russia built up with oil and gas money will suddenly see a crash of oil and gas prices. AT that time a Russia dependent on energy exports will become desperate and decide to take a spoil and move against Israel just like Ezekiel said in his chapters 38 and 39 prophecy.

Oil and gas could crash because of a world economic collapse or some energy breakthrough or even because of some massive new finds of deep oil deposits - perhaps found in Israel. I am expecting this conjecture to be fulfilled in about ten to twenty years. Meanwhile, a fascist system is being set up by Putin and he could rule Russia for decades. In my opinion, there is a better chance then not that Vladimir Putin is Gog.

Russia: A totalitarian regime in thrall to a Tsar who’s creating the new Facist empire | the Daily Mail

No decision of any significance for the Russian people or the rest of us will be made in the foreseeable future without the say - so of Medvedev’s unsmiling master.

Just before he stood down as President, Putin declared: “I have worked like a galley slave throughout these eight years, morning til night, and I have given all I could to this work. I am happy with the results.”

As he surveys the nation today he reminds me of that chilling poem by Ted Hughes, Hawk Roosting, in which the dreaded bird sits at the top of a tall tree musing: “Now I hold all Creation in my foot - I kill as I please because it is all mine - I am going to keep things like this.”

Russia may be a member of the G8 whose GDP (because of oil) should soon overtake the United Kingdom, but, in many ways, it is more like a Third World country.

Stricken with an epidemic of AIDS and alcoholism which both contribute to a male life expectancy of 58 years, the population is projected to shrink from 145 million to 120 million within a few decades.

So where has all the oil wealth gone? According to an Independent Experts Report, written by two former high-level Kremlin insiders who have had the courage to speak out, “a criminal system of government [has] taken shape under Putin” in which the Kremlin has been selling state assets cheaply to Putin’s cronies and buying others assets back from them at an exorbitant price.

The threat of prosecution for tax fraud is the Kremlin’s weapon of choice against anyone who dares to challenge its hegemony.

When Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once the richest man in Russia, used his oil wealth to promote human rights and democracy, Putin detected a threat to his throne.

The oligarch was duly arrested and convicted of fraud. He now languishes in a Siberian jail where he is in the third year of an eight-year prison sentence.

None of this is a matter of public debate in Russia where the media has been muzzled by the Kremlin, their freedom of expression stifled by the government.

Almost every national radio and television station is now controlled directly or indirectly by the state, and the same applies to every newspaper of any influence.

Some 20 Russian journalists have been killed in suspicious circumstances since Putin came to office. No one has yet been convicted for any of these crimes.

Putin calls the system over which he presides “sovereign democracy”. I think a better term is “cryptofascism” - though even the Kremlin’s few critics in Russia recoil when I suggest this.

After all, their parents and grandparents helped save the world from Hitler - at a cost of 25 million Soviet lives. Nonetheless, the evidence is compelling.

The structure of the state - the alliance between the Kremlin, the oligarchs, and the security services - is awesomely powerful.

No less worryingly is popular distaste - often contempt - for democracy and indifference to human rights.

Here is one great interview with Joel Rosenberg who gives his very astute view of end time events. His latest book is “Dead Heat”

CNN.com - Transcripts

ROSENBERG: Well I think eventually Rome will be the center of the E.U. How is that going to happen? I don`t know. There is a lot I don`t know. The point is the Bible laid out some details it doesn`t give us all the details.

BECK: Is it true that we — we haven`t bombed parts of Iraq because of, not only the historic significance, but the biblical significance of — of Babylon?

ROSENBERG: Babylon itself, Babylon is a province, it`s also a city, but there is no one living in current Babylon, it`s being reconstructed. There is no question American forces were very careful about bombing in the area. However there was some archaeological destruction as troops were coming in and out of there. That was a problem.

But I interviewed for my previous book, “Epicenter,” a nonfiction book, “Epicenter,” you and I have talked about it. I interviewed the chief economic adviser to the current prime minister of Iraq and I said “The New York Times” and others are reporting you have a plan to rebuild Babylon as a cultural epicenter. He said absolutely. He walked me through the plans they have to rebuild the city. They believe cultural tourism in Iraq will be the second largest money producer after oil, two, three, four, five years down the road.

