Almost everything we see in terms of international news these days lines up perfectly with what we would expect to see through the lens of biblical prophecy. It really is amazing and eye-opening.
Once again, Secretary of State John Kerry came home from Geneva this past Sunday, amidst a great deal of euphoria, boasting of an agreement between the P5 plus 1 nations and Iran that is scheduled to take effect on January 20th, saying, “As of that day, for the first time in almost a decade, Iran’s nuclear program will not be able to advance, and parts of it will be rolled back, while we start negotiating a comprehensive agreement to address the international community’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear program.”
These triumphant words were over a signed agreement, the details of which are so fabulous that the Obama administration absolutely refuses to reveal them to journalists or the public at large.
However, the triumphalism is shared in Iran, where on Wednesday morning, President Rouhani spoke before a demonstration of throngs of thousands of ecstatic supporters, where he boasted, ‘Do you know what the Geneva agreement means? It means the surrender of great international powers against the nation of Iran.”
The Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister, Abbas Araqchi, told the country’s state-run television on Sunday, “We will in no way, never, dismantle our nuclear centrifuges.”
Yet they are getting an estimated 20 to 25 billion dollars in sanctions relief, plus an additional 8 billion dollars from the unfreezing of the assets that have been frozen in America since the 1979 Islamic revolution. There is a tremendous economic, psychological boost. Businesses from many regions in the world are flying into Tehran seeking new markets. The stock market in Tehran is soaring.
While running for office last May, Mr. Rouhani was interviewed on Iranian National television, in which he boasted about how, when he was chief negotiator for the Iranian nuclear program between 2003 and 2005, the Iranians went from 150 centrifuges to 1,750; that he introduced the yellowcake, and the heavy water plutonium enrichment facility in Arak.
When elected, papers such as The New York Times and the Washington Post wrote glowing editorials about him as a “reformer” and a “moderate.” They failed to mention that the very day before Mr. Rouhani came to New York to embark upon his charm offensive, he spoke in front of a military parade where a fleet of trucks carried a convoy of Shahab II missiles that can easily reach Tel Aviv with the words in English, Farsi and Arabic, “Israel shall cease to exist.”
The People's Liberation Army plans to "retake" the disputed island of Thitu in the South China Sea this year, reports the Manila-based Philstar quoting a report on Chinese business and political website Qianzhan.
Claimed by China and Taiwan but controlled by the Philippines, Thitu is the second-largest island in the hotly disputed Spratly chain. The island was formerly known as Tie Zhi in Chinese, but has more recently been known as Zhongye island after a landing ship from the Republic of China Navy which was responsible for recovering the island from Japanese occupation after World War II. It has been occupied by the Philippines from 1971.
The Philippines made an "arrogant" move after announcing plans to increase its military deployment to the island, according to the report. This new policy is an "intolerable insult" to China, the report continued.
The PLA Navy has reportedly drafted a battle plan to "recover" the island in 2014. China holds that the island was "stolen" by the Philippines in 1971, and the clock is ticking to the 50-year mark that will allow the Philippines to legalize its claim.
The challenges facing Hezbollah and its leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah these days are complex. It is waging nothing less than a war in Syria, fighting alongside President Bashar Assad’s forces. It constantly maintains and seeks to boost its military capabilities for another conflict with Israel. And it needs to counter the growing terror threat it faces inside Lebanon.
Theoretically, Hezbollah has the military power to take over Lebanon by force. But as it looks at the new reality in Iraq, in which Sunni terrorists attack Shiites almost every day, it evidently understands that grabbing power might not be the smartest move right now.
Hezbollah members don’t move around in uniform, in organized fashion, but it’s obvious to IDF forces on the border that they are there. The Israelis know the vehicles they move in; when a “TV crew” arrives in the area and doesn’t act like a television crew, it is clear who they are. On more than one occasion, Hezbollah activists have dressed as shepherds. But when three “shepherds” move around with just 15-20 sheep, and without much success in controlling them, they tend to stand out.
Right at the border fence, Hezbollah members have hung a metal sign featuring the pictures of six Lebanese killed on Nakba Day — when Palestinians and their supporters mark the catastrophe of Israel’s establishment — a year-and-a-half ago. On the sign, the phrase, “They are definitely returning,” is written in sloppy Hebrew. Last Nakba Day, the Lebanese Army deployed in the area and prevented protesters from reaching the border, thwarting a planned joint demonstration with a group of Israeli Arabs.
Hezbollah is preparing. Despite the number of casualties in Syria, despite the resources its conflict with Israel require, and despite its deteriorating status in the Arab world in general and in Lebanon in particular, the organization is showing no signs of wilting.
It has sent one-third of its fighting force to Syria, while more than a third continue to prepare for another round of hostilities against the IDF.
It is not really trying to hide the massive excavations underway in Shiite towns and villages in the south, where it stores thousands of rockets — recent Israeli estimates talk of 100,000 rockets in Hezbollah hands — and where it is possibly trying to dig a tunnel it can use for an attack inside Israel. Bulldozers and heavy engineering equipment are working overtime in Shiite villages, and the organization offers to build shelters inside residents’ homes, in order, among other reasons, to convince them to stay instead of flee when the next conflict erupts. These engineering efforts are clear to the watching Israeli defense establishment, and the current estimate is that a key part of the fighting in the next war will be in built-up areas, and not in the “nature reserves” as in 2006.
Amin, editor of the newspaper al-Akhbar, is not regarded as an empty threat. “Wait and see,” he wrote. “I expect blood on the southern border.”
