Thousands Make Their Way to Hevron
Oct 25th, 2013
Daily NewsINN - Maayana Miskin
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel
Many thousands of Jews from Israel and around the world have been making their way to the city of Hevron since Friday morning.
Hevron, known as “the city of the Patriarchs,” will be the site of a festive Sabbath gathering in honor of the Torah portion Chayei Sarah.
The Torah portion describes the Biblical patriarch Abraham’s purchase of the Machpelah Cave in Hevron as a burial site for his wife Sarah. According to Jewish tradition, Abraham, Sarah, their son Yitzchak (Isaac) and his wife Rivka (Rebecca), and Yaakov (Jacob) and his wife Leah are all buried in the cave.
The IDF and police have sent extra forces to the city to maintain order.
Noam Arnon, spokesman for Hevron’s Jewish community, told Arutz Sheva that the entire community is working to make the Sabbath go smoothly.
Ministers, MKs and other public figures will be among the guests. Other visitors are arriving from overseas.
“We’re happy to host the entire Jewish nation,” said Arnon. The Sabbath will be “emotionally powerful, and entertaining,” he added.
Each year, more Jews want to come for the Sabbath event, he said. Unfortunately, he said, severe limits on Jewish building and Jewish home purchases in the ancient city mean the number of people who can come is limited.
“The minute we’re able to build here, we’ll have 100,000 people,” he declared.
Housing Minister Uri Ariel called this week to double the number of homes in Hevron's Jewish neighborhoods.
The number one American export is U.S. dollars. It is paper currency that is backed up by absolutely nothing, but the rest of the world has been using it to trade with one another and so there is tremendous global demand for our dollars. The linchpin of this system is the petrodollar.
For decades, if you have wanted to buy oil virtually anywhere in the world you have had to do so with U.S. dollars. But if one of the biggest oil exporters on the planet, such as Saudi Arabia, decided to start accepting other currencies as payment for oil, the petrodollar monopoly would disintegrate very rapidly.
For years, everyone assumed that nothing like that would happen any time soon, but now Saudi officials are warning of a "major shift" in relations with the United States. In fact, the Saudis are so upset at the Obama administration that "all options" are reportedly "on the table".
If it gets to the point where the Saudis decide to make a major move away from the petrodollar monopoly, it will be absolutely catastrophic for the U.S. economy.
The biggest reason why having good relations with Saudi Arabia is so important to the United States is because the petrodollar monopoly will not work without them. For decades, Washington D.C. has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the Saudis happy. But now the Saudis are becoming increasingly frustrated that the U.S. military is not being used to fight their wars for them. The following is from a recent Daily Mail report...
Upset at President Barack Obama's policies on Iran and Syria, members of Saudi Arabia's ruling family are threatening a rift with the United States that could take the alliance between Washington and the kingdom to its lowest point in years.
Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief is vowing that the kingdom will make a 'major shift' in relations with the United States to protest perceived American inaction over Syria's civil war as well as recent U.S. overtures to Iran, a source close to Saudi policy said on Tuesday.
Prince Bandar bin Sultan told European diplomats that the United States had failed to act effectively against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was growing closer to Tehran, and had failed to back Saudi support for Bahrain when it crushed an anti-government revolt in 2011, the source said.
Saudi Arabia desperately wants the U.S. military to intervene in the Syrian civil war on the side of the "rebels". This has not happened yet, and the Saudis are very upset about that.
Of course the Saudis could always go and fight their own war, but that is not the way that the Saudis do things.
So since the Saudis are not getting their way, they are threatening to punish the U.S. for their inaction. According to Reuters, the Saudis are saying that "all options are on the table now"...
Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, ploughs much of its earnings back into U.S. assets. Most of the Saudi central bank's net foreign assets of $690 billion are thought to be denominated in dollars, much of them in U.S. Treasury bonds.
"All options are on the table now, and for sure there will be some impact," the Saudi source said.
Sadly, most Americans have absolutely no idea how important all of this is. If the Saudis break the petrodollar monopoly, it would severely damage the U.S. economy. For those that do not fully understand the importance of the petrodollar, the following is a good summary of how the petrodollar works from an article by Christopher Doran...
In a nutshell, any country that wants to purchase oil from an oil producing country has to do so in U.S. dollars. This is a long standing agreement within all oil exporting nations, aka OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The UK for example, cannot simply buy oil from Saudi Arabia by exchanging British pounds. Instead, the UK must exchange its pounds for U.S. dollars. The major exception at present is, of course, Iran.
