Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

Let the Headlines Speak
Oct 29th, 2012
Daily NewsFrom the Internet
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Could 'Frankenstorm' be a sign from God?
America’s eastern seaboard is in a state of emergency, stocking up on food and battening down the hatches as it anticipates a ferocious weather event some insurance companies would refer to as “an act of God.” But could the “Frankenstorm” – the feared combined forces of a wintery land storm with Hurricane Sandy – actually be a message from the Almighty?

4.2 earthquake hits Central California wilderness
The U.S. Geological Survey reported that the temblor occurred at 9:25 p.m. The epicenter was five miles northwest of Pinnacles and 13 miles northeast of Soledad. The Pinnacles National Monument is a vast wilderness area containing a rock formation left by an extinct volcano. The San Andreas fault runs through the region and seismic activity is frequent. There were no immediate reports of injury or damage.

Daily Humiliation Continues: 18 Rockets since Midnight
"At least 18 rockets were fired at Israeli territory, without causing injuries or damage," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP, saying the count was from midnight.

Iraq stops Syria-bound jet
In a second time this month, Baghdad stops an Iranian cargo plane heading to Syria, allowing it to leave after ensuring that it is not carrying weapons

Christianity struggling to return to eastern Turkey
Turkey is home to one of the oldest Christian populations in the world, the Suriyani, who fled during recent conflict. In the last few years they’ve been returning, but problems with their resettlement are apparent.

Daily Humiliation Continues: 18 Rockets since Midnight
"At least 18 rockets were fired at Israeli territory, without causing injuries or damage," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP, saying the count was from midnight.

Millions across East Coast brace for 'Superstorm' Sandy, while transit systems close and supplies fly off shelves
As of 5 a.m. Monday, the storm was centered about 385 miles southeast of New York City, moving to the north at 14 mph, with hurricane-force winds extending an incredible 175 miles from its center. The National Hurricane Center said early Monday the storm has intensified, with top sustained winds of 85 mph and higher gusts.

8 minor quakes jolt Surigao del Norte town in a day
Eight earthquakes, many of which occurred within an hour of each other, were recorded east of Burgos town in Surigao del Norte on Sunday, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said.

Has General Ham Been Fired?
Has General Carter F. Ham, commander of U.S. Africa Command, been fired for defying Leon Panetta on Benghazi? Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, ran a piece Saturday afternoon titled "Interesting Rumor Concerning General Carter Ham and Stand Down Order." This piece is presented as a rumor. It suggests that General Ham was told to stand down from sending aid to Benghazi, that General Ham on his own decided to proceed, and that he was then relieved of his command.

Bill Clinton told Hillary To Resign, US Arming ‘Syrian Rebels’ With Ties To Al Queda
Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, came forward to “take responsibility overall” for the attacks at Benghazi, but per Ed Klein we now know behind the scenes Bill Clinton advised his wife to resign over the possible criminal fallout of the Benghazi massacre.

Disengagement General: Stop Carrying Gaza on Our Back
Oct 29th, 2012
Daily NewsINN - Gil Ronen
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Maj. Gen. (res.) Dan Harel said Monday that it is time for Israel to stop bearing the responsibility for the humanitarian condition in Gaza.

Harel, who was Head of Southern Command during the 2005 "Disengagement" from Gaza, told IDF Radio that before taking other measures to solve the rocket problem, the basic "equation of relations" between Israel and Gaza needs to be changed.

"We carry Gaza on our backs," he said. "I do not know if Israeli are aware of this, but we supply Gaza with all of its needs. We supply it with electricity, we supply it with water."

"The situation today is absurd," he added. "They fire rockets at us from Gaza and in response, we supply them with water and electricity. This absurd has to stop."

He said that the blockade of Gaza needs to be lifted. In this way, he said, Israel will not be responsible for the humanitarian situation there.

He did not explain how Israel would prevent heavy rockets and other munitions from entering Gaza, if the blockade is lifted.

Harel has said, after his release from the IDF, that the "Disengagement," as the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza was called, was a mistake.

Daily Humiliation Continues: 18 Rockets Since Midnight
Oct 29th, 2012
Daily NewsINN - Gil Ronen
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Gaza terrorists fired 18 rockets at southern Israel Monday, with the armed wing of the ruling Hamas movement saying it was revenge after an IAF air raid killed one of their men.

"At least 18 rockets were fired at Israeli territory, without causing injuries or damage," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP, saying the count was from midnight.

