Iraqis burn US, Israeli flags in protests

AFP at ahramonline, Friday 14 Sep 2012

People burn an Israeli and a U.S. flag during a protest in Basra September 14, 2012 (Photo: Reuters)

Iraqi protesters burned US and Israeli flags as thousands of people demonstrated for a second day Friday in cities and towns across Iraq against an anti-Islam film that has sparked outrage in the Muslim world.

In the biggest protest, thousands of people turned out in the southern port city of Basra, carrying Iraqi flags and shouting slogans like, "There is no freedom by abuses to the feelings of two billion Muslims."

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Will the protests ignite into a firestorm that sweeps the cities and all "the environs" with flames? Will Jeremiah's next prophecy of judgment come true over the next day or so? Are we seeing the literal fulfillment of a 2,600 year-old prophecy from the ancient hebrew scriptures?

Video: Friday protests rock the Muslim world

Published on Sep 21, 2012 by ITN News, report by Genelle Aldred


Will these "protests" spill over into Iraq? Will the cities be "set on fire"?

Pakistani 'Day of Love' protests turn deadly

By RIAZ KHAN, Associated Press - Friday, September 21, 2012

A demonstrator brandishes a stick near burning police vehicles during protests in Karachi on Friday. (AFP photo)

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Protests over an anti-Muslim film turned violent Friday across Pakistan, with police firing tear gas and live ammunition at thousands of demonstrators who threw rocks and set fire to buildings. At least 17 people were killed and dozens were injured.

Muslims also marched in at least a half-dozen other countries, with some burning American flags and effigies of U.S. President Barack Obama.

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Will these deadly protests in Pakistan and elsewhere in the Middle East spill over into Iraq?  Will the cities of the land of Babylon -- the modern-day nation of Iraq -- burn as prophesied by Jeremiah the hebrew prophet? -- "'I shall set fire to his cities, and it will devour all his environs... the broad wall of Babylon will be completely razed, and her high gates will be set on fire; so the peoples will toil for nothing, and the nations become exhausted (because of the) fire," (Jer 50:32; 51:58).

Muslim protests focus on embassies

PBS NEWSHOUR video report published Sep 14, 2012

Muslim protests and demonstrations continue in countries throughout the Middle East and Africa. Though some were peaceful, centered around Friday prayers, other have been all out assaults on U.S. embassies and American-owned businesses. Jeffrey Brown reports.

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Violent Islamic protests spreading worldwide

by Matthew Clark, ACLJ.org

The radical Islamic "protests," violent attacks on (U.S.) embassies and murder of four (American) diplomats on the eleventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, are spreading across the globe at an alarming rate.


The Atlantic Wire has compiled a detailed map (below) showing where the violent radical Islamic incidents are spreading around the world.



READ MORE HERE...

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'Corrupt' oil-rich Iraq unable to provide much-needed infrastructure

Wednesday, 19 September 2012


Iraq couldn't provide $36.5 billion in infrastructure services to its people despite $100 billion in oil revenues for 2012. (Reuters)

by Al Arabiya News with Reuters 

Iraq is not capable to provide $36.5 billion for needed infrastructure services to its people, despite more than $100 billion in oil revenues for 2012, a study by the International Center for Development Studies showed. 

"Corruption and bureaucracy are leaving Iraq with no infrastructure services," the London-based center said.
[...]
The study warned that the shortage in funds will also "cause deterioration in vital sectors such as health, agriculture, industry and tourism."
[...]
Iraq needs development in almost every sector, as rubble and incomplete buildings are still commonplace more than nine years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

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Jeremiah the hebrew prophet foresaw a time when the land of Babylon would be invaded, occupied and left in rubble -- "Raise your battle cry against her on every side! She has given herself up, her pillars have fallen, her walls have been torn down... How the hammer of the whole earth has been cut off and broken!" (Jer 50:15, 23). He continues: "Suddenly Babylon has fallen and been broken; wail over her! Bring balm for her pain; perhaps she may be healed," (Jer 51:8).

But Babylon will not be healed, rather she will be abandoned by the reconstructionists, according to the prophet: "'We applied healing to Babylon, but she was not healed; forsake her and let us each go to his own country, for her judgment has reached to heaven and towers to the very skies," (Jer 51:9).

Not only can the invader/occupier/reconstructionists not heal her, she can't even heal herself, despite having billions of dollars worth of liquid treasure.  According to the prophet, even that will one day be "plundered" (Jer 50:37).

Salon: American reconstruction fails

IN a Thursday, August 16, 2012 editorial appearing at salon.com, Peter Van Buren, a 24-year veteran Foreign Service Officer, writes, "I spent a year with the Department of State helping squander some of the $44 billion American taxpayers put up to 'reconstruct' (Iraq)... To this day I'm left pondering...,: Why has the United States spent so much money and time so disastrously trying to rebuild (this nation)...?"

Van Buren, author of the 2010 book "We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People", continues -- "Now, it's definitive. Reconstruction in Iraq has failed. Dismally... The accounts of that failure still pour out. Choose your favorites... (From) a $200 million year-long State Department police training program (that has) shown no results (none, nada),... (to) a long official list of major reconstruction projects uncompleted, with billions of taxpayer dollars wasted, all carefully catalogued by the now-defunct Special Inspector for Iraq Reconstruction."