This means that every country in the world that imports oil—which is the vast majority of the world's nations—has to have immense quantities of dollars in reserve. These dollars of course are not hidden under the proverbial national mattress. They are invested.
And because they are U.S. dollars, they are invested in U.S. Treasury bills and other interest bearing securities that can be easily converted to purchase dollar-priced commodities like oil. This is what has allowed the U.S. to run up trillions of dollars of debt: the rest of the world simply buys up that debt in the form of U.S. interest bearing securities.
This arrangement works out very well for the United States because we can wildly print money and run up gigantic amounts of debt and the rest of the world gobbles it all up.
In 2012, the United States ran a trade deficit of about $540,000,000,000 with the rest of the planet. In other words, about half a trillion more dollars left the country than came into the country. These dollars represent the number one "product" that the U.S. exports.
We make dollars and exchange them for the things that we need. Major exporting countries (such as Saudi Arabia) take many of those dollars and "invest" them in our debt at ultra-low interest rates. It is this system that makes our massively inflated standard of living possible.
When this system ends, the era of cheap imports and super low interest rates will be over and the "adjustment" to our standard of living will be excruciatingly painful.
And without a doubt, the day is rapidly approaching when the petrodollar monopoly will end.
Today, Russia is the number one exporter of oil in the world.
China is now the number one importer of oil in the world, and at this point they are actually importing more oil from Saudi Arabia than the United States is.
So why should Russia, China and virtually everyone else continue to be forced to use U.S. dollars to trade oil?
That is a very good question.
In fact, China has been making a whole lot of noise recently about the fact that it is time to start becoming less dependent on the U.S. dollar. The following comes from a recent CNBC article authored by Michael Pento...
Our addictions to debt and cheap money have finally caused our major international creditors to call for an end to dollar hegemony and to push for a "de-Americanized" world.
China, the largest U.S. creditor with $1.28 trillion in Treasury bonds, recently put out a commentary through the state-run Xinhua news agency stating that, "Such alarming days when the destinies of others are in the hands of a hypocritical nation have to be terminated."
For much more on all of this, please see my previous article entitled "9 Signs That China Is Making A Move Against The U.S. Dollar".
But you very rarely hear anything about this on the evening news, and most Americans do not understand these things at all. The fact that the U.S. produces the de facto reserve currency of the planet is an absolutely massive advantage for us. According to John Mauldin, this advantage allows us to consume far more wealth than we actually produce...
What that means in practical terms is that the United States can purchase more with its currency than it produces and sells. In theory those accounts should balance. But the world's reserve currency, for all intent and purposes, becomes a product. The world needs dollars in order to conduct its trade.
Today, if someone in Peru wants to buy something from Thailand, they first convert their local currency into US dollars and then purchase the product with those dollars. Those dollars eventually wind up at the Central Bank of Thailand, which includes them in its reserve balance. When someone in Thailand wants to purchase an imported product, their bank accesses those dollars, which may go anywhere in the world that will take the US dollar, which is to say pretty much anywhere.
And as Mauldin went on to explain in that same article, a significant amount of the money that we ship out to the rest of the globe ends up getting reinvested in U.S. government debt...
That privilege allows US citizens to purchase goods and services at prices somewhat lower than those people in the rest of the world must pay. We can produce electronic fiat dollars, and the rest of the world accepts them because they need them to in order to trade with each other.
And they do so because they trust the dollar more than they do any other currency that is readily available. You can take those dollars and come to the United States and purchase all manner of goods, including real estate and stocks. Just this week a Chinese company spent $600 million to buy a building in New York City. Such transactions happen all the time.
And there is one other item those dollars are used to pay for: US Treasury bonds. We buy oil and all manner of goods with our electronic dollars, and those dollars typically end up on the reserve balance sheets of other central banks, which buy our government bonds.
It's hard to quantify the exact amount, but these transactions significantly lower the cost of borrowing for the US government. On a $16 trillion debt, every basis point (1/10 of 1%) means a saving of $16 billion annually. So 5 basis points would be $80 billion a year. There are credible estimates that the savings are well in excess of $100 billion a year. Thus, as the debt grows, the savings also grow! That also means the total debt compounds at a lower rate.
Unfortunately, this system only works if the rest of the planet has faith in it, and right now the United States is systematically destroying the faith that the rest of the world has in our financial system.
