Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

‘A True Warrior’: Soldier Fought in Afghanistan Before ‘horrific’ Death At Hands of London Terrorist
May 24th, 2013
Daily NewsThe Telegraph
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

MoD Crown CopyrightDrummer Lee Digby was run down by a car and murdered by two terrorists in London on Wednesday May 22, 2013.

LONDON — Drummer Lee Rigby was a loving father who only ever wanted to be a soldier and “live life and enjoy himself”, his family said last night.

The 25-year-old soldier, from Crumpsall, Manchester, was walking towards the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, south-east London, on Wednesday when he was run down by a car and murdered by two terrorists.

MoD Crown Copyright“He was a real character. Larger than life, he was at the heart of our Corps of Drums,” Drummer Rigby's commanding officer said.

A moving tribute from his family described how he was always there to protect his loved ones and played the “big brother” role to his sisters.

Since childhood all he had wanted to do was to be in the Army, it added.

Former colleagues also paid tribute to Drummer Rigby as a “true warrior” who had served with distinction in Afghanistan.

He was estranged from his wife of six years, Rebecca Metcalfe, and leaves a two-year-old son, Jack.

A statement on behalf of his family said: “Lee was lovely. He would do anything for anybody, he always looked after his sisters and always protected them. He took a ’big brother’ role with everyone.

“All he wanted to do from when he was a little boy, was to be in the Army. He wanted to live life and enjoy himself. His family meant everything to him. He was a loving son, husband, father, brother, and uncle, and a friend to many.

“We ask that our privacy be respected at this difficult time.”

Drummer Rigby’s colleagues from 2nd Bn The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, described him as one of its “great characters”. Lieutenant Colonel Jim Taylor, the commanding officer of the Second Fusiliers, led tributes to the “dedicated and professional soldier”, a talented parade drummer who performed outside the Royal Palaces and whose strong personality marked him out to work in Army recruitment.

Why An International Syria Conference Can’t Succeed
May 24th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

US Secretary of State John Kerry refuses to take no for an answer in his unremitting effort to get an international conference convened in Geneva for negotiating a political solution of the Syrian conflict in the first week of June.
He still has five hurdles to overcome.
1. The US administration has not formally bowed to Moscow’s stipulation that Iran be invited, but DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Washington sources report that both Moscow and Tehran know that, however reluctantly, the administration will give in on this point and Iran will take its seat at the table.
Those sources discern within the Obama administration two opposing camps on the question of Iran’s participation:
The Kerry school holds that, since Iran is part of the Syrian problem, it has to be part of the solution and invited to attend.
This view is challenged by the National Security Council, including former ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, which argues that inviting the Iranian government to the conference would endorse the Islamic Republic as a leading Middle East power. The US should therefore only accept Iranian representatives as part of the Syrian delegation.
A senior State Department official belatedly acknowledged Tuesday, May 21, that Iranian troops were in Syria fighting alongside forces loyal to President Bashar Assad and Hizballah elite combatants from Lebanon. (This was first disclosed by our sources in late February.)

Obama notices Hizballah in Syria two months late

Up until now, the Obama administration chose to keep the real events on the Syrian battlefield out of sight and mind, ignoring the deployment of two elite Hizballah brigades to Syria to fight for Assad.
It was only two months later, that President Barack Obama picked up the phone to Lebanese President Michel Suleiman Monday, May 20 and voiced his concern about the Shiite terrorist group’s interference in the Syrian civil war. Since March therefore, those Hizballah fighters have been moving back and forth between Lebanon and Syria with ease. Before then, they were employed in securing Syrian battle lines and Shiite areas against attack.
All that time, the US could have provided the Lebanese president with intelligence and logistical assistance for hampering the freedom of movement enjoyed by Hizballah’s fighting forces crossing the border.
But when did the Obama wake up?
The day after Hizballah pulled off the Assad regime’s greatest victory: the capture of the strategic northwestern Syrian town of Al-Qusayr which sits on the high road from Syrian Homs to the Hermel Mountains of Lebanon.
By default, US policy gave this Iranian proxy a battlefield success and left itself little option but to invite its Iranian master to the international conference on Syria’s future.

