US Secretary of State John Kerry “deceived” Israel during the discussions over the release of longtime Palestinian terrorist convicts, a senior Israeli official charged Monday, according to a TV report.
The dramatic Channel 2 report — broadcast just a few hours before Israel’s release of a third group of 26 Palestinian prisoners, and shortly before Kerry is due back in the region with hopes to get Israel and the Palestinians to sign a “framework” peace deal — suggested a profound breakdown of trust between the secretary and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Prime Minister’s Office late Monday issued a statement saying it was not accusing Kerry of deception.
The TV report said that Netanyahu had sent a message to Kerry in the last few days making crystal clear that Israel will not free any Israeli Arab prisoners in the fourth and final phase of the prisoner releases, set for the coming months, and it suggested that Kerry had duplicitously allowed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to believe that Israeli Arab prisoners would be freed.
According to the report, quoting an unnamed senior Israeli government source, Netanyahu had agreed with Kerry, when they were finalizing terms for a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in the summer, that Israel would free 82 Palestinian prisoners in a series of phased releases, and that Israel would not include any Israeli Arab convicts among those to be freed. And yet when Abbas demanded, in his own separate meetings with Kerry, that 104 prisoners be released, and that Israeli Arab terrorist convicts be among those set free, “Kerry did not correct him,” the report said, presumably because he did not want to scupper the talks.
A top minister is scheduled to attend a Thursday dedication ceremony for a new Israeli neighborhood in a Jordan Valley settlement while US Secretary of State John Kerry is to be in the region, a move that could threaten to further complicate the ongoing peace process.
Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar and other lawmakers are scheduled to visit the Jordan Valley community of Gitit and attend a ceremony during which “actual construction… on a new neighborhood” will take place, according to the organizers.
Sa’ar’s move is liable to embarrass Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kerry, who is slated to arrive in Israel Wednesday to advance stalling peace talks by advocating for Israelis and Palestinians to sign on to a proposed “framework agreement.”
Well-informed sources told The Times of Israel Tuesday that Sa’ar has offered to champion the cause of securing Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley.
The West Bank border region has become a sticking point in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, with Jerusalem demanding the long-term presence of Israeli troops in the area, a proposal the Palestinians reject.
On Sunday, a bill to annex the Jordan Valley passed a key ministerial committee, drawing condemnations from both Palestinians and Israelis, who said it threatened the future of the talks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to thwart the bill becoming law.
Kerry is due to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas this week to discuss a so-called framework agreement that would enable the sides to continue negotiating a final status agreement beyond the May 2014 deadline originally set for the conclusion of talks. The exact nature of the positions delineated in this agreement are still unclear. The State Department said Monday merely that it would “serve as guidelines for the permanent status negotiation and would address all the core issues.”
Netanyahu insists that Israel needs to maintain a security presence in the Jordan Valley to be able to protect itself, by itself, from any threats. However, he is likely to freeze the proposed legislation that would annex the territory to Israel.
On Tuesday, the spokesperson of the Jordanian government condemned the legislation and called on the US to prevent Israel from passing the bill.
A global retirement crisis is bearing down on workers of all ages.
Spawned years before the Great Recession and the financial meltdown in 2008, the crisis was significantly worsened by those twin traumas. It will play out for decades, and its consequences will be far-reaching.
Many people will be forced to work well past the traditional retirement age of 65 — to 70 or even longer. Living standards will fall, and poverty rates will rise for the elderly in wealthy countries that built safety nets for seniors after the Second World War. In developing countries, people’s rising expectations will be frustrated if governments can’t afford retirement systems to replace the tradition of children caring for aging parents.
The problems are emerging as the generation born after The Second World War moves into retirement.
“The first wave of under-prepared workers is going to try to go into retirement and will find they can’t afford to do so,” says Norman Dreger, a retirement specialist in Frankfurt, Germany, who works for Mercer, a global consulting firm.
The crisis is a convergence of three factors:
— Countries are slashing retirement benefits and raising the age to start collecting them. These countries are awash in debt after overspending last decade and racking up enormous deficits since the recession. Now, they face a demographics disaster as retirees live longer and falling birth rates mean there will be fewer workers to support them.
— Companies have eliminated traditional pension plans that cost employees nothing and guaranteed them a monthly check in retirement.
— Individuals spent freely and failed to save before the recession, and they saw much of their wealth disappear once it hit.
Those factors have been documented individually. What is less appreciated is their combined ferocity and their global scope.
“Most countries are not ready to meet what is sure to be one of the defining challenges of the 21st century,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think-tank , concluded in a report this fall.
Military leaders who support the US Constitution and have indicated they will not fire on their fellow citizens in the event of manufactured False-Flag events in order to instill and install Martial Law have been fired and more firings are on the way. Obama demands a military that is fully-subordinate to him and will follow any order he gives them…including those that dismiss the US Constitution and recognize him as Supreme Leader. He is doing it and getting away with it.
