Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

White House Seems Giddy About Genocidal, Nuclear Weapons - Developing Mullocracy
Oct 19th, 2013
Daily NewsCaroline B. Gick
Categories: Today's Headlines;Commentary

JERUSALEM— Speaking to the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Wednesday, Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz explained Israel's concerns about the nuclear negotiations with Iran in Geneva. "We're worried Geneva 2013 will end up like Munich 1938."

Well, the time for worrying has passed. The statements from the Obama administration and the EU following the closing of the first round of talks all made clear that Geneva 2013 is Munich 1938.

The White House was unable to restrain its excitement at the prospect of a deal with the genocidal, nuclear weapons developing mullocracy. White House spokesman Jay Carney said, "The Iranian proposal was a new proposal with a level of seriousness and substance that we had not seen before."

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who led the six-power delegation that faced the Iranians said that the talks were "the most detailed we have ever had, by a long way."

Ashton also said that she is committed to making concessions to Iran as quickly as possible. In her words, "When we have been talking and in our discussions in these last days we know that we have to look for a first step, a confidence-building step, and we know we have to be clear about the last steps and to do that in the context of the objective overall."

The stunning talks even included a one-on-one discussion between the chief US negotiator Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman and the Iranians.

The only problem with all these exciting developments is that all the "serious Iranian proposals" would result in the same outcome: a nuclear-armed Iran. There was nothing in the Iranian proposals that could give anyone any reason whatsoever to believe that Iran is serious about stopping its nuclear weapons development program. Indeed, the only thing we learned this week is that like the Allied powers in 1938, the Obama administration and the Europeans have no stomach for a confrontation and are willing to dress up appeasement of a dangerous foe as "peace" and "progress."

The Iranians have given no indication that they would be willing to suspend all uranium enrichment. In his press conference after the current round of talks ended, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif insisted that Iran has the right to continue enriching uranium. The Iranian offer appears to involve suspending its 20 percent uranium enrichment activities and sufficing with enriching uranium to 3.5 percent.

As everyone from US Senator Mark Kirk to the Washington Post editorial board to US President Barack Obama's former chief point man on Iran's nuclear program Gary Samore have stated over the past several days, given Iran' current enrichment capabilities, Iran's offer is meaningless.

Over the past year Iran has installed a thousand sophisticated centrifuges at its nuclear installation at Natanz. These new centrifuges allow Iran to transform 3.5 percent enriched uranium to bomb-grade material (enriched to 90 percent) as quickly as its old centrifuges were capable of transforming 20 percent enriched uranium to weapons-grade levels. So today, 3.5 percent enrichment is as comfortable a jumping-off point for the Iranian weapons program as 20 percent enrichment was a few years ago. Iran's "serious proposal" is a joke.

As Samore told The New York Times, "ending production of 20 percent enriched uranium is not sufficient to prevent breakout, because Iran can produce nuclear weapons using low-enriched uranium and a large number of centrifuge machines."

In a conference call with the Israel Project Wednesday Samore explained, "What they're offering is really no different than what we've heard from the previous government, from [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's government for the last couple of years….They continue to reject any physical limits on their enrichment capacity — meaning the number and type of centrifuge machines, the stockpile of enriched material that they have in country. And as far as I can tell, they have continued to reject closing any of their nuclear facilities... I haven't heard of any agreement to halt work or to modify the heavy water research reactor that they're building, and which may be close to operational."

So the Iranians offered nothing this week that they didn't offer in the past. And as a senior administration official told the New York Times, the Iranian program is already so advanced that for there to be time to negotiation a comprehensive agreement, Iran needs to first take steps to halt or even reverse its nuclear program.

And as Samore explained, none of the reports on the conclusion of this week's round of talks indicated any Iranian willingness to take such actions.