Assad’s price for attending: Recognition of his presidency

2. Our sources say that Assad has begun sorting out his delegation for the conference before finally deciding whether to attend.
He is holding out first for guarantees from Moscow and Tehran to champion his entitlement to a personal role in every political and diplomatic process initiated by the gathering, including a transitional administration, and his right to run for reelection as president in late 2014. Assad has been telling his associates that the laurels of his latest military victories should lift him back into the presidential palace not just through 2014, but beyond – at least until 2016.
Will the Obama administration swing around from its insistence on Assad’s exit far enough to swallow the Syrian ruler’s demands?
3. While divided on most other issues, the majority of rebel field commanders are opposed to the international conference. They are united in their loss of faith in the Obama administration, which stands accused of leaving the rebels in the lurch without weapons and, moreover, forcing Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE to cut down on their arms and funding assistance to the rebel cause.
At the most critical juncture of their uprising, the rebels found themselves pinned to the wall by superior forces heavily armed by Iran and Russia.
The Syrian rebels’ sense of being jilted by America will have far-reaching repercussions for Washington’s future credibility in the region, especially in the eyes of national and religious entities.

Rebel discord preys on conference expectations

Kerry is deeply concerned that the conference will be the platform for a public display of the rebel movement’s profound divisions. Some of the leaders will come to Geneva; others will make a big play of boycotting it.
The heavily reduced Friends of Syria meeting in Amman Wednesday, May 22, did nothing to allay his concern.
Two senior members of the Syrian National Coalition, which has won recognition as the dominant Syrian opposition group, said Tuesday, May 21, it will seek ironclad guarantees for Assad's departure as part of any transition deal and more weapons for rebel fighters. The group will hash out its position on the conference at a three-day General Assembly in Istanbul later this week.
4. Although Washington and Moscow might be expected to be of one mind on the Al Qaeda forces fighting in Syria and their Islamist pawns – and indeed they agree that there is no room for them at the international summit – yet unable to agree on how to handle the jihadis.
Al Qaeda’s fighting strength and weight in the Syrian conflict has been markedly bolstered by its combat performance and superior weaponry, as well as by Iraqi reinforcements.
(See a separate article on the migration of Al Qaeda fighters from Iraq to Syria).

US disengagement from Syria reduces its clout

However, unlike Moscow, the Obama administration is not ready to go to war on al Qaeda in Syria right now. And even if it were, Moscow would suspect US intervention of being geared to Assad’s ouster.
So, there is no real chance of the US and Russia getting together against al Qaeda.
This means that any accords negotiated at the international conference in Geneva - assuming it gets off the ground as planned in June – will be smashed as soon as they reach Syria by the Islamists at the forefront of the rebellion.
5. The rebels’ two leading allies, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have not yet made their intentions known about attending the conference. Our Gulf sources say they are watching to see if Iran is invited. If it is, they are unlikely to show their faces there.
Secretary Kerry will faces an uphill task in bringing US will to bear on the Geneva meeting at a time of America’s declining regional clout as a world power capable of dictating the course of events in Syria - especially after Washington cut back the commitments of Turkey, Israel and the Persian Gulf states to the Syrian opposition as well as Lebanon.
Moscow, Tehran, Damascus and Beirut, in contrast, maintain a strong and unified grip on events, capitalizing on Washington’s disengagement to promote their interests at the expense of the US and its allies.

Veteran Fears ‘Beginning of the End’ for Japan As Bond Market Buckles
May 24th, 2013
Daily NewsThe Telegraph
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Yields on 10-year Japanese bonds (JGBs) have doubled in a month and spiked dramatically to 1pc on Thursday, triggering a 7.3pc crash in the Nikkei stock index. It was the biggest one-day fall since the tsunami two years ago, comparable with wild moves seen at the height of the Asian crisis in 1998.

