Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

What Happened to Global Warming?
Oct 17th, 2009
Daily Newswww.wnd.com
Categories: Today's Headlines

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. 

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise. 

So what on Earth is going on? 

Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming. 

They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this? 

During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly. 

Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth's warmth comes from the Sun. 

But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences. 

The scientists' main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature. 

And the results were clear. "Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 

But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees. 

He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures. 

He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month. 

If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject. 

Ocean cycles

What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth's great heat stores.

In the last few years [the Pacific Ocean] has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down 

According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated. 

The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO). 

For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too. 

But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down. 

These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years. 

So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles. 

Professor Easterbrook says: "The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling." 

So what does it all mean? Climate change sceptics argue that this is evidence that they have been right all along. 

They say there are so many other natural causes for warming and cooling, that even if man is warming the planet, it is a small part compared with nature. 

But those scientists who are equally passionate about man's influence on global warming argue that their science is solid. 

The UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate predictions, says it incorporates solar variation and ocean cycles into its climate models, and that they are nothing new. 

In fact, the centre says they are just two of the whole host of known factors that influence global temperatures - all of which are accounted for by its models. 

In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling. 

What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up. 

To confuse the issue even further, last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years.

Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers. 

But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself. 

So what can we expect in the next few years? 

Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly. 

It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998). 

Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely. 

One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.

School Opens to Train Descendents of Cohanim (priests) for Service in the Rebuilt Temple
Oct 17th, 2009
Daily Newsisraelnationalnews.com
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Jews in the town of Mitzpe Yericho are taking practical steps to prepare for the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, by preparing descendents of Cohanim (priests) and Levites for service. At the Mitzpe Yericho school, Temple priest hopefuls learn exactly how to conduct the daily Temple service and offer the required sacrifices.

"Today is really a historical event for the Jewish people,” organizer Levi Chazan said as another part of the school was completed. “It is the beginning of the work for the Third Temple.”

The school will include an exact replica of the Temple. The latest addition to the replica was the area in which priests offered wine and water libations. The water offering was traditionally given on the Sukkot holiday, which was celebrated last week.

Festivities accompanied the completion of another step in the school's construction. Among those present was Baruch Marzel, long-time Land of Israel activist and parliamentary aide to MK Michael Ben-Ari. The timing of the work on the school is particularly appropriate due to recent Muslim riots against Jewish visits to the Temple Mount, Marzel said.

Meet the 'father of World Currency' and His Plan to Destroy the U.S. Dollar
Oct 17th, 2009
Daily Newswww.wnd.com
Categories: Today's Headlines;World Government

A plan to replace the dollar with a world currency originated with Columbia University economics professor Robert Mundell, who won a Nobel Prize in economics in 1999 for creating the euro and is now widely regarded as "the father of the euro." 

Mundell, currently an economic consultant to China, is the originator of the suggestion that the International Monetary Fund should utilize Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, to replace the dollar as a new standard for holding foreign exchange reserves in international trade transactions. 

SDRs are international reserve assets calculated by the IMF in a basket of major currencies allocated to the IMF's 185 member nation-states in relation to the capital. The assets are largely in gold or widely accepted foreign currencies the members have on deposit with the IMF. 

As far back as June 2008, Mundell was telling Reuters a major dollar crisis would come within five years, and China was discussing with him proposals to reform the global monetary system. 

"There's no doubt about it that inside the Chinese government there's a lot of discussion going on," Mundell told Reuters. "I'm not sure how they're doing it, but I know they're going to get input from me." 

In the interview, Mundell went so far as to speculate the Chinese-recommended solution would involve the IMF. 

Aspiring to be the father of a global currency, Mundell has argued, "What you need to have is an International Monetary Fund that's going to take some of these excess dollars (such as held by China in foreign exchange reserves), put them into a substitution account inside the IMF or some other institution and then use that to create what is a new international currency." 

Mundell stressed to Reuters that such a proposal would be "very acceptable" to China. 

Optimum currency areas 

Mundell has argued for decades the proposition that nation-state currencies, including the dollar, need to give way to a new official world currency. 