Now, right now it`s almost impossible to imagine people going on a vacation to Iraq.

BECK: Oh, no. Come to Iraq. I mean .

ROSENBERG: I just went there. My family thought I was crazy, president of Crazytown. But look, the Bible says that is what will happen. People will come from all over the world. Revelation describes all the merchants of the earth are coming to Iraq. That`s not that far off I don`t think.

Religious freedom like political freedom is now about dead in Putin’s new Russia. The state religion is Russian Orthodox. It is a church of blind ritual and no biblical means of salvation.

Protestants in Russia face Moscow’s antipathy - International Herald Tribune

First came visits from agents of the FSB, the successor to the KGB, who evidently saw a threat in a few dozen searching souls who liked to huddle in cramped apartments to read the Bible and, perhaps, drink a little tea. Local officials then labeled the church a “sect.” Finally, last month, they shut it down.

There was a time after the fall of Communism when small Protestant congregations blossomed here in southwestern Russia, when a church was almost as easy to set up as a general store. Today, this industrial region has become emblematic of the suppression of religious freedom under President Vladimir Putin.

Just as the government has tightened control over political life, so, too, has it intruded in matters of faith. The Kremlin’s surrogates in many areas have turned the Russian Orthodox Church into a de facto official religion, warding off other Christian denominations that seem to offer the most significant competition for worshipers. They have all but banned proselytizing by Protestants and discouraged Protestant worship through a variety of harassing measures, according to dozens of interviews with government officials and religious leaders across Russia.

This close alliance between the government and the Russian Orthodox Church has become a defining characteristic of Putin’s tenure,

This is a nice article and perspective on Russia. I do disagree on at least one major point. When the next crises comes to Russia Putin will not settle for another economic collapse. He will will move Russian forces into the Middle East to take a spoil as spoken about in Ezekiel chapter 38 and 39.

American Thinker: The Trouble with Russia

While the Putin regime means short-term trouble for us, it also means that another long-term tragedy is looming for the Russian people. Once again, they are living in a police state. Even now, the Kremlin is busily re-building the dreaded Gulag and packing it with Russians whose only crime has been to oppose Putin or to speak out publicly against the dictatorship he and his cronies are tightening every day. And If you’re wondering why Russia has squandered the historic opportunity it had to join the civilized world when the Soviet Union collapsed back in 1991, the answer is depressingly simple: Countries are like people; some learn from their mistakes and move on, while others keep making the same mistake over and over again.

Russia is now fascist and most of the people in Russia love it. So did Germany under Hitler. Fascism with dictatorial leaders can be a very efficient system. In many ways Putin is following in Hitler’s footsteps. For this reason Russia will prosper for awhile and also because it controls so much of the world’s needed resources. However, no reasonable person should have any illusion where this will all lead. When the Jackals take control of a country you know that they will devour anyone in their way. Russia will become a world superpower again but this time she will be much like Germany was under Hitler. In 10 to 15 years she will be ready to march to the Middle East and fulfill the prophecies of Gog in Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39.

Putin’s Iron Grip on Russia Suffocates His Opponents - New York Times

NIZHNY NOVGOROD, Russia — Shortly before parliamentary elections in December, foremen fanned out across the sprawling GAZ vehicle factory here, pulling aside assembly-line workers and giving them an order: vote for President Vladimir V. Putin’s party or else. They were instructed to phone in after they left their polling places. Names would be tallied, defiance punished. The city’s children, too, were pressed into service. At schools, teachers gave them pamphlets promoting “Putin’s Plan” and told them to lobby their parents. Some were threatened with bad grades if they failed to attend “Children’s Referendums” at polling places, a ploy to ensure that their parents would show up and vote for the ruling party.

Around the same time, volunteers for an opposition party here, the Union of Right Forces, received hundreds of calls at all hours, warning them to stop working for their candidates. Otherwise, you will be hurt, the callers said, along with the rest of your family.