U.S. Military Fears Taking on Assad’s Troops in Drawn - Out Syrian War, Says Bob Carr
May 24th, 2013
Daily NewsABC News
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Senator Carr spoke with the refugees during a visit to their camp in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, on the border with Syria.

The refugees urged Senator Carr to back military intervention to bring the civil war in Syria to an end.

“Why doesn’t the outside world intervene to put an end to the killing in Syria?” one woman asked.

Senator Carr replied: “I think the big powers are afraid of getting involved in another war in an Islamic country. They’re afraid of that.

“They think it’ll be a drawn-out war of attrition, and I hear that not even the American armed forces want to take those risks with the strength of the Assad army.”

The women responded that even a world war would be better than what they have been living through.

“But isn’t what’s happening in Syria a war in itself?” one asked.

“The amputated children, the raped women – where is the humanitarian consideration?”

Tehran Shops for North Korean Nuclear Warheads
May 24th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

This coming weekend, US and Israeli intelligence eyes will be straining for a sight of a landmark event taking place in Pyongyang: A large Iranian delegation arriving May 26 on a shopping expedition for…nuclear bombs.
Brig. Gen. Ali-Reza Jannati of the Iranian air force will be heading the largest military delegation his government has ever sent to North Korea, including also a group of nuclear arms industry officials.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's exclusive US and Israeli military and intelligence sources, Tehran opened the bidding in two months of secret preliminary bargaining with an offer of $1 billion per nuke.
The high points covered by those talks and ready now for the final rounds are revealed here as follows:
1. Iran offered $4 billion for four complete nuclear bombs in operational condition. North Korea agreed to the deal in principle but not the price, and countered with an offer of just two operational nuclear bombs at $2 billion apiece
Western intelligence officials expect Iran to raise its bid to $5 billion for four bombs and North Korea to settle on that price for only three bombs.
2. Our intelligence sources open an astonishing window on the tensions North Korea ramped up recently with the US, Japan and South Korea, starting with the deployment in February of Masudan ballistic missiles in launch mode on its eastern coast, with threats to target the western United States.
It is now believed in Washington and Jerusalem that this show of muscle was part of Pyongyang’s sales pitch for Tehran. The Iranians demanded to see nuclear bombs operational and installed on missiles before taking the negotiations forward and clinching the deal.

Doubling up on the effort for an impressive nuclear arsenal

So why does Iran need the North Korean warheads if it already possesses the technology, materials, manpower and knowledge for assembling bombs on its own?
Speculation in US and Israeli intelligence experts monitoring the Iranian nuclear program is divided between three schools of thought:
a) One view is that the Iranian nuclear industry has run into technological problems which are holding up its timetable for assembling a bomb. Teheran suspects the Israeli Mossad or American CIA of planting flawed materials or components into its nuclear program for sabotaging its computer systems, so that when the bomb is assembled, it won’t work.
b) Another school of thought suspects Iran is cheating again. The Obama administration insists US intelligence is capable of pinning down the moment when Iran starts building a nuclear bomb, so that the US can exercise its military option.
But how would Washington’s calculus work if that moment never came, because Iran had gained possession of a complete nuke without going through the process of building one?
c). A third view holds that Ayatollah Khamenei plans to use the purchases from North Korea to fast-forward Iran’s progress toward an impressive nuclear arsenal.
Iran would manufacture two or three nuclear bombs itself and procure three or four more from Pyongyang, ending up with six or seven devices in short order.
A nuclear arsenal on this scale would place Iran on a much more elevated strategic footing than just a couple of nukes.