According to Mundell, an "optimal currency area" is best defined by international free-trade areas and regional markets, not by nation-states such as the United States of America. 

Mundell's argument was that nation-states are not optimal currency areas because nation-state borders are artificial constraints imposed on the globe to create ethnic or historical divisions that do not necessarily represent how international markets operate. 

To understand the concept, Mundell cites former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker's frequently quoted dictum, "A global economy needs a global currency." 

"The benefits from a world currency would be enormous," Mundell argues on his website. 

G20 votes to fund global currency 

The G20 summit meeting in London last week, through the International Monetary Fund, took an important step to create a new global currency to replace the dollar as the world's foreign exchange reserve currency of choice. 

Appearing on Sean Hannity's Fox News Channel television show, political consultant Dick Morris and Hannity agreed the decision by the G20 proved the "conspiracy theorists were right" and there is now clear evidence of a plan to create a one-world currency. 

Point 19 of the final communiqué from the G20 summit in London April 2 specified, "We have agreed to support a general SDR which will inject $250 billion into the world economy and increase global liquidity," taking the first steps forward to implement China's proposal that Special Drawing Rights at the IMF should be created as a foreign exchange currency to replace the dollar. 

"I think the dollar is now under question," billionaire investor and political activist George Soros told CNBC, commenting that the goal was to create an IMF currency to use in international trade. 

Obama deficits frighten China 

China is clearly worried its massive holdings of U.S. dollars are at risk of devaluation, with the Obama administration projecting trillion-dollar deficits into the foreseeable future. 

At the beginning of this year, China's holdings of U.S. Treasury securities jumped to $739 billion, up dramatically from $535 billion in June 2008. 

On March 17, the Moscow Times published an article revealing the Kremlin attended to use the April G20 meeting in London to push for the IMF to utilize SDRs as "a super-reserve currency widely accepted by the whole of the international community." 

Then, a few days later, on March 24, the Financial Times in London reported China's central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan has proposed to utilize SDRs issued by the IMF as a world reserve currency. 

The coincidence of the two announcements gave the impression Moscow and Beijing had coordinated their efforts to undermine the dollar. 

The G20 final communiqué gave the strong impression the meeting adopted China's proposal. 

China's proposal called for the IMF to issue at least $250 billion in SDRs to IMF-member states as a method of placing a safety net under developing countries that might otherwise have to declare bankruptcy. 

International overdraft 

As Red Alert previously reported, the proposal originally advanced by China and Russia would issue SDRs to central banks of IMF member states far in excess of any gold or currency reserves the member states have on deposit with the IMF. 

The idea is to utilize the little-understood and largely ignored SDR's in a new capacity, as a sort of an international overdraft facility made available to bankrupt or financially failing IMF members originated with Ted Turner, formerly a senior official at both the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury. 

The IMF created SDRs in 1969 to support the Bretton Woods fixed–exchange-rate system. 

"The international supply of two key reserve assets – gold and the U.S. dollar – proved inadequate for supporting the expansion of world trade and financial development that was taking place," a a document on the IMF website explains. "Therefore, the international community decided to create a new international reserve asset under the auspices of the IMF." 

When the Bretton Woods fixed-rate system collapse, major world currencies, including the dollar, shifted to a floating exchange rate system where the price of the dollar and other major world currencies was created by trading on international currency exchanges. 

Until the current global economic crisis, SDRs issued by the IMF have been used by IMF members primarily as a reserve account to support international trade transactions, not as an alternative international currency available to settle international debt transactions in danger of default.

Israel's Growth Outpaces the World
Oct 17th, 2009
Daily Newsisraelnationalnews.com
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

The Central Bureau of Statistics has released the latest population figures for Israeli cities and towns. 

Israel’s population as of June 30, 2009 stood at nearly 7.43 million – nearly three-quarters of a percent more than it was at the end of 2008. Some 623,000 people (8.4%) live in rural villages and towns of fewer than 2,000 residents.