The U.S. Army, already reeling from the beginning of a round of cuts that will drop from its peak of 570,000 to about 490,000, was just told that those cuts don’t begin to cut it. Now the Army has begun planning to plan to shrink even more: to a force of about 420,000.
The writing was on the wall. With Iraq now a distant memory and Afghanistan winding down by the end of the year, the Army had expected to drop in size. But to some, this means “cutting into bone,” as one officer observed, and that raises a question about what a smaller Army can do — and what it can’t.
The Army leadership have framed almost any cuts to end strength as draconian. Speaking before a December budget deal that softens some of the blow, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno attempted to make the case that a smaller Army couldn’t do what it was supposed to do.
“If Congress does not act to mitigate the magnitude, method and speed of the reductions under the Budget Control Act with sequestration, the Army will be forced to make significant reductions in force structure and end strength, adding: “Such reductions will not allow us to execute the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance, and will make it very difficult to conduct even one sustained major combat operation.”
Budget cuts have already forced the Army to cut back on training and operations. Odierno told lawmakers last fall that there is less money to prepare deploying soldiers for combat, leaving soldiers across the Army less ready than they have ever been. Last summer, when the Army was still planning on having 490,000 soldiers, the service announced that it would cut 10 brigade combat teams, or BCTs, over four years.
After Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu accused the EU of "hypocrisy" in condemning settlement construction, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman summoned on Friday the ambassadors of four European countries to admonish the move.
The foreign minister called upon the four states' envoys in order to severely rebuke the ambassadors for their "he one-sided position they constantly take against Israel and in favor of the Palestinians."
This position is "unacceptable and creates a feeling that they are only looking to place blame on Israel," Liberman said.
In addition, Liberman insisted that the constant criticisms that the Israeli representatives in Europe receive "may have the opposite effect."
"Israel is making great effort to allow the dialogue with the Palestinians to continue and the position these states are taking, beyond it being biased and unbalanced, is significantly harming the chances of reaching an accord," the foreign minister said.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Netanyahu lashed out at the EU, accusing it of “hypocrisy” in condemning settlement construction, but not the Palestinians for incitement or continued terrorism.
Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf has becoming an exceedingly successful international e-book bestseller – a sign that anti-Semitism is on the rise worldwide.
Originally published in 1925, the 387-page anti-Semitic manifesto on the “Jewish peril” and the Nazi ideology has become “a bona fide online sensation,” writes Fox News, topping Amazon’s Propaganda & Political Psychology section as of Thursday for just 99 cents.
Chris Faraone of Vocativ.com wrote Wednesday that for about a year now, Hitler's book has been on the list of best-sellers on iTunes, where and that currently two different digital versions of the book rank 12th and 15th on the Politics & Current Events chart.
Originally published in 1925, the 387-page anti-Semitic manifesto on the “Jewish peril” and the Nazi ideology has become “a bona fide online sensation,” writes Fox News, topping Amazon’s Propaganda & Political Psychology section as of Thursday for just 99 cents.
Chris Faraone of Vocativ.com wrote Wednesday that for about a year now, Hitler's book has been on the list of best-sellers on iTunes, where and that currently two different digital versions of the book rank 12th and 15th on the Politics & Current Events chart.
"It adds fuel to the fire of hatred. It's shorthand for Jew hatred, and that makes it an automatic seller."
Cooper, along with historical consultant Harold Brackman, said the posthumous e-book's surge is not entirely unexpected.
“It exploits pent-up demand in Germany, where print versions have been verboten, but cyberspace again makes a joke of the Maginot Line of censorship laws,” Cooper and Brackman wrote on JewishJournal.com.
The glorification of Hitler, Cooper claims, is being seen among Muslims and Arabs in the Netherlands, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt, Thailand, Japan, India and South Korea.
Cooper, along with historical consultant Harold Brackman, said the posthumous e-book's surge is not entirely unexpected.
“It exploits pent-up demand in Germany, where print versions have been verboten, but cyberspace again makes a joke of the Maginot Line of censorship laws,” Cooper and Brackman wrote on JewishJournal.com.
The glorification of Hitler, Cooper claims, is being seen among Muslims and Arabs in the Netherlands, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt, Thailand, Japan, India and South Korea.
Fiscal crises triggered by ballooning debt levels in advanced economies pose the biggest threat to the global economy in 2014, a report by the World Economic Forum has warned.
Ahead of next week's WEF annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the forum's annual assessment of global dangers said high levels of debt in advanced economies, including Japan and America, could lead to an investor backlash.
This would create a "vicious cycle" of ballooning interest payments, rising debt piles and investor doubt that would force interest rates up further.
"This can rapidly turn into a fatal spiral, in which fears that a country will default on its debt become a self-fulfilling prophecy," it said, ultimately forcing governments to undertake "painful fiscal adjustments" in order to get debt levels back under control.
"Advanced economies remain in danger of fiscal crises. Given the US’s official public debt of more than 100pc of its GDP, and Japan’s of more than 230pc, investors may at some point conclude that these levels are unsustainable," the report said.
Also see:
[Disclaimer: I added that last part]
1 comment:
"...investors may at some point conclude that these levels are unsustainable,"
Ya think? Good grief-- this SHOULD be the front & center issue in our upcoming congressional elections, as well as our next presidential election (if we are still here for it). Again, no God-given common sense can be found. If we all ran our households the way the world government's are running countries we'd all be in jail-- the, "big brother is watching" IRS would see to that.
Looking up---
(Note to David P)
David- have a fire capt. friend who had to retire 2 years early from the fire dept. because of PTSD. This is a devastating condition that is way under appreciated. In case anyone hasn't said it to you lately, thank you for your service, sir. Praying more of your days are "good" than not.
Post a Comment