The negotiations in Geneva bear an unsettling resemblance to the negotiations the West held with North Korea as it developed nuclear weapons. There too, Western negotiators bragged about new, serious, and unprecedented North Korean "concessions." For its part, Pyongyang used the talks to undermine Western resolve to block its nuclear progress. Just as happened with North Korea, so with Iran, the appeasement crazed press will bring us endless stories about new, serious negotiations documents that will "ensure the peace." The last of the stories will be published the day Iran tests its first atomic bomb.

Since the Iranians are making the same unserious offers they have been making for years why are the Americans and the Europeans hailing the talks as a new beginning? Why is Ashton talking about confidence-building measures?

Why are American commentators and senators talking about various steps the US could take to appease Iran? By midweek talk was rife in Washington about the prospect of unfreezing some of the $50 billion Iranian funds that have been held in escrow in Western banks. Doing so, we were told, would reward the Iranians for being so "serious" but it wouldn't involve directly unraveling the sanctions regime.

All of this is happening because the American and Europeans have changed their game. The only serious development of this week is the revelation of their new game.

The Iranians remain committed to developing nuclear weapons. But the US and Europe have stopped even paying lip service to stopping them. Instead, the US and Europe aim to destroy domestic Western opposition to Iran's nuclear program. This is the new American/European game plan. This is what stands behind all the nonsensical talk of "serious" Iranian proposals.

Before his re-election, Obama felt constrained to pretend that he was serious about preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. He opposed but then grudgingly signed comprehensive sanctions passed overwhelmingly by both houses of Congress. He told AIPAC that he had Israel's back.

But now that he's no longer facing re-election, the jig is up. Obama's new goal, which is enthusiastically supported by Ashton and her comrades in Brussels, is to use the new negotiations with Iran's phony baloney "moderate" new President — to give himself political cover to open the door to Iran acquiring nuclear bombs. Obama doesn't want to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. He wants to insulate himself from criticism when it gets the bomb.

Not only do the White House's lies about Iran's new "level of seriousness" give Obama the maneuver room to pretend he's acting responsibly, they also trap Israel into inaction. After all, how could Israel possibly bomb Iran's nuclear installations when Iran is negotiating so seriously, and is "this close" to making a groundbreaking agreement?

We shouldn't be surprised by this state of affairs. Obama has never acted in good faith with Israel.

Take the latest news on Turkey, for example. Thursday, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported that last year NATO member Turkey gave Iranian intelligence the identities of up to ten Iranian agents working for Mossad after they met with their Israeli case officers in Turkey. Turkey's action was a shocking betrayal of what was supposed to be a goal it shared with Israel and the US — preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Turkey willfully harmed Israeli efforts to achieve this goal by turning in ten Israeli agents.

Rather than taking action against Turkey, or simply acknowledging that the actions of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan represented a fundamental shift in Turkey's strategic outlook, Obama shrugged off Turkey's betrayal. The US didn't even protest Turkey's despicable deed. Instead, as Ignatius noted, "Turkish-American relations continued warming last year to the point that Erdogan was among Obama's key confidants."

A few months after Turkey colluded with Iran against Israel, Obama coerced Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into apologizing to Erdogan for Israel's lawful maritime interdiction of the Mavi Marmara as it unlawfully sought to breach Israel's blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza coastline.

No doubt, in making this concession Netanyahu believed that he would win Obama's good will. In a similar fashion, in the hope of appeasing Obama, Netanyahu has made concession after concession to the Palestinians — from drastically downgrading Jewish property rights in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to releasing Palestinian murderers from prison.

Yet in all of these cases, Obama has pocketed Israel's concessions and demanded more concessions. In all these cases, Obama's allies have used the concessions to present a picture of Israel as both an ungrateful and unhelpful ally, and as a weakling. And in the meantime, Obama has facilitated EU sanctions against Israel. He has leaked top secret Israeli intelligence operations to the media. He has repeatedly threatened to abandon Israel at the UN Security Council. He has supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. And now he is involved in negotiations with Iran that will necessarily lead to Iran's emergence as a nuclear power.

