Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

‘Not Everything Has a Solution’
Jun 28th, 2013
Daily NewsINN - Maayana Miskin
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Trying to force a solution to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinian Authority and Hamas would be dangerous, Minister of Economics Naftali Bennett warned in a new interview with Arutz Sheva.

“In Oslo, they thought they had found a solution to an intractable problem… When they tried to force a solution, it led to more than 1,000 people being killed,” he said, referring to Israeli victims of PA terrorism in the years that followed the Oslo Accords.

“We have to understand that not everything has a solution. There’s a tendency towards ‘solutionizing,’ and – no. Not everything can be solved,” he stated.

“We’re in a complex neighborhood. Iran is taking over the field. There’s Syria, Lebanon and Gaza, and only Israel cuts through that Islamic crescent.

“What makes our lives here possible can be summed up in two words, ‘Be strong.’ Be economically strong, be strong in values. If we will be strong, we will survive here,” he declared.

Bennett confirmed that the government is heading toward negotiations with the PA. “Let them talk as much as they want. When they bring peace in a basket, then we’ll talk,” he said.

“We knew what government we were getting into. In the opposition we would have had no influence,” he said.

The planned negotiations will have limits meant to protect Israel, he continued, “The parameters here are that we are not paying any price just to negotiate, and that negotiations on various issues will be simultaneous. Not borders first, then recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.”

Unlike MK Danny Danon, Bennett said he believes Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu means what he has said about the “two-state solution.” Netanyahu thinks the least bad option for Israel is an unarmed PA-led Arab state alongside Israel, he explained. “He thinks there will ultimately be a solution.”

Bennett has suggested his own plan, a “calming plan” rather than a peace plan, aimed at “allowing us to live with the conflict.” Part of the plan is the annexation of Area C, the part of Judea and Samaria under Israeli control, and the granting of citizenship to the 40,000 Arabs in the area.

U.K. Bans Yet Another U.S. Media Star
Jun 28th, 2013
Daily NewsWND
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Pamela Geller

WND columnist Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, co-founders of Stop Islamization of America, have been banned from entering the U.K. because, the government says, their presence “is not conducive to the public good.”

Geller and Spencer were scheduled to speak in Woolwich June 29 at a memorial for Lee Rigby – the soldier who was brutally murdered May 22 by at least two Muslim men armed with a cleaver and a knife. After beheading Rigby, the men reportedly boasted of the murder in the streets.

BBC News reported a government spokesman said visitors whose presence “is not conducive to the public good” could be excluded by the home secretary.

He added: “We condemn all those whose behaviors and views run counter to our shared values and will not stand for extremism in any form.”

Geller, who runs the Atlas Shrugs blog, and Spencer, of Jihad Watch, are also executive directors of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, known for its “Defeat Jihad” poster campaign in New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

On their blogs, the two posted a letter from the British Home Office issuing the ban.

“I have been banned in Britain,” Geller wrote. “My crime? My principled dedication to freedom. I am a human rights activist dedicated to freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and individual rights for all before the law. I fiercely oppose violence and the persecution and oppression of minorities under supremacist law. I deplore violence and work for the preservation of freedom of speech to avoid violent conflict.

“I have never been convicted of any crime. I have never been arrested. I became a writer and activist in the wake of 9/11.

“For this I am banned. I shed no tears. I am banned from Mecca, too.”

See the truth, about Islam and other topics, in Geller’s “Stop the Islamization of America,” “The Ground Zero Mosque” and “The Post-American Presidency.”

At Jihad Watch, Spencer wrote, “In a striking blow against freedom, the British government has banned us from entering the country. Muhammad al-Arifi, who has advocated Jew-hatred, wife-beating, and jihad violence, entered the U.K. recently with no difficulty. In not allowing us into the country solely because of our true and accurate statements about Islam, the British government is behaving like a de facto Islamic state. The nation that gave the world the Magna Carta is dead.”

According to BBC News, the Home Affairs Select Committee had called for the bloggers to be banned from the U.K. Chairman Keith Vaz said, “I welcome the home secretary’s ban on Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer from entering the country. This is the right decision. The U.K. should never become a stage for inflammatory speakers who promote hate.”

The English Defence League, which invited Geller and Spencer to its event, blasted the decision. Leader Tommy Robinson said, “It’s embarrassing for this so-called land of democracy and freedom of speech.”

“How many hate preachers are living in this country? It just shows what sort of a two-tier system we have here.”

Meanwhile a group called Hope Not Hate had campaigned to stop Geller and Spencer from entering the U.K.

Hope Not Hate researcher Matthew Collins told BBC News he was “delighted” with the decision to ban the two.

“These two are among some of the most extreme anti-Muslim activists in the world. They’ve nothing to contribute to life in this country,” he said. “They’re not here to contribute to good community relations. They only wanted to come here and help the EDL stir up more trouble. Britain doesn’t need more hate even just for a few days.”

In her Tuesday WND column, Geller wrote:

“Imagine: The country of the Magna Carta Libertatum, or the Great Charter of the Liberties of England, would consider banning two human rights activists whose body of work is founded on the freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and individual rights. The Magna Carta led to the rule of constitutional law. It was the model for the legal structure of the American colonies.

“My organizations stand for the very things the British fought and died for in World War II and decades later in Afghanistan and Iraq. After their great sacrifices, the U.K. is going to ban freedom?”

The U.K. ban against Geller and Spencer comes just four years after then-British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced that leading talk-radio host Michael Savage was on a list of 16 people banned from entry because the government believed their views might provoke violence. Smith said it was “important that people understand the sorts of values and sorts of standards that we have here, the fact that it’s a privilege to come and the sort of things that mean you won’t be welcome in this country.”

“How about democracy in the U.K.?” asked Savage at the time, referring to his case. “The freedom to a trial? The freedom of appeal? The freedom to set the record straight?

