OATH KEEPERS UNDER ATTACK

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The Big Green Buy Christian Parenti July 27, 2010-THE NATION.

In the wake of the BP oil spill, some captains of industry have begun calling for government leadership to spur a clean-energy revolution. In June billionaire software mogul Bill Gates visited Washington and encouraged lawmakers to pony up public subsidies to triple clean-tech R&D funding from $5 billion to $16 billion annually. Gates explained to the Washington Post that much of what is touted as free-market innovation was born of government subsidies: The Internet and the microprocessor, which were very fundamental to Microsoft being able to take the magic of software and having the PC explode, were among many of the elements that came through government research and development.And on his website Gates wrote, When it comes to developing new sources of energy, and ways to store that energy, I believe the federal government needs to play a more active role than it does today.

Gates's acknowledgment of the need for government intervention is welcome, but he and many others are stuck on innovation. The fixation on new game-changing technology is omnipresent. Think of the metaphors we use: a green Manhattan Project or a clean-tech Apollo Program. It recalls Tocqueville's observation that the American lives in a land of wonders, in which everything around him is in constant movement, and every movement seems an advance. Consequently, in his mind the idea of newness is closely linked with that of improvement.Yet according to clean-tech experts, innovation is now less important than rapid large-scale implementation. In other words, developing a clean-energy economy is not about new gadgets but rather about new policies.An overemphasis on breakthrough inventions can obscure the fact that most of the energy technologies we need already exist. You know what they are: wind farms, concentrated solar power plants, geothermal and tidal power, all feeding an efficient smart grid that, in turn, powers electric vehicles and radically more energy-efficient buildings.But the so-called price gap is holding back clean tech: it is too expensive, while fossil fuels are far too cheap. The simple fact is that capitalist economies will switch to clean energy on a large scale only when it is cheaper than fossil fuels. The fastest way to close the price gap is to build large clean-tech markets that allow for economies of scale. So, what is the fastest way to build those markets? More research grants? More tax credits? More clumsy pilot programs? No. The fastest, simplest way to do it is to reorient government procurement away from fossil fuel energy, toward clean energy and technology—to use the government's vast spending power to create a market for green energy. After all, the government didn't just fund the invention of the microprocessor; it was also the first major consumer of the device.

Call it the Big Green Buy. The advantage of this strategy is that it is something Obama can do right now, without waiting for Congressional approval to act. As such, it amounts to a real test of his will to make progress in the fight against climate change.Consider this: altogether federal, state and local government constitute more than 38 percent of our GDP. Allow that to sink in for a moment. The federal government will spend $3.6 trillion this year. In more concrete terms, Uncle Sam owns or leases more than 430,000 buildings (mostly large office buildings) and 650,000 vehicles. The federal government is the world's largest consumer of energy and vehicles, and the nation's largest greenhouse gas emitter. Add state and local government activity, and all those numbers grow by about a third again.A redirection of government purchasing would create massive markets for clean power, electric vehicles and efficient buildings, as well as for more sustainably produced furniture, paper, cleaning supplies, uniforms, food and services. If government bought green, it would drive down marketplace prices sufficiently that the momentum toward green tech would become self-reinforcing and spread to the private sector.

The good news is that despite our sclerotic, largely right-wing Congress, government agencies are turning toward procurement as a means to jump-start clean tech and cut emissions.Perhaps the most important move in this direction came in October 2009, when President Obama quietly signed Executive Order 13514, which directs all federal agencies to increase energy efficiency; measure, report, and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions from direct and indirect activities; conserve and protect water resources through efficiency, reuse, and stormwater management; eliminate waste, recycle, and prevent pollution; leverage agency acquisitions to foster markets for sustainable technologies and environmentally preferable materials, products, and services; design, construct, maintain, and operate high performance sustainable buildings in sustainable locations.The executive order also stipulates that federal agencies immediately start purchasing 95 percent through green certified programs and achieve a 28 percent greenhouse gas reduction by 2020. The stimulus package passed in 2009 included $32.7 billion for the Energy Department to tackle climate change, and some of that money is now being dispersed to business and federal agencies.Already some federal agencies are installing energy management systems and new solar arrays in buildings, tapping landfills to burn methane and replacing older vehicles with plug-in hybrids and soon some all-electric vehicles. But it is the green procurement part of the executive order that is most interesting.Government has tremendous latitude to leverage green procurement because it requires no new taxes, programs or spending, nor is it hostage to the holy grail of sixty votes in the Senate. It is simply a matter of changing how the government buys its energy, vehicles and services. Yes, in many cases clean tech costs more up front, but in most cases savings arrive soon afterward. And government—because of its size—is a market mover that has already shown it can leverage money-saving deals.

Currently, the price gap relegates clean tech to boutique status: San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom owns an electric car; SF City Hall has three electric-vehicle charging stations; nationwide there are about 55,000 electric vehicles and 5,000 charging stations. Groovy.However, back on Planet America the asphalt transportation arteries are clogged with 250 million gasoline-powered vehicles sucking down an annual $200–$300 billion worth of fuel from more than 121,000 filling stations. Add to that the cost of heating and cooling buildings, jet travel, shipping, powering industry and the energy-gobbling servers and mainframes that are the Internet, and the US energy economy reaches a spectacular annual tab of $2–$3 trillion.The clean-tech price gap is partly the result of old dirty tech's history of subsidies ($72.5 billion between 2002 and 2008), but it is also the result of the massive economies of scale that the fossil fuel industry enjoys. In other words, gas pumps and gasoline are cheaper when you buy in bulk.Closely associated with the price gap is another concept, which clean-tech developers call the valley of death. This is the time in a technology's life cycle when capital dries up, the time between a technology's initial invention and its successful application as a moneymaking commodity.A report by Ernst & Young found that a typical technological innovation—like the flatscreen TV or the cellphone—costs about $20–$100 million to invent but about $1 billion to deploy at competitive prices. Between government subsidies and capital markets, there is often enough financing available to invent new gadgets or buy into a mature and profitable business. But there is a dearth of capital for new companies trying to cross that gap between victory in the lab and victory in the market.Smith Electric Vehicles, of Kansas City, is one company that would benefit immensely if government started robust green procurement. Currently Smith, the US affiliate of a British firm that has been making electric delivery trucks for eighty years, turns out about twenty units a month. The vehicles—flatbeds, refrigerator trucks, basic box-style delivery trucks—all require components that Smith buys on the open market.If we could buy gear boxes in batches of a hundred rather than ten at a time, they could be cast to our specifications rather than each one machined. That would immediately cut the cost by 30 to 40 percent, says Smith CEO Bryan Hansel. Similar savings would be available for other inputs like steel chassis, cabs, drive shafts, suspensions and wiring harnesses, all of which are purchased from the same suppliers used by diesel- and gas-powered vehicle makers.

In March Smith received a $32 million Energy Department grant that will help it offset the cost of its trucks. But what would really give it a boost is an order of 1,000 trucks a year for the next ten years, from, say, the Defense Department or the Postal Service or the General Services Administration (GSA). If that happened, Smith's plans to open twenty more small manufacturing facilities around the country would shift into high gear.We have approached the DoD about nontactical vehicles, like trucks that are used on bases here in the US. They bought four of our vehicles for testing. So we're hopeful,says Hansel. The Defense Department has 160,000 nontactical vehicles, many of which are suitable for electrification.In other respects, the military is one of the most avid adaptors of clean technology. Of all the energy the federal government consumes, 80 percent is used by the Defense Department. The cost of delivering fuel to forward operating areas can be as high as $400 a gallon, by some estimates. And according to an Army Environmental Policy Institute report, 170 soldiers died and many more were horribly maimed just protecting fuel in combat zones during 2007. For purely strategic reasons the military is trying to free itself (at least a bit) from its clumsy and very long fossil fuel tether.Thus the military is experimenting on a large scale with green technology. Fort Irwin, in California, is building a 500 megawatt (that is big) solar power plant and is on track to become self-sufficient in electricity use within a decade. Fort Leavenworth is undergoing an energy retrofit that a Pew report described thus: energy efficiency improvements are made by a private-sector firm at no upfront cost to the Army, with resulting savings shared by the base and the contractor.The list goes on, but unfortunately most of the changes are relatively small scale.Government procurement, particularly the military's, would become significantly greener if two recently introduced bills became law. The Department of Defense Energy Security Act of 2010, introduced by Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, would require the department to derive a quarter of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025. And—good news for Smith Electric Vehicles—the bill also calls, rather ambitiously, for a full-scale conversion of the military's nontactical vehicle fleet to electric, hybrid or alternative-fuel vehicles by 2015.

A similar bill, introduced by Democrat José Serrano of New York, would require the Postal Service to purchase at least 20,000 electric vehicles by 2015. That goal is reasonable, and the USPS is a perfect place to start, as most of its vehicles travel in loops of less than 20 miles each day and always park in the same garage. Thus, even current battery technology is sufficient. Many other government fleets fit the same profile: they have regular routes of less than 100 miles a day and use the same parking spot each night, so they are easy and cheaper to charge because the price of juice drops at night.Right now a vehicle from Smith is about 20 percent more expensive than a standard gas or diesel truck. But the cost per mile to run an electric truck is about one-third the cost per mile of a gas- or diesel-powered one. Hansel says that with enough large orders his product will reach cost parity with dirty-tech options. When that happens, large private-sector fleets, like UPS, FedEx, Staples and Frito-Lay, will start buying electric vehicles simply because it will be the cheaper option.In anticipation of that day, Nissan is releasing the 2011 Leaf, a fully electric plug-in car. It plans to make 90,000 of them. Chevy is coming out with the Volt—10,000 of them. Will this first generation of EVs really have a market, and sufficient charging options? Who knows? But you can be sure they would if Big Government made the Big Green Buy.Buildings also use lots of energy. The US Green Building Council reports that buildings account for about 36 percent of America's total energy use and emit roughly the same proportion of greenhouse gases. But if properly constructed and managed, many buildings could actually generate energy for their own use, for vehicles or to put back into the grid.The government's building manager—its janitor, if you will—is the GSA. The GSA constructs, repairs and manages federal buildings; it buys the supplies and keeps the heat and AC on; and it buys and maintains much of the government's nonmilitary vehicle fleet. It also acts as a purchaser and contractor of sorts for most other federal agencies. The GSA is about as dull an agency as you can imagine. It has pocket-protector and brown shoes written all over it. But in the age of climate change, its brief has taken on vital importance. The implications of Executive Order 13514 have put the GSA, along with the military, at the cutting edge of the Big Green Buy.We're taking this very seriously,says Martha Johnson, administrator of the GSA. We are normally sort of overlooked, but we were thrilled, really excited, when the president gave us such prominent place in his environmental strategy.President Bill Clinton issued four executive orders on sustainable clean procurement, but they lacked specific targets or enforcement mechanisms and thus achieved very little. Our progress in general in buying these products stinks,said Dana Arnold, senior program manager at the White House Office of the Federal Environmental Executive in a recent interview with the Federal Times.

This time it may be different, and the GSA is gearing up to be the point agency in what is sometimes called Environmentally Preferable Procurement, or green supply chain management.The GSA is putting up solar arrays, buying a few electric cars and hybrids, trying to produce energy at its buildings and buying renewable energy like biomass, solar and wind power, which now account for 10.8 percent of the GSA's federal building power supply. It is also creating monitoring systems to track progress and keep federal agencies accountable.The GSA's sustainability plan requires a minimum of three percent renewable energy source for all competitive electricity supply contracts and requires that renewable energy be from a plant that was recently built in order to stimulate greater investment in the industry.The agency has reduced its own energy use by 15 percent, as measured against a 2003 baseline, and plans to reduce energy consumption in its buildings by 30 percent from that baseline by 2020. Already the GSA's building stock—mostly offices—is about 22 percent more efficient than similar private-sector buildings.In addition, the GSA is working on cutting the amount of jet travel its workforce requires and, when possible, increasing telecommuting and home-based work. It is also pressuring other agencies to shut off unused data centers—the USDA, for example, uses only between 10 percent and 20 percent of its total computing capacity, but its huge, largely empty servers run at 100 percent of power.Other federal agencies, however, are lagging far behind. It is amazing to us to find out the low level of awareness, says Linda Mesaros, a consultant for sustainable purchasing. State and local governments are also moving toward green procurement, but few have been very aggressive or ambitious.

