Israeli police dispersed dozens of masked Palestinians who threw rocks and firecrackers near the contested Holy site in Jerusalem's Old City in response to a visit by a group of Jewish activists.
The footage was taken a few hours before an attack at a train station in east Jerusalem when a border police officer was killed by a Palestinian who ran over several people with his car, killing one and injuring 14 others.
The Palestinian man rammed a car into a crowded train stop and then attacked people with an iron bar after leaving the vehicle, before he was shot dead by police.
The militant Hamas group took responsibility for the attack – the second such assault in east Jerusalem in the past two weeks – which escalated already heightened tensions between Arabs and Jews in the city.
The roots of the unrest are many: from the killing in July of a Palestinian teenager by Jewish extremists – apparently in revenge for the killing of three Israeli teenagers by Palestinians – to increased settlement building in East Jerusalem, the war in Gaza and a push by ultranationalist Jews to be allowed to pray at one of Islam's holiest sites.
The result is the greatest period of unrest the city has experienced since the second Palestinian uprising, or Intifada, began in 2000, a five-year period of conflict that left around 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis dead.
A full-scale manhunt was underway for the Palestinian driver of a vehicle who rammed into three IDF soldiers on a West Bank road Wednesday evening in what appeared to be that day’s second vehicular terror attack.
Two of the soldiers were moderately hurt and one sustained light injuries, Israel Radio reported. They were evacuated to hospitals in Jerusalem for treatment, and a hospital official said there was no immediate threat to their lives.
A Palestinian vehicle hit the soldiers, who were standing by the side of Route 60 near the Palestinian refugee camp of al-Aroub, south of Jerusalem, a police spokesperson said.
“The IDF is conducting a widespread search in the region to locate the vehicle and its driver,” the army said in a statement.
The vehicle was identified as a large white commercial truck, and a van matching the description was later found by IDF troops.
It is difficult to find the motivation to write about the state of the global economy these days, if only because there is not much left to say. I feel like I am composing multiple obituaries for the same long dead corpse. Most of the Liberty Movement and I suspect a small portion of the mainstream market understand that there is no tangible or legitimate recovery, let alone a stable fiscal ladder to rest our feet upon. There is literally nothing left to the financial system but rigged statistics, false promises, and ever expanding debt. In fact, the concept of debt creation is the only thing holding our facade of an economy together.
I have come across many mainstream economic acolytes and cultists in recent months whodisregard ALL logic and reason, forsaking the realities of demand based trade and immersing themselves in a grand delusion in which central bank generated debt and inflation are the real source of “prosperity”. I feel sorry for them in a way, because the truth is right in front of their faces, and yet, they will never see it, not until they are buried alive in it.
Stocks are, of course, a sham of the highest magnitude, but they do still say something about the greater truth behind our financial condition. The fact that many market traders clearly KNOW that it's all a farce, and are actually banking and betting on the scam, tells me exactly how close we are to the end of the line.
In almost every instance of market decline, financial news group Reuters has injected false rumors of more stimulus from the European Central Bank. This was also the case in October as markets began to crash. These rumors were later dashed by the Financial Times, but not before the mere mention of more fiat stimulus from any central bank sent stocks soaring yet again.
And what about government debt? As it stands now, foreign interest in U.S. treasury bonds is waning. The vast majority of new bonds sold are short term. Until now, the Fed has been the primary buyer of long term debt, snapping up 10 year bonds from the market while other investors lose confidence in America's ability to pay off liabilities in the future. Now that QE is over, who is going to buy the ever expanding U.S. government debt? I aimed this question recently at a Fed cultist and his response was “Well...obviously somebody will buy it...”, though he couldn't specify.
The IMF claims that “bold action” is required to “reset” the global system.
And, the ever present overlords at the Bank Of International Settlements have posted a stark warningabout our financial future, predicting a “violent reversal” in markets. The last time the BIS made such a prediction was in the summer of 2007, just before the derivatives crash.
I believe that the admissions of financial danger by internationalists, the sharp drop in stocks at the beginning of fall, the reversal of the political theater, and the fact that mainstream investors now recognize the illegitimacy of the markets yet continue with the scam anyway, signals the last gasp of the global economy. I expect increasing market instability from this point on, as well as numerous geopolitical distractions which will be blamed for the fiscal chaos. I have left out my explanation of the final end game so that I can cover it more fully in my next article. Needless to say, the coming storm is a deliberately engineered one, meant to achieve very specific goals, including a fearful and panicked populace, easy to manipulate as the system goes off the rails for the last time.
How do you fix a superpower with exploding levels of debt, that has a rapidly aging population, that consumes far more wealth than it produces, and that has scores of zombie banks that could collapse at any moment. You might think that I am talking about the United States, but I am actually talking about Europe. You see, the truth is that the European Union has a larger population than the United States does, it has a larger economy than the United States does, and it has a much larger banking system than the United States does. Most of the time I write about the horrible economic problems that the U.S. is facing, but without a doubt economic conditions in Europe are even worse at the moment. In fact, there are many (including the Washington Post) that are calling what is happening in Europe a full-blown "depression". Sadly, this is probably only just the beginning. In the months to come things in Europe are likely to get much worse.
First of all, let's take a look at unemployment. If the U.S. was using honest numbers, the official unemployment rate would probably be somewhere close to 10 percent. But in many nations in Europe, the official unemployment rate is already above the ten percent mark...
France: 10.2%
Poland: 11.5%
Italy: 12.6%
Portugal: 13.1%
Spain: 23.6%
Greece: 26.4%
The lack of good jobs is causing the middle class to shrink all over Europe, and more people than ever are becoming dependent on government assistance. European nations are well known for their generous welfare programs, but all of this spending is causing debt to GDP ratios to absolutely explode...
Spain: 92.1%
France: 92.2%
Belgium: 101.5%
Portugal: 129.0%
Italy: 132.6%
Greece: 174.9%
At the same time, the value of the euro has been steadily declining over the last six months. This is significantly reducing the purchasing power that European families have...
The Europeans are scared to death of a deflationary depression, but that is precisely where the long-term economic trends are taking them right now. The following is from a recent Forbes article...
Eurozone data is constantly reminding investors that the region’s economy is barely limping along, as companies slash selling prices in a vain attempt to improve sales in the face of a weakening economy and evaporating new orders. Corporate deflationary reactions like this only hurt a company’s bottom line by squeezing profit margins even further. The obvious knock-on effect will limit resources for hiring and investing, which in turn only dampens any chances of an economic rebound, again putting the region into a bigger hole.
Turbulent times are ahead for the dollar, the euro and the yen.
Getting back to Europe, let us hope that things stabilize over there - at least for a while.
But that might not happen. In fact, things could take a turn for the worse at any moment.
Most people don't realize this, but European banks are even shakier than U.S. banks, and that is saying a lot.
For example, the largest bank in the strongest economy in Europe is Deutsche Bank. At this point, Deutsche Bank has approximately 75 trillion dollars worth of exposure to derivatives. That amount of money is about 20 times the size of German GDP, and it is more exposure than any U.S. bank has.
Just like in the United States, most economic activity in Europe is fueled by debt. So those banks are needed to provide mortgages, loans and credit cards to average citizens and businesses. Unfortunately, bad debt levels and business failures continue to shoot up all over Europe.
The system is breaking down, and nobody is quite sure what is going to happen next.
So keep an eye on Europe. In particular, keep an eye on Italy. I have a feeling that big economic news is about to start coming out of Italy, and it won't be good.
In 2014, we have been experiencing "the calm before the storm".
But 2015 is right around the corner, and it promises to be extremely "interesting".
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