“Why does the Cameron government protect Muslim terrorists and Muslim hate-preachers who espouse the overthrow of the British government, democracy itself, while banning Michael Savage from entering the land of their better forefathers?” he asked.

In 2011, an attorney for the British government reaffirmed the U.K. decision to ban Savage from entry.

The Qatar Ruling Family Divided
Jun 28th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

The transfer of power in Qatar was not as trouble-free as depicted by the stream of citizens and dignitaries flocking to the palace Tuesday, June 25, to pledge allegiance to the new emir, 31-year old Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the fourth son of the ailing Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.
Shortly before this ceremony, in a back chamber of the palace, Sheikh Hamad summoned Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani to threaten him: "Unless you put a stop to your intrigues for setting Qatar's prominent and wealthiest families against the new ruler, I will have you arrested and thrown in jail, your property confiscated and put you on trial for corruption on the evidence in my possession."
This is reported exclusively by DEBKA Weekly's sources in the Gulf.
Prime Minister Jassim knew he would be relieved of his post in the shakeup accompanying the new regime in Doha. The old emir struck hard and fast upon receipt of intelligence that Jassim was cooking up a conspiracy to mount a coup against the new ruler – or else round up opposition groups for disrupting the new administration.
It took plenty of courage for Sheikh Hamad to clear the ground for his successor and so lay bare and exacerbate a major spit in the ruling family of Qatar. The outgoing prime minister, a cousin of the new emir, is one of the most powerful and affluent figures in the Persian Gulf and the author of the emirate’s aggressive diplomacy which transformed a weak sheikdom into a major power in the West and Arab world. The Al Jazeera television station is the product of his vision and ambition.

A triumvirate for ruling Qatar and a reshuffled cabinet

Jassim al-Thani is unlikely to go quietly. But he will probably continue his intrigues against the young new ruler from outside Qatar. The former emir took the precaution of buttressing his successor by forming a ruling triumvirate: He stays on to support him, on one side, with his second wife, the influential Sheikha Mozah, who is the mother of the young emir, supporting her son on the other.
While the ex-ruler is subject to treatment for an acute kidney ailment, Sheikha Mozah will be on hand to oversee her son’s first steps and keep an eye on their enemies.
For a second line of defense, the appointments of a new prime minister and foreign minister were announced in Doha Wednesday June 26. This was a fast move to break the outgoing prime minister’s monopoly over the emirate’s domestic and foreign affairs.
Another family member, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Nasser Al Than, is Qatar's new prime minister, and Khalid bin Mohammad Al Attiyah takes over as foreign minister.
Our Gulf sources say the two new appointees have much in common:
1. Both have a plenty of experience in managing intelligence operations and running special forces operations.
2, Both took part in the new emir’s past activities as Director of Intelligence in the upheaval of the Arab Revolt in Libya, the civil war in Syria and the change of power in Egypt.
3. Both are fierce opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood, which they believe is bent on overthrowing the Arab regimes of the Persian Gulf.

Solidly attached to Washington

4. Both have strong connections in US administration and intelligence circles in Washington.
Qatar's new prime minister, Sheikh Abdullah, 43, served as Qatar’s Minister of State for Internal Affairs from 1995 to 2013. He holds degrees in policing science from Durham Military College in Britain and in law from Beirut University.
According to his biography, he has graduated from more than 23 qualifying and specialized training courses at home and abroad in the field of Special Forces.
The new Foreign Minister, Khalid Al Attiyah, was formerly Qatar's main liaison officer with the Syrian rebels.
DEBKA Weekly's sources in Washington report that the new regime in Doha has assured the Obama administration that no change is contemplated in the status of the US operational commands for the Mideast, Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean housed at the Al Udeid Air Base.

The 441 Trillion Dollar Interest Rate Derivatives Time Bomb
Jun 28th, 2013
Daily Newstheeconomiccollpaseblog
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Do you want to know the primary reason why rapidly rising interest rates could take down the entire global financial system? Most people might think that it would be because the U.S. government would have to pay much more interest on the national debt. 

And yes, if the average rate of interest on U.S. government debt rose to just 6 percent (and it has actually been much higher in the past), the federal government would be paying out about a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt. But that isn't it. Nor does the primary reason have to do with the fact that rapidly rising interest rates would impose massive losses on bond investors. 

At this point, it is being projected that if U.S. bond yields rise by an average of 3 percentage points, it will cause investors to lose a trillion dollars. Yes, that is a 1 with 12 zeroes after it ($1,000,000,000,000). But that is not the number one danger posed by rapidly rising interest rates either. 

Rather, the number one reason why rapidly rising interest rates could cause the entire global financial system to crash is because there are more than 441 TRILLION dollars worth of interest rate derivatives sitting out there. This number comes directly from the Bank for International Settlements - the central bank of central banks. 

In other words, more than $441,000,000,000,000 has been bet on the movement of interest rates. Normally these bets do not cause a major problem because rates tend to move very slowly and the system stays balanced. But now rates are starting to skyrocket, and the sophisticated financial models used by derivatives traders do not account for this kind of movement.

So what does all of this mean?

It means that the global financial system is potentially heading for massive amounts of trouble if interest rates continue to soar.

Today, the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasury bonds rocketed up to 2.66% before settling back to 2.55%. The chart posted below shows how dramatically the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries has moved in recent days...

10 Year Treasury Yield

Right now, the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries is about 30 percent above its 50 day moving average. That is the most that it has been above its 50 day moving average in 50 years.

Like I mentioned above, we are moving into uncharted territory and this data doesn't really fit into the models used by derivatives traders.

The yield on 5 year U.S. Treasuries has been moving even more dramatically...

5 Year Treasury Yield

Last week, the yield on 5 year U.S. Treasuries rose by an astounding 37 percent. That was the largest increase in 50 years.

Once again, this is uncharted territory.