Nor are the main pieces of energy and climate legislation focusing on procurement. The American Energy Innovation Council—which includes Bill Gates and executives from companies like Xerox, General Electric and Bank of America—is lobbying for a research plan and money and pilot programs all focused on expensive and spectacular new technology, like small fourth-generation nukes. The plan totally ignores the Big Green Buy strategy.Another group, the Electrification Coalition—made up of CEOs from FedEx, Nissan and PG&E—has published an ambitious 180-page plan for converting America's light-duty vehicle fleet to 75 percent electric miles by 2040. It also calls for radically upgrading America's old, overburdened, semi-deregulated and thus chaotic electrical grid, which loses about twice as much power in transmission as it did in the 1970s. The EC is lobbying hard and has helped shape the Electric Drive Vehicle Deployment Act of 2010, legislation being championed by Representative Ed Markey.But again, neither Markey's staff nor the EC is comfortable demanding the Big Green Buy. We don't think that is the best approach was all I could get from a Markey staffer. Instead, the EC proposes a Rube Goldberg–style scheme of geographic target areas that will receive multiple layers of consumer and industry tax credits and tax breaks—$7 billion total. That may sound big, but in the face of the climate crisis it is Lilliputian.This approach is emblematic of the intellectual poverty of the political class and business elites. The bill is entirely too clever for its own good, painfully complicated in its tinkering instrumentalism, which in the end would do very little and do it too late, like an impoverished family scrounging for dinner money on the eve of their eviction. And the Electric Drive Vehicle Deployment Act will be red meat to the climate deniers and fiscal hawks. You can almost hear the derision now: if yuppies in Berkeley want to drive funny new plug-in cars, why do we have to pay for it? Viewed broadly, there are four simple things the government can do to help close the clean-technology price gap and aid clean-tech business across the valley of death.First, it can boost R&D as Gates has requested, but that alone won't bring mass-scale green power on line.

Second, it can set up a Green Bank tasked with financing clean-tech businesses as they cross the valley of death. Along with loans, the government can offer more loan guarantees, which encourage otherwise frightened private capital to invest in clean-energy start-ups. The Waxman-Markey climate bill of last year included language to do that, but nothing like it is yet law.

Third, the government can impose mandates on the private sector requiring companies to adopt electric vehicles, purchase clean energy and conserve energy. Industry already lives with numerous rules that put limits on the anarchy of production. Yet in the crazy world of American politics circa 2010, forcing green procurement mandates on business would be very difficult.So let's get real. The fourth path is the best: a robust program of green procurement is the most immediate and politically feasible thing government can do to boost the clean-tech sector. And the only number that approaches the scale of the energy economy is government spending on energy. We need to be talking not about millions or billions but trillions of dollars going in a new direction. If the government is serious about electric vehicles—then just buy them already!At one level, the mad Tea Partyers are correct: government is leviathan—a monster. But it is our monster, and with proper leadership even this government in the current climate could jump-start a clean-energy revolution.

DANIEL 7:23-24
23 Thus he said, The fourth beast(THE EU,REVIVED ROME) shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth,(7TH WORLD EMPIRE) which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.(TRADE BLOCKS)
24 And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise:(10 NATIONS) and another shall rise after them;(#11 SPAIN) and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.(BE HEAD OF 3 KINGS OR NATIONS).

EU foreign ministers approve diplomatic service
HONOR MAHONY Today JULY 27,10 @ 09:20 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU foreign ministers on Monday (26 July) gave the nod to the overall structure of the Union's new diplomatic service, paving the way for chief of diplomacy Catherine Ashton to begin making appointments to the service that will employ thousands.It is historic to be able to witness the birth, at least at the decision level, of a European diplomacy, Belgian foreign minister Steven Vanackere, whose country holds the EU rotating presidency, said following the meeting.Due to be on its feet by 1 December, the service will see Ms Ashton backed up by a secretary general - likely to be France's ambassador to the US Pierre Vimont - as well as two deputy secretaries general.Monday's decision puts to rest a lengthy period of infighting between the EU institutions on the exact balance of power within the diplomatic service but opens the door to a power struggle between member states about who should land which posts within the service.Ms Ashton is soon expected to announce a series of names for the heads of EU embassies abroad - including to prestigious countries such as China and Brazil. But appointments to key internal posts, such as the secretary general job, can only be made once the European Parliament has agreed new staffing rules, a move expected towards the end of September.Writing in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, Ms Ashton said the new European External Action Service, despite its ungainly name, has a bold and simple purpose: to give the EU a stronger voice around the world, and greater impact on the ground.

With the fight to have the service established largely over, the focus is now likely set on the extent to which member states, several of whom jealously guard their foreign policy prerogatives, will allow a coherent foreign policy to thrive.Big countries have been keen to stress the service will not impinge on their foreign policy sovereignty, a point illustrated by the extent to which they are prepared to consider closing their own embassies in certain countries and use the EU embassy.

According to France's Europe minister, Pierre Lellouche, some countries may consider saving money through using EU embassy facilities but this should not be the case for France.I am the secretary of state, and I do not speak for France [but] I think it is desirable that France continues to maintain a global network. It is one of the few countries to do so, he said, according to Le Monde.Ms Ashton alluded to the difficulties in the article: Our aim is to do foreign policy in a modern way, differently and better. Not to compete with or duplicate what our member states are doing, but to add value and play to our strength of acting as a union.Drawing staff from the European Commission, the member states' council secretariat in Brussels and national diplomats, the service is expected to have around 6,000 personnel once it is fully up and running, expected to take another two or three years.

Critics slams Europe's rescue mechanisms as a threat to social peace
ANDREW WILLIS 26.07.2010 @ 09:11 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – A member of a German quintet of professors that is currently challenging the legality of Europe's recently-devised support measures has said they threaten to create enormous tensions between EU citizens if allowed to stand. In a telephone interview with EUobserver on Thursday (22 July), Wilhelm Nolling, professor of economics at the University of Hamburg, said the idea that Greece would be able to pay back its loans to EU states was simply ridiculous, given the country's level of indebtedness and lack of competitiveness.As a result, EU citizens in lender countries would increasingly begin to question the merits of this implicit system of wealth redistribution, he predicted. A transfer union will destroy the social peace in Europe,he said.Do you think the Germans will be able to keep quiet?

The group of German economists recently extended their legal case in Germany's constitutional court against the EU-IMF €110 billion bail-out for Greece to include the eurozone's €440 billion support mechanism and the ECB's sovereign bond purchases, the latter two announced in the early hours of 10 May. Their complaint is that they breach the EU's no-bailout clause, a ban on fiscal transfers between richer and poorer member states that many Germans feared would be inevitable when giving up the Deutsche Mark in 1999. In addition, Mr Nolling is amongst those that believe that the various support measures have bought nothing but limited time to a eurozone system that is inherently flawed.If you start with a makeshift operation you will never get to the real cause of the malaise. That cause is that a currency area of this size needs converging economies but the opposite has happened.Writing in a blog on this webiste back in February, Edin Mujagic, a monetary economist at Tilburg University, also noted these divergences had increased over the eurozone's 11-year history.Whether you take a closer look at unit labour costs, unemployment, welfare, productivity, fiscal deficits, debt and so on, the differences have increased since 1999,he wrote.

A smaller euro area?

Europe's politicians are rapidly striving to reduce these differences by devising a system of macro-economic indicators that member states would be forced to comply with.A recent European Commission paper suggested financial sanctions should be applied to states that fail to meet the grade, a system similar to the bloc's theoretical rules on debt and deficit limits.Some, however, fear this is merely too little too late, arguing that the eurozone's forefathers were blinded to the inherent economic impossibility of the project by political motivations.We need to form a new heart of the euro, France, Germany, Finland, Austria and the Netherlands, offered Mr Nolling as the only solution to overcoming divergences without using the forbidden system of fiscal transfers.All the other states should be given their freedom back. That would give them a real opportunity to increase their competitiveness through currency devaluations.It is currently impossible for them when they are 30 percent out of line. Salaries and cost structures are way out of line.At present, no one is sure when the German constitutional court will come to its decision, but a rejection by the powerful group of judges is likely to have explosive consequences.I expect the decision before the winter starts,predicted Mr Nolling. I want the court to tell the German government to stop giving money away.

Greece back under EU-IMF microscope as Asian stocks rise-EU officials arrive in Athens Monday to assess Greece's performance so far (Photo: John D. Carnessiotis, Athens, Greece)LEIGH PHILLIPS 26.07.2010 @ 09:31 CET

Asian stocks have risen on the back of easing of fears over European bank stress test results were revealed on Friday.In a filip of optimism, Japan's Nkkei 225 Stock Average had climbed 0.9 percent as of early afternoon in Tokyo, according to market reports, while Australia's S&P/ASX 200 index was up 0.5 percent and New Zealand's NZX 50 had gained 0.4 percent. The MSCI Asia Pacific index had risen 0.3 percent.As the results of the stress tests of European banks, which revealed just seven out of 91 had failed, were issued late Friday in Europe, this was the first chance for Asian markets to assess the fall-out.European authorities had however decided not to subject the banks to the test of seeing what would happen to them in the event of a debt default by Greece, a move that was widely criticised given that such an event is within the realm of possibility.Meanwhile on Monday (26 July), officials from the EU, IMF and European Central Bank arrive in Athens to investigate the implementation of the governing centre-left Pasok's austerity measures before a second, €9 billion tranche of eurozone-IMF bail-out agreed in May can be disbursed.Initial indications from the so-called troika, as the trio of fiscal overseers is referred to in Greece, have been approving.On the weekend, finance minister George Papaconstantinou said he expected no delays to delivery of the second tranche in September as the government had gone further than what was required with its harsh pension cuts.However, an IMF report from earlier this month noted concerns over budget gaps in public healthcare, social security, public transport and municipal governments - the very core of Greece's welfare system, already one of the weakest in western Europe.The fund suggested that Athens ratchet up its programme of privatisation and focus on setting loose government corporations. Railways and bus firms are potential targets, while the troika will also likely push for liberalisation of certain trades, including architects, notaries and lorry-drivers, according to media reports.Brussels for its part wants to see a quick and tidy deregulation of the energy sector, in line with existing EU legislation.However, eyes will also be on the country's labour movement and widespread popular resistance to the cuts. Already imposed austerity measures have produced a series of general strikes and a riot that cost the lives of three bank workers.

Seven banks fail to make the stress test grade-The Royal Bank of Scotland was among the banks to pass with flying colours (Photo: Wikipedia)ANDREW WILLIS
23.07.2010 @ 20:34 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Seven European banks have failed the region's stress tests, designed to assess their ability to withstand a series of worst-case scenarios such as another recession. EU policymakers will now be hoping that the news brings an end investor doubts in the sector, after Friday evening's (23 July) publication of the test results showed the vast majority of banks to have passed with flying colours.We support ... the transparency of this exercise, given the specific market circumstances under which banks currently operate, the Committee of European Banking Supervisors (CEBS), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission said in a joint statement. One German bank (Hypo Real Estate), five Spanish lenders (Unnim, Cajasur, Diada, Espiga, Banca Civica), and one Greek bank (ATEbank) failed the test.Banks whose Tier 1 capital ratio, the main buffer used to protect against losses, fell below six percent were deemed to have failed, although authorities stressed that four percent is the current regulatory minimum. The results are broadly in line with market expectations, with most analysts predicting failures in the five to 10 range. The seven firms will now need to raise roughly €3.5 billion in additional capital between them.Where the results of the exercise indicate that individual banks require additional capital, these banks should take the necessary steps to reinforce their capital positions through private-sector means and by resorting, if necessary, to facilities set up by member state governments, said the CEBS, ECB, commission statement. None of Europe's major banks failed the tests which were conducted by CEBS on 91 firms in order to asses their ability to deal with another recession or losses on eurozone sovereign bonds.A haircut of 23.1 percent was applied to Greek debt, slightly higher than the 17 percent that had earlier been predicted. Spanish bonds were marked down by 12.3 percent, and German bonds by 4.7 percent.

Doubts remain

Doubts remain however, with some analysts prior to Friday's publication saying a 50 percent markdown on Greek bonds would be more appropriate.I see nothing stressful about this test. It's like sending the banks away for a weekend of R&R,said Stephen Pope, chief global equity strategist at Cantor, reported various media.Other analysts were critical of the fact that sovereign debt haircuts were only applied to bonds set aside for trading, and not those being held until maturity.Stock markets in the US fluctuated as investors digested the news. Europe's markets were all closed when data were released.Centre-right MEP Jean-Paul Gauzès, a key-player in European efforts to overhaul its finance sector, welcomed the results, but cautioned that legislative reform must continue.These good results should not bring us to disregard the implementation of norms, in particular as regards banks' own capital requirements,he said.