One way that this is being done is by our reckless accumulation of debt. The U.S. national debt is now 37 times larger than it was 40 years ago, and we are on pace to accumulate more new debt under the 8 years of the Obama administration than we did under all of the other presidents in U.S. history combined. The rest of the world is watching this and they are beginning to wonder if we are going to be able to pay them back the money that we owe them.
Quantitative easing is another factor that is severely damaging worldwide faith in the U.S. financial system. The rest of the globe is watching as the Federal Reserve wildly prints up money and monetizes our debt. They are beginning to wonder why they should continue to loan us gobs of money at super low interest rates when we are beginning to resemble the Weimar Republic.
The long-term damage that we are doing to the "U.S. brand" far, far outweighs any short-term benefits of quantitative easing.
And as Richard Koo has brilliantly demonstrated, quantitative easing is going to cause long-term interest rates to eventually rise much higher than they normally should have.
What all of this means is that the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve are systematically destroying the financial system that has enabled us to enjoy such a high standard of living for the past several decades.
Yes, the U.S. economy is not doing well at the moment, but we haven't seen anything yet. When the monopoly of the petrodollar is broken, it is going to be absolutely devastating.
Settlers Furious At Homes for Killers Offer
Oct 25th, 2013
Daily NewsINN - Maayana Miskin
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel
Sources on the political right expressed outrage Friday over Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s plan to simultaneously release 26 terrorist prisoners, among them convicted killers, and approve the construction of hundreds of new homes in Israeli towns in Judea and Samaria (Shomron).
A senior figure on the political right told Arutz Sheva on condition of anonymity that Netanyahu’s goal appears to be to embarrass the “settlers” and the Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) party.
“Netanyahu knows that it will be hard for the settlers to forgo hundreds of housing units, even with the release of hundreds of murderers,” the source said. The entire country is experiencing a housing shortage, and communities in Judea and Samaria, which have an unusually high rate of growth, have been particularly hard-hit.
However, he declared, “We’re telling the Prime Minister – we are giving up the housing units. Don’t release even a single murderer.”
“The [Jewish] public in Judea and Samaria has very clear principles, and cannot be enticed with bitter candy,” he continued. “My suggestion to Netanyahu is that he give up these dangerous deals.”
“Many freed terrorists return to terrorism. An apartment in Judea and Samaria is not worth a terrorist attack,” he added.
Jews in Judea and Samaria should not be facing the choice implicit in Netanyahu’s offer in the first place, he said angrily. “No country on earth frees murderers or freezes construction for Jews. It’s time to wake up,” he said.
The government is expected to free terrorist prisoners next week as part of a previously agreed-upon series of prisoner releases that will continue until mid-March. The names of the terrorists to be released have not yet been made public.
The first in the series of prisoner releases saw Israel set free several convicted murderers, to the chagrin of their victims’ surviving relatives.
Salvation
Oct 25th, 2013
Daily NewsThe Bible
Categories: Bible Salvation
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. (John 1:1-12).
Political sources who spoke to Arutz Sheva on Friday morning revealed that Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who heads Israel’s negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, has been working to bury a bill that would ban the release of terrorists as a “good-will gesture” to the PA.
Livni apparently fears that the bill would make it harder for her to appease PA leaders, who have repeatedly threatened that there will be no peace agreement with Israel without the release of every terrorist from Israel’s prisons.
A representative from the government secretary’s office reportedly called one of the MKs who initiated the bill and said it would be taken off the table of the ministerial committee for legislation.
Livni is reportedly pressuring Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to join her in trying to put a stop to the bill before it comes to a vote.
Sources in the Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) party expressed outrage at the reports. “If Livni is so eager to free murderers, she’ll have to put it to a democratic vote,” they insisted.
A statement released by the party on Thursday night argued that it is more important to keep terrorist murderers in jail than to keep Livni in the government.
Party sources condemned what they said was a “cynical and immoral” attempt by Livni to make permits for construction for Jews in Judea and Samaria contingent on terrorist release. If it comes down to that, they said, “It would be better that the Prime Minister not free murderers, and not build.”
The proposed law would not prevent the release of several terrorists in the upcoming days, but would present a legal obstacle to similar “gestures” in the future.
The ministerial committee tasked with oversight of terrorist release has not yet reached a final decision regarding the identity of the terrorists who are to be released next week. However, sources involved in the process say the names that are on the table are those of “mass murderers and arch-terrorists.”