Israel's growth rate currently stands at an annual rate of approximately 1.5% - compared to 1.188% for the entire world in 2008.

The ranking of Israel’s 20 largest cities did not change. Jerusalem is still the largest city, with a population of 769,400, followed by Tel Aviv (393,200), Haifa (265,300), Rishon LeTzion (226,500), and Ashdod (210,500).

Jerusalem also grew by the largest amount – 5,800 people, just over three-quarters of a percent. It was followed by Petach Tikvah, Israel’s sixth-largest city, which added more than 2,000 more people (just over 1%) in the first half of 2009. 

The hareidi-religious city of Modi'in Illit, also known as Kiryat Sefer, jumped next-highest, by 1,800 people - a full 4.3% - to 43,500 people. 

Rounding out Israel's top ten cities are Be'er Sheva (up .032% in the first half of 2009), Netanya (.067), Holon (.064), and Bnei Brak (.091).

Only three cities dropped in population during the first half of 2009: Eilat, Tiberias, and Nazareth Illit, each by between 200 and 300 residents.

Growth in Judea and Samaria, Israel’s fastest-growing regions, continued to surpass that of the rest of the country, but slightly less so. Beitar Illit grew during the first half of 2009 by 2.9%, to a population of 35,700 residents, and Beit El grew by 3.7% to a population of 5,600.

Between 1995 and 2007, the population of Judea and Samaria grew by 107%, from 130,000 to 270,000 people - compared with 29% in the rest of the country. From 2005 until 2007, population growth in Judea and Samaria was three times higher than it was in the rest of Israel - 5% a year compared to 1.7%

Islamic Messiah At Center of Iranian Policy
Oct 17th, 2009
Daily Newswww.wnd.com
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel;Warning

Ahmadinejad's chief spiritual adviser is Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, known as "the Crocodile" for his rugged facial features and his hard-line orthodox religious views. 

Yazdi is the chief living authority on the Mahdi, the "Guided One," better known as the Twelfth Imam or the Hidden Imam. The belief in Shiite Islam is that Muhammad al-Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam in line of succession from the Prophet Muhammad, disappeared down a well in the 10th century A.D., going into "occultation," or hiding, until the appointed time to return. 

Shiite Muslims believing in the Mahdi maintain the Mahdi is a messianic figure who will return after an apocalypse to elevate Shiite Islam to the status of the only true religion, with the consequence that all false religions, including Sunni Islam, will be vanquished. 

A key distinction between Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims is that Shiite Muslims believe the legitimate authority over Islam must be established from within Prophet Muhammad's direct family line, whereas Sunni Muslims accept secular leadership, such as the caliphates that ruled Islam during the Ottoman Empire. 

Ayatollah Yazdi heads the Imam Khomeini Research and Learning Center in Qom, site of the Jamkaran well from which Shiite believers expect the Twelfth Imam will reappear. Yazdi has proclaimed that Ahmadinejad is the "chosen" of Imam Mahdi, the person designated to prepare the way for the Mahdi's second coming. 

Yazdi is also a member of the Assembly of Experts, the select group of clerics responsible for electing the supreme leader from within their ranks. When Ayatollah Khomeni died in 1989, the Assembly of Experts, then chaired by Rafsanjani, elected Ayatollah Khamenei to be the second supreme leader. 

The informal agreement at the time was that Khamenei would succeed Khomeni, with Rafsanjani becoming president. Key to putting this deal together was Ayatollah Yazdi's support for Khamenei. With his acknowledged years of learning, Ayatollah Yazdi qualifies to be ranked an imam, a distinction Ayatollah Khamanei does not share. Without Yazdi's support, Khamanei would never have been selected supreme leader. Today, Yazdi would have to be considered a possible future supreme leader himself, likely to succeed Khamenei. 

That Yazdi backed Ahmadinejad was a key factor determining Ahmadinejad's electoral victory over Rafsanjani in 2005. In the 2009 presidential election campaign, Rafsanjani was put on notice: during a televised debate with Mousavi, Ahmadinejad directly accused Rafsanjani of corruption, charging that Rafsanjani had enriched himself at the expense of the Iranian people. 