Syria: Assad Regime is Making Gains and ‘Planning a Major Push’
May 24th, 2013
Daily NewsThe Telegraph
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Opening Shots of Syrian - Iranian-hizballah War of Attrition on Israel
May 24th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

The ingathering of Syrian, Iranian and Hizballah military assets in one place for the Syrian conflict brought the three allied armies together in unique proximity for confronting the target of their collective odium – Israel.
This opportunity was seized on by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei when he issued his ukase for a step-by-step war of attrition to be launched against the Jewish state from the Golan and South Lebanon.
Syrian President Bashar Assad and Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah jumped on the opportunity. In no time, all three had coordinated their opening moves.
This dangerous offshoot of the Syrian war has been consistently brushed aside by Washington as inconsequential. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was urged to keep Israeli military responses low key. Most of all, he must not go for another major attack on Syria, like the May 5 air strike against military facilities on Mt. Qassioun.
To apply the brakes directly, President Barack Obama sent John Brennan, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, on a quick trip to Israel Thursday, May 16 to intercede with Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, and key IDF officials, and make sure they held their fire against the hitherto minor Syrian shooting attacks.
He argued that a cutting Israeli response would only ignite a major conflagration on the Israel-Syria border which no one needs. It would only serve the interests of Ayatollah Khamenei for promoting his candidates in the June 14 presidential election, and give Assad extra cards to play when his delegates attended the international conference for a political resolution of the Syrian conflict, which Washington and Moscow are struggling to get off of the ground in early June.
It turned out that the Brennan mission was just the chance Khamenei and Assad needed.

Minor Syrian attacks probe Israel’s readiness to fight back

On May 15, the day before the CIA director arrived in Israel, they kicked off the Middle East conflict to come by shelling an Israeli military post on Mt. Hermon.
Israel did not shoot back. And so the follow-up came five days later on May 20 with gunfire on an IDF patrol moving along the Golan border fence. The Syrian outpost kept shooting until the third round hit and damaged an IDF jeep. Damascus claimed the jeep was destroyed after crossing the border.
This time, Israeli artillery did respond with a Tamuz precision rocket which wiped out the Syrian position.
The answer came a few hours later in unexpected form.
Ibrahim al-Amin, editor of the Hizballah Beirut publication Al Akhbar and personal mouthpiece of Assad and Nasrallah, wrote the following: “The rope is taut. It is taut to the limit. Anyone at either end need only flex a finger and it will break, and the great confrontation will take place. This is neither a threat, nor an exaggeration or interpretation. It is not circling and maneuvering. This is the situation on the enemy's northern front now. Now means today; it means this hour.”
Obeying instructions from his masters in Damascus and Beirut, the editor went on to say: “In summary, Israel read – and was mistaken once more – that the opposite axis is weak and has lost the initiative. So it decided to play chess, but on a football field. It could serve the enemy to seek the virtual world, to go to Facebook and celebrate.
“But the situation in the real world, on the ground, and as Israel sees with its many eyes, indicates something different. The real equation is not that Israel's hands are free, but that the other side is ready, at any moment, to turn the situation upside down."

Reversing Mid East wheel, Iran attacks Israel

The Al Akhbar editor’s message was self-evident: The Mideast wheel has reversed direction: Instead of attacking Iran, Israel is under attack itself by Iran joined by its Syrian and Hizballah allies. In the Mideast of 2013, you don't send Notes or hold conferences or even formally declare war. You get your meaning across through an editorial lackey.
Publicly, Israeli officials continued to act as though the peril is still over the horizon, notwithstanding frequent disclosures by debkafile and DEBKA-Net-Weekly that it was already afoot.
On Tuesday, May 23, IDF chief, Gen. Gantz, warned Assad that bringing terror to the Golan would have consequences. He was still using the future tense although the “terror” was already at hand..
But away from the public eye, Israel’s policy-makers and strategists were treating the situation more realistically.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report that Netanyahu ordered the cancellation for high-ranking IDF officers of all vacations and trips abroad for supplemental training.
He has set up a war room in the prime minister’s office Jerusalem for daily meetings attended by senior ministers, including Defense Minister Ya'alon, and Home Front Defense Minister Gilad Erdan, along with top military officers. They receive intelligence updates on Iran, Syria and Lebanon before reviewing Israel’s next options.