Monday's barrage of rocket fire followed hot on the heels of two late-night Israeli air strikes which did not cause any injuries, Arab sources said.

Although Hamas's Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades did not say how many rockets it had fired, it named at least five locations in southern Israel where it claimed it had targeted "military sites" – Sufa, Kissufim, Beeri, Yad Mordechai and Nahal Oz. All five locations are civilian communities. No casualties or damage were reported.

The terror group also posted a grainy video on their website which appeared to show terrorist launching nine rockets in the early morning.

"This shelling was in response to the continuous Zionist bombing and terrorizing of peaceful citizens, which most recently killed Suleiman Kamel al-Qara, as well as in response to the repeated incursions and attacks carried out by the occupation," the group said referring to one of its own terrorists.

Celente - It’s not Just Germany’s Gold That’s Missing
Oct 29th, 2012
Daily NewsKing World News - Gerald Celente - (excerpts)
Categories: Commentary;Contemporary Issues

It has been reported that Germany's entire store of gold reserves is missing. In an interview renowned futurist, Gerald Celente has revealed that a fiscal collapse is imminent.

 “It’s not only Germany (who’s gold is missing), it’s the United Sates, it’s all of the countries. Nobody knows what’s in Fort Knox. They won’t let anybody in. Where’s the gold in the United States? How come we can’t go in and look in Fort Knox?”

“How come the people can’t have a reading? How come we can’t look at it? How come politicians can’t get in there? How come no one can get in there? The gold does not exist. All this does is confirm what so many of us already know, ‘The Emperor has no gold.’

Celente also added: “What do they keep doing over in China? They keep lowering interest rates, keep dumping money into the economy to keep juicing it. Look at the news coming out of the European Central Bank, ‘Indefinite buying up of worthless bonds.’ Where are they getting the money from?

The more they print, the more the currency becomes debased and devalued. Look what’s going on in the United States, neither of the candidates are talking about the fiscal cliff. There’s no end in sight of the damage that’s going to be wrought from the failing economies. They are failing around the world.

You keep going around the world, only a couple of million people taking to the streets in Spain, Portugal, Greece, virtually every week. They have no food, no houses, no nothing, thrown out into the streets. The banks have no money. All they are doing is printing more digital money and keeping this Ponzi scheme going. Can’t people see what’s going on? The entire financial system is collapsing.”

Analysis: Euro Zone Ponders Best Path to
Oct 29th, 2012
Daily NewsReuters
Categories: Today's Headlines;Revived Roman Empire

In the rich lexicon of Brussels acronyms, a new treasure has entered the vocabulary since June: GEMU.

It stands for Genuine Economic and Monetary Union, a term used in the conclusions of the last two European Union summits in a tacit acknowledgement that the single currency created by the 1992 Maastricht Treaty was flawed and woefully incomplete.

It also signals that Europe's leaders are starting to shift their focus from fingers-in-the-dike crisis management to save the euro to a longer-term process of building a more robust, storm-resistant architecture for the currency area.

The aim is to bolt onto the existing governance structures more binding fiscal discipline, common banking supervision and resolution, more effective economic policy coordination and greater democratic oversight of euro zone policymaking.

The battle over the nature of a revamped GEMU will be a long and incremental affair.

"We are not looking at a 'big bang' moment for the euro zone, a sudden mutation that would transform it into a completely different beast," European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, who is leading the reform exercise, said last week.

At least three competing visions of the future are in play and the central battleground is the trade-off between more financial burden-sharing and more pooling of sovereignty.

For the sake of simplicity, let's call the alternatives NOMU, OLDMU and NEWMU, although in typical EU style, the outcome is likely to be a muddled combination of all the options.

NOMU

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europe's most powerful leader, wants more central control over national budgets and economic reforms, with a small new euro zone "solidarity fund" to reward compliance and cushion the impact of painful changes.

Merkel has doggedly opposed any sharing of the debts and liabilities of euro zone governments or their banks, whether by a debt redemption fund, common euro zone bond issuance, a common bank deposit guarantee or retroactive direct recapitalization of bailed-out banks by the euro zone's rescue fund.

Her public position on the euro's future can best be described as NOMU - no mutualisation. It is shared by the Dutch and Finns, fellow AAA-rated north European creditor countries.

Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen sees it as a moral issue. "In Finland, people ask 'is it right that we have to pay the bill come from other countries' politicians' mistakes'. It's easy to understand that it isn't fair."