If rates continue to shoot up, there are going to be some financial institutions out there that are going to start losing absolutely massive amounts of money on interest rate derivative contracts.

So exactly what is an interest rate derivative?

The following is how Investopedia defines interest rate derivatives...

A financial instrument based on an underlying financial security whose value is affected by changes in interest rates. Interest-rate derivatives are hedges used by institutional investors such as banks to combat the changes in market interest rates. Individual investors are more likely to use interest-rate derivatives as a speculative tool - they hope to profit from their guesses about which direction market interest rates will move.

They can be very complicated, but I prefer to think of them in very simple terms. Just imagine walking into a casino and placing a bet that the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries will hit 2.75% in July. If it does reach that level, you win. If it doesn't, you lose. That is a very simplistic example, but I think that it is a helpful one. At the heart of it, the 441 TRILLION dollar derivatives market is just a bunch of people making bets about which way interest rates will go.

And normally the betting stays very balanced and our financial system is not threatened. The people that run this betting use models that are far more sophisticated than anything that Las Vegas uses. But all models are based on human assumptions, and wild swings in interest rates could break their models and potentially start causing financial losses on a scale that our financial system has never seen before.

We are potentially talking about a financial collapse far worse than anything that we saw back in 2008.

Remember, the U.S. national debt is just now approaching 17 trillion dollars. So when you are talking about 441 trillion dollars you are talking about an amount of money that is almost unimaginable.

Meanwhile, China appears to be on the verge of another financial crisis as well. The following is from a recent article by Graham Summers...

China is on the verge of a “Lehman” moment as its shadow banking system implodes. China had pumped roughly $1.6 trillion in new credit (that’s 21% of GDP) into its economy in the last two quarters… and China GDP growth is in fact slowing.

This is what a credit bubble bursting looks like: the pumping becomes more and more frantic with less and less returns.

And Chinese stocks just experienced their largest decline since 2009. The second largest economy on earth is starting to have significant financial problems at the same time that our markets are starting to crumble.

Not good.

And don't forget about Europe. European stocks have had a very, very rough month so far...

The narrow EuroStoxx 50 index is now at its lowest in over seven months (-5.4% year-to-date and -12.5% from its highs in May) and the broader EuroStoxx 600 is also flailing lower. The European bank stocks pushed down to their lowest in almost 10 months and are now in bear market territory - down 22.5% from their highs. Spain and Italy are now testing their lowest level in 9 months.

So are the central banks of the world going to swoop in and rescue the financial markets from the brink of disaster?

At this point it does not appear likely.

As I have written about previously, the Bank for International Settlements is the central bank for central banks, and it has a tremendous amount of influence over central bank policy all over the planet.

The other day, the general manager of the Bank for International Settlements, Jaime Caruana, gave a speech entitled "Making the most of borrowed time". In that speech, he made it clear that the era of extraordinary central bank intervention was coming to an end. The following is one short excerpt from that speech...

"Ours is a call for acting responsibly now to strengthen growth and avoid even costlier adjustment down the road. And it is a call for recognizing that returning to stability and prosperity is a shared responsibility. Monetary policy has done its part. Recovery now calls for a different policy mix – with more emphasis on strengthening economic flexibility and dynamism and stabilizing public finances."

Monetary policy has done its part?

That sounds pretty firm.

And if you read the entire speech, you will see that Caruana makes it clear that he believes that it is time for the financial markets to stand on their own.

But will they be able to?

As I wrote about yesterday, the U.S. financial system is a massive Ponzi scheme that is on the verge of imploding. Unprecedented intervention by the Federal Reserve has helped to prop it up for the last couple of years, and there is a lot of fear in the financial world about what is going to happen once that unprecedented intervention is gone.

So what happens next?

Well, nobody knows for sure, but one thing seems certain. The last half of 2013 is shaping up to be very, very interesting.

Radiation Inside Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant Rises Sharply, Workers Evacuated
Jun 28th, 2013
Daily NewsIndia Today
Categories: Today's Headlines;Warning

Japanese officials reported a huge jump in radioactivity – levels 10 million times the norm – in water in one reactor unit at a tsunami-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Sunday, forcing workers to evacuate and again delaying efforts to control the leaking complex.

Radiation in the air, meanwhile, measured 1,000 millisieverts per hour – four times the limit deemed safe by the government, Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Takashi Kurita said.

Word of the startling jump in radioactivity in Unit 2 of the power plant came as TEPCO struggled to pump contaminated water from four troubled reactor units at the overheated Fukushima plant, 220 kilometers northeast of Tokyo. The reading was so high that the worker measuring the levels fled before taking a second reading, officials said.

Palestinian Textbooks Erase Israel, Give No Hope for Peace
Jun 28th, 2013
Daily NewsIsrael Today - Ryan Jones
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

A hearing at the Knesset this week revealed once again that Palestinian school textbooks deny the legitimacy of Israel, erase Jewish history in the region, and teach that true peace is not possible until the Jewish state disappears.

Presenting his findings to the gathered lawmakers and foreign diplomats, Dr. Arnon Groiss, a recognized expert on tolerance in education, charged that "Israel is delegitimized, and demonized in these texts and no peaceful solution to Arab-Israel conflict is ever discussed."

The textbooks in question are used currently in Palestinian schools funded and operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Financing for the schools and textbooks comes from the US, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Australia and other nations.

One of the chief components of the original "Oslo" peace accords was that both sides would educate their respective populations for peaceful coexistence on the basis that both had a right to sovereignty in at least part of the land.

The Palestinian side has not only failed to meet this obligation, but has been demonstrably going in the opposite direction, educating future generations to perpetuate the conflict with Israel.

Let the Headlines Speak
Jun 28th, 2013
Daily NewsFrom the Internet
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Britain could create first 'three-parent baby' through IVF
Britain will become the first country in the world to create babies with the DNA of three people under government plans which could see the procedure offered on the NHS by next year.  