Iceland membership talks formally begin Tuesday
HONOR MAHONY 26.07.2010 @ 17:41 CET

At their last meeting before the summer break, EU foreign ministers on Monday (26 July) gave the greenlight for the start of negotiations on Iceland's membership bid.

Talks will formally begin on Tuesday. The small north Atlantic island, with a population of just 320,000, has aligned itself with many EU laws and is seen as fitting snugly with the slightly more ineffable European 'norms', but negotiations on a few key issues - such as fishing rights and its traditional whale hunting - are expected to be difficult.Iceland, whose fishing policies have largely been a success in terms of sustainability, is keen to see that its rich fishing waters are not over-fished by EU member states. The EU's common fisheries policy has led to the severe depletion of stocks in western Europe. Efforts will have to be made by Iceland, Belgian foreign minister Steven Vanackere said after chairing the meeting in Brussels.Think of environment, think of whale hunting.In addition, the UK and the Netherlands have linked actual membership with resolution of a dispute over the €3.8 billion in British and Dutch savings, lost in the banking crisis that consumed the nation in 2008.After the Icelandic Icesave internet bank collapsed two years ago, depositers in the UK and the Netherlands were compensated by their governments. The Hague and London now are demanding Reykjavik pay them back.It's clear that all the chapters need to be discussed ... When the last chapter isn't resolved, nothing is resolved, said Mr Vanackere, when specifically asked about whether the Icesave issue could stymie talks.

Icelanders themselves in a recent referendum rejected a payout plan that would have cost each household tens of thousands of euros. The disagreement has soured the population's sentiment towards the EU. Immediately after the crisis, a majority of Icelanders looked to the EU as a solution to their problems, but the bitter fight with London and the Hague has slashed support for EU membership on the island.In addition to potential controversial policy issues, there is also the increasingly negative opinion of Icelanders towards EU membership.I don't have the impression from the opinion polls that the Icelanders themselves are very favourable: that's the problem, said France's EU Minister Pierre Lellouche.Popular opinions have to be taken on board, and you have to communicate the value [of becoming an EU member], said Mr Vanackere. A June poll showed that public opposition to joining the EU has risen to 60 percent. In November last year, it was 54 percent.The negotiation process is expected to take up to 18 months. EU legislation covers 35 different areas, known as chapters, ranging from the justice and home affairs to environment, energy, social and transport policy. Through its membership of the European Free Trade Association and the Schengen border-free zone, many of Iceland's laws already comply with those of the EU.Croatia and Turkey have also opened membership negotiations with the EU. Zagreb is expected to conclude talks in 2011 while Ankara's talks are proceeding much more slowly.

EU commission called upon to go after corrupt defence deals
VALENTINA POP 26.07.2010 @ 09:14 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – MEPs and defence experts are calling on the EU commission to go after market-distorting, corrupt side-deals to big weapon deals between member states, such as the ones greasing Germany's submarine sales to Portugal and Greece.

As EU officials are packing their holiday suitcases in Brussels, prosecutors in Germany, Portugal and Greece are on to a hot summer, tracing the complex trails of bribes and side-contracts to the German submarines each of the southern countries signed up for at a price of over €1billion.The EU hypocrisy of allowing Greek and Portuguese governments allocate huge parts of their budget for questionable defence purchases, while they are being pressed for austerity measures to cap their deficit, already made headlines such as The submarine deals that helped sink Greece in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month.What's striking about Greece and Portugal is the inappropriateness of these purchases,Nick Witney, a defence expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations, a London-based think tank, told EUobserver.It makes no sense at all to urge austerity and at the same time encourage them to buy weapons. But where there's a nexus of security, secrecy and lack of competition, there is always an open field for corruption, he noted.Munich-based investigators in March opened a case against the German engineering group Ferrostaal, suspected of paying bribes to secure defence contracts in Portugal and Greece and of organizing bribery payments on behalf of other firms for a fee. The investigation has meanwhile spread to Portugal and Greece, and touches on former party colleagues of EU commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, who was prime minister at the time the contract was signed. Mr Barroso has denied any involvement in the alleged bribery scheme and says he had nothing to do with the negotiation of the contract, which was the responsibility of the defence minister.

Along with the acquisition per se came offset contracts to the tune of €1billion, meaning direct foreign investments from Germany and business opportunities to Portuguese companies on the German market.Under EU law, offsets are forbidden, except for the defence sector, where member states invoke a national security exemption. As it turns out, a lot of these offsets were actually existing investments. Seven Portuguese executives and three Ferrostaal representatives have already been indicted. According to the public prosecutor's office, the Portuguese state was mislead in these deals and suffered damages of at least €34 million.

According to estimates by the European Defence Agency, 25 percent of the offsets in Europe are non-military and have no direct connection with the purchase.These contracts totally violate the EU's internal market competition rules, Portuguese Socialist MEP Ana Gomes told this website.They are contracts negotiated among companies with government favouring and in total disregard of the competition rules. There are plenty of reasons why the European Commission should investigate, and make it an exemplary case to deter such behaviour from now on from any member state.So far, the commission has turned a blind eye to the non-military contracts occurring alongside large defence procurements.A new defence procurement directive which needs to be transposed into national legislation by August 2011 is set to shed more light into the way such deals are done and restrict the areas in which governments can invoke the national security exemption to internal market rules.Member states will need to prove that the offsets are necessary for the protection of security interests and not distort competition on non-military markets.During his hearings as internal market commissioner, Michel Barnier said the defence offsets bring about discriminations which contradict the [EU] treaty. While acknowledging the traditions and sensibilities, he said these procedures had to be put to an end.

But to Ms Gomes, the commission is missing an opportunity to expose a very corrupt business that involves Portuguese, German companies, government officials and military people.In a time of budget austerity and market jitters, the two submarines acquired by Portugal account for about 40 percent of its defence spending until 2023. We don't have money to equip properly our military and security forces, we are wasting this money in a very corrupt business and violating competition, Ms Gomes points out.

Voluntary code of conduct

A voluntary code of conduct adopted by all member states except Romania last year meanwhile puts some limits on offsets, such as for the value of these contracts not to surpass 100 percent of that of the actual purchase.Apart from being voluntary, the code has also come under fire for lacking any reference to corruption, despite the fact that the defence sector is one of the most prone to this phenomenon, according to Transparency International.We would have hoped EU agencies required high standards, but this is not the case, Mark Pyman, the watchdog's defence expert told this website.He also said that market-distorting deals ranging from refrigerator factories to advertising companies are clearly a question of internal market for the EU commission to investigate.We need clear guidance how governments conduct and audit offsets and an EU framework putting transparency at the core,he concluded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS3H6Cakwpw&feature=player_embedded
Why Oath Keepers are Under Attack: Stewart Rhodes Oath Keepers
Oath Keepers July 27, 2010

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes during the first annual Oath Keepers Conference in October 2009. http://www.youtube.com/my_playlists?p…
Meet David Berry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyaxEw…
Meet Eddie & Ada Gilbert: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49GPAK…
http://stewart-rhodes.blogspot.com/

This is my old, private blog that is now sadly neglected since I have launched Oath Keepers, which has truly taken off like a rocket, leaving me no time for personal blogging – not that I’m complaining. the Oath Keepers mission is very important, and worth the time and effort.Go here: http://oathkeepers.org/oath/

However, if you want to see what prompted me to finally launch Oath Keepers, there are several posts on this blog that show my thinking.Back in 2006 I wrote several scathing criticisms of the Bush Administration’s absurd and dangerous claims of nearly unlimited executive war powers. Those articles built on my research at Yale Law School (where I won the Miller Prize for best paper on the Bill of Rights).One of the most common refrains I get from Obama supporters is where were you when Bush was violating the Constitution.Well, I was right here. Read this:
http://stewart-rhodes.blogspot.com/

OATH KEEPERS is a non-partisan association of Military, Veterans, and peace officers who will honor their oaths to defend the Constitution, will NOT just follow orders, will stand for liberty, and will save the Republic, so help us God. Our motto is:
Not on Our Watch!

SUMMARY LIST OF ORDERS WE WILL NOT OBEY:
1. We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people.
2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people
3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as unlawful enemy combatants or to subject them to military tribunal.
4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a state of emergency on a state.
5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.
6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.
7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.
8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to keep the peace or to maintain control.
9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies.
10.We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.Read the full declaration at http://oathkeepers.org

DOCTOR DOCTORIAN FROM ANGEL OF GOD
then the angel said, Financial crisis will come to Asia. I will shake the world.

JAMES 5:1-3
1 Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.
3 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

REVELATION 18:10,17,19
10 Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.
17 For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off,
19 And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.

EZEKIEL 7:19
19 They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed: their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the LORD: they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels: because it is the stumblingblock of their iniquity.

REVELATION 13:16-18
16 And he(FALSE POPE) causeth all,(WORLD SOCIALISM) both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:(CHIP IMPLANT)
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.(6-6-6) A NUMBER SYSTEM

WORLD MARKET RESULTS
http://money.cnn.com/data/world_markets/
CNBC VIDEOS
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15839263/site/14081545/?tabid=15839796&tabheader=false

HALF HOUR DOW RESULTS TUE JULY 27,2010

09:30 AM +1.52
10:00 AM +15.06
10:30 AM +16.88
11:00 AM +10.90
11:30 AM -11.12
12:00 PM -0.07
12:30 PM +30.50
01:00 PM +10.67
01:30 PM -5.14
02:00 PM +8.25
02:30 PM +24.60
03:00 PM +11.28
03:30 PM +23.24
04:00 PM +12.26 10,537.69

S&P 500 1113.84 -1.17

NASDAQ 2288.25 -8.18

GOLD 1,159.10 -24.00

OIL 77.58 -1.40

TSE 300 11,716.70 -29.40

CDNX 1396.28 -7.18

S&P/TSX/60 684.83 -1.00

MORNING,NEWS,STATS

YEAR TO DATE PERFORMANCE
Dow +38 points at 4 minutes of trading today.
Dow -31 points at low today.
Dow +53 points at high today so far.
GOLD opens at $1,173.80.OIL opens at $79.35 today.

AFTERNOON,NEWS,STATS
Dow -31 points at low today so far.
Dow +53 points at high today so far.

WRAPUP,NEWS,STATS
Dow -31 points at low today.
Dow +53 points at high today.

GOLD ALLTIME HIGH $1,260.90 (NOT AT CLOSE)

H.R. 5741 Slave bill now in Committee
Rob Dew Infowars.com July 26, 2010

Slavery has a new name: Mandatory Service, introduced July 15th 2010 by Charles Rangle.H.R. 5741 will give the president the authority To require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, to authorize the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services, and for other purposes.Barely a year after introducing H.R. 1444, which was supposed to form a Congressional Commission on Civic Service to study methods of improving and promoting volunteerism and national service, and for other purposes, Congress has upped the ante. Anyone between 18 and 42 will be eligible for a two year commitment of civilian or military service. With more college graduates working for the fast food industry, a depression era unemployment rate and less people retiring; the government will have plenty of eligible able bodies to move into the slave ranks.This echos the sentiment of President Obama who asked Congress in Febuary 2009 to send him a bipartisan bill in the spirit of national service. His Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel outlined a similar plan in his book The Plan.But even Emanuel aims low looking at only 18 to 25 year olds for three months of compulsory service. Under this new legislation nearly all, able bodied Americans will be sentenced to two years of forced labor. The infrastructure is already in place for those unwilling to participate in mandatory service and now the army is looking to fill it’s ranks with Interment/Resettlement Specialists.

There are very few loopholes to opt of out national service, even CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS (SEC. 109) will be forced to choose the mandatory option of A. noncombatant service (as defined by the President) or B. national civilian service. It seems the congressional commission on civic service will no longer be needed thanks to the hard work of a suspected Congressional tax cheat from New York.The slavery bill is currently in debate in the House Committee on Armed Services chaired by Rep Ike Skelton a democrat from Missouri. Those who oppose mandatory slavery should contact Rep. Skelton. Many bills die in committee and this bill should meet the same fate.