ObamaCare gives the dictator-in-chief not only control over your body but, over your assets, your activities and what you think via what you say. It is an all-encompassing document of increasing horror for those who refused to pay attention to it in the past and are now being destroyed by it. It calls upon everyone else to pay for those who have been on welfare for generations (aka “those who refuse to work at a real job”) and is the culmination of the Marxist-Democrat plans that have been in place for many decades.The National ID Law takes effect in 2014 and will be enforced by the Obama-controlled DHS, TSA (which has had its police power expanded almost exponentially by Obama) and any other agency the dictator deems. It may soon no longer be acceptable to use State-issued drivers’ licenses as identification. The ObamaGov is summarily taking over every aspect of States’ authority and replacing it with their own.
[This is worth reading in full - below is the intro to this thoughtful article]
Similarly, as I illustrate in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we in the emerging American police state find ourselves reliving the same set of circumstances over and over again—egregious surveillance, strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, government spying, the criminalization of lawful activities, warmongering, etc.—although with far fewer moments of comic hilarity.
What remains to be seen is whether 2014 will bring more of the same or whether “we the people” will wake up from our somnambulant states. Indeed, when it comes to civil liberties and freedom, 2013 was far from a banner year. The following is just a sampling of what we can look forward to repeating if we don’t find some way to push back against the menace of an overreaching, aggressive, invasive, militarized government and restore our freedoms.
[Another article worth reading in full]
Obamacare presented nothing to worry about top WND’s annual list of the 10 most “spiked” or underreported stories of the last year.
At the end of each year, many news organizations typically present their retrospective replays of what they consider to have been the top news stories of the previous 12 months. WND’s editors, however, long have considered it more newsworthy to publicize the most underreported or unreported news events of the year – to shine a spotlight on those issues that the establishment media successfully “spiked.”
WND Editor and CEO Joseph Farah has sponsored “Operation Spike” every year since 1988, and since founding WND in May 1997, has continued the annual tradition.
Produced with the help of WND readers, here are the WND editors’ picks for the 10 most underreported or unreported stories of 2013:
Any way you slice it, whether it’s car sales, home sales, retail sales, employment, or monetary stimulus, the warnings are everywhere. The canary in the coal mine is going into cardiac arrest.
Back in 2007 trend forecaster Gerald Celente warned the world of the “Crash of 2008.” He based his analysis on many of the aforementioned data points. We’re seeing a similar pattern develop in late 2013, suggesting that 2014 could be the year it all goes critical: There’s fear and hysteria running through the entire global financial community, because as everybody knows all they did was postpone the inevitable.
And as for the international scene… the whole thing is collapsing.
That’s our forecast.
We are saying that by the second quarter of 2014, we expect the bottom to fall out… or something to divert our attention as it falls out.
A canary may have just keeled over. Not in the coal mine – but in the stock market.
Shares of Ford – healthiest of the Big Three automakers – are down 8 percent, according to Bloomberg. And it’s not just Ford, either. GM, Honda and Toyota stocks are down, too.
Could it be related to the gloomy news that the number of new mortgage applications has just hit a 13 year low? That the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasuries is a barely break-even-with-inflation 3 percent? That there are almost1.5 million fewer Americans employed full-time today than there were in 2006, even as the population has increased by 16 million since then?
…
The buying power of the average American – not just his ability but his inclination – is the decisive factor. And the buying power of the average American is going down – not up. Lower household income; higher cost of necessaries (food especially). Higher – and new – taxes (in particular, the ObamaTax). The very real specter of Zimbabwean inflation at any moment. It is enough to give a sensible person pause.
…
Interest rates? Forget about it. When they begin their inevitable uptick – expect this to happen by summer – it will be impossible to sweep under the rug.
And it will probably do to the car industry’s fortunes what Bernie Madoff did to his “investors.”
Grab onto something. It’s going to get bumpy.
Our economy as it exists today is wholly unsustainable. The government and Federal Reserve will soon run out of bullets and their efforts to stabilize the system will be revealed for the abject failures they really are.
Is 2014 the year?
We’ll soon find out.
This Is What Really Happens In The Drone Program - From An Insider
Over the weekend, Heather Linebaugh wrote a powerful Op-ed in The Guardian newspaper lamenting the lack of public understanding regarding the American drone program. Heather should know what she’s talking about, she served in the United Stated Air Force from 2009 until March 2012. She worked in intelligence as an imagery analyst and geo-spatial analyst for the drone program during the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Here are some key excerpts from her article:
Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and Reaper program – aka drones – I wish I could ask them a few questions. I’d start with: “How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?” And: “How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?” Or even more pointedly: “How many soldiers have you seen die on the side of a road in Afghanistan because our ever-so-accurate UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] were unable to detect an IED [improvised explosive device] that awaited their convoy?”