Iran: Syrian crisis prelude to coming of Mahdi
A high Iranian politician believes the Syrian revolution could be the catalyst for sparking a worldwide conflagration that will usher in an era of Muslim domination of the world. “One can smell from the crisis in Syria the coming … of the end of times and the coming of the last Islamic messiah,” said Ruhollah Hosseinian, a member of the Islamic regime’s parliament.  

Light earthquake in Salinas, California
M 3.9 light earthquake shakes Salinas, California today, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the quake's epicenter was located 11 km WSW of Ridgemark. It was 4.3 miles deep.  

U.S. Begins Shipping Arms for Syrian Rebels
The Central Intelligence Agency has begun moving weapons to start arming small groups of vetted Syrian rebels within a month. Adam Entous reports.  

Timelapse of a supercell near Booker, Texas
After four years of searching for perfect supercell in the Central Plains, photographer Mike Olbinski from Arizona and his friend Andy Hoeland captured an amazing rotating supercell near Booker, Texas. Rotating clouds looking like "alien spacecraft hanging over the Earth" formed on June 3, 2013. (contributors note: notice the name of the publication)  

Obama administration paid contractors millions to snoop through Americans’ financial data
A secretive data collection program run by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau allows private contractors access to millions of Americans’ personal financial information, according to a government accountability group. The information may also be shared with other federal agencies. Documents obtained by Washington-based Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act illustrate the cost and scope of the program, which business groups and some Republican lawmakers have assailed as invasive and potentially illegal.  

EARTH-DIRECTED FLARES
Southern hemisphere sunspots AR1777 and AR1778 erupted in quick succession during the early hours of June 28th, producing a pair of C-class solar flares and at least one CME. An initial analysis of coronagraph images suggests that the CME could deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field over the weekend.  

Egypt braced for rival mass demonstrations
Egypt is preparing for rival mass demonstrations, amid tight security in the increasingly polarised nation. President Mohammed Morsi's supporters are to hold "open-ended" rallies - two days ahead of opposition protests calling for the president to resign. Meanwhile, one person died and a number of others were injured in clashes in northern Egypt late on Thursday.  

Volcano in Russia’s Kamchatka Spews Ash Up to 4.3 Miles
Russia's northernmost active volcano churned out ash to a height of up to 7,000 meters (almost 23,000 feet) in the country's Far East, local Emergencies Ministry’s department reported on Friday. The 3,283-meter (10,771 feet) Shiveluch volcano increased activity in May 2009 and has been periodically spewing ash from three to ten kilometers.  

Somalia's al-Shabab leader Aweys 'not surrendering'
A key al-Shabab leader in Somalia, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, has so far refused to surrender, elders from his clan have told the BBC Somali Service. The UN has reported that Mr Aweys has handed himself over to a pro-government administration in central Somalia after falling out with al-Shabab's leader.  

Alaska Volcano Eruptions Get Worse: `We Can’t Explain’ Says Geologist
Alaska volcano eruptions are entering a more powerful phase. After six weeks of Alaska volcano eruptions reaching five miles into the sky, covering nearby communities with ash and shutting down air flights, there looks to be no end.  

US Senate passes far-reaching immigration reform bill
The US Senate has passed a broad immigration reform bill that includes a path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants. The 68-32 vote comes after months of debate and a recent deal to boost border security spending significantly. But the legislation faces a tough road in the more conservative House.  

Popocatépetl volcano (Mexico): increasing activity, aerial images of crater
Seismic activity has picked up, suggesting that the volcano could be headed for more vigorous activity soon. SO2 emissions on NOAA recent satellite data have been relatively high as well. A magnitude 3.6 volcanic quake  

Washington: Earthquake magnitude 4.3 near Wenatchee, Leavenworth
The US Geological Survey is reporting that a 4.3-magnitude earthquake struck central Washington near Wenatchee and Leavenworth Wednesday night around 7:45 p.m. The quake rattled dishes and shook homes, but there were no reports of injuries or damages.  

UN renews peacekeeping mission in the Golan
The UN Security Council renewed for six months on Thursday a peacekeeping mission in the Golan Heights monitoring a decades-old truce between Israel and Syria... The unanimously agreed resolution stresses the need for the peacekeepers, who currently just carry handguns, to boost their protection. Diplomats said troops would likely now get equipment such as flak jackets, armored vehicles and machine guns.  

56% View Feds As Threat to Individual Rights
The United States was founded on a belief that governments are created to protect certain unalienable rights. Today, however, more voters than ever view the federal government as a threat to those rights.  

CBS News: 27 NFL Players Arrested Since Super Bowl
CBS News reports that 27 players have been arrested since the Super Bowl on Feb. 3. Just over the past two days alone two players are facing murder charges. New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez was charged Wednesday with first-degree murder in the death of Odin Lloyd while Cleveland Browns rookie Ausar Walcott was charged with attempted murder Monday for allegedly punching a man in the head outside a club in New Jersey.  

Egypt braces for rival mass demonstrations
Egypt is bracing for rival mass demonstrations, amid tight security in the increasingly polarised nation. President Mohammed Morsi's supporters are to hold "open-ended' rallies - two days ahead of the opposition protests calling for the president to resign.  

Gold hits three-year low, heads for worst quarter since 1968
Gold fell below $1,200 on Friday to its lowest since August 2010 and is on track to record its worst quarter since at least 1968 on persistent worries over the U.S. Federal Reserve's plan to wind down its monetary stimulus.  

Is Hezb’allah A Terrorist Organization?
Two salient issues from earlier this year, on different continents, are concerned with the same political problem. One was the nomination of John Brennan to be head of the CIA.  

EX-Mccain Strategist Hired To Move GOP On 'Gay' Marriage
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced Wednesday that it's hiring Steve Schmidt, a former top strategist on Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) 2008 presidential campaign, to help shift the Republican Party's attitude on marriage equality.  