INSTEAD OF TAX HIKES-EXPECT FEES,FEES,FEES

Instead of tax hike, expect fees, fees and more fees
Posted By CHRISTINA BLIZZARD JULY 24,10

The sneaky eco fee tax hike may have been put on the back burner for three months, but don't relax. It was simply Round 1 in what promises to be a slew of tax hikes by stealth. The McGuinty government is searching for new forms of non-tax revenue to help pay down the $19 billion deficit.According to a 2010-11 Results-Based Planningdocument obtained by QMI Agency, these NTRs offer an opportunity to ensure fiscal neutrality of ministry expenditure proposals.Income tax is not enough. Bad enough that the government has just about doubled spending since it came to power in 2003, now if a new program is introduced, it will be paid for not through existing revenues, but through more sneaky charges such as the eco fee. If applicable, ministries are encouraged to propose new revenue streams to offset increased expenditures if there are no large-scale investments required, or to increase existing fees to achieve full cost recovery,says the document. Worse, they want us to pay more for services that cost less.Once upon a time, you used to be able to talk to a human being when you renewed your licence or your health card.

I don't mind paying for the privilege of talking to a person. But government seems to be taking a leaf from the banks' book: Charge people fees for using a machine.
Ministries were told to charge a premium for using electronic kiosks.Particular electronic service delivery channels, such as kiosks, are considered a premium service for which an additional amount is charged to acknowledge the cost of this service above the normal delivery standard, a guide says.This may result in the total fee charged being higher than the fee to deliver the same service over the counter.Call me old-fashioned, but I think premium service is personal service.

Watch for licences, testing and other sly ways to whack unsuspecting folk with extra costs.The public safety ministry recently implemented a test for people who want to be security guards. As of April 15, new applicants must successfully complete accredited training and pass a test prior to a licence being issued. The cost? $60. If you fail, you have to pay $60 to re-take the test. Starting in July, all existing licensed security guards and investigators have to pass a test before they can renew their licenses. So, people wanting to become security guards -- often a minimum wage job -- will have to work almost a full day just to pay for the test.The Liberals came to power lambasting the Tories for their so-called structural $5.6 billion deficit. Yet these guys, having massively hiked taxes, have a $19 billion structural deficit.

And no one seems to mind. Sure, we're in an economic

downturn. But we'd suffered through SARS, West Nile and a massive power outage in 2003, so things were grim then as well.We're already paying massively through our income taxes. We've got soaring electricity prices, eco fees and now we're going to be dinged through other non-tax revenue.That's sneaky. And it's unfair. Income tax is progressive. The people who make the most money pay the most tax. This willy-nilly system of hidden fees and costs isn't fair, it isn't transparent. And it isn't good government. christina.blizzard@sunmedia.ca Article ID# 2682637

Eco fee yet another cash grab by Ontario Liberals
Posted By CHRISTINA BLIZZARD

possibly illegal -- tax.Think of it as a green fee.Don't think of the HST as another tax grab that shifts the tax burden from corporations to individuals. Think of it as the Liberals saving the economy.Don't think of the deposit on liquor bottles as a tax.Think of it as saving the environment.(WORSHIPPING THE EARTH).Ditto for the 5¢ you now pay for plastic bags. Don't think of it as a massive gift from the government to the retail sector. Not only are they off the hook for the cost of plastic bags, they even built a whole new revenue stream selling cloth bags.

Some retailers even add HST to the fee and charge 6¢ a bag.That's the soothing message the government wants to get out.And, we're all nodding and smiling at the cash register and smugly thinking we're doing our bit to save the world, when what we're really doing is paying stores for the privilege of shopping at them.Like so many other government tax grabs, the eco fee on 9,000 consumer goods came disguised as an environmental fee. It was done with such stealth, the opposition parties seem to have been caught unaware.But, as QMI Agency's Queen's Park Bureau Chief Antonella Artuso reported last week, it may well be illegal. Industry insiders and a prominent tax lawyer all point out the tax is being levied not by the government, but by a third party.What are the stores doing with this money? What happens to the fee you pay on batteries, fire extinguishers and air freshener? We already pay taxes that help support waste disposal and diversion programs,PC Leader Tim Hudak said Tuesday.

The notion that it comes from an unaccountable, arm's length body of the government that can tax directly consumers, I reject fundamentally, he said. In an attempt at damage control, Stewardship Ontario sent out e-mails to stewards (you and I call them shops) with hints as to how to hide the tax.They suggest making the fee part of the price of the goods -- and hoping no one notices.

Here's what they said:Our Message: The eco fee is not mandatory nor is it a tax -- stewards have the option to pass the fees they pay Stewardship Ontario on to consumers . . . The eco fee may be reflected in the product's sticker price -- in which case the consumer is none the wiser. Or it may be itemized on the cash register receipt and added to the product price at checkout . . .So, it's a hidden fee charged arbitrarily by these unnamed stewards. It's not going to the government or Stewardship Ontario (SO) -- so no one is clear where that money is going. Tuesday night, Environment Minister John Gerretsen released a letter he had sent to SO CEO Gemma Zecchini, expressing,serious concerns with some overcharging of fees and the availability of accurate information, related to the Municipal Hazardous or Special Waste Program.Gerretsen said SO must take quick action to resolve these issues and restore consumer confidence.It's not just the eco fee that has people outraged. It's the sneaky way it was implemented. Introduce a sly eco fee the same day you introduce a whopping tax grab -- and hope no one notices.Boston had its tea party because people resented paying unfair taxes to a person they didn't know. Who wants to toss the eco fees overboard? christina.blizzard@sunmedia.ca Article ID# 2670362

DOCTOR DOCTORIAN FROM ANGEL OF GOD
then the angel said, Financial crisis will come to Asia. I will shake the world.

JAMES 5:1-3
1 Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.
3 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

REVELATION 18:10,17,19
10 Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.
17 For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off,
19 And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.

EZEKIEL 7:19
19 They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed: their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the LORD: they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels: because it is the stumblingblock of their iniquity.

REVELATION 13:16-18
16 And he(FALSE POPE) causeth all,(WORLD SOCIALISM) both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:(CHIP IMPLANT)
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.(6-6-6) A NUMBER SYSTEM

WORLD MARKET RESULTS
http://money.cnn.com/data/world_markets/
CNBC VIDEOS
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15839263/site/14081545/?tabid=15839796&tabheader=false

HALF HOUR DOW RESULTS MON JULY 26,2010

09:30 AM -1.25
10:00 AM +20.13
10:30 AM +50.48
11:00 AM +38.30
11:30 AM +69.63
12:00 PM +64.48
12:30 PM +66.00
01:00 PM +55.82
01:30 PM +56.69
02:00 PM +68.42
02:30 PM +60.85
03:00 PM +50.03
03:30 PM +74.78
04:00 PM +100.81 10,525.43

S&P 500 1115.01 +12.35

NASDAQ 2296.43 +26.96

GOLD 1,180.40 -7.40

OIL 79.03 +0.05

TSE 300 11,746.10 +31.90

CDNX 1403.46 +8.48

S&P/TSX/60 685.83 +2.16

MORNING,NEWS,STATS

YEAR TO DATE PERFORMANCE
Dow +14 points at 4 minutes of trading today.
Dow -10 points at low today.
Dow +76 points at high today so far.
GOLD opens at $1,190.80.OIL opens at $78.73 today.

AFTERNOON,NEWS,STATS
Dow -10 points at low today so far.
Dow +76 points at high today so far.

WRAPUP,NEWS,STATS
Dow -10 points at low today.
Dow +102 points at high today.

GOLD ALLTIME HIGH $1,260.90 (NOT AT CLOSE)

FIN-REG LETS BANKS HAVE U.S. OVER A BARREL

ALEX JONES WEEKLY SHOWS AFTER 3PM
http://rss.nfowars.net/20100725_Sun_Alex.mp3
http://rss.nfowars.net/20100726_Mon_Alex.mp3
http://rss.nfowars.net/20100727_Tue_Alex.mp3
http://rss.nfowars.net/20100728_Wed_Alex.mp3
http://rss.nfowars.net/20100729_Thu_Alex.mp3
http://rss.nfowars.net/20100730_Fri_Alex.mp3
http://rss.nfowars.net/20100801_Sun_Alex.mp3

STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES

LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

Flooding causes millions in damage in Iowa
Sun Jul 25, 5:24 pm ET

MONTICELLO, Iowa – Flooding from the Maquoketa River after the Lake Delhi dam failed has damaged dozens of homes and businesses, causing millions of dollars in damage in Monticello, officials said Sunday.The Lake Delhi dam in eastern Iowa failed Saturday as rising floodwater from the Maquoketa River ate a 30-foot-wide hole in it. Areas below the dam, including in Hopkinton and Monticello were evacuated.It is simply unbelievable. This is unprecedented. We've had floods before and we've always been able to contain the situation and minimize the damage, but with Mother Nature's fury ... there was no way to do anything about it, said Mike Willey, president of the board of directors at the Lake Delhi Recreation Association.There was simply too much water.The river crested upstream of the dam at Manchester early Saturday afternoon at 24.53 feet — more than 10 feet above flood stage and well above its 2004record of 21.66 feet — before it began to slowly recede.About 50 homes and 20 businesses had major flood damage and the city's sewer plant had been flooded and shut down about 7 p.m. Saturday, said Monticello Public Works Director Dana Edwards.

Most of the city's 3,700 residents could flush their toilets, but the waste was pouring into the river. Still, environmental damage shouldn't be great because the waste was being diluted by the flood water, Edwards said.The city's drinking water system was working, but we are asking people to use as little water as possible, Edwards said.Damage to private property would likely be in the millions of dollars, Edwards said. The cost of repairing the sewer plant wouldn't be known until workers could get inside to assess the damage.Pumps from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the city were being put into the city's main sewer lines to try to keep water out of residents' basements.The hydroelectric dam on the Maquoketa River that created Lake Delhi in the 1920s is no longer used for power but maintains the lake for recreational purposes.Information from: The Des Moines Register, http://www.desmoinesregister.com

Floods close Chicago interstate, damage Iowa dam
Sun Jul 25, 6:50 am ET

CHICAGO – Standing water on Chicago-area expressways turned what should have been an easy Saturday morning drive into a soggy, snarled mess after heavy rains across the Midwest closed roads, stranded residents and punched a hole through an Iowa dam.In Chicago, officials say more than 7 inches of rain fell early Saturday, inundating the sewer system and overwhelming waterways. Water covered portions of several Chicago interstates and the commuter train tracks that run along them, leading crews to divert traffic and call in bus shuttles. Portions of Interstate 290 west of downtown were closed for several hours.Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and other officials urged residents to call for help if they need it.Our goal is to get the city back to normal as quickly as possible, Daley said at a news conference Saturday.

West of Chicago in suburban Westchester, crews in boats were searching for people who were stranded in their flooded homes or trapped in cars under viaducts.In eastern Iowa, the Lake Delhi dam failed as rising floodwater from the Maquoketa River ate a 30-foot-wide hole in the earthen dam, causing water to drop 45 feet to the river below and threatening the small town of Hopkinton.Lake Delhi was created in the 1920s by damming the Maquoketa River. The resort area now has about 700 cabins and homes.Areas below and above the dam had been evacuated after heavy rain has pushed the river to 23.92 feet — more than 2 feet above its previous record of 21.66 feet in 2004.Jack Klaus, a spokesman with the Delaware County emergency management office, said warning sirens sounded in Hopkinton as water began to surround homes Saturday afternoon.There's going to be significant losses of property there,Klaus said.Donna Dubberke, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Davenport, said areas below the dam will see an initial crest in the river caused by the dam's failure followed by a secondary crest as the high water above the dam made its way downstream.There will be initial wave from the sudden shot of water and a secondary shot behind it from the rainfall,she said.Heavy rains have also wreaked havoc in the Milwaukee area in the past few days, and Gov. Jim Doyle planned to tour affected areas Saturday, including the intersection where a sink hole swallowed an SUV.County Executive Scott Walker estimated Thursday's torrential rains caused more than $10 million in damage to public property and another $18 million to private property. Doyle has already declared a state of emergency in the county.

Floods and landslide in Indonesia kill 21: official
Sun Jul 25, 4:54 am ET

JAKARTA (AFP) – At least 21 people have been killed in floods and a landslide triggered by heavy rains in Indonesia, an official said Sunday.The landslide on Buru island in eastern Maluku province took place on Friday after heavy rains in a hilly area, Disaster Management Agency spokesman Priyadi Kardono told AFP.We've pulled out 18 bodies from the landslide and rescued seven others who were injured, he said.

Elsewhere, three people drowned and three went missing after days of continuous rain in South Kalimantan province caused a river there to overflow, he added.More than 3,000 families were affected by the floods, local media reported.Floods and landslides are common in Indonesia, which is densely populated and prone to frequent heavy rains.

