A Palestinian professor made an intriguing historical tweak when he appeared on television and proclaimed that Moses, the Biblical figure who led the Jews out of captivity in Egypt, was actually a Muslim. Even more surprising, Dr. Omar Ja’ara (of Al-Najah University in Nablus, West Bank) claims that the historical figure led Muslims out of captivity — not Jews.
 
Palestinian Media Watch explains the connotations and purported inaccuracies in Ja‘ara’s controversial claims that were made on Palestinian Authority Television:

A Palestinian university lecturer taught during a recent Palestinian Authority TV program on religion that Moses, a Muslim, brought “the Muslims of the Children of Israel out of Egypt.“ He refers to the subsequent Israeli conquest of the Land of Israel as the ”first Palestinian liberation… of Palestine.” This conquest, he taught, was led not by Joshua, as the Bible tells, but by Saul (Talut) who is also said to have slayed Goliath.
 
While some of this is retelling of Islamic tradition, some of it is a distortion of even the Quran for political purposes. The Quran refers to the “Children of Israel” in their land in many chapters (e.g., Sura 5), but it never refers to them or anyone else as “Palestinians.” Likewise the Quran never refers to Israel’s conquest as a “Palestinian” conquest. The lecturer on PA TV, however, deviates from Islamic tradition, and calls the nation of Israel’s conquest of the Land of Israel “the first Palestinian liberation through armed struggle to liberate Palestine.”

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“Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”— A senior intelligence official previously involved with the Utah Data Center

In the small town of Bluffdale, Utah, not far from bustling Salt Lake City, the federal government is quietly erecting what will be the crown jewel of its surveillance empire. Rising up out of the desert landscape, the Utah Data Center (UDC)—a $2 billion behemoth designed to house a network of computers, satellites, and phone lines that stretches across the world—is intended to serve as the central hub of the National Security Agency’s vast spying infrastructure. 

Once complete (the UDC is expected to be fully operational by September 2013), the last link in the chain of the electronic concentration camp that surrounds us will be complete, and privacy, as we have known it, will be extinct.

At five times the size of the U.S. Capitol, the UDC will be a clearinghouse and a depository for every imaginable kind of information—whether innocent or not, private or public—including communications, transactions and the like. Anything and everything you’ve ever said or done, from the trivial to the damning—phone calls, Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, Google searches, emails, bookstore and grocery purchases, bank statements, commuter toll records, etc.—will be tracked, collected, catalogued and analyzed by the UDC’s supercomputers and teams of government agents. In this way, by sifting through the detritus of your once-private life, the government will come to its own conclusions about who you are, where you fit in, and how best to deal with you should the need arise.

What little we know about this highly classified spy center—which will be operated by the National Security Agency (NSA)—comes from James Bamford, a former intelligence analyst and an expert on the highly secretive government agency. Bamford’s expose in Wired (March 15, 2012), a must-read for anyone concerned about the loss of our freedoms in a technological age, provides a chilling glimpse into the government’s plans for total control, a.k.a., total information awareness. As Bamford notes, the NSA “has transformed itself into the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever created. In the process—and for the first time since Watergate and the other scandals of the Nixon administration—the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the US and its citizens.”

Supposedly created by the NSA in order to track foreign threats to America, as well as to shore up cybersecurity and battle hackers, the UDC’s technological capabilities are astounding. As the central depository for all of the information gathered by the NSA’s vast spy centers, the UDC’s supercomputers will be capable of downloading data amounting to the entire contents of the Library of Congress every six hours. However, the data being targeted goes far beyond the scope of terrorist threats. In fact, as Bamford points out, the NSA is interested in nothing less than the “so-called invisible web, also known as the deep web or deepnet—data beyond the reach of the public. This includes password-protected data, US and foreign government communications, and noncommercial file-sharing between trusted peers.”

The loss of privacy resulting from such aggressive surveillance systems highlights very dramatically the growing problem of large public and private institutions in relation to the individual citizen. What we are witnessing, in the so-called name of security and efficiency, is the creation of a new class system comprised of the watched (average Americans such as you and me) and the watchers (government bureaucrats, technicians and private corporations). The growing need for technicians necessitates the bureaucracy. The massive bureaucracies—now computerized—that administer governmental policy are a permanent form of government.  Presidents come and go, but the nonelected bureaucrats remain.

The question looms before us.  Can freedom in the United States continue to flourish and grow in an age when the physical movements, individual purchases, conversations, and meetings of every citizen are constantly under surveillance by private companies and government agencies?