Just Sit Down and Talk, Says U.S. Secretary to Israelis and Palestinians
Jun 28th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

On Thursday June 27 US Secretary of State John Kerry began shuttling between Jerusalem and
Amman for his fifth attempt to draw Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) to the table for negotiations.
Anyone else would have given up ages ago, like many determined statesmen before him - especially now that he comes to his task at less than his brightest and best – much like his Israeli and Palestinian hosts.
Secretary Kerry bears fresh scars from the Edward Snowden affair. After the former National Security Agency contractor’s embarrassing exposure of the scale of US and British intelligence eavesdropping on their citizens, he managed to elude Washington’s grasp with the help of China and Russia. They frustrated the US secretary’s urgent requests to turn him over after he was indicted in the US for espionage, although Americans are divided over whether he is a hero or a traitor.
Moscow has proved just as unhelpful on Syria.

Netanyahu loses top adviser, takes a beating in Likud

As for the Israeli prime minister, he is smarting from the desertion of a member of his close circle of advisers and a beating from his Likud party.
National Security Adviser Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror tendered his resignation Monday night, June 24, to distance himself from the negotiations expected to come up with the Palestinians as well as from Netanyahu's inaction for preventing a nuclear Iran.
In the past year, Amidror was Netanyahu’s point man for talks with Russian President Putin, French President Francois Hollande and top Obama administration officials in Washington. This key adviser now deserts the prime minister because he is at odds with him on almost every important diplomatic and security issue facing the government.
In the first rounds of internal elections for party institutions, Likud rank and file have tossed Netanyahu’s loyalists off the lists and replaced them by an 85-percent majority with candidates for the key jobs – mostly of the younger generation – who are directly opposed to his policies.
The Palestinian leader faces Kerry after losing his government.
Rami Hamdallah of Nablus, an anonymous figure he appointed prime minister in place of Salam Fayyad, lasted just two weeks before stepping down and disappearing out of sight.

Abbas will go through the motions of negotiations, then turn to the UN

Following this mishap, Abbas was reported in US, Israeli and Palestinian press leaks to have moderated his position and dropped his longstanding preconditions for negotiations with Israel. He no longer insists on a prior settlement freeze for the West Bank and Jerusalem, it was said, or on Israel’s consent to withdrawing to pre-1967 borders for a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu rose to the occasion generated by the media with an offer: If Kerry put up a tent for negotiations at a point midway between Jerusalem and Ramallah, he would go inside and stay there until he and Abu Mazen came to an agreement.
But this burst of optimism turned out to be misplaced.
The leaks were a cover story for the plan which the diplomatically savvy Abbas confided to his associates. This plan, as revealed by DEBKA Weekly's sources, entailed meeting Netanyahu no more than three or four times - just enough to expose what he calls the prime minister’s bluff. He would then declare Kerry’s mission failed and refer the Palestinian issue back to the United Nations.
This scheme should play out until September, at which time Abu Mazen intended to approach UN Secretary Ban ki-Moon and hand him the keys to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.
He would explain that he tried the path of a negotiated settlement with Israel, in all good faith. Only after this track petered out, did he decide to dissolve the Palestinian Authority and apply for a UN trustee to take over the administration of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Abbas would then deliver his swan’s song speech on the international stage and declare before the UN Security Council that the Palestinian Authority was a lapsed entity.
With this plan in place, Abbas can afford to be nonchalant about the limbo in Ramallah and not try too hard to find another prime minister.

Kerry warns Abbas not to play games, consults with Netanyahu

Kerry, who is onto Abu Mazen's scheme, has cautioned him to stop playing games, install a functioning government in Ramallah and get down to serious talks with the Israelis.
But the truth is the US Secretary of State is oppressed with much bigger Middle East troubles than Palestinian feints and dodges. Kerry has so far neglected to name a respected figure as US facilitator of the Palestinian-Israeli peace track, but is nonetheless determined to prevent Abbas handing the PA keys to the UN. This would be a stinging affront to his personal prestige after his heavy stake in dragging the two sides together for peace talks.
In the last two weeks, Kerry has held almost daily conversations with Netanyahu to further his goal. Neither has shared their contents with anyone else, except possibly President Barack Obama in Washington and the prime minister’s most trusted adviser, Yakov Molcho.
Even Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, Israel’s formal lead negotiator with the Palestinians, is not privy to the ideas exchanged and decisions reached in the ongoing discussions between the prime minister and the secretary of state.

How to stop Abbas’ dash to the UN without bowing to his conditions

Our sources reveal that Kerry confided to Netanyahu that, far from dropping his preconditions for talks, Abu Mazen now wants advance payment in the form of a declaration by the Israeli prime minister publicly accepting a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 war boundaries, with minor adjustments. He is also demanding that Israel open the doors of its jails and free Palestinian security prisoners incarcerated 20 years or more – i.e., since before the 1993 Oslo Peace Framework Accords.
Netanyahu replied that the question of borders is subject to negotiation and cannot be determined in advance – certainly not before security arrangements with the future Palestinian state are finalized and the issue of Jerusalem resolved.
Both he and the US Secretary are of one mind that Abu Mazen must be stopped in his dash to the UN embrace.
Therefore, even if Kerry does pull off his very long shot and is able to announce over this weekend that the Palestinians and Israelis were persuaded to go back to the table, with a starting date, negotiations have a long way to go before they get serious.

