The Epicenter: On The Brink As Tensions Escalate

Again today we have a number of articles which reveal the world's birthpains progression - first to the Middle East:

Syria Defense Minister Killed In Damascus

Assad's brother-in-law reportedly killed, interior minister critically injured; Republican Guard troops seal off hospital where casualties were brought; overnight fighting breaks out near Damascus presidential palace

Syrian state television said a "terrorist explosion" which struck a national security building in Damascus killed Syrian Defense Minister Daoud Rajha and critically injured the country's interior minister on Wednesday.

"The terrorist explosion which targeted the national security building in Damascus occurred during a meeting of ministers and a number of heads of (security) agencies," the television.

Jordan Moving To Ward Off Possible Syrian Chemical Attacks

Jordan’s Foreign Minister said the kingdom has taken precautions to ward off a possible Syrian chemical attack.

Nasser Judeh said “the matter is of grave concern to us, and we have taken all necessary measures to confront that.” He declined to say what measures were taken.

“We will not allow anything to threaten the internal security of the kingdom,” he told reporters Tuesday at a joint news conference with visiting British Foreign Minister William Hague.

Israel and others have expressed concern about Syrian chemical weapons. Syria does not comment on the subject.

If Damascus Falls, Israel And Its Gas Fields Feared Threatened

Syrian military forces were gathered in Tuesday, July 17, to save Damascus.
Tanks and armored vehicles were positioned in strength in the capital’s center and around government buildings.

The two beleaguered districts are home to a quarter of the capital’s 1.8 million inhabitants.
The Syrian general staff has withdrawn its command headquarters to a well-fortified complex on Shuhada Street in the capital’s center.

If Damascus falls and Assad is cornered, the entire region stands in peril of wider repercussions, because neither he nor Tehran will take defeat lying down.

On the Iranian-Hizballah list are Middle East oil installations as well as Israeli, US, Turkish, Saudi and Jordanian strategic targets.

Saturday, the Cypriot police captured a Hizballah terrorist before he could blow up an Israeli El Al flight and tourist buses in Limassol.

Tehran is feared to be focusing on the Mediterranean island as part of a plot to set Israel’s Mediterranean gas field Tamar on fire. The field is 80 kilometers west of Haifa

It would be a spectacular curtain-raiser for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and for strikes against Gulf oil installations.

Navy Commander, Maj. Gen. Ram Rothberg called last week for an extra five warships and submarines to safeguard Israel’s burgeoning gas fields at the cost of a billion dollars.

The Syrian ruler has stoked up the menace by moving out of storage missiles and shells armed with mustard gas, sarin nerve gas and cyanide stockpiled for years.

They are on operational readiness at Homs, Latakia and Aleppo

Syria Hardens Its Response To Rebels In Damascus Clashes

Tensions escalated in Damascus on Tuesday as clashes between the Syrian Army and rebels near the city center extended into a third day, with government forces throwing a security cordon around some embattled neighborhoods, firing from helicopters and reinforcing the number of tanks on the streets.

The urban combat overshadowed international diplomacy aimed at halting the Syria conflict, which intensified ahead of a United Nations Security Council vote scheduled for Wednesday on whether to extend the mission of 300 United Nations monitors, who have basically been trapped in their hotel rooms by the violence since last month, their work suspended.

There was also new evidence, reported by Israel’s intelligence chief, that President Bashar al-Assad was moving troops into Damascus from Syria’s border with the disputed Golan Heights territory held by Israel, a possible sign of the seriousness of the fighting shaking neighborhoods at Mr. Assad’s doorstep.

“The battle for Damascus has not started,” said Abu Raed, a coordinator in Qaboun for the Free Syrian Army, the coalition of rebel fighters, who was interviewed in Turkey and did not use his full name for safety reasons. “It is more ebb and flow; these skirmishes are just a test as our fighters infiltrate then withdraw.”

The government was taking it seriously, however, with one video posted online showing tank and troop reinforcements rolling into Damascus

“Damascus is a symbol, it is the center of gravity of the Syrian regime, so this has psychological, moral, military and political consequences,” Mr. Hanna said. “This is a war of attrition. The Free Syrian Army has a hit-and-run strategy. This is urban warfare. It favors the rebel forces and not the conventional forces.”