A recent terrorist release saw the government set free several convicted murderers, including terrorists who burned young children alive, and who slaughtered senior citizens with axes.
Editors note....Add to this wickedness the sin of Israel's leaders in arresting Jews for praying to God on the Temple Mount and the sin of defying God in the matter of giving away the Promised Land to their enemies. Israel are bringing down upon their heads the "Time of Jacob's Trouble." These sins will not go unpunished by God.
"And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the LORD, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God" (Zechariah 13:8-9).
Obama met Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif on Wednesday to reassure him over anxieties around US drone attacks. Photograph: Rex Features
International anger over US government surveillance has combined with a backlash against its current Middle East policy to leave President Obama increasingly isolated from many of his key foreign allies, according to diplomats in Washington.
The furious call that German chancellor Angela Merkel made to the White House on Wednesday to ask if her phone had been tapped was the latest in a string of diplomatic rebukes by allies including France, Brazil and Mexico, all of which have distanced themselves from the US following revelations of spying by the National Security Agency.
But the collapse in trust of the US among its European and South American partners has been matched by an equally rapid deterioration in its relationships with key allies in the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia this week joined Israel, Jordan and United Arab Emirates in signalling a shift in its relations with the US over its unhappiness at a perceived policy of rapprochement toward Iran and Syria.
Though the issues are largely unrelated, they have led to a flurry of diplomatic activity from Washington, which is anxious to avoid a more permanent rift in the network of alliances that has been central to its foreign policy since the second world war.
Secretary of state John Kerry has been meeting with Saudi and Israeli leaders in an effort to keep them involved in Middle East peace talks about Palestine and Syria, Obama met Wednesday with Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif to reassure him over separate anxiety over US drone attacks, and the White House has been privately trying to mend fences with world leaders on the surveillance issue.
"The [NSA] revelations have clearly caused tension in our relationships with some countries and we are dealing with that through diplomatic channels," said White House spokesman Jay Carney on Thursday.
"These are very important relations both economically and for our security, and we will work to maintain the closest possible ties."
But the Guardian has spoken with several diplomats and foreign government officials – all of whom agreed to talk only on the condition of anonymity – who say the White House is still underestimating the anger felt over recent disclosures.
They argue that US officials are being deliberately disingenuous when they claim that all countries engage in similar forms of espionage, even against allies. While it is widely accepted that the US, Britain, France, Russia and China engage in counter-espionage, other countries do not have the tools to conduct surveillance on the scale of the NSA.
Obama, Merkel and Hollande at the G20 summit in St Petersburg. Photograph: Getty
A European diplomat said that the White House had presented a false comparison by claiming all countries were engaged in the same tactics.
"How would the US respond if it discovered a friendly country was covertly listening to the calls of thousands of US citizens – including Obama?" the diplomat said.
France, Mexico, Brazil and Germany have all provided the White House with a list of detailed questions about the reports of surveillance, demanding explanations and assurances it will stop. None have so far received what they believe to be a satisfactory answer.
There is an ever-growing list of Christian leaders (including Christian scholars) who compromise God’s Word in Genesis by accepting fallible ideas such as evolution and millions of years.
Why do biblical creationists oppose evolution? Well, I would say that it’s an authority issue. We hold to the authority of God’s Word from the very first verse, and we listen as God speaks to us through His written Word and then seek to comprehend it using sound principles of biblical interpretation. Evolutionary ideas (whether geological, biological, or astronomical) clearly contradict what God tells us about the origin of the universe and life in Genesis.
Dr. Jeffrey Schloss, a professing Christian, is a professor of biology at Westmont College (a Christian college in Santa Barbara, California) and a senior scholar at the evolutionary-compromising organization BioLogos. In a blog post on the BioLogos website (originally posted in 2010 and reposted last week), Dr. Schloss proposes some ideas about why he believes there is opposition to evolutionary ideas in parts of the church. He states that many people who oppose evolution and millions of years “feel that the very truths delivered by the Bible hinge on the historicity of some passages and are therefore threatened if we accept the view of an old earth.”
First, it is true that “truths delivered by the Bible hinge the historicity of some passages.” For instance, every single biblical doctrine of theology, directly or indirectly, is founded in the first eleven chapters of the Bible. The message of the gospel has its foundation in Genesis—original sin and the penalty of death as a judgment!