From Netanyahu's repeated declarations that Israel will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, it is unclear whether he realizes what is going on. More than anything else, those statements represent an attempt to negotiate with Obama. Netanyahu is still trying to win Obama over.

If there was ever an argument to be made in favor of Netanyahu's pleading, their time is long past. In nothing else, the obscene diplomatic theater in Geneva this week made that clear.

Israel is alone. We have no diplomatic option. No matter what Israel says, no matter what it does, neither the US nor any other Western power is ever going to be convinced to take the only step that would set back Iran's nuclear program — bombing Iran's nuclear installations. No matter what, neither Obama nor any European leader will ever support an Israeli military strike on Iran's nuclear installations.

Israel's back is to the wall. That is the meaning of the talks in Geneva. If we aren't prepared to live with a nuclear armed Iran then we have to stop talking and start acting. And we need to prepare for the diplomatic hell that will break loose thereafter.

Saudi Rejection of Security Council Seat – Snub for U.S.
Oct 19th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki tried shrugging off Saudi Arabia’s unprecedented refusal of a nonpermanent Security Council seat, saying that Washington would continue to work with Riyadh on matters of common interest. The Saudis accused the international body of double standards, failing to act against the Assad regime and falling down on a host of international issues in the Middle East. However, the snub essentially indicated Riyadh’s disapproval of the Obama administration’s outreach to Iran and its regional policies as a whole.

Obama’s Potential Release of $12bn of Frozen Iranian Assets Would be Followed By $35 Billion from EU
Oct 19th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Tehran stands to gain access to nearly $50 billion if the Obama administration decides to free up $12 billion of frozen Iranian assets in the US, inevitably followed by Europe’s release of another $35 billion. The White House was reported Friday, Oct. 18 to be weighing a proposal to offer Iran access to these funds “in installments” against "steps to cut down on its nuclear program."
debkafile’s intelligence sources: This plan offers Barack Obama a way to ease sanctions on Iran, while avoiding political and diplomatic fallout in Congress and from Jerusalem that would result from an attempt to get the sanctions legislation repealed or amended.

US lawmakers and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu continue to call for harsher measures against Iran, after the Geneva conference last week failed to achieve any breakthrough in the controversy on Iran’s nuclear program.

Although its delegation avoided any pledge to suspend uranium enrichment and offered no plan to dismantle its enrichment facilities, US officials complimented the Iranian position as “more candid and substantive” than in previous diplomatic encounters.

Indeed, according to our sources, the Iranian delegation advised the six world powers on the opposite side of the table to simply accept Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s fatwa as an ironclad pledge of the Islamic Republic’s commitment to refrain from developing a nuclear weapon and continue to pursue a peaceful program.
As for a substantial proposal to cut back on their nuclear operations, the Iranian negotiators said firmly: Sanctions relief first; concessions only at the end of the road.
Ahead of the next round of talks on Nov. 7-8, the Obama administration hopes to warm world opinion to the proposition that Iran’s leaders, especially President Hassan Rouhani, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and his deputy Abbas Araghchi, need more incentives for concessions. They must be able to show their doctrinaire colleagues at home that diplomacy and smiles win more than intransigence.

Even before the Geneva conference, the White House was already putting in place the plan for relieving sanctions by the release of frozen funds - which is why the US delegation included for the first time the Director of the OFAC (the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control), Adam Szubin.
Asked by CNN what Szubin was doing there, senior US negotiator Undersecretary Wendy Sherman said:

“The purpose of having our sanctions team here with us is because … Iran wants to get sanctions relief. But they also have to understand what the range of our sanctions are, what they require, how they work, what it takes to implement sanctions relief, what sanctions we believe need to stay in place.”

Even this gesture failed to elicit from the Iranian delegates any concrete concessions. The obviously fed-up senior Russian delegate, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, summed up his impression of the conference by commenting sourly that it was “…better than Almaty" (where the last round of talks took place in April) but offered “no guarantee of future progress.”