Merkel has not ruled out the possibility of common eurobonds in the distant future at the end of a long process of fiscal and economic integration. Many EU officials believe she will be more open to burden-sharing solutions after next September's German general election.

But for now she wants far stricter discipline up front, symbolized by Germany's proposal for a euro zone "Sparkommissar" - a super-commissioner with the power to veto national budgets.

Bundesbank board member Andreas Dombret couched the German stance in quasi-religious terms, telling an audience in Dublin that a euro zone banking union must not "cover past sins", for example by taking on some of the Irish government's bank debt.

"Anything else would amount to a fiscal transfer."

However, many analysts believe Merkel will have to take some bigger step towards fiscal transfers or debt mutualisation to win French acceptance of more intrusive EU supervision of national budgets and economic reforms.

"NOMU won't fly with France," said Jean Pisani-Ferry, head of the Bruegel economic think-tank in Brussels. "I don't think the Germans will manage to impose a right of veto on budgets without a trade-off for euro bonds.

"This may be what Angela Merkel wants, but it's not what she will get."

OLDMU

Not all Germans take such a black-and-white view. The Berlin government's council of economic advisers has proposed creating a temporary redemption fund that would issue common euro zone bonds to help countries pay off their excessive debt stock beyond the EU treaty limit of 60 percent.

This could be dubbed OLDMU - mutualising legacy debts and liabilities.

It would help heavily indebted countries such as Greece, Italy and Ireland, but also potentially France and Germany, to get back to a sustainable debt level over 15 to 20 years, while each country would remain liable for its own new borrowing.

French President Francois Hollande embraced this version of common euro zone bonds, which some experts see as compatible with recent German constitutional court rulings because it does not create permanent transfers.

One EU official joked that this was a Catholic approach - granting sinners absolution - which would not work in mostly Protestant northern Europe.

Another form of OLDMU would involve allowing the euro zone's permanent rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism, to inject capital directly into banks that have been rescued by bailed-out governments in Ireland and Spain.

That would permit Dublin and Madrid to remove the bank debt from their state balance sheets, making it easier for Ireland to return to capital markets next year, and for Spain to retain market access without requiring a sovereign bailout.

However, Merkel has so far ruled out either a debt redemption fund or retroactive direct recapitalization of banks.

NEWMU

An alternative approach favored by many economists and the more federalist politicians would be to focus on pooling new borrowing by creating a common euro zone debt agency that would issue bonds on behalf of member states up to a permitted quota.

Governments would either be banned from issuing debt above that limit, or would have to do so on a national guarantee, ensuring they would face market discipline.

This NEWMU option - mutualising new liabilities but not legacy debts - is favored by the executive European Commission but has been explicitly ruled out by the German constitutional court and would hence require Berlin to change its Basic Law.

It would also create a permanent handicap race, where some countries had lead in their running shorts due to the burden of old liabilities for sovereign and bank debt.

Cleaning up Spanish banks hit by a burst real-estate bubble is set to cost some 4 percent of gross domestic product - not a huge addition to the national debt unless liabilities spiral.

But Ireland's taxpayers have taken on liabilities equivalent to 40 percent of GDP, a massive burden that will weigh on the economy for a generation unless EU authorities provide some relief.

The EU official, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak in public, calls NEWMU a very Protestant road to salvation. Every country starts with its original sins.

240 Ethiopian Immigrants Arrive in Israel on 'Dove's Wings'
Oct 29th, 2012
Daily NewsINN - Rachael Hirshfeld
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

A charter flight carrying approximately 240 new immigrants from Ethiopia is scheduled to arrive at Ben-Gurion Airport on Monday.

The flight is the first of a series of monthly flights planned as part of Operation Dove’s Wings, a government initiative to speed up the place of aliyah and bring the remainder of the Falash Mura, members of the Ethiopian Jewish community who were forcibly converted to Christianity during the 19th and 20th centuries, to Israel.

The Jewish Agency’s Ibim Absorption Center in the Negev is set to reopen in order to accommodate a number of the new immigrants. The rest will be spread among an additional 16 absorption centers throughout Israel operated by the Jewish Agency and the Absorption Ministry.

The 17.5-million-shekel operation is scheduled to be completed by October 2013.

The flight will be welcomed by a host of dignitaries, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Jewish Agency head Natan Sharansky, Minister of Immigrant Absorption MK Sofa Landver and Jewish Agency Board of Directors chairman James S. Tisch.

The ceremony, which will take place in Tel Aviv, will include participation of Jewish leaders and philanthropists from Israel and around the world.