Few of these politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue of what actually goes on. I, on the other hand, have seen these awful sights first hand.
I knew the names of some of the young soldiers I saw bleed to death on the side of a road. I watched dozens of military-aged males die in Afghanistan, in empty fields, along riversides, and some right outside the compound where their family was waiting for them to return home from the mosque.
What the public needs to understand is that the video provided by a drone is not usually clear enough to detect someone carrying a weapon, even on a crystal-clear day with limited cloud and perfect light. This makes it incredibly difficult for the best analysts to identify if someone has weapons for sure. One example comes to mind: “The feed is so pixelated, what if it’s a shovel, and not a weapon?” I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people, if we endangered the wrong people, if we destroyed an innocent civilian’s life all because of a bad image or angle.
Moreover, the many civilians being incinerated without a trial are not the only victims here. So are the actual drone operators themselves, many of whom end up committing suicide. Recall my article from December 2012: Meet Brandon Bryant: The Drone Operator Who Quit After Killing a Child. Of course, our so-called political “leaders” never get their hands dirty, other than to take a lobbyist bribe that is. Now more from Heather:
At least we can find a little humor at the end of the year:
Warmists Stuck In A Sea Of Denial
Global warming scientists forced to admit defeat... because of too much ice: Stranded Antarctic ship's crew will be rescued by helicopter ... Chris Turney, a climate scientist and leader of the expedition, was going to document 'environmental changes' at the pole ... In an interview he said he expected melting ice to play a part in expedition ... MV Akademik Schokalskiy still stuck among thick ice sheet 1,500 nautical miles south of Hobart, the Tasmanian capital ... Called for help at 5am Christmas morning after becoming submerged in ice. – UK Daily Mail
Free-Market Analysis: So a number of prominent warmists set sail on an icebreaker ship to check on the thinning of the Antarctic ice cap. What they discovered was that the ice was actually thicker than expected.
And then they got stuck.
If these warmists were in search of the perfect headline to convince credulous masses that global warming was thinning both the North and South Pole, they miscalculated. They created a headline nonetheless, but surely not the one they wanted.
The vision of so many top warmists stranded on a ship, stuck amidst the icebergs they swore were thinning, provides skeptics with an ironic episode that rarely presents itself.
Here's how the Daily Mail reports on it:
They went in search evidence of the world's melting ice caps, but instead a team of climate scientists have been forced to abandon their mission ... because the Antarctic ice is thicker than usual at this time of year.
The scientists have been stuck aboard the stricken MV Akademik Schokalskiy since Christmas Day, with repeated sea rescue attempts being abandoned as icebreaking ships failed to reach them.
Now that effort has been ditched, with experts admitting the ice is just too thick. Instead the crew have built an icy helipad, with plans afoot to rescue the 74-strong team by helicopter.
The expedition is being lead by Chris Turney, a climate scientist, who was hoping to reach the base camp of Douglas Mawson, one of the most famous Antarctic explorers, and repeat observations done by him in 1912 to see what impact climate change had made.
Global warming is a basic dominant social theme of the elite, in that it is a promotion on which others are predicated. Global warming – climate change, etc. – is intended to provide the justification for such oddities as smart meters and carbon capture. Basically, this theme gives rise to a vast panorama of authoritarian legislation and Draconian enforcement. Once the idea of manmade global warming/climate change is accepted, the ramifications are endless. Almost any law can be justified under the idea that the planet itself is at risk due to human behavior. And almost behavior-altering tax or fine can be justified as well.
Popular acceptance of global warming is a prelude to the application of deep fascism. The meme introduces the endlessly regnant state. No wonder the elites are so keen on establishing it – even though "it" presumably doesn't exist. Still, they proceed with their endless UN conferences, presentations of meaningless papers, fiddled statistics, endlessly repeated falsehoods that travel around the world and show clearly the nature and content of the cooperative ecosystem.
Lying liars lie. And now, finally, they are on the cusp of their biggest caper. Having built up stock markets, especially the US stock market, to empyrean highs via excessive money printing and relaxed regulations, they have managed to jam the IPO pipeline with various kinds of "green" solutions, often partaking of the global warming promotion.
They are making a final push – as part of the Wall Street Party we've diagnosed – to fund a slew of warmist industries and facilities with the public's money. Presumably, this sort of funding adds credibility to what is being created.
If it can somehow be seen that the market process itself created various forms of green technology, then presumably their credibility is enhanced. Which leads us to a final point: There is money to be made with this meme and those who are cynical enough (or idealistic enough) to subscribe to it may gain revenue via professional or investment participation.
For many, however, there may be moral issues that preclude participation. This is an egregious elite meme with numerous authoritarian ramifications. But some will always continue to help elite forces promote it for a variety of reasons.
Conclusion
One could certainly say that global warmists are trapped amidst contradictory evidence. They are frozen in a sea of denial.
Also see:
