Peace on earth requires more than a cessation of hostilities. Real peace (with God and man) begins by acknowledging what's true and repenting of our waywardness.

In a perfect world, that's the way things would operate. But for the duplicitous and unrepentant, sometimes we need to apply a little coaxing in the form of -- indictment and conviction. For a case in point, this month we focus on the world's chief diplomatic body, the UN, where their motto suggests we're "united for a better world" -- but their methods involve graft and corruption.

Next, and not to be outdone by other ambitious challenges, we consider a refreshing new idea for resolving the intractable problems between Israelis and Palestinians -- with a roadmap to peace that takes a different approach. Here, we may have finally proferred a solution that appeases both heaven and earth.

And finally, we consider the unrelenting assault upon America's Christian heritage each Christmas. With parity and multiculturalism the goal, everyone is welcome but the Christ child.

But don't be discouraged by the absurdity of it all...These bizarre arrangements will soon give way to the Prince of Peace. And "of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end." (Isa 9:7)

Roy Tanner


Come Clean, Kofi
The U.N. secretary-general ducks responsibility on Oil for Food scam.

BY CLAUDIA ROSETT

With estimates soaring of graft and fraud under the United Nations Oil for Food program in Iraq, we are hearing a lot about the need to "get to the bottom" of this scandal, the biggest ever to hit the U.N. To get to that bottom will need a much harder look at the top--where Secretary-General Kofi Annan himself resides.

That violates all sorts of taboos. But so, one might suppose, does a United Nations that allowed Saddam Hussein to embezzle at least $21.3 billion in oil money during 12 years, with the great bulk of that sum--a staggering $17.3 billion--pilfered between 1997-2003, on Mr. Annan's watch.

These are the record-breaking new estimates released Monday by the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, whose staffers, despite Mr. Annan's refusal to cooperate, have spent the past seven months voyaging deep into the muck of Oil for Food. At a hearing Monday, these investigators surfaced to tell us the theft and fraud under Oil for Food was at least twice as bad as earlier reports had suggested, and that all this is just a preview of yet more appalling disclosures they expect to release early next year. Sen. Norm Coleman, the subcommittee's chairman, underscored the urgency of such investigations, noting not only that the size of the fraud "is staggering," but that some of Saddam's vast illicit stash might right now be funding terrorists and costing American lives.

Mr. Annan, by contrast, seems to inhabit a different universe--one in which the chief problem lies not in the U.N.'s complicity, including his own, in the biggest fraud in the history of humanitarian relief, but rather in the attempts to shine any light on all that sleaze. In Annan Land, there was earlier this year no need for any probe into Oil for Food; and even now there is no need for any investigating beyond the U.N.'s own "independent inquiry" into itself, led by former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, required to funnel its findings first through Mr. Annan, funded to the tune of $30 million out of one of the old Oil for Food accounts it is supposed to be investigating, and not planning to clock in with any specific results until sometime next summer.

In the spirit of shooting the messenger, Mr. Annan has complained often in recent months about criticism of Oil for Food, denouncing it as a "campaign" that has "hurt the U.N." Monday's Oil for Food hearing evoked from Mr. Annan's spokesman, Fred Eckhard, the comment that Mr. Annan feels he has been "misjudged by certain media" and that Mr. Annan is "not being obstructionist" in his refusal to cooperate with congressional investigators. We are given to understand that Mr. Annan would help if he could, but his job entails so many over-riding responsibilities.

OK, except that when it comes to Oil for Food, Mr. Annan has labored hard in recent months to disavow his own large role and responsibilities. From both Mr. Annan and the entourage of U.N. speechwriters and spokesman who report to him have come a long series of disclaimers and protests, eye-catching less for what they tell us than for what they leave out.

Just last week, we had Mr. Annan's director of communications, Edward Mortimer, asserting in a letter to The Wall Street Journal that Mr. Annan was "not involved" in designing Oil for Food. Technically, it may be correct that Mr. Annan did not actually seal the original deal. But Mr. Annan's own official U.N. biography states that before becoming secretary-general, he "led the first United Nations team negotiating with Iraq on the sale of oil to fund purchases of humanitarian aid"--and that implies a certain familiarity with the origins of Oil for Food.