The IDF projects a war escalating in five stages

A military assessment is before Israel’s highest decision-making forum, which predicts the war offensive unfolding in five escalating stages:
1. The rash of minor attacks already in progress on the Golan should be viewed as the opening, probing shots of the war to come.
2. The small arms and mortar fire the Syrian army has directed hitherto against Israeli military targets will rise in tempo and make way for rockets, especially anti-tank missiles, for inflicting the first casualties and substantial damage.
3. The assaults by Syrian troops and terrorist proxies, including missile fire, will spread next to civilian populations - not just on the Golan, but in Upper Galilee.
4. Syria and Hizballah will use the advanced air defense missiles Russia is sending Syria to try and down Israeli Air Force planes flying over Syria and Lebanon.
Tuesday, May 21, a senior Syrian minister, Halef al-Muftah, said Syria was ready to confront Israel. He told the Hizballah-owned Al Manar TV station: "We have strategic weapons. The Syrian Army is ready to answer any threat, the rules have changed,"
5. The firing across the Syrian-Israeli border will expand and start coming from Lebanon.
Clearly, the Obama administration’s concession of a breathing space for the Iranian presidential election is being freely abused by the Iranian and Syrian rulers to turn the Middle East on its head, starting with a round of aggression against Israel.

Khamenei counts his profits from bolstering Assad

Israeli intelligence believes Ayatollah Khamenei has calculated that his timeline for nuclear procrastination games with the West will not outlast 2014, after which Iran must prepare to face the music of military punishment from Israel and possibly the United States.
Having managed with Moscow’s aid to partially stabilize the Assad regime in Damascus, curtail the foreseeable prospects of a Syrian rebel recovery and made sure no helping hand to save them is forthcoming from the US or Arab friends, Tehran is convinced that launching a war of attrition on the Jewish state will further enhance the statures of Assad and Nasrallah.
The Syrian ruler will assume the mantle of the only Arab leader daring to take Israel on; Nasrallah, hailed as the key Shiite figure who stemmed the rise of American influence in the region on the backs of the Moslem Brotherhood, and who curtailed the increasingly unpopular “Arab revolt”
Two years ago, Khamenei could never have dreamt that Iran’s hand would hold the levers of two major conflicts challenging Israel, with the power to calibrate the level of violence according to Iranian interests, while at the same time witnessing the declining capacity of Israel’s armed forces, especially its air force.
In the Iranian ruler’s view, this harvest is the fruit of Iran’s massive military and financial investment - plus the bulk of Hizballah’s fighting strength - in the campaign for Bashar Assad’s survival.
It also puts the Islamic Republic in a position of vantage for facing its enemies when the major accounting comes.

Let the Headlines Speak
May 24th, 2013
Daily NewsFrom the Internet
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Hague: Time Running Out for a 'Two-State Solution'
"The prospects of a two-state solution cannot be kept alive forever as the situation changes," he told reporters in Ramallah, according to the AFP news agency. "The two-state solution does not have much longer, there is not much more time in which it could be brought about," he emphasized.  

PM to Kerry: Let's Get Talks With PA Going
At a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Thursday morning, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that Israel was very interested in reopening negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. A spokesperson in the Prime Minister's office said that the discussions were “positive,” and that Israel had urged Kerry to do what he could to convince the PA to return to the negotiating table.  

What's up in space STORM WARNING
A CME propelled into space by the M5-class explosion of May 22nd is expected to deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field on May 24th. NOAA forecasters estimate a 55% chance of polar geomagnetic storms when the cloud arrives. 

Boy Scouts approve plan to accept openly gay boys
After lengthy and wrenching debate, local leaders of the Boy Scouts of America have voted to open their ranks to openly gay boys for the first time, but heated reactions from the left and right made clear that the BSA's controversies are far from over. The Scouts' longstanding ban on gay adults remains in force, and many liberal Scout leaders...plan to continue pressing for an end to that exclusion...  

War against terrorism must end, Barack Obama says
In a major speech to military and political leaders, Mr Obama said the US could not wage "a boundless global war on terror" but must face a new reality where threats come from regional jihadists and home-grown extremists. "Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organisations must continue. But this war, like all wars, must end," Mr Obama said. "That's what history advises. That's what our democracy demands."  