Iran’s Challenge to Sunnis in Syria Raises Specter of Global Muslim War
Jun 28th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

In nearly two and a half years, the Syrian war has passed through one savage stage after another: The initial popular uprising against President Bashar Assad and his regime in March 2011 mutated into an armed rebellion, then a regional conflict encompassing Iran, Hizballah, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey and Israel.
In mid-2013, with the death toll passing the 100,000 mark, Syria is a churning vortex sucking in global powers: A duel between the United States and Russia by means of expanded weapons supplies and intelligence to the warring sides crisscrosses - and at times converges - with the Muslim intercine war fast overtaking the Syrian battlefield.
This stage, in the view of DEBKA Weekly’s Western intelligence sources, will overshadow all the foregoing stages as the bloodiest and most pervasive them all.
Wednesday, June 26, Moscow announced the evacuation of all Russian military and diplomatic personnel from Syria, including its naval base at Tartus, “for fear of an incident involving the Russian military that could have larger consequences.”
A 16-ship Russian naval task force remained in the eastern Mediterranean.
In the early stages, Iran stepped in to bolster the Assad regime and his ruling Alawite clan against their foes in the interests of preserving this alliance as their bridge to Hizballah, the Lebanese Shiite surrogate the ayatollahs prized for opening a second front against Israel if their nuclear facilities were attacked.
This perception changed in the summer of 2011 when Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu shelved his plans for preempting Iran’s nuclear weapons aspirations by force.
The Economist of London wrote on Friday, June 21: The die is cast for a nuclear Iran. An Israeli attack is unlikely. Neither Iran’s election, nor sanctions nor military threats are likely to divert it from the path it is on to getting nuclear weapons, says The Economist, citing top independent experts in the field.

Discounting an Israeli attack, Iran goes for regional hegemony

Safe in the conviction that neither Israel nor the US any longer posed a military threat, DEBKA Weekly's Iranian experts found the ayatollahs moving on to their next objective, the status of regional hegemon.
In their first foray, they picked the Syrian conflict as their vehicle. It was then that they initiated the process of superimposing on the Syrian war a violent trial of strength between Shiite fighters and rival Sunni-led rebel forces.
The Shiite Hizballah and Iraq Shiite militiamen mobilized in their thousands to Assad’s war effort.
In late May of this year, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s call to arms of all Lebanese Shiites led to victory in the battle for al-Qusayr.
The Sunni-ruled Gulf Arab regimes were in shock.
Qatar enlisted the influential Sunni cleric Yusuf Qaradawi to pour fire and brimstone on Hizballah and muster Sunnis across the Muslim world for jihad against the Shiites massed in Syria although some Gulf leaders fought shy of dipping into the perilous waters of holy war. They may think again when they see Shiite forces vanquishing Sunni rebels in the impending decisive battle of Aleppo.

Religious fever spreads out from Syria to engulf Muslims

Seen from Washington and Moscow, the Syrian war now pits Barack Obama against Vladimir Putin in a personal bout for the upper hand in Middle East and Persian Gulf influence.
The region's Muslims see it in a different light. Nasrallah, on the one hand, and Qaradawi, on the other, have transformed Syria into the arena of a religious war whose guidelines and goals are set by global Muslim authorities.
It has opened the floodgates for violent jihad to surge out of Syria and infect nations with sizeable Shiite populations, such as Iraq, Bahrain, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Pakistan.
Muslim nations with large Sunni majorities, including those outside the region such as Turkey, may easily be sucked into the fever of religious zeal engulfing Muslim communities. Even Iran and its Shiite Islamic regime might not at the end of the day prove immune to the deleterious effects of the jihad Tehran itself whipped in Syria. The ayatollahs would find that religious hatred is an epidemic more easily started than contained.
The violent Sunni-Shiite schism of the seventh century offers a case in point. In the overcharged contemporary climate, with its high stakes and geopolitical rivalries, a fresh outbreak of Shiite-Sunni strife could become “the mother of religious wars.”
Non-Muslim outsiders likely to be caught up in this clash, like the US and Israel, are unfortunately unprepared and ill-equipped for coming to grips with this menace on their doorstep.

Al Qaeda fights in Syria to disrupt Shiite rule in Baghdad

Washington and Jerusalem are still bogged down in the minutiae of the Syrian conflict, such as how to deal with undesirable Al Qaeda elements while aiding the safe parts of rebel movement and, most of all, how to keep chemical and advanced weapons out of Hizballah and other terrorist hands.
These issues, serious as they are, represent no more than corners of the expanding Syrian battlefield picture. On the other hand, a look at one particular corner makes one wonder where Al Qaeda’s fighting men have disappeared to of late.
The answer to this again points to the bigger picture: The jihadis took note of the fluctuating nature of the Syria war and the approaching knock-down Shiites-Sunni contest and went to ground to make appropriate preparations
Al Qaeda’s overriding goal in joining the Syrian conflict was never just to make war on America and Arab dictators, but to use it as a staging post for challenging the pro-Iranian Shiite regime in Baghdad. By fighting with the Syrian rebels, al Qaeda hoped to bag in one fair swoop three glittering prizes - control in Damascus, Baghdad and Beirut.
Related forces are adapting to the latest stage in the Syrian war. That is why this week, the Lebanese army, 60 percent of whose manpower are Shiite Muslims, used a battle in the southern port town of Sidon with Sheikh Ahmed al-Asir’s Salafite militia, to start killing their Sunni comrades-at-arms in different parts of Lebanon.

Al Jazeera TV platform for Syrian Islamists

In the past two weeks, Qatar’s Al Jazeera TV network has given a regional platform to the radical Syrian Islamic Front (SIF) and its leader Hassan Aboud Abu Abdulllah al-Hamawi. His first public interview took place after he attended a conference of high-ranking Muslim clerics in Cairo, who called for jihad in Syria. Influential Qatari and Egyptian clerics appear to be ready to anoint the SIF as leader of the Syrian revolution against the Assad regime and its Shiite allies.
An important SIF member alongside the Syrian al Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra, is the Harakat Ahrar al-Sham al-Islamiya (HASI). Those two are the best-armed rebel groups in the Syrian rebel movement. HASI recently established a Technical Division for running a cyber war on websites representing the pro-Assad Syrian “Electronic Army.”
Though trailing far behind Syria on the world’s front pages, the Sunni-Shiite war in Iraq is broader and more lethal. It is edging perilously close to Iran and Turkey. The Erdogan government in Ankara has already dipped a toe in those waters by sending arms to Sunni militias in western Iraq.