Whether or not the surveillance is undertaken for "innocent" reasons, does not surveillance of all citizens, even the innocent sort, gradually poison the soul of a nation?  Does not surveillance limit personal options—deny freedom of choice—for many individuals?  Does not surveillance increase the powers of those who are in a position to enjoy the fruits of this activity?  Is not control the name of the game?

We are all becoming data collected in government files. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who suffered under the secret police in the Soviet Union, wrote about this process some years ago:

As every man goes through life he fills in a number of forms for the record, each containing a number of questions….There are thus hundreds of little threads radiating from every man, millions of threads in all.  If these threads were suddenly to become visible, the whole sky would look like a spider’s web, and if they materialized like rubber bands, buses and trams and even people would lose the ability to move and the wind would be unable to carry torn-up newspapers or autumn leaves along the streets of the city.

Thus, we come back to the NSA’s spy center. That the NSA, which has shown itself to care little for constitutional limits or privacy, is the driving force behind this spy center is no surprise. The agency, which is three times the size of the CIA, consumes one third of the intelligence budget and has a global spy network, has a long history of spying on Americans—whether or not it has always had the authorization to do so. Take, for instance, the warrantless wiretapping program conducted during the Bush years, which resulted in the NSA monitoring the private communications of millions of Americans—a program that continues unabated today, with help from private telecommunications companies such as AT&T. The program recorded 320 million phone calls a day when it first started. It is estimated that the NSA has intercepted 15 to 20 trillion communications of American citizens since 9/11.

What has proven to be surprising to some is that the Obama White House has proven to be just as bad, if not worse, than the Bush White House when it comes to invading the privacy rights of Americans. As Yale law professor Jack Balkin notes, “We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national-surveillance state. [Obama has] systematically adopted policies consistent with the second term of the Bush Administration.” Unfortunately, whereas those on the Left raised a hew and cry over the Bush administration’s constant encroachments on Americans’ privacy rights, it appears that the political leanings of those on the Left have held greater sway than their principles. Consequently, the Obama administration has faced much less criticism for its blatant efforts to reinforce the surveillance state.

Clearly, the age of privacy in America is coming to a close. We have moved into a new paradigm in which surveillance technology which renders everyone a suspect is driving the bureaucratic ship that once was our democratic republic. By the time this UDC spy center is fully operational, no phone call, no email, no Tweet, no web search is safe from the prying eyes and ears of the government. People going about their daily business will no longer be assured that they are not being spied upon by federal agents and other government bureaucrats.

While the responses to the news of the Bluffdale facility have been varied, with some Americans cleaving to the over-used government line “if you have nothing to hide, you have no need to worry,” more and more people are starting to feel like Mike Newell, a Wired reader who had this to say about the UDC:

Not very long ago….. I actually believed that I would be willing to sacrifice a bit of freedom for security. I believed that a guard or cop at the entrance to my community, checking I.D. would be better than car loads of gang members roaming through creating havoc. I once laughed at those who mistrusted the government and prepared for survival, should things go sideways. I supported efforts by our so called "leaders" to monitor society, in search for the ever present evil. Not long ago….. I slept.

The new I Pad was released!!!!! Snooky had a meltdown! My Mac  Pro is awesome!!! These trinkets that keep us giggling and focused on nothing…. this addiction to instant gratification…….. this will be our downfall.

There’s a storm brewing.

Opinion:  The latest television show to hit the airway is Mobbed.  It is hosted by Howie Mandel and comes on the air following American Idol.  Originally, the plan was for it to be a one-time program.  Mobbed was so popular that the network immediately planned for seven additional episodes.

So what is Mobbed?  Mobbed gets its premise from the phenomenon called a flash mob. 

A flash mob is a group who assemble suddenly in a public place to
perform an unusual and sometimes seemingly pointless act for a brief
time.  When flash mob is finished, the participants disperse.  They are
performed for purposes of entertainment or satire.  If you missed the
show, you can check it out at fox.com/mobbed.

When people gather in large groups for a singular purpose, something powerful happens.  Remember Tiananmen Square, the Berlin Wall and the Civil Rights movement?  These and other “mob’ events demonstrate the power and impact of people uniting for a cause and purpose.  These can be and often are catalysts for justice, social change and other amazing results.

