5 February 2010

Mark Armstrong was unavailable to write a weekly update this week so the task has fallen to me.

 

Where to start? The areas of interest most often covered are as always rolling along. Europe, the Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan, climate change, the state of the nation (the United Sates that is) and it could be said, the state of the world, as we survey what has been happening, especially leading toward prophesied outcomes.

 

The lead news early this week was the revelation that the United States has been beefing up it’s forces around the Gulf with Patriot and other missile batteries to four Gulf States.

 

See story: click here

 

There is a very thorough analysis of this build-up at the Stratfor site – click here

 

Essentially, this move to reinforce the Gulf area points to a (predictable) failure in diplomacy with Iran by the US administration. Moreover, it seems sanctions are also doomed. The only effective measure for sanctions would be a ban on Iranian petrol imports. (Believe it or not Iran imports 35% of it’s petrol needs). But China rejected that idea even before the recent revelation of another large arms sale by the US to Taiwan.

See story:  Click here

 

The build up has been going on for some time. But it may be needed sooner than anticipated as also earlier this week the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Feb. 11 would mark the demise of “the liberal capitalist system,” adding that its champion, America, was on the decline and that Iran and its Islamic Revolution were on the rise. February 11 is Iran’s National Day marking the country’s Islamic Revolution.

 

See story:  Click here

 

Also this week news that Iran had started to execute alleged dissidents associated with the protests over the disputed Iranian Presidential election last June. Both hanged men were found to be “enemies of God”.

 

See story: click here
 

Then there is the news that the US government has sought to raise it’s debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion but that US Treasury think that ceiling will be reached by the end of the month.

 

See story:  click here
 

Compare that with Australia. Last year the Australian Government raised it’s debt ceiling to AU$200 billion. Previously,  it was just AU$75 billion. Current Australian Government debt is AU$120 billion expected to rise to AU$315 billion + over the next 2 or 3 years following “stimulus” spending (borrowing). Australia’s population is about one fifteenth that of the USA. And Australia does not know how it will pay it’s debt off!

 

See story:  click here
 

But Australia and the United States are not causing world market heartburn right now. We have heard that Greece may face national bankruptcy due to sovereign debt. The same applies potentially to four other EU countries, with Spain at the forefront. Can Germany and France prop up this much debt in Europe? The accompanying article leads with a great truism, very neglected in our western “democracies”, but precisely why all of our western democracies face financial ruin and potentially political destruction – and why a different system may be just around the corner, in prophecy called “the Beast Power”.

 

“"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy..."

Alexander Fraser Tytler, Scottish lawyer and writer, 1770

See source:  click here
 

Then finally this week, the edifice of the world’s latest religion and it’s “bible”, that is “manmade global warming” and the 2007 IPPC Report respectively, took further blows this week adding to the crumbling claims of alarmists and scientists of doubtful credibility.

 

See story:  click here
 

It seems that more claims made in the IPPC 2007 Report, headline claims at that, such as ice disappearing in the mountains of the Andes, Alps and Africa were based upon unreviewed observational papers using anecdotal accounts of mountaineers. No direct evidence. Combine that with the Himalayan Glaciers melting by 2035 scam of a week or two ago, the email scandal of the Hadley Institute – well? What can you say? If you are one of the adherent scientists you simply describe these falsehoods as “minor errors” and that “the majority of the science presented in the IPCC report is sound and its conclusions are unaffected”. As noted though, the claims now shown to be false or dubious at best have been the “headline” claims driving the fear campaign of the alarmists. A report in the Australian newspaper this week even declared that the Great Barrier Reef was safe – despite the Australian Prime Minister’s claim just in the last week that the Reef was in imminent danger of destruction, thus seeking again to justify his third time lunge in the Parliament for an ETS. 

 

See story:  click here

 

No doubt there are a number of important stories and areas of concern that cannot be covered in this report. The trend is however that around the world there is little to give comfort that the world’s slide toward the next crisis, be it financial, Iran or the Middle East, among a number of possibilities, can be averted. We can and should only continue to watch.

 

The numbers for the program this week are not available at this time and will be given in next week’s update

 

Have a good Sabbath.

 

Murray Allatt