When Ayatollah Khamenei declared Ahmadinejad the winner of the 2009 election, despite protests of voter fraud from Mousavi, the warning was abundantly clear. The first mission would be for the Basij to root out and imprison or kill all known organizers of the street protests. The next mission, once Ahmadinejad was firmly in power and the election protests had been suppressed, would be for Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to turn on Rafsanjani and Mousavi to eliminate them as potential rivals in the future. 

Earlier in 2009, Yazdi lost a vote to Rafsanjani in a bid to become the head of the Assembly of Experts, the group that chooses Iran's supreme leader. Once the post-election protest is completely subdued and Ayatollah Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad have the opportunity to settle all scores against Mousavi and his supporters, another such contest with Rafsanjani may turn out very differently. 

Israel takes Ahmadinejad seriously 

Israeli military intelligence experts are convinced that Ahmadinejad's expressed religious devotion to the Mahdi is genuine. 

Equally, Israeli military intelligence takes seriously Ahmadinejad's repeated threats to destroy Israel. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs published in 2008 a detailed examination of Ahmadinejad's menacing public statements. The author, political scientist Joshua Teitelbaum, concluded that the intent of Ahmadinejad's numerous statements calling for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people was clear. 

"What emerges from a comprehensive study of what Ahmadinejad actually said – and how it has been interpreted in Iran – is that the Iranian president was not just calling for 'regime change' in Jerusalem, but rather the actual physical destruction of the State of Israel," Teitelbaum wrote. "When Ahmadinejad punctuates his speech with 'Death to Israel' (marg bar Esraiil), this is no longer open to various interpretations." 

As evidence for his conclusions, Teitelbaum published a photograph taken in a military parade in Tehran on Sept. 22, 2003, in which the Iranian regime displayed a Shahab 3 missile inscribed in Farsi with Ahmadinejad's famous statement that "Israel must be uprooted and wiped off [the pages] of history." 

Evaluating the impact of the image, Teitelbaum wrote, "By juxtaposing its call for Israel's elimination with a Shahab 3 missile during a military parade, the Iranian regime itself has clarified that these expressions about Israel's future do not describe a long-term historical process, in which the Israeli state collapses by itself like the former Soviet Union, but rather the actual physical destruction of Israel as a result of a military strike."

Dollar Loses Reserve Status to Euro, Yen
Oct 17th, 2009
Daily Newswww.nypost.com
Categories: Today's Headlines;Warning

Ben Bernanke's dollar crisis went into a wider mode yesterday as the greenback was shockingly upstaged by the euro and yen, both of which can lay claim to the world title as the currency favored by central banks as their reserve currency. 

Over the last three months, banks put 63 percent of their new cash into euros and yen -- not the greenbacks -- a nearly complete reversal of the dollar's onetime dominance for reserves, according to Barclays Capital. The dollar's share of new cash in the central banks was down to 37 percent -- compared with two-thirds a decade ago. 

Fed boss Ben Bernanke may be forced to raise rates in order to restore faith in the dollar — and help bring the euro and the yen back to earth.

Currently, dollars account for about 62 percent of the currency reserve at central banks -- the lowest on record, said the International Monetary Fund. 

Bernanke could go down in economic history as the man who killed the greenback on the operating table. 

After printing up trillions of new dollars and new bonds to stimulate the US economy, the Federal Reserve chief is now boxed into a corner battling two separate monsters that could devour the economy -- ravenous inflation on one hand, and a perilous recession on the other. 

"He's in a crisis worse than the meltdown ever was," said Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital. "I fear that he could be the Fed chairman who brought down the whole thing." 

Investors and central banks are snubbing dollars because the greenback is kept too weak by zero interest rates and a flood of greenbacks in the global economy. 

They grumble that they've loaned the US record amounts to cover its mounting debt, but are getting paid back by a currency that's worth 10 percent less in the past three months alone. In a decade, it's down nearly one-third. 

Economists believe the market rebellion against the dollar will spread until Bernanke starts raising interest rates from around zero to the high single digits, and pulls back the flood of currency spewed from US printing presses. 

"That's a cure, but it's also going to stifle any US economic growth," said Schiff. "The economy is addicted to the cheap interest and liquidity." 

Economists warn that a jump in rates will clobber stocks and cripple the already stalled housing market. 

"Bernanke's other choice is to keep rates at zero, print even more money and sell more debt, but we'll see triple-digit inflation that could collapse the economy as we know it. 

"The stimulus is what's toxic -- we're poisoning ourselves and the global economy with it."

2012 Forecast: Food Riots, Ghost Malls, Mob Rule, Terror
Oct 17th, 2009
Daily Newswww.wnd.com - Gerald Celente
Categories: Today's Headlines;Warning

A trends forecaster says the current economic "rebound" from last winter's Wall Street collapse of banks, insurance companies and automobile manufacturers is an artificial blip created by 'phantom money printed out of thin air backed by nothing." 

And Gerald Celente of TrendsResearch.com, says people right now should be bracing for "the greatest recession" which will hit worldwide and will mark the "decline of empire America." Crop failures could be among the minor concerns. 

"Here we are in 2012. Food riots, tax protests, farmer rebellions, student revolts, squatter diggins, homeless uprisings, tent cities, ghost malls, general strikes, bossnappings, kidnappings, industrial saboteurs, gang warfare, mob rule, terror," he writes for a quarterly publication that is available through subscription on his website. 

The recent surge in Wall Street indexes back to near the 10,000 level, still far below the 14,000 prior to the crash, should be no reassurance for anyone, he said. 

"There's no recovery. This is merely a cover-up," he said. "The market crashed in March of 2009 and around the world they papered over the damage from the collapse with phantom money printed out of thin air backed by nothing," he said. 

This is "much bigger" than an economic collapse, he said. "This is the decline of empire America." 

"Look what's happened to the dollar," he warned. "Gold prices are surging forward. That's the evidence. The rest that's coming from Washington and Wall Street is rhetoric." 

"This is the beginning of the greatest depression. We're telling our readers to take pro-active measures in anticipation of much worse to come," he said. 

USA Today says Celente "has a knack for getting the zeitgeist right," and CNBC says, "The man knows what he's talking about." 

The Wall Street Jounral has said, "Those who take their predictions seriously … consider the Trends Research Institute." 

He said during the Radio America/WND interview that retail sales this coming Christmas season will be the "real nail in the economic coffin." 

"The second American revolution has already begun; it just hasn't been announced yet by the mainstream media," he said. "Anybody waiting for hope to show up at the door with a big bag full of money is going to be in for a shock." 

Tim Barello in the Examiner noted that since 1980 Celente has made at least 40 accurate predictions about major world events, such as the 1987 stock market crash. 

"Throughout the 1990's, many other forecasts came true, including the collapse of the Soviet Union, surges in global terrorism, the popularity of spiritual and new age philosophies, public backlash against globalization, upsurges in online shopping, and the 1997 Asian financial crisis, to name a select few," he wrote. 

Now comes his forecast for a global depression and for the United States, "Obamageddon." 

"We want to make it very clear that the policies leading to the decline of 'Empire America' have been long in the making," Celente told Barello. "What has happened in the Obama administration is that they have taken policies far beyond even what Bush took with the TARP program; for example, with his stimulus package, with the buyouts, with the bailouts, the rescue packages, these are unprecedented in American history. 

"Never before has so much phantom money been printed out of thin air, backed by nothing, producing practically nothing," Celente continued. "You don't even have to be a student of history to know the outcome of this. All you have to do is have your eyes open, and start thinking for yourself." 

In his conversation with the Examiner, Celente warned with the "bubble" bursts, U.S. taxpayers will be slammed because, unlike during the dot-com bubble, the stock market bubble and the real estate bubble, they are stockholders in a long list of major companies. 

He forecasts the possibility of a civil war, and says if people want to see what Main Street America will look like, they should drive around Detroit. Look at all the blown out houses and empty neighborhoods. Look at the violence that's increasing.