What a difference three years makes, Pierre Atlas wrote on Friday, contrasting Israel’s new government with the one that emerged in the wake of Ariel Sharon’s debilitating stroke three years ago. In 2006, he wrote, most Israelis supported the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and much of the Knesset favored withdrawing from parts of the West Bank. The right-wing Likud party, which opposed unilateral withdrawals, suffered most as a result of the electorate’s mood. It lost 26 of its 38 seats in parliamentary elections.

“No one could have imagined then that, three years later,” Atlas wrote, “Netanyahu would be forming the next Israeli government.”

Actually, shortly before those 2006 elections, as our regular readers know, our editor in chief mentioned on his weekly television program that Benjamin Netanyahu would likely return to power in Israel because of a prophecy in Zechariah 14:2. He said half of Jerusalem is “going to be taken by force, and you need to realize that. Now, that might also indicate that the Likud, or the conservative party, will get in power.”

To learn more about this important prophecy, as well as many others, study our free booklet Jerusalem in Prophecy.

Putin’s Party Loses—Reacts With “Thermonuclear Political Force”

Last week, Vladimir Putin’s “United Russia” party lost an election. Big time.

It was a mayoral election in the city of Murmansk, and the United Russia candidate was routed—nearly two votes to one—by independent candidate Sergei Subbotin.

The reaction to the loss from the Kremlin tells you a lot about how far toward totalitarianism Putin’s Russia has returned. Kim Zigfeld wrote in American Thinker,

The casual onlooker might not have thought Putin’s Kremlin would get too worked up over the loss, however. After all, Subbotin stated unequivocally that he was not an opposition candidate. “I’m a supporter of Vladimir Putin,” he proudly declared, loudly and often.But the Kremlin reacted with thermonuclear political force.The ink on Subbotin’s victory certification was not even dry before a measure was moving in the Russian parliament to authorize regional governors who are no longer popularly elected but rather appointed directly by the Kremlin thanks to Putin’s “reforms,” to fire mayors like Subbotin notwithstanding their elections. That’s right, simply fire them.And then a couple of days ago, the Kremlin got even more draconian: Not content to wait for Subbotin to be fired, and in fact apparently not at all sure he ever would be, it fired Yuri Yevdokimov, the governor of the Murmansk region, equivalent to an American state.

Right after Subbotin’s victory, United Russia leaders cried foul about how Yevdokimov had campaigned for the mayor, which they said was against elections law. And just like that, the Mumansk governor was gone.

Zigfeld also drew attention to the unhappy fate met by Boris Nemstov, a politician who has authored a series of papers criticizing the Putin economy. The Kremlin has “aggressively censored” his work—but then, this happened: Nemstov

was on the campaign trail himself in his native city of Sochi days ago when he was attacked by having ammonia squirted in his face just hours after issuing yet another tough critique of the Kremlin, this time questioning whether the nation’s economic meltdown was undermining the city’s prospects to successfully host the 2014 Winter Olympics. Nemstov had no doubt that the attack was instigated by the Kremlin, and quite possibly carried out by its frenzied Hiter-youth cult known as “Nashi.”The incident brought to mind the radiation assault on kgb defector and dissident Alexander Litvinenko and the dioxin attack on Ukrainian president Victor Yushchenko.

The heavy-handed tactics of the Russian government are no small matter. Not only do they mirror the ambition Moscow has for expanding Russia’s influence internationally—a scenario forecast in the Bible and which we are closely monitoring—but they put foreign governments on notice and are likely to provoke a strong response.

It is this second effect that our editor in chief began drawing attention to back in 2004 with his Trumpet cover story, “Russia Frightens Europe—and Fulfills Bible Prophecy.” At that time, Gerald Flurry wrote,

Russian elections have recently moved President Vladimir Putin much closer to becoming a dictator. This strikes intense fear in Europe. The Europeans still remember how violent Russia was in World War ii, and Russia is a close neighbor with massive piles of nuclear weapons.

Europe’s fear and nervousness over Russia’s growing power is directly prophesied in the Bible. Mr. Flurry’s article explains where, and shows this trend’s electrifying outcome.

The Collapse of South Africa

After 15 years of unrestricted power, black South Africa is an unmitigated failure, according to the Daily Mail’s Peter Hitchens. How distressing to think it might never have come to this if the world had been more critical, and more interested, during the long wasted years of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, he says. Instead, Western media gave black-ruled South Africa a free pass on just about every issue.

Now, South Africa is on the cusp of having a president who has “faced 783 counts of fraud, racketeering, tax evasion and corruption which somehow never came to court; and had been acquitted of rape while his fearsome supporters mobbed the courthouse.” Furthermore, according to the piece, he allegedly accepted campaign money from Colonel Qadhafi.

And oh, lest we forget, he is also known for his love of the song “Bring Me My Machine Gun,” which he likes to sing while swaying and jigging to the hypnotic chorus. His supporters like to chant the word “cockroach,” a menacing threat to the party’s opponents. Cockroach is the term Hutu fanatics repeatedly used to describe their Tutsi neighbors in Rwanda, shortly before the 1994 genocidal massacres that horrified the world.

Who is this man? His name is Jacob Zuma. Remember the name—you are going to hear a lot more of it, says Hitchens. Zuma is a former intelligence chief in the anc’s ruthless armed wing, “Spear of the Nation.” He is a “former” Communist who underwent “military training” in the old Soviet Union. “He has at least four wives and 18 children. He has for years avoided standing trial on fraud and corruption charges. Nobody seriously believes he ever will,” writes Hitchens.

And on April 22, due to the dominance and intimidation of the anc, he will most likely become president of one of the world’s most important countries. But as scary as the above description is, Peter Hitchens says it is actually “much, much worse” on the ground.

