The Levant is the geographical region bordering the Mediterranean, roughly between Egypt and Anatolia (modern Turkey). The Southern Levant is roughly encompassed by Palestine, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, along with the modern sovereign states of Israel, Jordan and the southern part of Lebanon.

The archaeology of the southern Levant is generally conceived as a series of phases or stages in human cultural and evolutional development based, for the most part, on tool technology for early pre-historic, proto-historic and early historic periods. Later phases are generally associated with historical periods and are named accordingly.

While there is no single, accepted sequence that all archaeologists agree upon, the basic conventions indicate a number of Stone Ages, followed by a Copper/Stone age, in turn followed by a Bronze Age. The names given to them,derived from the Greek, are also used widely for other regions. The different ages in turn are often divided up into sequential or sometimes parallel chrono-cultural facies, sometimes called “cultures” or “periods”. Sometimes their names are derived from European prehistory, at other times from local sites, often where they were first discovered.

Texe W. Marrs (born 1944) is an American writer, who runs a Christian ministry called Power of Prophecy Ministries, based in Austin, Texas.

He was previously an officer in the United States Air Force and a faculty member at the University of Texas.

Marrs has received coverage from the news media for his claims that:

Marrs has been accused of being anti-Catholic. Some of his critics, such as Edward L. King, have accused him of anti-Semitism. In 1999 he alleged that former United States President George H.W. Bush would be involved in a black mass in a chamber within the Great Pyramid of Giza during the 2000 millennium celebrations. Christian writer Constance Cumbey has accused Marrs of plagiarism of material from her book Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow.

Jeff Rense is an American conspiracy theorist and radio talk-show host of the Jeff Rense Program, broadcast on US satellite radio via Republic Broadcasting Network (RBN) and Internet radio.

Rense's radio program and website, Rense.com, cover subjects such as 9/11 conspiracy theories,UFO reporting, paranormal phenomena, Holocaust denial,Zionism, tracking of new diseases and possible resultant pandemics, environmental concerns (see chemtrails), animal rights, possible evidence of advanced ancient technology, geopolitical developments and emergent energy technologies, complementary and alternative medicine among other subjects.

Rense's show has been accused of being among "conspiracy-oriented Internet radio shows that often feature antisemites and extremists" by the Anti-Defamation League.

Rense was born in St. Louis, Missouri and grew up in Southern California. Rense worked as a television news reporter, producer and anchor for Santa Barbara's ABC affiliate, KEYT-TV. He performed the same duties for two TV stations in the Northwest in the early to mid-1980s, chiefly Oregon NBC affiliate KOBI-TV, where he spent several years. He left the business after jobs in Oregon and at a Las Vegas, Nevada television stations. Later, Rense returned to Santa Barbara and opened several "All About Pets" stores, which he sold in the early-1990s. Rense hosts a web site on the music and life of tenor Mario Lanza. In 2007, 3 CDs of rare recordings of Mario Lanza's were released which Rense produced.

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He resigned from all of these positions in June 2007.

Blair was elected Leader of the Labour Party in the leadership election of July 1994, following the sudden death of his predecessor, John Smith. Under his leadership, the party used the phrases "New Labour" and "New Socialism" to define its policy, and moved away from its support of state socialism since the 1960s and created a new version of the ethical socialism that was last pursued by Clement Attlee. Critics of Blair claim that "New Labour" did not adhere to socialism as claimed, and that it effectively advocated capitalism. Blair subsequently led Labour to a landslide victory in the 1997 general election. At 43 years old, he became the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812. In the first years of the New Labour government, Blair's government implemented a number of 1997 manifesto pledges, introducing the minimum wage, Human Rights Act and Freedom of Information Act, and carrying out devolution, establishing the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales, and the Northern Ireland Assembly.