Nevertheless, President Obama is determined to keep up his strategy of appeasing Tehran and showing Congress and the Israeli prime minister that they are wasting their time by trying to stop him easing sanctions on Iran, because he will bypass them with presidential decrees.
Most of all, Obama is set against allowing himself to be persuaded by Netanyahu’s arguments of the terrible danger posed by a nuclear Iran.
Foreign Minister Zarif put his oar into the conflict between Washington and Jerusalem Friday with this comment: “There is a high possibility that the talks will be disturbed by various efforts on the part of Israel,” he said. “This reflects Israel’s frustration and warmongering.”

Let the Headlines Speak
Oct 19th, 2013
Daily NewsFrom the Internet
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

The House Of Saud Pushes For A “New United Nations”
The Saudi government cites the United Nations refusal (and thus by default, the United States) to engage in military action against the Assad regime in Syria. This refusal is far more significant than the sum of its parts – it is a strong signal from the Saudis of a desire to see a greatly enhanced, strengthened, and militaristic United Nations. In effect, the House of Saud is now calling for a New United Nations.  

Pope Plans to Visit Israel as Early as Next Year
Pope Francis plans to visit Israel as soon as next year, the Vatican said, in what could be a landmark visit for a pontiff who has already won plaudits from the Jewish community for his strong condemnation of anti-Semitism. On Thursday, the pope also met at the Vatican with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who invited him to visit Palestine as well.  

Thousands of Morsi supporters march across Egypt
Thousands of supporters of Egypt's deposed President Mohamed Morsi protested in Cairo on Friday, shouting slogans against army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who removed him on July 3. One person was injured by gunfire when taking part in a pro-Morsi march of a few thousand in Fayoum, south of Cairo, state news agency MENA reported.  

Russia slams Saudi Arabia for refusing UN Security Council membership
Russia on Friday slammed Saudi Arabia for refusing to accept its seat on the UN Security Council, calling the kingdom's decision "strange" in light of its anger at the international community to end the conflict in Syria, AFP reported. The Russian Foreign Ministry said it was surprised at Saudi Arabia's move and puzzled by its accusations against the Security Council.  

Family fights to include ‘Jesus’ on grave marker at city-owned cemetery
The family of a Colorado preacher’s wife is still fuming after the director of the city-owned cemetery refused to engrave her final resting place with the name ‘Jesus’ because it might offend people. The city eventually reversed course under public pressure. “We were in disbelief,” said Stacy Adams, the daughter-in-law of Linda Baker. “Who tries to censor Jesus from a cemetery?”  

Egypt ‘looking to Russia’ for arms after US aid freeze
Egypt is looking to Russia to supply it with arms now that the US has frozen much of its military aid to the Egyptians, Israeli television reported Friday night.  

Big asteroid buzzes past Earth and will again in 19 years
One of the most dangerous asteroids on record zipped close by Earth last month. It made headlines on Thursday, when reports said that there's a chance it could strike our planet in less than 20 years. Such a collision could unleash a force as powerful as a couple of thousand atomic bombs.  

U.S. debt jumps a record $328 billion — tops $17 trillion for first time
U.S. debt jumped a record $328 billion on Thursday, the first day the federal government was able to borrow money under the deal President Obama and Congress sealed this week. The debt now equals $17.075 trillion, according to figures the Treasury Department posted online on Friday.  

Fire in Brazilian port of Santos burns tonnes of raw sugar
A fire in Brazil's largest port has burnt some 180,000 tonnes of raw sugar, damaging six warehouses and pushing international prices to a one-year high.  

Syria must allow aid convoys to starving civilians, says US
The US has urged the Syrian government to allow immediate aid convoys to starving civilians cut off in rebel-held suburbs of Damascus. Washington said the army's months-long siege left many people in desperate need of food, water and medicine. It also cited "unprecedented reports" of children dying of malnutrition just a few kilometres from President Bashar al-Assad palace.  