Once Mr. Annan became secretary-general, he lost little time in getting deeply involved with Oil for Food. In October 1997, just 10 months into the job, he transformed what had begun as an ad hoc, temporary relief measure into the Office of the Iraq Program, an entrenched U.N. department, which reported to him directly--and was eliminated only after the U.S.-led coalition, against Mr. Annan's wishes, deposed Saddam. To run Oil for Food, Mr. Annan picked Benon Sevan (now alleged to have received oil money from Saddam, which he denies) and kept him there until the program ended about six years later.

Mr. Annan's reorganization of Oil for Food meant a nontrivial change in the trajectory of the program. All the signs are that Saddam immediately took the cue that he could now start gaming the program with impunity--and Mr. Annan did not prove him wrong. Within the month, Saddam had created the first crisis over the U.N. weapons inspectors, who were supposed to be part of the sanctions and Oil for Food package. Mr. Annan's response was not to throttle back on Oil for Food but to go before the Security Council a few months later and urge that Baghdad be allowed to import oil equipment along with the food and medicine to which the program had been initially limited. This set the stage for the ensuing burst in Saddam's oil production, kickbacks, surcharges and smuggling.

Mr. Annan then flew to Baghdad for a private powwow with Saddam and returned to declare that this was a man he could do business with. The weapons inspectors returned to Iraq for a short spell, but by the end of 1998, Saddam had evicted them for the next four years. Mr. Annan, however, went right on doing business. And big business it was, however humanitarian in name. Under the Oil for Food deal, Mr. Annan's Secretariat pulled in a 2.2% commission on Saddam's oil sales, totaling a whopping $1.4 billion over the life of the program, to cover the costs of supervising Saddam. Yet somehow the Secretariat never found the funding to fully meter oil shipments, ensure full inspections of all goods entering Iraq, or catch the pricing scams that by the new estimates of Senate investigators let Saddam rake in $4.4 billion in kickbacks on relief contracts.

Mr. Annan and his aides would also have us believe that Oil for Food had nothing to do with Saddam's smuggling of oil--which generated the lion's share of his illicit income. But it was only after Oil for Food geared up that Saddam's oil smuggling really took off, totaling $13.6 billion during his entire 12 years between wars, but with more than two-thirds of that--an estimated $9.7 billion--earned during the era of Oil for Food. Those were precisely the years in which Mr. Annan repeatedly went to bat to enable Saddam, under Oil for Food, to import the equipment to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure, whence came all that smuggled oil.

Transparency from the start might have flagged the world and stopped the scams as things turned deeply rotten under Oil for Food. But Mr. Annan's policy to this day has been secrecy. On Monday, Sen. Coleman summed up his subcommittee's efforts to get at the truth, as having required so far, eight subpoenas, 13 chairman's letters, "numerous interviews with key participants, and receipt of over a million pages of evidence" to begin to understand "the behind-the-scenes machinations of the participants in the Oil for Food program."

"Participants" are generally understood to have been Saddam's chosen contractors. But we need to recognize that one of the biggest of those contractors was, in effect, the U.N. itself. As Oil for Food was not only designed but expanded, embellished upon and run for more than six years under Mr. Annan's stewardship, it became not so much a supervisory operation, but a business deal with Saddam, in which the U.N. in effect provided money laundering services, the Secretariat collected a percentage fee from Saddam--and somewhere in there, between the kickbacks, surcharges, importation of oil equipment and smuggling out of oil, they jointly ran a storefront relief operation.

Who at the U.N. took illicit money from Saddam--if, indeed, anyone did--is an important question, and worth pursuing. But so is the matter of who covered up for Saddam; who pushed to continue and expand a program so derelict that it failed to nab more than $17 billion in illicit deals, and so secretive that investigators have spent much of the past year trying simply to get their hands on information the U.N. should have made public at the time. It is worth asking whose welfare was enhanced, whose domain was expanded, whose coffers filled with $1.4 billion delivered as a percentage cut of Saddam's oil revenues--and who has failed to this day to take on board the thumping lessons about the need for transparency at the U.N.

That would be Mr. Annan. He is not protecting the U.N. At great cost to whatever noble aspirations the U.N. once had, and to all societies that value integrity over Potemkin institutions, he is protecting himself.