When Van Buren does media interviews now, only two years later, the question of the day is not "Did we succeed in Iraq?" or "Will reconstruction pay off?", but "Why did we fail?"

READ MORE HERE...

Jeremiah the hebrew prophet presages Van Buren's lament over latter day Mesopotamia's demise: "Babylon has fallen and been broken; Wail over her! Bring balm for her pain; perhaps she may be healed. 'We applied healing to Babylon, but she was not healed; forsake her and let us each go to his own country, for her judgment has reached to heaven and towers up to the very skies." (Jer 51:8-9)

And so, with reconstruction having failed, miserably, the reconstructionists shall abandon her, each returning to his own country, and she shall fall into the remaining judgments alone and without hope.

Invasion by "a great nation and many kings" (Jer 50:41), humiliating capture and occupation (Jer 50:46, 51:14) and execution of her "arrogant" ruler (Jer 50:31-32) has already occurred. The burning of the cities (Jer 50:32, 51:58) and subsequent abandonment by the reconstructionists (Jer 51:8-9, 58) comes next.

Then her "judgment" really begins: war with and defeat by a horde "from the land to the north" (Jer 50:9), the "Medes" (Jer 51:11,28,48) -- the modern-day Kurds of Kurdistan -- who then "plunder" her "treasures" (Jer 50:10,37), a catastrophic flood event (Jer 51:42) and finally a drought (Jer 50:38-40, 51:43) so severe it renders the land "an object of horror, and there will be no inhabitant in it" (Jer 50:3), so that "she will be completely desolate; everyone who passes by Babylon will be horrified..." (Jer 50:13).

Will the fires that precipitate the final abandonment be lit soon? Will judgments 4 and 5 occur in 2012?

Al-Qaeda promises "black days ahead"

The irishtimes.com reported today, September 17, 2012 a suicide bomber "crashed a car packed with explosives into one of the gates of Baghdad's heavily guarded green zone today, killing seven people."

The blast, according to the report, "set several cars on fire." Al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attacks, and, according to the report, promised "black days ahead."

The "Green Zone" is where most government offices, the parliament and several embassies and foreign missions in the Iraqi capital are located.  The U.S. mission employs 15,000 Americans there.

More than a week ago, in a string of attacks across the country, insurgents killed 92 people in one of Iraq's deadliest days this year.

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Jeremiah the prophet, in a decree of judgment on the land of Babylon, foresaw destruction leading to abandonment by the reconstructionists: "Her high gates will be set on fire; so the peoples will toil for nothing; and the nations become exhausted (because of the) fire," (Jer 51:58); "I shall set fire to his cities, and it will devour all his environs," (Jer 50:32); "Suddenly Babylon has fallen and been broken, wail over her! Bring balm for her pain, perhaps she may be healed. 'We applied healing to Babylon, but she was not healed; forsake her and let us each go to his own country, for her judgment has reached to heaven...'" (Jer 51:8-9).

Is this bombing today the beginning of the conflagration that induces the "nations" to "forsake" their attempts at "healing" Babylon, and abandon her to her coming destruction?

Shiite militia threatens American interests in Iraq

By Associated Press, Updated: Thursday, September 13, 6:22 AM

BAGHDAD — A Shiite militant group is threatening U.S. interests in Iraq as part of the backlash over an anti-Islam film it has described as “heinous.”

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Jeremiah's prophecy of doom describes the burning of the cities in the land of the Chaldeans -- "Her high gates will be set on fire; so the peoples will toil for nothing..." (Jer 51:58) -- which results in the abandonment of that nation by those who would attempt to rebuild it after they had invaded, captured and "broken" it -- "Suddenly Babylon has fallen and been broken; wail over her! Bring balm for her pain; perhaps she may be healed. 'We applied healing to Babylon, but she was not healed; forsake her and let us each go to his own country, for her judgment has reached to heaven and towers up to the very skies.'" (Jer 51:8-9).

According to the AP report, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad remains the world's largest American diplomatic mission, with an estimated 15,000 employees. Private American contractors continue to vainly toil to rebuild the broken infrastructure across Iraq.  But now, as the AP reports, the Shiite militia is threatening "all the American interests (in) Iraq."

Will the fires burn, lit by Shiite militias funded by Iran, causing America to declare, "We applied healing to Babylon, but she was not healed; forsake her and let us each go to his own country, for her judgment has reached to heaven..."?

Renewed tensions in Iraq

The New York Times Opinion Pages offered an editorial on the renewed tensions in Iraq following the sentencing of Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi to death in the killing of two Iraqis.  In the editorial, published Sept 10, 2012 at nytimes.com, the NY Times asserts the decision by a panel of judges is "sure to exacerbate... tensions -- in Iraq and the wider region."

Hashimi, a Sunni muslim, was convicted in absentia on Sunday of the murders of a lawyer and a security official, and is living in Turkey, which is a Sunni-majority nation. He had been a "vocal critic" of Iraq's Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al -Maliki, who has, according to the editorial, "shown more interest in reprisals against the Sunni minority than in encouraging inclusion..."

We are coming up on 2,090 days since the execution of Saddam Hussein, the third judgment on Babylon pronounced by Jeremiah the hebrew prophet in chapters 50 through 51 of his book in the bible. The first judgment, invasion of the land by "a great nation and many kings", was followed by its "capture", and then the  "punishment of the arrogant one."

The fourth judgment is the burning of the cities. Will that occur soon?