Shiites gird up for insurgency in Arab Gulf kingdoms

In the oil-rich Eastern Provinces of Saudi Arabia, the large Shiite population is on the march, staging almost daily protests and riots which Saudi security forces have proved unable to suppress.
In Bahrain, the Shiite majority conducts a violent underground war against the ruling Sunni minority.
In Egypt, a large Salafist mob murdered the Shiite cleric, Hassan Shehata, in an attack on his home in the town of Zawiyat Abu Muslim on the outskirts of Cairo.
And in the Gaza Strip this week, Hamas special forces raided the home of pro-Iranian Palestinian Jihad Islami’s missile battery commander Raed Jundeir and shot him dead with a bullet to the head.
Under the influence of Tehran, Jundeir, like other senior Jihadi officers, had recently converted from Sunni to Shiite Islam.
In Yemen, the Houthi rebels fighting from their northern base are armed by Iran and receive military training from Iranian Revolutionary Guards instructors. Their battles may well spread into the Indian subcontinent and reach Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Hamas: Palestinians will Never Recognize Israel
Jun 28th, 2013
Daily NewsIsrael Today Staff
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh this week reiterated that the Palestinian Arabs as a whole will never recognize Israel's right to exist, and certainly not to exist as the Jewish state.

"We had two wars...but Palestinians did not and will not recognize Israel," Bethlehem-based news agency Ma'an quoted Haniyeh as saying as he welcomed a solidarity visit by international activists.

Why should anyone care what Hamas says at this point? That's certainly the line being taken by Washington and Europe, as they once again press Israel to make "peace" concessions to Hamas' rivals in the Palestinian Authority.

But what most have conveniently forgotten is that Haniyeh is prime minister and Hamas legally controls a majority in the Palestinian parliament because the Palestinian public voted the group into power.

Meanwhile, Haniyeh praised international activists that visit Hamas-ruled Gaza for performing a "holy duty" aimed at de-legitimizing Israel.

Assad Set for Two Simultaneous Warfronts: Aleppo and Golan
Jun 28th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

On Tuesday June 25, the Syrian Army took the town of Tel-Kalah at the northernmost point of the Syrian-Lebanese border intersection, divesting the rebels of their biggest supply base in northern Syria.
In the last few days, their situation has gone from bad to grave, owing to six circumstances:
1. The chiefs of the myriad rebel militias in Aleppo and northern Syria are too deeply fractured to be able to cooperate on the battlefield. Each unit and faction is making its own arrangements for supplies and weapons.
This week, Western media, mainly in Britain, depicted Gen. Abdul al Aygedi as senior rebel commander for Aleppo. DEBKA Weekly's military sources report, however, that the Aleppo sector doesn’t have a single overall rebel commander. It’s every militia for itself, with no officer in place to coordinate their operations against the Syrian, Hizballah and Iraqi armies preparing a major onslaught to drive them out of Syria’s second city.
2. Western intelligence officers, positioned on the Turkish-Syrian border to keep track of the arms shipments from Libya as they cross into Syria, are at a loss. When they asked Turkish agents for information, they were told that no one knows in whose hands those weapons are ending up.

Promised US arms undelivered to the rebels

3. The Saudis were first to draw conclusions from the rebels’ disarray in northern Syria. Our intelligence sources report that Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan ordered his agents to break off contact with, and halt the cash flow, to the rebel commanders and militias in northern Syria, and focus henceforth on keeping rebel factions in the South supplied with arms and other assistance.
This route goes through Jordan rather than Turkey.
4. Washington has apparently not delivered on President Barack Obama's pledge of June 14 to send the Syrian insurgency small arms, RPGs and mortars as “military support.” Asked this week when the American arms had arrived, one Syrian field commander answered angrily – “I haven’t received a single item. So this is very difficult for me.” Asked when delivery was expected, another officer said – Never!
Their bitterness was compounded when they learned from the media of Wednesday, June 26, that the CIA had started moving “small arms, ammunition and possibly certain types of antitank missiles” to Jordan for delivery in August.
Rebel leaders say they need the arms now. By August, it will be too late for the new intake to be much use in the imminent battle for Aleppo.

Iranian officers in forward combat positions

5. Iranian officers and soldiers are seen in increasing numbers since early last week in northern and southern Syria, DEBKA Weekly's military and intelligence sources report. They are quite openly filling operational positions with the Syrian army and Hizballah forces.
6. Another important omen of the impending battle for Aleppo was Moscow’s sudden announcement Wednesday of the evacuation of Russian military and diplomatic personnel from Syria, including the naval base leased to the Russian Navy in Tartus. The withdrawal process took two weeks. A high defense official said: “Russia decided to withdraw its personnel because of fear that an incident involving the Russian military could have larger consequences.”
He made it clear that 16 warships remained “on post” in the eastern Mediterranean and that Moscow will continue to send arms, especially anti-aircraft weaponry, to the Syrian government. The only Russian army personnel staying in the country were those instructing Syrian officers in the use of incoming advanced weapons systems.
It is estimated in Washington and Jerusalem that the Russian personnel were whisked out of Syria in anticipation of a very bloody battle over Aleppo, with Bashar Assad and rebel forces preparing to use chemical weapons in large quantities. President Vladimir Putin evidently preferred to distance Russian personnel from combat of this extreme savagery, in which many civilians, including women and children, would be sacrificed.
The Russian personnel from Syria and additional rapid intervention forces were removed to bases on the Black Sea and southern Russia and remain on standby. At the first sign of a Western military presence in Syria, they will be flown back to Syria by air or landed by sea.

Netanyahu to Golani troops: Scare the enemy to death!