But Dr. Schloss is wrong in saying that those who stand on the historicity of Genesis (as we should!) are “threatened if we accept the view of an old earth.” Frankly, that is nonsense. We are not “threatened” by those people who compromise Genesis with millions of years. Instead, we are jealous for the Word of God! We do take God’s Word seriously to “contend for the faith.” Part of our mission at Answers in Genesis is to help bring reformation to the church and call it back to the authority of the Word of God. And as we have pointed out so many times, when Christians accept millions of years, they therefore accept millions of years of death, bloodshed, diseases (like cancer and brain tumors), carnivory, and thorns—and that God called this “very good.” No, such things are the result of sin! We need to take God at His Word.
Now, Dr. Schloss holds to a position called “evolutionary creation” (which is basically just a form of theistic evolution). So he doesn’t agree that the truths of Scripture (as given clearly in Genesis) are undermined by evolution and millions of years. But as I’ve said many times, this is an “authority issue”—and a gospel issue. If we can’t believe that in Genesis 1 God created the universe and everything in it in six literal days, just like it says He did, then why should we believe the miracle of the Virgin Birth or of Christ’s Resurrection? If God called cancer, brain tumors, death, and suffering ”very good,” this would not only undermine the message of the gospel—that sin brought death and suffering and that’s why Jesus suffered death on the cross—but also attacks the character of our holy God.
Of course, such compromise in Genesis is not a salvation issue per se—there are many Christians who sincerely love the Lord but who deny the literal words of Genesis 1–11. However, their compromised positions about Genesis undermine the message of the gospel since they remove the very foundation of the Creation and Fall of man. And such compromise can be and has been a terrible stumbling block to those people the Genesis compromisers will influence. More and more young people are walking away from the church because compromise in Genesis has led them to doubt the authority of the Word, from which the gospel comes.
In the blog post Dr. Schloss continued by saying that many Christians who oppose evolution do so because in evolution “there is no room for a designer or a supernatural power.” And that’s true in one sense! Evolution was developed as a way to explain the world without God. It’s a naturalistic explanation of the origin of the universe. But the main reason biblical creationists oppose evolution is because we take God’s Word first—and what God’s Word clearly states in Genesis totally contradicts evolution and millions of years.
Sadly, like a seemingly never-ending group of Christian academics and church leaders who have compromised on Genesis, Dr. Schloss approaches Scripture with his own evolutionary presuppositions and is trying to find a way to mix his ideas with Genesis. He takes man’s word on origins as infallible—and God’s Word as fallible! What a shocking state of affairs, but such compromise permeates the church and Christian institutions.
My new book, Six Days, the Age of the Earth, and the Decline of the Church (to be released in a few weeks) details the sort of compromise happening in our so-called Christian colleges, universities, and seminaries—and in many parts of the church! Dr. Schloss is just one of many Christian academics who attempt to fit evolution and millions of years into Scripture and who encourage their students to do the same. Such academics will one day have to give an account of what they taught their students.
Let the Headlines Speak
Oct 25th, 2013
Daily NewsFrom the Internet
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues
Supertyphoon Lekima and Typhoon Francisco approaching Japan
Typhoon Francisco is battering Minamidaito Island in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. Super Typhoon Lekima is on a northwest path toward Iwo Jima and it is forecasted to turn away to the northeast in the next 48 hours. Maximum sustained winds are 140 knots (260 km/h, 162 mph) with gusts up to 170 knots (314 km/h, 195 mph)!
Major solar flare measuring X1.7 erupted from Region 1882
Following days of increased solar activity newly emerging Active Region 1882 erupted with major solar flare measuring X1.7 on October 25, 2013. The event started at 07:53, peaked at 08:01 and ended at 08:08 UTC. This region is not in geoeffective position but will be in the coming days. Potential impacts: area of impact consists of large portions of the sunlit side of Earth, strongest at the sub-solar point. Radio - Wide area blackout of HF (high frequency) radio communication for about an hour.
The disease that killed a million piglets in China has spread to the US, and no one knows why
America’s pork industry has been gripped by an outbreak of porcine diarrhea since mid-May, the first appearance of the condition in North America. US farmers have reported 768 cases of the disease, known as porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), through the first week of October, which implies that many more thousands of animals could be affected.