Floods and landslides kill 10 in Vietnam: govt
Sun Jul 25, 12:18 am ET

HANOI (AFP) – Flooding and landslides caused by heavy rain have killed at least 10 people in Vietnam's northern mountainous provinces near China, the government said Sunday.The biggest death toll of five came in Ha Giang province, where people were buried in their homes or swept away in floods, the Hanoi-based national flood and storm control department said in an online statement.Of the victims, four were children aged between two and 15 years old, the agency said.Hundreds of houses in five northern provinces have been inundated while roads and crops were severely damaged in up to 300 millimetres (12 inches) of rain, which began falling on Thursday, it said.At least 10 communes in Bac Giang province have been cut off.
Weather forecasters in Vietnam said the country had been influenced by the effects of Typhoon Chanthu, which lashed southern China late last week.

OZONE DEPLETION JUDGEMENT ON THE EARTH DUE TO SIN

ISAIAH 30:26-27
26 Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold,(7X OR 7-DEGREES) as the light of seven days, in the day that the LORD bindeth up the breach of his people,(ISRAEL) and healeth the stroke of their wound.
27 Behold, the name of the LORD cometh from far, burning with his anger, and the burden thereof is heavy: his lips are full of indignation, and his tongue as a devouring fire:

MATTHEW 24:21-22,29
21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.
22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake (ISRAELS SAKE) those days shall be shortened (Daylight hours shortened)
29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:

REVELATION 16:7-9
7 And I heard another out of the altar say, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments.
8 And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire.
9 And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory.

Eastern US cooks in summer heat, temps reach 100s By BRUCE SHIPKOWSKI, Associated Press Writer – Sun Jul 25, 6:51 am ET

TOMS RIVER, N.J. – Another wave of oppressive heat clamped down on a broad swath of Eastern states on Saturday, with temperatures in the high 90s and 100s and residents scrambling for shade or just staying indoors.In the Mid-Atlantic, already the locus for brutal temperatures several times in July, weather experts warned of the dangerous conditions and residents resigned themselves to coping with the discomfort.

Oh, it's disgusting. It's already really hot, meteorologist Heather Sheffield of the National Weather Service said of morning temperatures in Washington, D.C.One possible weather-related death was reported in Maryland, where paramedics said the high temperatures and humidity likely played a role in the death of a 20-year-old man who was biking, went into cardiac arrest and hit his head on a tree as he fell.

With the heat and humidity combining for a possible heat index of over 110 degrees, the weather service issued an excessive heat warning for the first time this year for an area stretching from south of Washington to north of Baltimore, along the Interstate 95 corridor. By midday Saturday, a wide band from lower New England to the Deep South was under a heat advisory.The thermometer hit 100 degrees in Washington and Baltimore by mid-afternoon, where the heat index was 109. In Norfolk, Va., it was 104 degrees and 108 degrees with the heat index. Elsewhere, record highs for July 24 of 97 degrees in New York and Philadelphia and 99 degrees in Newark, N.J., were reported.As temperatures soared toward 100 degrees in New Jersey, Harry Oliver was trying to make sense of it all as he waited to get sandwiches inside a Toms River convenience store.When I complain about the heat and humidity, my wife reminds me that I was begging for this type of weather when I was shoveling all that snow this past winter, the 47-year-old Lakehurst resident said. Now I'm looking forward to the snow again.Oliver said he and his wife didn't want to cook.It's hot enough in the house already, even with my air conditioning running 24/7,he said.In New York City, the heat brought out the inner entrepreneur in one resident.A.J. Ousmane, 27, a native of the West African nation of Mali, sold ice-cold water bottles for $1 from a cooler on a Harlem sidewalk. He planned to stay out all afternoon, and hoped to make about $55 for the day, after expenses.I keep moving with the shade, he said, as he positioned himself in the creeping shadow of a coin-operated laundry.Poolside, 20-year-old Meredith Watkins slathered herself with SPF 15 and filled her water bottle before working a shift as a lifeguard in suburban Columbus, Ohio. Watkins scouted the swimming pool for an excuse to jump in — something she says she does at least once an hour on hot days.

You still gotta do your job when it's this hot,she said, twirling a whistle on a red lanyard.Especially with the humidity, it makes it awful. You just sit there and sweat and sweat.Kristin Kline, a weather service meteorologist at Mount Holly, N.J., said this summer hasn't been record-setting hot in most places. The off-and-on scorching heat that's been felt in the Mid-Atlantic can be blamed on a Bermuda high between Bermuda and North Carolina that is pushing hot, humid air into the region, Kline said.In Pennsylvania, Louie Correa, 55, of Louie's Appliances was out trundling a fan and a kitchen table into a South Philadelphia home. He said that earlier in the day, he had been by the homes of some older residents to make sure they were all right.Sometimes they see me knocking on the door, and the neighbors say What you want there? Like this morning, I said Oh, just making sure Miss Regina is all right,Just making sure Frank is all right, Correa said.While temperatures climbed, Jason Wish dabbed a sweaty T-shirt on his brow as he loaded crates of tomatoes and bushels of peppers into a truck at a farmer's market in suburban Columbus, Ohio. He and dozens of other farmhands hurried to pack up their produce and escape to air-conditioned vans and pickups. It makes me wanna jump in the pond and go swimming,Wish said.Many hit the beach for relief, though not all were there to soak up the sun.Jeff Clarkson, 47, and his 12-year-old son Chuck planned to hit the arcades along the Point Pleasant area boardwalk in New Jersey.I don't want him out there too long cause it could be dangerous,said the elder Clarkson, whose family was visiting from suburban Philadelphia.But in here, we can spend time together and stay kind of cool, though it's likely to cost me a lot of money by the time we're through.Not much relief was in the forecast Sunday. Sunday's highs were expected to reach into the low- to mid-90s, but heat indices should be slightly lower — in the high 90s, possibly as high as 101 in cities. Associated Press writers Jessica Gresko and Kathleen Miller in Washington, D.C., Verena Dobnik in New York City, Ron Todt in Philadelphia, and Jeannie Nuss in Columbus, Ohio., contributed to this story.

POISONED WATERS

REVELATION 8:8-11
8 And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood;
9 And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.
10 And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;
11 And the name of the star is called Wormwood:(bitter,Poisoned) and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.(poisoned)

REVELATION 16:3-7
3 And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea.(enviromentalists won't like this result)
4 And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood.
5 And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus.
6 For they(False World Church and Dictator) have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy.

BP chief likely to resign in wake of US oil spill
JULY 25,10

LONDON (AFP) – The chief executive of British oil giant BP, Tony Hayward, was likely to resign within the next 24 hours in the aftermath of the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the BBC reported.Citing a senior BP source, the BBC said that an announcement was due shortly on Hayward, whose future has been in doubt for several weeks over his handling of the worst environmental disaster in US history.There is a strong likelihood that he would be replaced by Bob Dudley, who took over management of BP's response to the spill from Hayward last month, the public broadcaster added.

Earlier, the Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported that Hayward was poised to resign before London-based BP announces its half-year results on Tuesday. The BP board is expected to meet on Monday ahead of the announcement.Last Monday BP put the cost of its response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill at 3.95 billion dollars (3.05 billion euros).Reports have suggested for days that Hayward would resign at some point in the coming weeks as BP battles to recover its reputation.The Sunday Telegraph said that there could be wrangling over Hayward's severance package, under which he is likely to be paid a minimum figure of just over one million pounds (1.5 million dollars, 1.2 million euros).Asked about the BBC report, a BP spokesman told AFP he would not comment on speculation. He added: Tony Hayward is our chief executive. He has the full support of the board and management.In the Gulf itself, engineers moved ahead Sunday with preparations for a well kill operation that officials hope will permanently plug the oil leak that erupted April 20 when an offshore oil rig exploded, killing 11 workers.A drill rig vessel charged with sinking a relief well that should finally stop the deep-sea oil leak arrived back at the site of the spill on Saturday after briefly moving away due to a tropical storm.US Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said the first chance to seal the well for good could come soon. That is a very rough estimate, three to five days from now, he said.

The returning drill rig, Development Driller 3, was among about 10 ships that fled the area ahead of Tropical Storm Bonnie. A cap has been lowered over the wellhead, but it has been leaking since July 15.Local residents are desperate to permanently resolve the disaster, more than three months after the April 20 explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil platform.The International Energy Agency estimates that between 2.3 million and 4.5 million barrels of crude have gushed into the sea.A BP spokesman, Bryan Ferguson, said it would take around 21 hours to reconnect the Development Driller 3 to drilling operations some 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below the sea surface.The rig is drilling the first of two relief wells that will be used to definitively plug the devastating spill.BP and US officials currently plan two operations to kill the well.The first, a static kill, involves pumping heavy drilling fluid known as mud through a blowout preventer valve system that sits on top of the well, and then injecting cement to seal it. The process is similar to a top kill attempt that failed in May, but officials say the cap now in place over the leak will make the operation easier and more likely to succeed. However, BP and US officials have said the ultimate solution to the leak will be the relief wells, which will intersect the original well.Using the same process as the static kill, drilling fluid, which is denser than oil, will be pumped via the relief well until the flow of crude is overcome, allowing the damaged well to be sealed with cement.

Before either can begin, the last section of the relief well must be secured with a 3,000-foot piece of steel pipe called a casing run, which will be cemented in place.

You're probably into three to five days from now when they might be able to be in a position to have the casing pipe in place and we could probably start the static kill at that point, Allen said. The spill has now washed up oil along the shorelines of all five US states on the Gulf Coast, but some experts said high waves kicked up by Tropical Storm Bonnie might actually help dissolve some of the oil faster.Other experts argued that surface currents bolstered by high winds would likely shift the near-surface oil closer to the Gulf Coast and spread it over a larger area, and that a hurrican-like storm could send fouled water far up into the bayous, contaminating spawning grounds for fish and shrimp.

Federal Government Working to Remove Sovereignty of States
Activist Post July 25, 2010

It has been reported that 46 states are on the verge of bankruptcy. Since states are Constitutionally mandated to balance their budgets, and do not possess the ability to print money, they’re finding themselves in a critically weakened position to challenge the Federal Government.The Federal government is overstepping their authority and infringing on the sovereignty of states. In our republic, states have sovereignty to create and enforce their own laws as long as they don’t violate the U.S. Constitution. The Tenth Amendment gives states the freedom from Federal laws and regulations if they deem them to be unconstitutional.The Tenth Amendment: which makes explicit the idea that the Federal government is limited only to the powers granted in the Constitution, is generally recognized to be a truism. States and local governments have occasionally attempted to assert exemption from various federal regulations, especially in the areas of labor and environmental controls, using the Tenth Amendment as a basis for their claim.

An oft-repeated quote, from United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100, 124 (1941), reads as follows:The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered. There is nothing in the history of its adoption to suggest that it was more than declaratory of the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment or that its purpose was other than to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers…(Source)Recently, it seems the Federal government is overstepping their authority and infringing on the sovereignty of states. Furthermore, given that many broke states will most certainly require a Federal bailout to maintain their basic social structures, we can assume that the Feds will use that to impose even stronger controls.The Federal government has clearly violated California state law regarding medical marijuana by raiding state-approved legal dispensaries and grow-ops. And now, Obama and company are suing Arizona to overturn their new anti-illegal immigration law, which is essentially a reiteration of the Federal law, just with plans to actually prosecute it.Additionally, we have seen the steady erosion of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of the military for local law enforcement. Stories of active military and the National Guard helping local law enforcement on operations as routine as random traffic checkpoints and local crimes such as illegal gun and drug searches are becoming everyday news — again a clear violation of the Tenth Amendment.It is clear that the goal of Federal government is to centralize and consolidate control as much as possible. Liberty advocates have a growing concern that states teetering on the verge of bankruptcy will require Federal bailouts that will come with sovereignty-smashing strings attached. Based on the clear violations already exhibited by the Federal government, we can only assume that more centralized oppression is on the way.

Former CIA Boss: Iran Attack Inexorable Kurt Nimmo Infowars.com
July 25, 2010

According to Michael Hayden, a CIA boss under George W. Bush, Iran’s not having a nuke is just as dangerous as it having one.Killing Iranians now seems inexorable and may not be the worst of all possible outcomes,according to Hayden.Hayden predicted Iran plans to get itself to that step right below a nuclear weapon, that permanent breakout stage, so the needle isn’t quite in the red for the international community.Hayden said that reaching even that level would be as destabilizing to the region as actually having a weapon and it will result in an attack by the U.S., Israel, or both.Killing Iranians now seems inexorable and may not be the worst of all possible outcomes,according to Hayden.Meanwhile, Iran’s leadership remains steeped in denial. Iran’s ISNA news agency quoted an aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday saying that Israel and the United States would never strike Iran, saying that both the U.S. and Zionist regime face internal problems and they know that we make many troubles for them if they attack Iranian territory.