Ms. Rosett is a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the Hudson Institute. Her column appears here and in The Wall Street Journal Europe on alternate Wednesdays.



Radical new plan for Mideast peace
Israeli movement builds for Arab population transfer

© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com

There's a new peace plan gaining support in Israel that has nothing to do with making land concessions to Arabs, negotiations with Yasser Arafat, extending the Oslo Accords or creating a new Palestinian state.

Instead, the seven-point Elon Peace Plan represents a radical departure in Israeli thinking over the last 12 years.

Named for Benny Elon, the relatively small Moledet Party's leader and a member of the Knesset, the new peace plan calls for transferring Arabs from the West Bank and other areas to what Elon calls the "existing state of Palestine" – the nation of Jordan.

Polls show between 20 and 30 percent of Israelis ready to back such a plan.

In an exclusive interview with WorldNetDaily Editor Joseph Farah, Elon said such a population transfer is not unusual in modern world history, nor is it immoral to contemplate.

"The solution is moral for both Jews, who have no other homeland, for the Palestinians, who have lost the most in the past wars – their homes were damaged and they became refugees," he said. "The world has now reached the understanding that there is no peace in bi-national countries, and that there is an urgent need for separation."

Elon points out that not one Arab leader has agreed to the most far-reaching Israeli offers for a peace agreement – even one carving up Jerusalem and placing part of it in the hands of the Palestinians.

"The state of Israel must demand the relocation of the refugees as a precondition of peace within any future negotiations," said Elon. "We cannot relinquish these lands, and we cannot live peacefully with the Arab population currently living in them. And we cannot succumb to the current, politically correct 'solution' – the creation of an Arab terrorist state, bent on our ultimate destruction and willing to sacrifice its children toward this end."

The seven-point Elon plan calls for:

1) Jerusalem's recognition that Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority, established under the lengthy peace process begin in Oslo in 1993, is the enemy of Israel.

2) The forcible removal of all terrorists and all weapons from the West Bank – or Judea and Samaria, as these lands are called by many in Israel.

3) The nullification of the Palestinian Authority as a legitimate entity and the canceling of the Oslo Accords.

4) The establishment of a cease-fire and negotiations under international auspices to relocate refugees in Arab countries and the dismantling of refugee camps, along with the establishment of a Jordan-Palestinian state with Amman as its capital.

5) Arabs who remain in Judea and Samaria would be offered citizenship in the Jordanian-Palestinian state.

6) Arab citizens of Israel also would be offered such status.

7) If the Arabs of Judea and Samaria breach the terms of the agreement, they would be forcibly deported to the other side of the Jordan River.


Elon is the political successor of late tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi, who was assassinated last year by Palestinian gunmen. He had launched his political career by advocating the voluntary transfer of Arabs to neighboring states.

"The high expectations of Oslo became deep disappointment," explained Elon. "Instead of peace, there has been so much bloodshed. When you look at it, transfer is the only conclusion. It is the only light at the end of the tunnel."

The population of Jordan, Elon points out, is currently comprised of 70 percent Palestinians. That is why he calls it the existing Palestinian state.

"The king of Jordan is well aware of the fact that Arafat is only waiting for the right moment [to make his land claim there]," said Elon. "... After he receives a small state west of the Jordan River, he will do all he can to connect it, under his rulership, to the Palestinian state called Jordan."

Population transfers have occurred repeatedly in modern history – often with success since World War II, Elon and his supporters point out. It is often overlooked and forgotten, they say, that some 850,000 Jewish refugees fled Arab lands since the creation of the new state of Israel in 1948. These refugees, as well as millions from other parts of the world, have been successfully absorbed in the tiny Jewish state, no larger than the state of New Jersey.

In fact, they say, of the 100 million refugees created since World War II, the only group still not resettled is the Palestinian refugee group.

"Instead, these unfortunate people became pawns in the hands of their own Arab leadership," said Elon.
Elon and his party will make a big public relations push on their peace plan in the coming months – both in Israel and in the United States.



The impending death of Christmas?

© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

The spiritual Grinches in our nation are accelerating their war against Christmas as never before. And they are tragically convincing growing numbers of our fellow citizens – primarily those in our nation's public schools and public administration – that Christmas should be publicly shunned, replaced by nebulous substitutes designed to avoid offending those who are all-so-easily outraged.