Bracing for the Next Budget Crisis
It is time to add the congressional budget approval process to the permanent list of known unknowns that can threaten the financial market's stability. Investors should view federal budget approvals as tradable events like corporate earnings reports, economic data releases, and Federal Reserve interest-rate-setting committee meetings.  

Nine Lebanese pilgrims kidnapped in Syria freed
Nine Lebanese Shiite pilgrims kidnapped by rebels in Syria last year have been released, with signs that two Turkish pilots whose abduction was linked to their capture may also be freed. "The nine Lebanese held in Syria are on their way to Turkey," Lebanon's Interior Minister Marwan Charbel told AFP on Friday. The country's Prime Minister Najib Mikati added in a statement that the former hostages were "in a secure place and are ready to enter Lebanon".  

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood facing wave of trials
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood faces a wave of trials unlike any it has seen in its history, threatening to put a large number of its senior leadership behind bars for years, even life, as military-backed authorities determined to cripple the group prepare prosecutions on charges including inciting violence and terrorism. The prosecutions are the next phase in the wide-scale crackdown on the Brotherhood since the military's July ouster of President Mohammed Morsi, who goes on trial next month.  

9 Signs That China is Making a Move Against the U.S. Dollar
Oct 19th, 2013
Daily NewsWall Street Daily - Michael Snyder
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

On the global financial stage, China is playing chess while the U.S. is playing checkers, and the Chinese are now accelerating their long-term plan to dethrone the U.S. dollar.  You see, the truth is that China does not plan to allow the U.S. financial system to dominate the world indefinitely.  Right now, China is the number one exporter on the globe and China will have the largest economy on the planet at some point in the coming years. 

The Chinese would like to see global currency usage reflect this shift in global economic power.  At the moment, most global trade is conducted in U.S. dollars and more than 60 percent of all global foreign exchange reserves are held in U.S. dollars.  This gives the United States an enormous built-in advantage, but thanks to decades of incredibly bad decisions this advantage is starting to erode.  And due to the recent political instability in Washington D.C., the Chinese sense vulnerability.  China has begun to publicly mock the level of U.S. debt, Chinese officials have publicly threatened to stop buying any more U.S. debt, the Chinese have started to aggressively make currency swap agreements with other major global powers, and China has been accumulating unprecedented amounts of gold.  All of these moves are setting up the moment in the future when China will completely pull the rug out from under the U.S. dollar.

Today, the U.S. financial system is the core of the global financial system.  Because nearly everybody uses the U.S. dollar to buy oil and to trade with one another, this creates a tremendous demand for U.S. dollars around the planet.  So other nations are generally very happy to take our dollars in exchange for oil, cheap plastic gadgets and other things that U.S. consumers "need".

Major exporting nations accumulate huge piles of our dollars, but instead of just letting all of that money sit there, they often invest large portions of their currency reserves into U.S. Treasury bonds which can easily be liquidated if needed.

So if the U.S. financial system is the core of the global financial system, then U.S. debt is "the core of the core" as some people put it.  U.S. Treasury bonds fuel the print, borrow, spend cycle that the global economy depends upon.

That is why a U.S. debt default would be such a big deal.  A default would cause interest rates to skyrocket and the entire global economic system to go haywire.

Unfortunately for us, the U.S. debt spiral cannot go on indefinitely.  Our debt is growing far, far more rapidly than our GDP is, and therefore our debt is completely and totally unsustainable.

The Chinese understand what is going on, and when the dust settles they plan to be the last ones standing.  In the aftermath of a U.S. collapse, China anticipates having the largest economy on the planet, more gold than anyone else, and a respected international currency that the rest of the globe will be able to use to conduct international trade.

And China is not just going to sit back and wait for all of this to happen.  In fact, they are already doing lots of things to get the ball moving.  The following are 9 signs that China is making a move against the U.S. dollar...