Despite the rhetoric, Iran appears ready to respond in the event of an attack

Yahya Rahim Safav told Iran’s ISNA news agency that Iran’s armed forces were fully prepared and enemies are aware of that, they do not have the power to take a political decision on the issue, because they know they can start the war but are not able to finish it.Mohammad-Ali Ja’fari, commander of the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guards, said the United States would not dare to attack Iran as it is fully aware of Iran’s defense power and its nation’s determination, according to Haaretz in Israel.Ja’fari said that he considered his forces’ preparedness as being at their highest level,adding that recent sanctions imposed on Iran would have no impact on Iran’s ability to respond to an attack.In addition, a former naval chief in the Revolutionary Guard said Iran has set aside 100 military vessels to confront each U.S. warship that poses a threat. The Revolutionary Guard is in charge of defending the country’s territorial waters in the Persian Gulf. General Morteza Saffari said Saturday that troops aboard U.S. warships are morsels for Iran to target in the event of any American threat against Iran.Over recent days, warnings about imminent war and direct calls for war have been proliferating in the world media,Webster G. Tarpley wrote last week, citing warnings issued by former communist leader Fidel Castro and Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. Tarpley also cited an editorial penned by former Senator Chuck Robb and former NATO deputy commander General Charles Wald calling for the U.S. to begin preparing an attack. We cannot afford to wait indefinitely to determine the effectiveness of diplomacy and sanctions. Sanctions can be effective only if coupled with open preparation for the military option as a last resort,Robb and Wald wrote.

Obama signs a bill that lets banks have US over a barrel once more - Last week, President Obama signed into law the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform bill – hailed as the most sweeping overhaul of US financial regulation since the 1930s. By Liam Halligan Published: 9:26PM BST 24 Jul 2010

Because of this law, the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street's mistakes,Obama boomed at the schmaltzy signing ceremony, amid bursts of applause.Obama makes right moves on regulating Wall Street but misses chance of a full rebuild These reforms will put a stop to a lot of the bad loans that fuelled this debt-based bubble,the President gushed to America and the rest of the world.This bill also empowers consumerse_SLpsdelivering the strongest consumer financial protections in history.It would be reassuring if we could agree with Obama, concluding that Dodd-Frank will help to prevent the next systemic crisis and associated bail-out of too-big-to-fail banks. Reassuring, but wrong. For despite some marginal regulatory improvements, this is no Rooseveltian legislative milestone. Amid the hype and back-slapping of last week's launch, the sad reality is that Dodd-Frank fails to address the fundamental problems that resulted in the sub-prime fiasco and the related damage to not just America, but the entire global economy.The inherent feebleness of this door-stopping bundle of statute and its lack of desperately needed substance, was brilliantly captured by Laurence Kotlikoff, a highly-respected professor of economics at Boston University. This law is like being invited to dinner and served pictures of food,Kotlikoff remarked.

It would be tempting to smile at such a wry observation if the situation it described wasn't so depressing. For what the US political establishment's non-response to the credit crunch illustrates is this: such is the lobbying power of the big Wall Street institutions that they not only caused a global economic crisis and then forced the US government to pay for a massive bail-out, but then used a slice of that bail-out cash to bribe politicians with campaign donations in order to block rule changes that might prevent a repeat performance.That leaves the politicians and high-flying bankers happy, of course, while regular citizens – and their children and grandchildren – foot the multi-billion dollar bill.The principal function of a financial services industry is to link savers with investors and creditors with borrowers, so facilitating broader commercial activity. Such intermediary functions are crucial to economic progress and can be the basis of a profitable and socially useful business.What we've created, instead, is a group of institutions that between them comprise nothing less than a financial oligarchy. These guys have Western taxpayers over a barrel. And what's alarming is that there is almost nothing in this bill that will stop yet more too-big-to-fail calamities. Mr President, you have missed a historic opportunity and, for that, history's judgment will be severe. In 1933, in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash, America introduced the Glass-Steagall divide – a firewall separating high-risk investment banks from regular commercial banks. The idea was to draw a regulatory line in the sand, preventing Wall Street from playing fast and loose with the deposits of ordinary firms and households, deposits rightly covered by a state guarantee.

For more than 60 years that divide stood firm. But during the late 1980s and 1990s, increasingly powerful vested interests, first in the City and then Wall Street, pushed for the co-mingling of banking activities. The resulting universal banks eventually bestrode the Western world, particularly after Bill Clinton succumbed to the lobbyists' dime and formally repealed Glass-Steagall in 1999.It is an indisputable fact that since that repeal, the Western world has lurched from crisis to crisis. Little wonder, given that the end of Glass-Steagall allowed investment banks to borrow heavily against their taxpayer-backed deposits, then place vastly leveraged heads-I-win-tails-the-government-loses bets on risky investments such as internet stocksor sliced-and-diced sub-prime mortgages. Yes, bank failures happened under Glass-Steagall, but they were less frequent and far smaller.Obama didn't consider re-instating Glass-Steagall. On the contrary, he packed his administration with the same people who helped Clinton remove it.During his first year in office, the President dithered over financial reform but then, in the aftermath of an electoral mauling in Massachusetts, he placated those calling for root-and-branch banking reform by calling in former Federal Reserve Chairman, Paul Volcker.The so-called Volcker Rule is the centrepiece of Dodd-Frank and as such, is indicative of the entire package. It's designed to restrict the ability of universal banks to speculate with taxpayer-backed money, rather than making sure by keeping deposit takers and investment banks separate. Volcker places limits on so-called prop trading without defining what it is, so allowing banks to exploit what they claim is the grey area between market-making and speculation.Wall Street firms will also still be able to lever up punters' money and deal in credit-default swaps – the main culprits in the AIG bankruptcy, which cost US taxpayers $182bn and counting – while also destroying Bear Stearns and Lehman. The only stipulation is that ratings agencies should classify such derivates as investment grade. Such agencies are unreformed and were at the heart of the last debacle – so that's hardly reassuring.

Last-minute changes mean that banks can, anyway, use 3pc of their tier-one capital for out-and-out speculation, circumventing Volcker. That doesn't sound much, but once levered up 50-times – and such a figure isn't unusual – this huge loophole in Volcker is more than enough to allow investment banks to keep destroying themselves in full knowledge the state will pay. Adding insult to injury, Wall Street then secured delays to the introduction of Volcker – or what's left of it – that in some cases will last for more than 10 years.The closer you look at Dodd-Frank, the more apparent becomes Wall Street's influence. Limits on leverage – rejected. Limits on bank size – rejected. Restrictions on derivatives – well, some trading will go through a central exchange, allowing more scrutiny, but it's entirely unclear how much. At every turn, this bill avoids decisions, delegating them instead to an army of regulators who will turn generalities into actual rules. If the banks were able to skew Dodd-Frank their way , think of the influence they'll have when the details are hammered out behind closed doors. Obama put the spotlight on the creation of a consumer protection bureau – an attempt, before November's mid-term elections, to make arcane legislation meaningful to the public. Are there limits on credit card interest, ensnaring adjustable rate mortgages or predatory pay-day loans? Nope. Some other omissions in the bill are breath-taking. There is no mention of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac – the government-sponsored mortgage-providers that have already cost $145bn in bail-out cash, rising to almost $400bn by 2019. No mention, either, of capital requirements – which means the global banking system must rely, once again, on the ridiculous Basel process for resolving this crucial issue. Once again, Obama missed a chance to give a lead when it comes to financial reform.Based on sound-thinking courageous judgment, the Glass-Steagall legislation was only 17 pages long. Packed with wheezes and loop-holes, Dodd-Frank runs to 2,319 pages. Enough said.

Goldman Sachs Names European Banks It Paid Amid AIG's U.S.-Funded Bailout
By Christine Harper and Jesse Westbrook - Jul 23, 2010

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said it made payments to banks including Germany’s DZ Bank AG and Banco Santander SA of Spain for mortgage-related losses as it received U.S. taxpayer funds through the American International Group Inc. bailout in 2008. The list of 32 counterparties to Goldman Sachs on collateralized debt obligations was released today by U.S. Senator Charles Grassley. The largest payments were to European lenders that also included the London branch of Rabobank Nederland NV, Zuercher Kantonalbank and Dexia Bank SA.The majority of these beneficiaries appear to be foreign entities, Grassley wrote in a set of questions directed at Elizabeth Warren, chairman of the Congressional Oversight Panel, and published on his website. Can you please explain how ensuring that these institutions were paid in full, rather than required to suffer the consequences of the risks that they took, benefited the U.S. taxpayer? Goldman Sachs turned over the list to the Congressional Oversight Panel and Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which are reviewing the use of taxpayer funds in financial bailouts. Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, had suggested Goldman Sachs could be subpoenaed if the New York-based bank didn’t provide the information.Goldman Sachs executives including Chief Operating Officer Gary Cohn and Chief Financial Officer David Viniar had defended the firm’s collection of $8.1 billion after AIG’s bailout, tied to swaps contracts. The money helped Goldman Sachs pay out offsetting contracts with other parties, they said, without naming the companies until now. In addition, Goldman Sachs received $4.8 billion after the bailout for securities lending contracts.

Buyers and Sellers

We had transactions on the other side, Cohn, 49, told members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission at a hearing earlier this month.In AIG, we sat in the middle of buyers and sellers.The documents released by Grassley’s office show that Goldman Sachs’s counterparties received a total of about $14 billion in payments for the bonds that ended up going into the Maiden Lane III special purpose vehicle established by the Federal Reserve for AIG’s bailout.Other names on the list include the Hospitals of Ontario Pension Plan and a GSAM Credit CDO Ltd., a collateralized debt obligation managed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, are securities backed by pools of financial instruments such as mortgage bonds or loans.To contact the reporters on this story: Christine Harper in New York at charper@bloomberg.net; Jesse Westbrook in Washington at jwestbrook1@bloomberg.net.

EU bank stress tests face their own test in markets
By Paul Taylor – Sun Jul 25, 8:34 pm ET

PARIS (Reuters) – EU tests of banks' ability to withstand financial shocks, criticized as too easy after only 7 out of 91 failed, face their own stress test in the markets on Monday with early signs pointing to a more positive response.European Union policymakers and regulators voiced relief at Friday's results but some market analysts and many media commentators derided an exercise in which all listed banks passed as lacking in credibility.I see nothing stressful about this test. It's like sending the banks away for a weekend of R&R, said Stephen Pope, chief global equity strategist at brokers Cantor Fitzgerald.There was skepticism about EU regulators' conclusion that banks need only a total of 3.5 billion euros ($4.5 billion) in extra capital. Market expectations had ranged from 30 to 100 billion euros, although many European banks have already raised capital during the financial crisis.Only five small Spanish banks, Germany's state-rescued Hypo Real Estate and Greece's Atebank failed outright. More than a dozen others scraped through with just over the required 6 percent of Tier 1 capital in the most stressful scenario and are likely to come under market scrutiny.However, the wealth of data disclosed by banks representing 65 percent of assets, and the commitment of banks, regulators and governments to follow-up action may well outweigh doubts about the stringency of the tests.In a first market reaction in New York late on Friday, the cost of insuring the debt of large European banks fell further and the euro rose against the dollar despite worries about the tests' credibility.Better-than-expected economic data and business confidence surveys suggesting the euro zone will avoid a double-dip recession despite fiscal austerity measures are also helping revive investor confidence in Europe.

HAGGLING

Given the haggling among EU governments and regulators about the stress tests right up to the last moment, the degree of transparency was greater than had been expected a few weeks ago.Sources familiar with the discussions said Germany fought hard behind closed doors to limit the extent of disclosure.In the end, most banks -- except Deutsche -- issued a detailed breakdown of their exposure to the sovereign debt of EU countries, enabling investors to run their own risk simulations to gauge a counterparty's solidity.We have all the sovereign exposure data, and we can go ahead and do our own tests,said Nial O'Connor, a banking analyst at Credit Suisse.

That should help reopen the interbank lending market, which partially froze at the height of the euro zone debt crisis in May and has remained tight due to fears that banks have been hiding big exposures.It also responds to one of the major criticisms of the exercise -- that the scenario assumed a haircut on sovereign debt of countries such as Greece held in banks' trading books, but not on a longer-term basis in their banking books.The EU authorities were chastised for refusing to test the impact of a default by Greece.But European Central Bank governing council member Christian Noyer said euro zone states have put several hundreds of billions of euros on the table with the support of the IMF to make this hypothesis completely excluded.