Biden: Gun control to wait for immigration
Joe Biden on Monday acknowledged what everyone involved in gun control has been saying privately for weeks: Any votes for expanded background checks must wait at least through the summer while the Senate debates immigration reform. Biden offered the White House timeline to a group of about 20 representatives from faith-based organizations, three people who attended the meeting told POLITICO. The vice president’s words mark the first time the White House has revealed a timeline that has been widely discussed among gun control advocates and senior aides to senators who are pushing background checks.  

7.4-magnitude earthquake strikes off Tonga
The quake hit at 5.19 am local time (2249 IST yesterday), and was centred 282 kilometres southwest of Tonga's capital Nuku'alofa and 171 kilometres deep. It was followed four hours later by a second powerful 6.6 tremor 84 kilometres northwest of the town and 103 kilometres deep. "A destructive tsunami was not generated based on earthquake and historical tsunami data," the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said of each quake.  

M8.3 earthquake hits Sea of Okhotsk, Russia
M 8.3 earthquake hits Sea of Okhotsk, Russia today, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. Following Russian news agencies, tremors lasted for about five minutes in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on the Kamchatka peninsula. Several residential buildings and schools were evacuated. -Tremors were also felt in Moscow. The Agency of Hydrometeorological and Environmental monitoring said very weak tremor with MMI I was felt in Moscow. Tremors are rare in Moscow.  

US could see seven to 11 hurricanes in 'active' season
US weather forecasters have predicted an unusually active Atlantic hurricane season of seven to 11 hurricanes. There is a 70% chance 13-20 named storms will form, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. This is above the average of 12 named storms, including six hurricanes, in the six-month season beginning in June.  

CA earthquake today 2013
M 5.7 strong earthquake shakes California today, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the quake's epicenter was located 11km (7mi) WNW of Greenville and 43km (27mi) SW of Susanville. It was 1 km deep.  

Analysis: Sinai is becoming a major threat to Egypt
There was a happy ending for the six policemen and the soldier kidnapped last week in the Sinai Peninsula. They were released unhurt after marathon negotiations that lasted until dawn Wednesday between a representative of military intelligence, a Salafi sheikh and a representative of the Swarka tribe, one of the largest in the peninsula.  

Holder signed warrant to seize Fox reporter's private email
Attorney General Eric Holder personally signed off on the search warrant that named Fox News reporter James Rosen as a potential criminal "co-conspirator," a law enforcement official told NBC News on Tuesday. That controversial warrant, revealed for the first time earlier this week, enabled federal law enforcement officials to seize Rosen's private emails as they sought to determine who leaked the journalist confidential intelligence about North Korea.  

Clashes in Lebanon feed fear of Syria spillover
Lebanese supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad fired heavy machine guns and lobbed mortar shells at each other Thursday in some of the worst fighting in the port city of Tripoli in years.  

Syria crisis: Government 'to attend Geneva conference'
Russia says Damascus has agreed "in principle" to attend an international conference on the Syria crisis set to be held in Geneva in June. Its foreign ministry said the Syrian government would participate "in order for Syrians themselves to find a political path to a solution".  

Japan's Great Economics Experiment Is Facing Its First Real Test
This week's turbulence in Tokyo markets exposes a key risk of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's all-in strategy to revive Japan's economy - if investor confidence falters, the government and the Bank of Japan may be left with few options to turn the tide.

Israel Gearing Up for ‘Surprise War’ With Syria If Assad Falls – General
May 24th, 2013
Daily NewsRT
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Four Signs That We’re Back in Dangerous Bubble Territory
May 24th, 2013
Daily NewsTrunews
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

As the global equity and bond markets grind ever higher, abundant signs exist that we are once again living through an asset bubble – or rather a whole series of bubbles in a variety of markets. This makes this period quite interesting, but also quite dangerous.

With equity and bond markets at or near all-time record highs, with all financial assets consistently shrugging off bad – or worse – news as the riskiest of assets continue to find consistent upward bids, we find ourselves in familiar and bubbly territory.