But adherents of this colossal effort to create a secular utopia have forgotten two significant realities:

1. Our founders were men who explicitly embraced Judeo-Christian principles in the founding of this nation. Even those who were Deists openly recognized the need for the citizenry to fall to their collective knees and beseech God's favor. They understood the need to recognize God in our Constitution, in our courts and in our schools.
2. Our fellow citizens do not want a spiritual sanitization effort to sweep out all vestiges of Christianity from the public square. One need look no further than an AOL poll this week. An astounding 89 percent of respondents (as of Wednesday afternoon) answered in the affirmative to the question, "Should religion be included in public holiday celebrations?"

The so-called mainstream media often portray radical secularists as reasonable individuals, but the people at the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and other such groups are practitioners of an extremist movement that would completely outlaw God, Christianity and any remnant of such from the public arena.

And they are, in many cases, winning this war.

That's why this week the student members of the Columbia High School brass ensemble in Maplewood, N.J., were told they could not play any Christmas-related songs – not even instrumental versions. (We wouldn't want some student or parent to get offended by a wordless tune, would we?)

This is the milieu of outright censorship that many students face today. Their teachers and administrators have become convinced (primarily through fear campaigns by leftist groups) that even the most blurred mention of Christmas would be an outright constitutional offense.

They are wrong. Disastrously wrong!

Other anti-Christmas strategies have gained headlines recently:

• TARGET will not allow the Salvation Army to collect funds at their stores, meaning that the Army will lost about $9 million this year;
• Macy's and Bloomingdale's have prohibited the phrase "Merry Christmas";
• Denver's "Parade of Lights," which has outlawed religious expression, is now considering allowing a Christian group to participate in the event;
• New York Mayor David Bloomberg now refers to the giant Christmas tree in the city as a holiday tree.
  

Other examples abound as a few Americans attempt to oust Christmas from the public vernacular. Leaders of religious freedom-based legal groups around the country tell me that during this time of year they see a hefty incursion of anti-religious expression cases.

One of those organizations is the Orlando, Fla.-based Liberty Counsel (which now has a divisional office on the Liberty University campus), which is involved in hundreds of cases each year wherein attorneys protect the rights of Americans to express their faith.

Christmas remains legal

Mathew Staver, founder and general counsel at Liberty Counsel, says that that publicly sponsored Nativity scenes on public property are, in fact, constitutional as long the display includes a secular symbol. The government may publicly exhibit depictions of Mary, Joseph and Jesus or a Menorah if such scenes incorporates the image of Santa Claus or Frosty the Snowman.

In addition, public-school students may sing Christian Christmas carols such as "Silent Night" as long as they also sing secular songs, such as "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

Furthermore, schools may not prohibit access to religious books, because to do so discriminates against the religious viewpoint of the message contained in the book. Public employers may not discriminate against staff by prohibiting Christmas celebration.

Mr. Staver also says that privately sponsored nativity scenes erected and displayed by citizens or groups in a public area are constitutional and require no secular symbols to be included.

"This nation was founded by people who sought to freely exercise their religious liberties," Mr. Staver said. "We have no intention of letting these liberties fall by the wayside or be chilled every holiday season by uninformed or hostile government officials."

Mr. Staver tells me that all 600 of his attorneys are available to provide free legal aid to students or employees around the nation who face religious discrimination. Visit the organization's website for more information on Liberty Counsel.

Other similar religious-freedom legal groups are actively working to protect Americans' rights to express their faith. The task is daunting because leftist organizations are aggressively attempting to redefine America in their own Godless image. They seek a national mandate.

While I celebrate the fact that men like Mat Staver and others are standing up for American values, it is imperative that parents and grandparents ensure that their children understand the Judeo-Christian ancestry that is undeniable. We must also make certain that our children's schools are not gagging their rights to live out their faith in the classroom.

The effort to preserve our religious heritage and future requires the diligence of us all. May we, through God's grace, faithfully safeguard the wonderful Christian birthright of America.

Rev. Jerry Falwell, a nationally recognized Christian minister and television show host, is the founder of Jerry Falwell Ministries and is chancellor of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va.