TRANSPARENCY

Spain, which spearheaded the drive for transparency, tested a larger part of its banking system and disclosed more data than any other country, hoping to clear away lingering market suspicion of its smaller banks' solvency. However economist Nicolas Veron of the Bruegel think-tank said Madrid had underplayed the recapitalization needs of the cajas, regional savings banks, although its bank resolution fund (FROBE) is well on the way to meeting those needs. The Spanish wanted to be seen as the most transparent and deserve praise for the catalyst role they played, but in the end they clearly understated what the cajas need,he said in a telephone interview. Veron said follow-up actions by governments and regulators should include pressing weaker banks to recapitalize, if necessary with state help and facilitating cross-border takeovers of weaker banks. Even before the results were published, National Bank of Greece, Slovenia's NLB and Civica in Spain announced plans to raise capital.Italy said it would reopen an offer of government-backed bonds to support its banks, although none failed. Monte dei Paschi di Siena squeaked through with 6.2 percent of Tier 1 capital under the most stressful scenario, and UBI Banca with 6.8 percent.Veron said the success of the exercise would depend partly on whether European regulators adopt a more cooperative approach after the stress tests than they did before them.If this is the start of a beautiful friendship among EU supervisors, then that's not the same as if the united front crumbles next week and they start criticizing each other again,he said.(Editing by Andrew Roche)

US holds drills off Korea as Pyongyang talks war By ERIC TALMADGE, Associated Press Writer – Sun Jul 25, 12:15 pm ET

ABOARD USS GEORGE WASHINGTON – Fighter jets buzzed the skies and submarines cruised underwater Sunday as a flotilla of U.S. and South Korean warships led by a nuclear-powered U.S. supercarrier began exercises that have enraged North Korea.U.S. officials denied North Korea's claims the maneuvers off Korea's east coast were a provocation, but said they were meant to send a strong message over the sinking of a South Korean warship in March that left 46 sailors dead.The drills, set to run through Wednesday, involve about 8,000 U.S. and South Korean troops, 20 ships and submarines and 200 aircraft. The USS George Washington, with several thousand sailors and dozens of fighter jets aboard, was deployed from Japan.We are showing our resolve, said Capt. David Lausman, the carrier's commanding officer.The exercises will be the first in a series of U.S.-South Korean maneuvers conducted in the East Sea off Korea and in the Yellow Sea closer to China's shores in international waters.The exercises also are the first to employ the F-22 stealth fighter — which can evade North Korean air defenses — in South Korea.North Korea has called the drills an unpardonable provocation and threatened to retaliate with nuclear deterrence and sacred war.The North routinely threatens attacks whenever South Korea and the U.S. hold joint military drills, which Pyongyang sees as a rehearsal for an invasion. The U.S. keeps 28,500 troops in South Korea and another 50,000 in Japan, but says it has no intention of invading the North.Still, the North's latest rhetoric carries extra weight following the sinking of the Cheonan warship in late March.Rear Adm. Daniel Cloyd, the top U.S. official in the exercise, said he was confident the United States could respond to any threat. He said no significant action by the North's military had been observed.We are monitoring the region all the time and we are very confident we can respond to any situation,he said.

Washington and Seoul blame Pyongyang for the sinking of the 1,200-ton Cheonan warship near the Koreas' maritime border. A five-nation team of investigators concluded a North Korean torpedo sank the Cheonan, considered the worst military attack on the South since the 1950-53 Korean War.North Korea, which denies any involvement in the sinking, has warned the United States against attempting to punish it.Our military and people will squarely respond to the nuclear war preparation by the American imperialists and the South Korean puppet regime with our powerful nuclear deterrent,the North's government-run Minju Joson newspaper said in a commentary headlined, We also have nuclear weapons.The commentary was carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.The North's powerful National Defense Commission issued a similar threat Saturday, saying the country will start a retaliatory sacred war.Pyongyang's rhetoric was seen by most as bluster, but its angry response to the maneuvers underscores the rising tension in the region.Capt. Ross Myers, the commander of the George Washington's air wing, said the exercises were not intended to raise tensions. But the George Washington, one of the biggest ships in the U.S. Navy, is a potent symbol of American military power, with about 5,000 sailors and aviators and the capacity to carry up to 70 planes. North Korea may contend that it is a provocation, but I would say the opposite, Myers said.It is a provocation to those who don't want peace and stability. North Korea doesn't want this. They know that one of South Korea's strengths is its alliance with the United States.Myers said North Korea's threats to retaliate are being taken seriously, however.There is a lot they can do, he said. They have ships, they have subs, they have airplanes. They are a credible threat.The maneuvers underscore a diplomatic blitz by the United States aimed at further tightening the screws on North Korea. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Wednesday, after visiting the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas, that the U.S. would slap new sanctions on the North to stifle its nuclear ambitions and punish it for the Cheonan sinking. The European Union is also considering new sanctions on North Korea. The deployment of the supercarrier to the area off Korea was also raising eyebrows in China — which was believed to have been concerned about having the carrier operate too close to its own shores.In what has been seen as a bow to Chinese sensitivities, the George Washington will not be joining the maneuvers later this summer in the Yellow Sea.But Cloyd, the top U.S. official in the exercise, said the carrier may be back.We reserve the right to exercise in international waters anywhere in the world, he said.

The Nimitz-class carrier had been expected to join in exercises — code-named Invincible Spirit — off South Korea sooner, but the Navy delayed those plans as the United Nations Security Council met to deliberate what action it should take over the Cheonan sinking. The council eventually condemned the incident, but stopped short of naming North Korea as the perpetrator. In Seoul, meanwhile, about 150 anti-war activists rallied Sunday near the U.S. Embassy, chanting slogans such as We are opposing the drills! and Scrap the South Korean-U.S. alliance! The activists said the training would only deepen tension in the region. The rally was peaceful and there was no reports of clashes with riot police.Associated Press writer Hyung-jin Kim and AP photographer Young-joon Ahn in Seoul contributed to this report.

Japan to OK exports of missile interceptors: report
JULY 25,10

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan is set to allow exports of missile interceptors it is developing jointly with the United States, Kyodo news agency said, relaxing its ban on arms exports.Europe is considered a likely destination for the ship-based Standard Missile-3 Block IIA, Kyodo said on Sunday, citing unnamed sources close to Japan-U.S. relations.The advanced missile defense system is key to U.S. plans to be able to defend all of NATO's European territory from a perceived Iranian ballistic-missile threat.Separately, the Yomiuri newspaper said on Monday an advisory panel to Prime Minister Naoto Kan will call for relaxation of Japan's weapons export ban in a report next month.Japan has banned arms sales since 1967 to countries with communist governments or that are involved in international conflicts or subject to United Nations sanctions.The rules have meant virtually a blanket ban on arms exports and the development or production of weapons with countries other than the United States, hurting the competitiveness of defense contractors such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.Nippon Keidanren, Japan's largest business lobby, has called for an easing of the restriction, which has prohibited the country's defense industry from joining multinational projects such as Lockheed Martin-led F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Michael Watson)

Iran says it has 100 vessels for each US warship By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer - Sat Jul 24, 11:34 am ET

TEHRAN, Iran – The former naval chief for Iran's Revolutionary Guard said the country has set aside 100 military vessels to confront each warship from the U.S. or any other foreign power that might pose a threat, an Iranian newspaper reported Saturday.Such a military confrontation in the vital oil lanes of the Persian Gulf would be of major global concern. The warning builds on earlier threats by Iran to seal off the Gulf's strategic Strait of Hormuz — through which 40 percent of the world's oil passes — in response to any military attack.We have set aside 100 military vessels for each (U.S.) warship to attack at the time of necessity, Gen. Morteza Saffari was quoted as saying by the conservative weekly Panjereh.The U.S. and Israel have said military force could be used if diplomacy fails to stop what they suspect is an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Iran denies any aim to develop such weapons and says its nuclear work is for peaceful purposes like power generation.The U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters is based just across the Gulf from Iran in Bahrain.Saffari said more than 100 foreign warships were currently in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman, adding that their sailors were morsels for Iran's military to target, the newspaper reported.Any moment the exalted supreme leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) orders — or should the enemy carry out the smallest threat against (Iran's ruling) Islamic system — the Guard ... is ready for quick reaction, he was quoted as saying.

By putting the number of foreign warships at 100, the general appeared to suggest Iran has 10,000 military vessels at the ready. Iran is known to have many speed boats used by the Guard, but there is no public information about how many larger military vessels it has.In January 2008, five small high-speed vessels believed to be from Iran's Revolutionary Guard briefly swarmed three U.S. Navy ships passing near Iranian waters in the Gulf and delivered a radio threat to blow them up.The war of words has intensified between Iran and the West since the U.N. Security Council imposed tougher sanctions last month in response to Iran's refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a technology that can be used to produce nuclear fuel or material for an atomic bomb.Iran put its most powerful military force, the Revolutionary Guard, in charge of defending the country's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf in 2008.We believe the enemy, through extensive psychological warfare, wants to coerce us, but Iran ... is ready,said Saffari, who was the Guard's navy chief until early May.The enemy won't dare attack Iran.

Abbas says entire world wants direct Mideast talks By MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH, Associated Press Writer - Sun Jul 25, 7:04 am ET

RAMALLAH, West Bank – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday that despite intense international pressure from the entire world, he is still not willing to start direct negotiations with Israel.Abbas told the Voice of Palestine radio that talks would be doomed without a clear framework.The Palestinians are wary of entering open-ended negotiations with Israel's hardline prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. They want Israel to first accept the principle of a Palestinian state in the lands it captured in the 1967 Mideast War, with some alterations.Netanyahu has endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state but refuses to be pinned down on the details before direct talks begin. Since May, U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell has shuttling between Abbas and Netanyahu to try to narrow the gaps, so far in vain.Abbas aides said he has received phone calls in recent days from the leaders of Germany, Britain and Italy, among others, urging him to go to direct talks.The entire world is asking us to go for direct negotiations, but going to negotiations without a clear reference might make them collapse from the first moment,Abbas told the radio from Uganda, where he was visiting.We are not against meetings, whether in Ramallah or Tel Aviv, Abbas added.The issue is to set the ... reference for negotiations. After that, we are ready to go anywhere.

Direct talks between Abbas and Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, broke down in late 2008. Abbas wants talks to pick up where they left off. Netanyahu has refused to do so.On Thursday, Arab League foreign ministers are to meet in Cairo to decide whether to back the move to direct negotiations.Abbas aide Saeb Erekat said the Palestinians would ask the Arab world to recommend continuing with indirect talks until they are slated to end Sept. 8, at which point the Palestinians will decide how to proceed. However, President Barack Obama is pushing for direct talks to start as quickly as possible, and it's unclear how much longer Abbas can withstand the mounting pressure.In other developments Sunday, a prominent Muslim cleric in Israel began serving a jail term for spitting at a police officer and leading a demonstration near Jerusalem's Old City in 2007. He is slated to serve five months after an Israeli court shortened his original nine-month sentence.At the time, Raed Salah was protesting Israeli renovation work near the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Salah heads a small, hardline Muslim group whose members come from Israel's one-fifth Arab minority. He has had repeated run-ins with Israeli authorities.In 2003 Salah was jailed for two years on charges that his organization funneled money to the Palestinian militant group Hamas, responsible for dozens of suicide bombings targeting Israelis.

Israeli warplanes strike Gaza tunnels
JULY 25,10

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories (AFP) – Israeli planes fired missiles at two smuggling tunnels near the Gaza Strip border with Egypt early Monday, causing damage but no casualties, officials from the Hamas-run security forces said.The Israeli army had no immediate comment. Israel has frequently targeted the tunnels in retaliation for rocket fire from the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave.The impoverished territory of 1.5 million people has largely relied on the vast network of tunnels on the border since Israel and Egypt sealed Gaza off to all but vital aid in 2006 after militants captured an Israeli soldier.The Israeli blockade was tightened after the Islamist movement Hamas seized power in June 2007.Most of the tunnels are used to bring in basic goods like food, household appliances and livestock but Hamas and other militant groups reportedly use their own tunnels to bring in arms and money.

Gaza-based militants fired four rockets into southern Israel over the weekend, a military spokesman said on Sunday.In December 2008, Israel launched a devastating assault on Gaza in a bid to halt near daily rocket fire from the besieged Palestinian territory.Some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed in the 22-day war.After a year of quiet following the assault, Gaza militants have recently stepped up the cross-border rocket fire.