I can summarize my thoughts in one sentence:  How could this be happening again so soon?

In times past, it took one or more generations between bubbles for people to financially recover and forget the painful lessons before they would consider doing it all again. Yet here we are, working our way through our third set of bubbles in less than two decades, which must be some sort of world record.

I will confess to my biases right up front: I have always been deeply skeptical of both the practice of running up debts at a faster pace than income (the common practice of the entire developed world over the past several decades) and the idea that the solution to too much debt is more debt, enabled by cheaper money courtesy of thin-air money printing.

Here are the four things that convince me that we are in truly bubbly territory:

Sign #1: Junk Bond Prices at Record Highs

The Fed, et al., have been buying up all of the 'safe' bonds, with the twin intents of driving down interest rates and chasing investors into riskier assets. With lower yields comes (hopefully) more borrowing; and when investors move towards riskier assets, this drives up the equity markets – which, as the thinking goes, will paint a rosier picture of the economy plus boost consumer confidence and spending.

Along with this, however, we find speculators and investors, starved for yield, chasing the junkiest of the junk.

Indeed, the prices of these "assets" have recently been driven to all-time record highs, which means that their yields have hit record lows.

And not just "low" prices, but a brand new record low in all of financial history.

Sign #2: Junk Sovereign Debt Being Chased to New Highs

It was just over a year ago when Greece ten-year debt was yielding a whopping 30%, reflecting the poor economic fundamentals of the country and concern that the European Central Bank (ECB) might stop loaning Greece the principal and interest payments needed to prevent another default.

Oh yes, and let's not forget that just a year prior, more than $130 billion had been lost by Greek bond investors, which created a ripple effect across Europe, including recently crippling Cyprus' key banks.

Today? Greek ten-year debt is under 10%.

Sign #3: It's Not Official Until It's Denied

The poster child for a bubble market has to be Japan, where the main stock index of the island nation, the Nikkei, is up an astonishing 70% in the past six months (!) in a vertical index rise that is well outside of our personal experience:

This isn't some penny stock, but the entire stock index for the world's third largest economy. Of course, the 'reason' for this rise centers on the actions the Bank of Japan is taking to debase its currency. The people of Japan are realizing that they cannot trust their cash and had better put it to use somewhere besides their bank accounts before its purchasing power is drained away.

After such an obviously unstable spike in the market, what's left to do but officially deny that it's in a bubble?

If something is not official until it's denied, then the Japanese stock market is most definitely in a bubble. It should be noted that there are similar examples of stock indexes making new highs on bad news and weak fundamentals the world over, so we're not just picking on Japan alone here.

Sign #4: Making Up Crazy Excuses

My final sign of that we are in bubble territory is when the folks who consider it their job to make sense of the high and spiking prices offer up thin, sometimes stretched-to-the-breaking-point, rationalizations for why the current price action make sense.

In the late 1990s, when the third most recent Fed bubble was cooking along, stratospherically valued technology shares were justified with strange metrics such as 'impressions' and 'eyeballs' and other contorted valuations contained in no standard finance methodologies.

In the 2000s, when the second most recent Fed bubble was cooking along, housing prices were justified with trite slogans such as "they're not making any more land, you know" and bizarro claims that housing had never gone down in price over time – which it most certainly had.

Today is no different. We're seeing the same sorts of 'explanations' to justify high prices fueled by central bank printing. Perhaps the central cheerleader for the benefits of perpetuating central banking policy errors is Paul Krugman, who recently swept aside arguments for an equity bubble by saying something that Irving Fisher might recognize:

Central Banks are Stuck on a Money Printing Treadmill
May 24th, 2013
Daily NewsThe Telegraph
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Boy Scouts Overturn Ban on Gay Members
May 24th, 2013
Daily NewsTrunews
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Delegates to the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) Thursday (May 23) approved new membership guidelines which open the ranks of the organization to homosexual members. Young men who openly claim to be homosexual may now participate as Scouts.