#1 Chinese credit rating agency Dagong has downgraded U.S. debt from A to A- and has indicated that further downgrades are possible.

#2 China has just entered into a very large currency swap agreement with the eurozone that is considered a huge step toward establishing the yuan as a major world currency.  This agreement will result in a lot less U.S. dollars being used in trade between China and Europe...

The swap deal will allow more trade and investment between the regions to be conducted in euros and yuan, without having to convert into another currency such as the U.S. dollar first, said Kathleen Brooks, a research director at FOREX.com.

"It's a way of promoting European and Chinese trade, but not doing it with the U.S. dollar," said Brooks. "It's a bit like cutting out the middleman, all of a sudden there's potentially no U.S. dollar risk."

#3 Back in June, China signed a major currency swap agreement with the United Kingdom.  This was another very important step toward internationalizing the yuan.

#4 China currently owns about 1.3 trillion dollars of U.S. debt, and this enormous exposure to U.S. debt is starting to become a major political issue within China.

#5 Mei Xinyu, Commerce Minister adviser to the Chinese government, warned this week that if the U.S. government ever does default that China may decide to completely stop buying U.S. Treasury bonds.

#6 According to Yahoo News, China has already been looking for ways to diversify away from the U.S. dollar...

There have been media reports this week that China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange, the body that handles the country's $3.66 trillion of foreign exchange reserve, is looking to diversify into real estate investments in Europe.

#7 Xinhua, the official news agency of China, called for a "de-Americanized world" this week, and also made the following statement about the political turmoil in Washington: "The cyclical stagnation in Washington for a viable bipartisan solution over a federal budget and an approval for raising debt ceiling has again left many nations' tremendous dollar assets in jeopardy and the international community highly agonized."

#8 Xinhua also said the following about the U.S. debt deal on Thursday: "[P]oliticians in Washington have done nothing substantial but postponing once again the final bankruptcy of global confidence in the U.S. financial system".  The commentary in the government-run publication also declared that the debt deal "was no more than prolonging the fuse of the U.S. debt bomb one inch longer."

#9 China is the largest producer of gold in the world, and it has also been importing an absolutely massive amount of gold from other nations.  But instead of slowing down, the Chinese appear to be accelerating their gold buying.  In fact, money manager Stephen Leeb says that his sources are telling him that China plans to buy another 5,000 tons of gold.  There are many that are convinced that China eventually plans to back the yuan with gold and try to make it the number one alternative to the U.S. dollar.

So exactly what would happen if the Chinese announced someday that they were going to back their currency with gold and would no longer be using the U.S. dollar in international trade?

It would change the face of the global economy almost overnight.  

If China does decide to back the yuan with gold and no longer use the U.S. dollar in international trade, it will have devastating effects on the U.S. economy.  Demand for the U.S. dollar and U.S. debt would drop like a rock, and prices on the things that we buy every day would soar.  At that point you could forget about cheap gasoline or cheap Chinese imports.  Our entire way of life depends on the U.S. dollar being the primary reserve currency of the world and being able to import things very inexpensively.  If the rest of the world (led by China) starts to reject the U.S. dollar, it would result in a massive tsunami of currency coming back to our shores and a very painful adjustment in our standard of living.  Today, most U.S. currency is actually used outside of the United States.  If someday that changes and we are no longer able to export our inflation that is going to mean big trouble for us.

The fact that we get to print up giant mountains of money and virtually everyone around the world uses it has been a huge boon for the U.S. economy.

When that changes, the word "catastrophic" is not going to be nearly strong enough to describe what is going to happen.

According to a Rasmussen Reports survey that was released this week, only 13 percent of all Americans believe that the country is on the right track.  But the truth is that these are the good times.  The American people haven't seen anything yet.

Someday people will look back and desperately wish that they could go back to the "good old days" of 2012 and 2013.  This is about as good as things are going to get, and it is only downhill from here.