Sinai Becoming New Israeli Enemy State

Jihad terrorists are threatening to take over the Sinai, says U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who added it will be a problem for Egypt and the United States as well as for Israel.

The Sinai is next door to Gaza, which Hamas has controlled since it ousted the rival Fatah faction six years ago, although it is being challenged by Islamic Jihad and other rival terrorist groups, all of which have the common goal of annihilating Israel.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards "Overseeing Huge Expansion Of Country's Nuclear Programme"

Iran's Revolutionary Guards are overseeing a massive expansion of the country's nuclear weapons programme in an attempt to bring forward the date when the regime can produce its first warhead, according to a leading Iranian dissident group.

Having previously revealed the existence of Iran's top-secret uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) says it has now uncovered conclusive evidence of how the Revolutionary Guards are quietly expanding the weapons programme.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's spiritual leader who has overall responsibility for Iran's nuclear programme, is keen for Iran's nuclear scientists to intensify their efforts to achieve the technological expertise required for making an atom bomb.

Sec. Clinton Issues Warning To Iran In Israel

The U.S. will use its power to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared Monday after meeting top Israeli officials, where they discussed the issue.

She said the U.S. would keep raising the pressure on Iran as long as it fails to come clean on its disputed uranium enrichment program.

"Iran is under greater pressure now than ever before," she said. "We will use all elements of American power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon."

The flurry of visits by top U.S. officials to Israel could reflect an administration attempt to shore up Obama's support among Jewish voters as the election nears. The president has pushed back forcefully against Republican claims that he is weak in defending Israel's security, and GOP candidate Mitt Romney is planning to visit Israel later this month.

The Federal Reserve Is Not Going To save Us From The Great Depression That Is Coming

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke delivered his annual address to Congress on Tuesday, and he did very little to give lawmakers much confidence about where the U.S. economy is heading. Bernanke told members of Congress that recent economic data points "suggest further weakness ahead"

During his testimony, Bernanke seemed unusually gloomy about the direction of the U.S. economy. He seemed resigned to the fact that there really isn't that much more that the Federal Reserve can do to stimulate the U.S. economy.

The truth is that the United States is absolutely drowning in debt, and when that debt bubble finally bursts the Federal Reserve is simply not going to be able to save us from the Great Depression that will happen as a result.

So what does Bernanke want us to do?

If we continue on the path that we are on, our debt will continue to grow by leaps and bounds.

But if we seriously cut spending or raise taxes, that will significantly slow down the economy.

Either path leads to a whole lot of pain.

Bernanke wants to come out of all this looking like a good guy. At this point he is probably hoping that the next great global financial crisis does not happen until his term ends.

Unfortunately, he is not going to have that luxury. The next wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching, and it is going to hit the U.S. even harder than the last recession did.

And when the unemployment rate soars well up into the double digits, what do you think is going to happen?

The truth is that the entire country will soon resemble cities such as Gary, Indiana and Flint, Michigan.

To get an idea of what most of our cites will soon look like, just check out this video.

Very Real Danger Of Collapse: "Could Be So Severe I Don't Think Our Civilization Could Survive It"

The single most important factor responsible for fueling the last several decades of economic growth has been credit expansion.

In the process we’ve expanded our national debt to unprecedented levels, with some estimates suggesting that our total liabilities and commitments are approaching nearly $200 trillion in the next twenty five years.

By all accounts, we live in a system built on nothing more than a promise to repay what we’ve borrowed. This reverse trickle-down economics has left everyone bloated with debt, including the government as a whole, as well as the individual American who has bought his house, car, furnishings and overall lifestyle by taking on insurmountable levels of debt

There is no recovery. The credit crisis has not been averted. Things are going to get far worse before they get better.

While most refuse to admit it, the evidence is clear. Our system of “creditism,” as described by The New Great Depression author Richard Duncan, is dependent on monetary intervention and expansion by our central bank. Unless the Federal Reserve continues to artificially expand credit and print more money, the system will collapse in on itself – just as it almost did in 2008.