The decision, the BSA leadership said in a statement, was based on “growing input from within the Scouting family.” That input led to a national review of policy, or a “comprehensive listening exercise,” resulting in a resolution to remove the restriction “denying membership to youth on the basis of sexual orientation alone.”

Some 1,400 delegates to the National Council approved the change in membership standards by a margin of 61-39 percent, but changes to the adult leadership policy of the organization, which forbids homosexual Scout leaders, was not up for vote and remains in place. Rules on sexual misconduct, heterosexual and homosexual, also remain in place for Scouts and Scout leaders.

John Stemberger, who has waged a national campaign to keep the ban on homosexual Scouts in place through the website OnMyHonor.net, said the “most influential youth organization in America had turned a sad corner.”

Al Qaeda’s Entire Iraqi Fighting Strength Migrates to Syria
May 24th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Al Qaeda’s entire organization in Iraq, from commander Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi down to rank-and-file terrorists, has migrated lock stock and barrel to Syria, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's exclusive counterterrorism sources report.
This counts as the biggest transfer of a complete al Qaeda branch from one country or war zone to another in recent years. The 2,000-strong Iraq contingent linked up at once with the Islamist Jabhat al-Nusra spearheading the rebel forces in Syria. It completed the merger earlier announced by Baghdadi, as DEBKA-Net-Weekly 583 first revealed on April 9, when he dubbed the Nusra Front “Al Qaeda in Syria.”
At the time, many Western intelligence experts questioned the credibility of that announcement, asserting that the Jabhat al Nusra leader Abu Mohammed al-Gonai would not accept a merger, for fear it compromised the organization’s fight to overthrow the Assad regime and discouraged would-be Muslim volunteers from joining.
Our counterterrorism sources stuck to their guns, certain that the merger was not a local Iraqi initiative but originated in superior al Qaeda ranks, possibly even from top leader, Ayman al Zawahiri. This week,t he merger turned out to have gone through and laid the groundwork for the consolidation of the Iraqi and Syrian branches in one place.

Al Qaeda snatches its first oil field

It also turned out that the jihadist organization’s agenda for Syria is altogether separate from the objectives of all the other parties involved in the civil war, including the US, Russia, Iran and Hizballah.
We have learned that Iraqi Al Qaeda operatives moved out of the Anbar region of western Iraq and marched along the banks of the Euphrates River up to the Deir al-Zor region in eastern Syria.
This region, where the Syrian border intersects with Iraq and Jordan, is almost completely under Jabhat al Nusra’s thumb.
It is there that the Islamists have installed weak local government and taken over the regional economy to generate sources of revenue. Indeed, Syrian al Qaeda has amazingly seized control of the eastern oil fields of Syria and is preparing to open the taps and start sending Syrian oil to market by means of Iraqi traders.
Nowhere in the Middle East, or anywhere else in the world, does an al Qaeda branch command a producing oil field.
The ramifications reach into five aspects of the Syrian war and its overspill into Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Iraq.

Poised for terror and a counterweight for Hizballah

1. Jabhat al Nusra, already the most effective and best-armed fighting force of Syria’s rebel movement, has been massively reinforced by the influx of Iraqi al Qaeda bearing heaps of weapons and cash.
2. The concentration of fresh fighting strength in eastern Syria will make that region a platform for launching jihadist terrorist attacks on Israel and Jordan.
3. Experienced in the most violent multiple terrorist operations, the Iraqi Islamists are expected to step up major attacks on Syrian cities controlled by Assad’s army, as well as activating clandestine al Qaeda cells in Jordanian towns.
4. Al Qaeda shook the dust of Iraq from its boots after accomplishing its long-held mission of fomenting a Shiite-Sunni civil war in that country. Now that the Shiite-led government in Baghdad and the Sunni minorities of central and Western Iraq are at each other’s throats and sectarian violence increases day by day, al Qaeda strategists have decided it is time to turn to another front.
5. The entry of Iraqi Al Qaeda forces into Syria should counterbalance the insertion of Shiite Hizballah brigades from Lebanon into the Syrian conflict – both in terms of numbers and operational capabilities.