This fast-approaching catastrophe is a source of shame and apprehension to millions of honest people, white and black, in South Africa itself.It is also a tragedy for Africa as a whole, a continent hungry for any reason to hope. And it is grave news for the civilized world, which needs no more failed states. …Once, South Africa dominated the nightly news for weeks on end. Now the liberal media barely mention it. Why not? Because post-apartheid South Africa is a failure.You don’t hear about the terrifying crime. You don’t hear about the pestilence of corruption ….There is a little about aids, but nothing like as much as there should be, given the acres of graves that commemorate the government’s moronic policies, of denial and folk remedies (including beetroot).Violent xenophobic rage against uncontrolled mass immigration was played down both in South Africa and abroad because it did not fit the smiley picture beloved by the Mandela worshippers. And little is said about the unstoppable spread of shanty towns, far outstripping state attempts to build proper houses for the poor.Electricity blackouts—the invariable sign of a country on the slide—are now frequent. The ill-run nuclear power station inherited from the apartheid regime’s atom bomb program is beginning to judder and fail, raising fears of an African Chernobyl. Then there are the overstretched water supply, the railway system fraying at the edges ….The once-admired Scorpions, a police anti-corruption squad symbolizing the country’s determination not to follow the rest of Africa into corrupt squalor, have been disbanded.

According to Hitchens, “the approaching enthronement of this sinister, populist one-time Zulu herd-boy really ought to mark the moment when South Africa has to stop dreaming about rainbows and miracles, and recognize that experience is usually a better guide to the future than hope.”

That “experience” is powerfully and starkly embodied by the whole of the post-colonial African continent. South Africa is not, “as the fashionable people claimed, a fairy story,” says Hitchens. “History did not stop when Nelson Mandela ended his long walk to freedom.” And South Africans “are not all going to live happily ever after.”

For the underlying reasons why these curses are coming on South Africa, read our booklet South Africa in Prophecy. Written more than a decade ago, this booklet foresaw the state that South Africa has come to today.

European Leaders Ambush Anglo-Americans

EU President Mirek Topolanek slammed President Obama’s economic policies last week, referring to his bailout measures as a “road to hell.” According to the Washington Post,

In an address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, Topolanek abandoned diplomatic niceties and blasted Washington for approving a $787 billion economic stimulus package, which he said encouraged “protectionist” trade policies. He said the overall U.S. strategy for ending the recession would flood global markets with too many dollars and lead to bigger problems.

His remarks startled some U.S. and European officials. According to the Washington Post, “Topolanek’s words, however, underscored a fundamental divide that persists between the United States and many European countries over the best way to respond to the global financial crisis.”

Last night, German Chancellor Angela Merkel ambushed the so-called “global New Deal” put forward by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The British plan, leaked to the press just prior to the G-20 summit, called for at least a $2 trillion injection of funds from world governments. “I will not let anyone tell me that we must spend more money,” Chancellor Merkel said. Pedro Solbes, Spanish finance minister, confirmed the eurozone’s stance: “In these conditions I and the rest of my colleagues from the eurozone believe there is no room for new fiscal stimulus plans.”

Britain Unprepared for Cyberattack

China may be able to shut down Britain, according the country’s intelligence chiefs. They have warned the government that equipment installed by Chinese telecom giant Huawei in British Telecom’s communication network could be used to shut down power, food and water supplies.

This week, Internet researchers also revealed that a Chinese cyber spy network has hacked into 1,295 machines in 103 countries—including computers at nato, foreign ministries, embassies, news organizations and banks.

The Sunday Timesreports that Britain is far from ready to face the threat of cyberespionage. According to the story, the Joint Intelligence Committee (jic) recently briefed the government about the threat from China. The government has “not paid sufficient attention to the threat in the past,” warned the intelligence officials at the meeting.

Working through Huawei, China was already equipped to make “covert modifications” or to “compromise equipment in ways that are very hard to detect” and that might later “remotely disrupt or even permanently disable the network,” the meeting was told.This would be likely to have a “significant impact on critical services” such as power and water supplies, food distribution, the financial system and transport, which were dependent on computers to operate.

Officials believe there is “low” risk of China exploiting its capacity to shut Britain down, but warned that “the impact would be very high.” The jic also warned that “covert functionality” within the equipment was already being used to gather intelligence for China.

The report said that already the potential threat from Huawei “has been demonstrated elsewhere in the world.” Huawei was allegedly founded with money from the Chinese government, and is run by a former director of the telecoms research arm of the Chinese Army. Only last week the Pentagon stated that Huawei has “close ties” with the Chinese Army and is a key part of the Chinese cyberthreat.

Official have also repeatedly warned that America is ill equipped to deal with a cyberattack. We have written before about this Achilles heel.

Elsewhere on the Web

President Obama unveiled his so-called “stronger and smarter” policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan on Friday, pledging an extra $5 billion to Pakistan and a further 4,000 troops to help train Afghan security forces. According to the New York Times, Obama’s new plan is risky, and he “is unveiling his approach at a time when the conflict is worsening, the lives of the people are not visibly improving, and the intervention by American-led foreign powers is increasingly resented. The goals that Mr. Obama has settled on may be elusive and, according to some critics, even naive.”

And in case you missed it, the New York Times had a piece last week about the surge of shanty towns across America. “While encampments and street living have always been a part of the landscape in big cities like Los Angeles and New York,” the Times noted, “these new tent cities have taken root—or grown from smaller enclaves of the homeless as more people lose jobs and housing—in such disparate places as Nashville, Olympia, Wash., and St. Petersburg, Fla.”