In order to understand this crisis it’s necessary to understand the role credit has played in bringing it about.

When we broke the link between money and gold forty years ago, this removed all the constraints on credit creation. And afterwards credit absolutely exploded. In the U.S. it grew from $1 trillion to $50 trillion – a fifty-fold increase in forty three years.

This explosion of credit created the world we live. It created very rapid economic growth. It ushered in the age of globalization.

But it now seems credit cannot expand any further because the private sector is incapable of repaying the debt that it has already. And if credit now begins to contract there is a very real danger that we will collapse into a new great depression.

As long as credit grow rapidly, that makes the economy grow. However, the day always comes when credit can’t expand any further and then the new depression begins.

If they don’t prevent the credit supply from contracting then we will have a new depression. So the policy is to ensure that credit continues to expand. And now that’s what government debt is doing; increasing government debt is making total debt grow, otherwise we would have already collapsed into a debt deflation death spiral.

If this credit bubble pops the depression is going to be so severe that I honestly don’t think our civilization can survive it.

Bankruptcy: Cities First, Then The States

As we watch the slow collapse of the nations of Europe under the heavy weight of leftist entitlement spending, the reality of the destructive forces of socialist utopianism is all too real. The United States has trailed Europe on its dire course, and only now is the diabolical truth of a progressive agenda truly taking shape for more than just the politically savvy to notice.

Before the current Obama administration in the White House the socialist ideas of utopianism were applied incrementally, slowly so as to not be noticed, yet steadily enough to move this nation in the direction of Marxist communitarianism. While full control of the federal government was granted to the democrats between 2007 and 2011, the downward spiral towards collapse excelerated at break-neck speed.

The problem is, this has never happened before because the Founding Fathers saw fit to not allow it to by prohibiting the States from emitting bills of credit.

Just another problem we have encountered because of our unwillingness to follow the U.S. Constitution.

Our insolence, if we don’t stop the progressive wave of utopianism, could result ultimately in the collapse of our nation. The bankruptcy of cities is only just the beginning.

U.S West Coast To Receive Dangerous Levels Of Fukushima Radiation

Researchers have released the findings of an intense study into the aftermath of last year’s Fukushima nuclear disaster and warn that the United States isn’t exactly spared just yet. In fact, scientists now fear that incredibly contaminated ocean waters could be reaching the West Coast of the US in a matter of only five years, and the toxicity of those waves could eventually be worse than what was seen in Japan.

A team of scientists led by Joke F Lübbecke of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory have published the findings of an experiment recently conducted to measure the impact of last year’s nuclear disaster and the results are eye-opening to say the least. By simulating the spreading of contaminated ocean waters and seeing how currents could carry them across the Pacific from Japan to the US, scientists believe that the worst might be still on the way.

“Within one year it will have spread over the entire western half of the North Pacific and in five years we predict it will reach the US West Coast.” Claus Böning, co-author of the study, tells the website Environmentalresearchweb

Answer To Christian-Bashers Shoots Up Amazon

Ever since its official release in May, “The Magic Man In The Sky: Effectively Defending The Christian Faith” by Pastor Carl Gallups consistently has been a No. 1-ranked best seller in the Science and Religion category for Amazon’s Hardcover and Kindle editions.

Recently Washington Times columnist Jeff Kuhner gave the book a rave review proclaiming, “A must-read book. A muscular defense of the Christian faith. An arsenal of powerful weapons against Christian bashers.”

Kuhner’s comments include, “‘It’s central theme can be distilled to one seminal idea: the secular argument that Christianity is an outdated, primitive institution peddling a superstitious faith in God – the “magic man in the sky” – is false. In fact, Mr. Gallups shows it is atheism that requires much greater, almost blind faith. The Christian has no need to be intimidated by the atheist and/or the evolutionist who attempts to assert that evolution is settled science,’ Mr. Gallups says. ‘It is not. It is fascinating speculation, but it is not settled science.’”