Unrelated to the developments in northern Syria, the Israeli army’s Golani Brigade conducted a surprise drill on the Golan on the same day as Moscow disclosed the Russian evacuation from Syria. The exercise was observed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon. Netanyahu’s comments sounded more like threats than pep talk for the troops. This exercise was no exercise in theory, he said, but preparedness to respond to “a constantly changing, inflammable situation.”
He said the country counted on its soldiers to break their adversaries and “scare the enemy to death. That is the only way to win,” he said.
DEBKA Weekly’s military sources say that the exercise and the prime minister’s bellicosity were reactions to the signs that the Syrian ruler, puffed up by his military advances, is ready to open his threatened second warfront – this one for the launching of a terrorist campaign against Israel from the divided Golan. Assad may hope that a limited campaign against Israel will steal world attention from the atrocities he is preparing to inflict on the population of Aleppo, Syria's largest city, to wrest it from the rebels.

Another Violent Convulsion Awaits Egypt. Suez Traffic Faces Disruptions
Jun 28th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

None of the experts are sticking out their necks to predict how Egypt will wake up on July 1, the day after Egypt’s third revolution in three years is formally kicked off. The opposition is committed to stage a major uprising June 30 against the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood and Mohamed Morsi’s year-old presidency in Cairo. But how this country of 90 million will look and who will be in power after it is over is terra incognita.
All that can be said for sure is that violent convulsions and disruptions lie ahead of a country and governing system that never had a chance to recover from the 2011 Tahrir Square revolution which ousted President Hosni Mubarak. Now, his successor is on notice to quit.
Some facts and figures may offer some clues to where Egypt is heading:
1. Calling their movement “Tamarod” (Rebel), opposition forces representing Egyptians “who refuse Muslim Brotherhood rule” launched the “30 June Front” as a coordinating body for organizing the protests starting Sunday and presenting political demands, along with a roadmap for a transitional period after Morsi’s departure. The organizers say they will bring millions or even tens of millions of protesters out to the streets. It will not be a one-day event, but the start of a long sit-down strike in city centers to paralyze the entire country. Each town will have its own organizing commander.

No one-day event, massive disruptions of public utilities

The Tamarod organizers say the movement encompasses not just liberals, democrats, academics and members of the secular Egyptian parties, but also the masses, who once supported the Muslim Brotherhood and now despair of improving their lives, enjoying personal security, or finding jobs and better income. Many are so reduced in circumstances that they can’t afford to feed their families every day.
These ordinary Egyptians are more than ready to take to the streets en masse. Their pent-up disillusionment will fuel the sweeping popular campaign for driving the president and Brotherhood out of power.
Muslim Brotherhood governors, mayors and other officials already feel the sharp edge of popular anger. In hundreds of cities across the country, they are afraid to show their faces in public for fear of attack. The first wave of violence erupted Thursday night, June 26, in towns of the Egyptian Delta.
2. The shutdown ordered by the protest organizers will apply to public transportation, factories, financial companies and the flow of oil and gas in and out of Egypt. Within days, the country will face electricity and water outages and start the grim descent into complete chaos.
3. After seizing control of the main city squares and strikebound factories and offices, the protesters are expected to start setting up defensive bulwarks. In some places, people are collecting old cars, sandbags and steel beams for fortificatons.

Army on alert for big cities and Suez Canal

4. The Muslim Brotherhood is not eager to stand up for Morsi, who he is too independent for their liking and refuses to rubber-stamp their wishes like a good puppet. Still, if he goes, Brotherhood rule will be next on the chopping block. In his defense, therefore, the Brotherhood this week placed its paramilitary units and activist militias on full alert. Their effectiveness is limited, because they are familiar faces on Egyptian streets and afraid to move around for fear of attack. The coming transport shutdown and road blocks will make it even harder for them to move from place to place.
5. Both sides to this contest are fully aware that civic action will quickly slide into armed clashes. Western intelligence agents present in Egyptian streets warn that casualties could be extremely high.
6. Anticipating violent outbreaks, the Egyptian army placed its units on the ready Tuesday June 25, five days before the big day of the Tamerod. DEBKA Weekly names those units as the 2^nd and 9^th armored Egyptian divisions based near Cairo.
Their instructions are to elevate the alert level by a notch per day and reach the highest point Saturday, June 29.
Additional army units standing ready are the Second Army, which is responsible for the area between the town of Ismailia and the point at which the Nile empties out into the Mediterranean, and the units on guard further south, on the banks of the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Suez.

The imponderable pro-al Qaeda Bedouin of Sinai

But military intervention for curtailing the unrest in Egypt is far from plain sailing.
- No one in Egypt or anywhere else can tell which parties the generals favor - or at what point they mean to step in. They may stand aside until the first blood is spilt in clashes and then decide to seize power themselves and announce Morsi’s removal.
The protest organizers would welcome the army doing their work for them by ousting the president and even the restoration of the military junta, which governed the country in the transition up to Muslim rule.
- The army could decide to stay out of it until a very advanced stage;
- All the Egyptian army’s bases are located near the main cities; it has no military presence in the outlying regions of the Delta and the South. The army would therefore be restricted to operating against trouble between the protesters and the Muslim Brotherhood only in Cairo, Alexandria and the Suez Canal cities – not in other places.
7. The nearly 10,000 armed Sinai Bedouin Salafis, some allied to Al Qaeda, are another imponderable. Traditionally antagonistic to any Egyptian rule, they appear now to have opted to join the fight against the Muslim Brotherhood. In recent weeks, they have begun testing new missiles every few days, a secret closely guarded by Washington, London, Paris and Jerusalem.
The Bedouin radicals conducted their last test on Tuesday June 25 by shooting a salvo from central Sinai which exploded near Al Qanjarah on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal, just a few meters short of the water.
If the armed Salafis of Sinai decide to use their missiles to disrupt shipping in the Suez Canal, the oil and insurance markets would fly off the board. This would put the Egyptian uprising squarely in the realms of regional and global geopolitics.