Democrats 'wholly own' Obamacare catastrophe
The congressman explained, just as the loss at the Alamo led to the creation of Texas, the losing battle to stop Obamacare has become a victory, because now the Democrats have to explain why their health care law has become such a disaster.
Adelson: US should drop atomic bomb on Iran
Sheldon Adelson, noted businessman and owner of the newspaper Israel Hayom, suggested that the US should use nuclear weapons on Iran to impose its demands from a position of strength.
Obamacare Website Contractors Point Fingers Back at Obama Admin.
Contractors who built the web portal for the Obama administration’s health insurance marketplace said Thursday the site’s crippling problems trace back to insufficient testing and changes that government officials made just prior to going live.
S. Africa evacuation plan: White Afrikaner group fears genocide upon Mandela’s death
Since Mandela’s was elected South Africa’s first black president in 1994 after spending 27 years in prison for actively opposing the segregationist policies of apartheid in the country, Afrikaners say over 3,000 white farmers have been murdered in revenge for the suppression enforced by its own National Party. Afrikaners say the government has never shown much desire to investigate the deaths. Genocide Watch, an organization that analyzes conditions around the world that could result in mass murder, puts Afrikaners’ risk of slaughter at level six or “preparation” stages, one level away from killings.
Mozilla's Lightbeam tool will expose who is looking over your shoulder on the web
Just who is looking over your shoulder when you browse the Internet? Tomorrow, web users will be given a new tool to shine a light on the commercial organisations which track your every movement online. Lightbeam, a download produced by Mozilla, the US free software community behind the popular Firefox browser, claims to be a “watershed” moment in the battle for web transparency.
Fukushima moves radioactive water as it braces for Typhoon Francisco
Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant is bracing itself for Typhoon Francisco, set to hit the country this weekend, by quickly securing new storage space for contaminated rainwater that has already taken up the facility’s entire storage tank capacity.
US drones strategy relies ‘too much on killing people, too little on solving the problems’
Using drones in Pakistan and elsewhere is part of the US anti-terrorism strategy that relies way too much on killing people, and way too little on solving the problems, Bennis said. Amnesty International has issued a report claiming US officials responsible for carrying out drone strikes may have to stand trial for war crimes, listing civilian casualties in the attacks in Pakistan. Human Rights Watch issued a similar report on Yemen.
Most Americans accumulating debt faster than they’re saving for retirement
A majority of Americans with 401(k)-type savings accounts are accumulating debt faster than they are setting aside money for retirement, further undermining the nation’s troubled system for old-age saving, a new report has found. Three in five workers...are “debt savers,” ...meaning their increasing mortgages, credit card balances and installment loans are outpacing the amount of money they are able to save...
Irritated EU leaders voice ‘lack of trust’ with US after spying claims
EU leaders say their relations with the US have been undermined by reports of NSA spying on European leaders and ordinary citizens. A partnership with America should be built on respect and trust, they said in a joint statement. The statement was released on Friday amid the ongoing summit of top European politicians in Brussels. It said the reports of American surveillance in Europe have raised “deep concerns” among the citizens and may harm cooperation between the EU and the US, particularly in counter-terrorism.
Obamacare website: Does it violate privacy rights?
...the Obamacare website violates a federal privacy law – a characterization that prompted one Democrat to say, 'I will not yield to this monkey court!' “buried in the source code of Healthcare.gov is this sentence that could prove embarrassing: ‘You have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication or data transiting or stored on this information system.’ ”
CHANCE OF STORMS
Earth's magnetic field is about to receive a glancing blow from three CMEs observed leaving the Sun between Oct. 20th and 22nd. Forecast models suggest that the three clouds merged en route to Earth, and their combined impact could trigger a mild polar geomagnetic storm on Oct. 24-25. Solar activity is high. On October 24th at 00:30 UT, Earth-facing sunspot AR1877 erupted, producing a powerful M9-class solar flare.
Zhupanovsky volcano (Kamchatka): new eruption
A new explosive eruption started yesterday night (23 Oct). An ash plume was detected drifting at an estimated 16,000 ft (5 km) altitude and drifting ESE. At least 1 mm of ash have been deposited in the Nalychevo valley, a natural park between Zhupanovsky and Avachinsky volcanoes.
Saudi government warns women over campaign to drive
A spokesman for the Saudi interior ministry has warned women that measures may be taken against them if they take part in a campaign against a ban on female drivers. A new campaign to give women the right to drive will culminate in Saudi Arabia this Saturday. Women are being encouraged to take to the wheel in defiance of the ban.