Believe it or not flashmobbing—I think I just made up a new word—can be found in the New Testament and the formative years of the Church: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.  Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.  All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.  Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

Shortly after Pentecost, the believers “mobbed” together to worship, grow, serve and share.  Their flashmobbing, fueled by God’s Holy Spirit, raised quite a few eyebrows.  It changed their community, and in the long run, it changed the world.  Lives were transformed!  New believers were added to their numbers every day.  Now, nearly 2,000 years later, we are still talking about their curious, compelling activities.  

Last Resurrection Sunday (Easter) most churches experienced their own flashmob.  The Church family that my family & I attend usually averages over three thousand every Sunday, but this Resurrection Lord’s Day we mobbed out with over five thousand with over forty baptisms.  Stories are already being shared of the impact on these loved ones lives.  Our goal was not that we might look good, but rather that God would receive all the glory!  God gets all the glory when we live out what Jesus called the first and second commandment found in Matthew 22: 35-39, “One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:  “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”   Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”

As a church family, we’d like to continue to plan large-scale flashmobs just like what we experienced this last Easter, and this coming Lord’s Day is a golden opportunity to demonstrate another faith-flashmobbing.  Then in our small groups we will experience a mini-flashmob encounter with the Lord and His word.  If you are interested in flashmobbing on a regular basis and if you are not currently connected to a Christ-honoring, Bible believing church family with a mission to change the world by loving them as individuals one by one into the kingdom of God, then I encourage you to be brave, bold and adventuresome and find such a place.

A lot of people don’t understand that we (born again people) are preparing for the ultimate massive flashmobbing that will occur at the end of time!  It’s called “Judgment Day!”  We want to be ready!  We would love for everyone to be ready to meet Jesus face to face!  Let’s be involved with Jesus in flashmobbing!

Analysis:  One of my favorite songs is "Flyover States" by Jason Aldean. It tells the story of a conversation between two men on a cross-country flight when all they see out the window is farmland. Noting it all looks the same, the men cannot understand why anyone would want to live "down there in the middle of nowhere." The song’s chorus answers back, explaining they only speak with such disdain because they have never met the hardworking Americans who inhabit those "flyover states," and suggesting that spending time in the heartland would help the men have a better understanding of Midwestern values – the very values that sustain this country.

Is there any chance the song could play out in real life?

President Obama is scheduled to visit what is arguably the capitol of the heartland when he travels to Oklahoma later this week. The President heads to Cushing as part of a two-day trip focused on sharing his energy message, one he feels has not been heard by many Americans.

Hearing the President’s message is not the problem.

When the Gulf oil disaster resulted in a blanket drilling moratorium – hurting production and jobs – rather than a common sense approach to increase safety while keeping the work going, the message began to come through. With the rejection of the Keystone XL permit that would have brought thousands of much-needed jobs and helped reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil, the message came more into focus. And with the decision to ask Saudi Arabia to increase its oil production rather than work with American producers to utilize our own technology and ingenuity to harvest our own resources, the message was crystal clear.

The problem is not whether Americans have heard Obama’s energy message; Americans hear him loud and clear. They are simply rejecting the message.

The President has been doing too much talking and not enough listening, so let’s hope the Cushing trip changes that. Pound for pound, no other state is leading in the energy sector like Oklahoma, and Washington could learn a lot from Oklahoma values. Oklahomans understand the vast resources that lie underneath our great nation – the same ones that can provide a foundation for years to come. Oklahomans understand the fundamental values that make this country great. And Oklahomans understand we must allow free-market principles to guide policy because when government chooses winners and losers, we all lose.

Mr. President, some of the world’s best leaders, best producers, and best entrepreneurs call Oklahoma home, and this is your chance to seek their help to build an energy policy that makes sense for all Americans. America needs America’s energy. America needs Oklahoma’s leadership. As the song suggests, maybe spending a little time here will help our friends from Washington see things differently: "On the plains of Oklahoma, with a windshield sunset in your eyes, like a water-color painted sky, you’ll think heaven’s doors have opened, and you’ll understand why God made those flyover states."

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its ice-field, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshiped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminine Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbor and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four —
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man —
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began: —
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return.

“The Gods of the Copybook Headings” has proved enduringly popular, despite the fact that copybooks disappeared from schoolrooms in Britain and America during, or shortly after, World War 2.

A copybook was an exercise book used to practice handwriting. The pages were blank except for horizontal rulings and a printed specimen of perfect handwriting at the top. You were supposed to copy this specimen all down the page. The specimens were proverbs or quotations, or little commonplace hortatory or admonitory sayings — the ones in the poem illustrate. These were the copybook headings.

Rudyard Kipling, 1865-1936