Elite Hezbollah fighters are spearheading battle in Syria, IDF commander warns
Elite Hezbollah fighters are leading the Syrian government’s battle against rebels in the country’s most violent regions, a senior IDF commander said on Thursday. “We must understand that this is not a war in Syria where Syrians are fighting against Syrians anymore,” Maj.-Gen. Noam Tibon, commander of the IDF Northern Corps, said at The Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference in Herzliya.
CBS May Drop Benghazi-Bomb On Obama
CBS May Drop Benghazi-Gate Bomb On Team Obama Sunday Night On 60 Minutes... Fox News' chief correspondent James Rosen reports 60 Minutes may air their long awaited report Sunday. (Video)
In Quake-Prone Israel, Public Is Advised to Take Cover, This Time Outside
But this week, the Home Front Command, the military department responsible for civil defense in times of war or national emergency, began a new public awareness campaign instructing people to run outdoors. That is because the safety campaign, advising the public to seek “open ground,” was prompted by a different threat: a swarm of minor earthquakes. The tremors, six in the last week, have been a reminder that Israel is due for a big earthquake...
Iran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium to build a nuclear bomb in as little as a month, according to a new estimate by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), considered one of the United States’ top nuclear experts.
ISIS made the estimate in a new report published on Thursday by USA Today.
"Shortening breakout times have implications for any negotiation with Iran," stated the report. "An essential finding is that they are currently too short and shortening further."
David Albright, president of the institute and a former inspector for the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the estimate means that Iran would have to eliminate more than half its 19,000 centrifuges to extend the time it would take to build a bomb to six months.
The Obama administration has said Iran is probably a year away from having enough enriched uranium to make a bomb. Requests for comment on the ISIS report from the National Security Council and the State Department were not answered.
In the report, Albright said negotiations with Iran should focus on so-called "breakout" times, or the time required to convert low-enriched uranium to weapons-grade, according to USA Today.
Albright, who has testified before Congress, said the negotiators should try to find ways to lengthen the breakout times and shorten the time that inspectors could detect breakout.
ISIS' analysis is based on the latest Iranian and United Nations reports on Iran's centrifuge equipment for producing nuclear fuel and its nuclear fuel stockpiles.
Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium has nearly doubled in a year's time and its number of centrifuges has expanded from 12,000 in 2012 to 19,000 today.
Senator Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican whose Senate Banking Committee is considering legislation to tighten Iran sanctions, said the report shows that Iran is expanding its nuclear capabilities under the cover of negotiations.
"The Senate should move forward immediately with a new round of sanctions to prevent Iran from acquiring an undetectable breakout capability," he told USA Today.
Europe’s leaders have turned their wrath on the US, condemning as unacceptable the alleged “out-of-control” spying on citizens, heads of state, and governments which has enraged Washington’s closest allies and could threaten trade and security ties.
Claims of widespread surveillance of phones, email and social media made in leaks by Edward Snowden, the former contractor with America’s National Security Agency (NSA), have already caused rifts between the US and nations including Brazil and Russia.
But it appears that not even Washington’s closest friends are immune from the snooping. On Wednesday night it emerged that the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, called President Barack Obama to take him to task over reports that the NSA had bugged her mobile phone.
Her call came days after French media reported that the NSA had monitored more than 70 million phone records, text messages and private conversations in France in one month alone, propelling the issue to the top of the agenda at a summit of EU heads of state in Brussels.
“I have... made it clear to the President of the United States that spying on friends is not acceptable at all,” Ms Merkel said as she arrived. “We need to have trust in our allies and this trust must now be established once again. To this end, we need to ask which data security agreements we need, what transparency we need between the US and Europe.”
Americans who were recipients of means-tested government benefits in 2011 outnumbered year-round full-time workers, according to data released this month by the Census Bureau.
They also out-numbered the total population of the Philippines.
There were 108,592,000 people in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2011 who were recipients of one or more means-tested government benefit programs, the Census Bureau said in data released this week. Meanwhile, according to the Census Bureau, there were 101,716,000 people who worked full-time year round in 2011. That included both private-sector and government workers.
That means there were about 1.07 people getting some form of means-tested government benefit for every 1 person working full-time year round.
Editors note.....Like Israel of old, America has turned away from God and the judgment of God has fallen upon her. What further judgment awaits is cause for trembling as we think of it.