EU to hammer Iran with oil sanctions by Laurent Thomet – Sun Jul 25, 3:23 pm ET

BRUSSELS (AFP) – The European Union will hit Iran with tough sanctions against its vital oil and gas industry on Monday in a bid to lure Tehran back to the negotiating table over its disputed nuclear programme.This (package of sanctions) is about applying pressure, but applying pressure in order to bring the Iranians to the table to talk, a European diplomat said.EU foreign ministers will formally approve the sanctions following Iran's repeated refusals to halt sensitive nuclear activities, which the West fears are aimed at building a bomb.Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned the EU against imposing unilateral sanctions, in remarks directed at the EU, which were translated into English by the Press TV channel.We do not welcome any tension or a new resolution. We seek logic and friendship, Ahmadinejad said.I should tell you that anyone who adopts a measure against the Iranian nation, such as inspection of our ships and planes, should know that Iran will react swiftly, he added.Although the UN Security Council imposed a fourth set of sanctions on Tehran in early June, EU leaders and the United States decided shortly after to impose their own penalties against the Iranian energy sector.The sanctions are part of a twin-track approach, with EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton seeking to revive moribund talks between Iran and six world powers -- Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.Western powers have demanded that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment programme, fearing that Tehran would use the material to build a nuclear bomb. Tehran says its atomic programme is a peaceful drive to produce energy.The new EU sanctions include a ban on the sale of equipment, technology and services to Iran's energy sector, hitting activities in refining, liquefied natural gas, exploration and production, diplomats said.The EU will ban dual-use goods that can be used for conventional weapons. It will also step up vigilance of the activities of Iranian-connected banks operating in the EU and bar them from setting up branches.

A number of (EU) member states have had to overcome considerable problems with their economic interests in order to adopt this package,the European diplomat said.It will be in some way the most substantive and far-reaching autonomous sanctions package which the EU has adopted against Iran or any other country,he added.Iran is the world's fourth largest producer of crude oil, but imports 40 percent of its fuel needs because it lacks enough refining capabilities to meet demand.The unilateral US and EU sanctions were expected to have a material impact on the country's energy industry,the International Energy Agency said last week.It was significant that China and Russia had agreed to back the UN sanctions, but that those did not include specific measures aimed at Iran's energy sector, the IAEA noted.The US and EU sanctions were harder, and longer term, development of the country's oil and gas industry will clearly be adversely impacted, the IEA said.These sanctions are surprisingly strong, said Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the nonproliferation programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. They go much further than the UN sanctions.As tough as they were however, they could persuade Iran back to talks, he added. In the past, Iran has always moved once it was under pressure of the international community.The last high-level talks between Iran and the six world powers were held in Geneva in October 2009 when the two sides agreed a nuclear fuel swap that has since stalled.

EU foreign ministers meeting Monday will urge Iran to set a date for new talks, according to draft conclusions. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, during a visit to Istanbul Sunday, said Iran was ready to start talks immediately with Western powers over a nuclear fuel swap deal, brokered by Turkey and Brazil in May.
Under the deal, Iran agreed to send 1,200 kilogrammes of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Turkey to be supplied at a later date with high-enriched uranium by Russia and France.But this deal has already been dismissed by world powers, who backed the renewed UN sanctions in June.

TORAH PORTION FROM JULY 25 - 31,2010

SINCE WHAT ISRAEL READS WILL BE FULFILLED IN THAT WEEK I WILL BE PUTTING THE WEEKLY TORAH PORTION ON FOR ALL OF US TO KEEP TRACK OF ISRAEL HAPPENINGS.

TORAH PORTION FROM JULY 25 2010 6PM - JULY 31 6PM 2010

DEUTERONOMY 7:12 - 11:25
12 Wherefore it shall come to pass, if ye hearken to these judgments, and keep, and do them, that the LORD thy God shall keep unto thee the covenant and the mercy which he sware unto thy fathers:
13 And he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee: he will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep, in the land which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee.
14 Thou shalt be blessed above all people: there shall not be male or female barren among you, or among your cattle.
15 And the LORD will take away from thee all sickness, and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which thou knowest, upon thee; but will lay them upon all them that hate thee.
16 And thou shalt consume all the people which the LORD thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them: neither shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee.
17 If thou shalt say in thine heart, These nations are more than I; how can I dispossess them?
18 Thou shalt not be afraid of them: but shalt well remember what the LORD thy God did unto Pharaoh, and unto all Egypt;
19 The great temptations which thine eyes saw, and the signs, and the wonders, and the mighty hand, and the stretched out arm, whereby the LORD thy God brought thee out: so shall the LORD thy God do unto all the people of whom thou art afraid.
20 Moreover the LORD thy God will send the hornet among them, until they that are left, and hide themselves from thee, be destroyed.
21 Thou shalt not be affrighted at them: for the LORD thy God is among you, a mighty God and terrible.
22 And the LORD thy God will put out those nations before thee by little and little: thou mayest not consume them at once, lest the beasts of the field increase upon thee.
23 But the LORD thy God shall deliver them unto thee, and shall destroy them with a mighty destruction, until they be destroyed.
24 And he shall deliver their kings into thine hand, and thou shalt destroy their name from under heaven: there shall no man be able to stand before thee, until thou have destroyed them.
25 The graven images of their gods shall ye burn with fire: thou shalt not desire the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it unto thee, lest thou be snared therein: for it is an abomination to the LORD thy God.
26 Neither shalt thou bring an abomination into thine house, lest thou be a cursed thing like it: but thou shalt utterly detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it is a cursed thing.

DEUTERONOMY 8:1-20
1 All the commandments which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers.
2 And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.
3 And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.
4 Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years.
5 Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that, as a man chasteneth his son, so the LORD thy God chasteneth thee.
6 Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, and to fear him.
7 For the LORD thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills;
8 A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey;
9 A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.
10 When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the LORD thy God for the good land which he hath given thee.
11 Beware that thou forget not the LORD thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day:
12 Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein;
13 And when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied;
14 Then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the LORD thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage;
15 Who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint;
16 Who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end;
17 And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.
18 But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.
19 And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish.
20 As the nations which the LORD destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the LORD your God.

DEUTERONOMY 9:1-29
1 Hear, O Israel: Thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to possess nations greater and mightier than thyself, cities great and fenced up to heaven,
2 A people great and tall, the children of the Anakims, whom thou knowest, and of whom thou hast heard say, Who can stand before the children of Anak!
3 Understand therefore this day, that the LORD thy God is he which goeth over before thee; as a consuming fire he shall destroy them, and he shall bring them down before thy face: so shalt thou drive them out, and destroy them quickly, as the LORD hath said unto thee.
4 Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the LORD thy God hath cast them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness the LORD hath brought me in to possess this land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD doth drive them out from before thee.
5 Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and that he may perform the word which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
6 Understand therefore, that the LORD thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy righteousness; for thou art a stiffnecked people.
7 Remember, and forget not, how thou provokedst the LORD thy God to wrath in the wilderness: from the day that thou didst depart out of the land of Egypt, until ye came unto this place, ye have been rebellious against the LORD.
8 Also in Horeb ye provoked the LORD to wrath, so that the LORD was angry with you to have destroyed you.
9 When I was gone up into the mount to receive the tables of stone, even the tables of the covenant which the LORD made with you, then I abode in the mount forty days and forty nights, I neither did eat bread nor drink water:
10 And the LORD delivered unto me two tables of stone written with the finger of God; and on them was written according to all the words, which the LORD spake with you in the mount out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly.
11 And it came to pass at the end of forty days and forty nights, that the LORD gave me the two tables of stone, even the tables of the covenant.
12 And the LORD said unto me, Arise, get thee down quickly from hence; for thy people which thou hast brought forth out of Egypt have corrupted themselves; they are quickly turned aside out of the way which I commanded them; they have made them a molten image.
13 Furthermore the LORD spake unto me, saying, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people:
14 Let me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under heaven: and I will make of thee a nation mightier and greater than they.
15 So I turned and came down from the mount, and the mount burned with fire: and the two tables of the covenant were in my two hands.
16 And I looked, and, behold, ye had sinned against the LORD your God, and had made you a molten calf: ye had turned aside quickly out of the way which the LORD had commanded you.
17 And I took the two tables, and cast them out of my two hands, and brake them before your eyes.
18 And I fell down before the LORD, as at the first, forty days and forty nights: I did neither eat bread, nor drink water, because of all your sins which ye sinned, in doing wickedly in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger.
19 For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure, wherewith the LORD was wroth against you to destroy you. But the LORD hearkened unto me at that time also.
20 And the LORD was very angry with Aaron to have destroyed him: and I prayed for Aaron also the same time.
21 And I took your sin, the calf which ye had made, and burnt it with fire, and stamped it, and ground it very small, even until it was as small as dust: and I cast the dust thereof into the brook that descended out of the mount.
22 And at Taberah, and at Massah, and at Kibrothhattaavah, ye provoked the LORD to wrath.
23 Likewise when the LORD sent you from Kadeshbarnea, saying, Go up and possess the land which I have given you; then ye rebelled against the commandment of the LORD your God, and ye believed him not, nor hearkened to his voice.
24 Ye have been rebellious against the LORD from the day that I knew you.
25 Thus I fell down before the LORD forty days and forty nights, as I fell down at the first; because the LORD had said he would destroy you.
26 I prayed therefore unto the LORD, and said, O Lord GOD, destroy not thy people and thine inheritance, which thou hast redeemed through thy greatness, which thou hast brought forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand.
27 Remember thy servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; look not unto the stubbornness of this people, nor to their wickedness, nor to their sin:
28 Lest the land whence thou broughtest us out say, Because the LORD was not able to bring them into the land which he promised them, and because he hated them, he hath brought them out to slay them in the wilderness.
29 Yet they are thy people and thine inheritance, which thou broughtest out by thy mighty power and by thy stretched out arm.

DEUTERONOMY 10:1-22
1 At that time the LORD said unto me, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first, and come up unto me into the mount, and make thee an ark of wood.
2 And I will write on the tables the words that were in the first tables which thou brakest, and thou shalt put them in the ark.
3 And I made an ark of shittim wood, and hewed two tables of stone like unto the first, and went up into the mount, having the two tables in mine hand.
4 And he wrote on the tables, according to the first writing, the ten commandments, which the LORD spake unto you in the mount out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly: and the LORD gave them unto me.
5 And I turned myself and came down from the mount, and put the tables in the ark which I had made; and there they be, as the LORD commanded me.
6 And the children of Israel took their journey from Beeroth of the children of Jaakan to Mosera: there Aaron died, and there he was buried; and Eleazar his son ministered in the priest's office in his stead.
7 From thence they journeyed unto Gudgodah; and from Gudgodah to Jotbath, a land of rivers of waters.
8 At that time the LORD separated the tribe of Levi, to bear the ark of the covenant of the LORD, to stand before the LORD to minister unto him, and to bless in his name, unto this day.
9 Wherefore Levi hath no part nor inheritance with his brethren; the LORD is his inheritance, according as the LORD thy God promised him.
10 And I stayed in the mount, according to the first time, forty days and forty nights; and the LORD hearkened unto me at that time also, and the LORD would not destroy thee.
11 And the LORD said unto me, Arise, take thy journey before the people, that they may go in and possess the land, which I sware unto their fathers to give unto them.
12 And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul,
13 To keep the commandments of the LORD, and his statutes, which I command thee this day for thy good?
14 Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the LORD'S thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is.
15 Only the LORD had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day.
16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.
17 For the LORD your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward:
18 He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment.
19 Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.
20 Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God; him shalt thou serve, and to him shalt thou cleave, and swear by his name.
21 He is thy praise, and he is thy God, that hath done for thee these great and terrible things, which thine eyes have seen.
22 Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons; and now the LORD thy God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude.

DEUTERONOMY 11:1-25
1 Therefore thou shalt love the LORD thy God, and keep his charge, and his statutes, and his judgments, and his commandments, alway.
2 And know ye this day: for I speak not with your children which have not known, and which have not seen the chastisement of the LORD your God, his greatness, his mighty hand, and his stretched out arm,
3 And his miracles, and his acts, which he did in the midst of Egypt unto Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and unto all his land;
4 And what he did unto the army of Egypt, unto their horses, and to their chariots; how he made the water of the Red sea to overflow them as they pursued after you, and how the LORD hath destroyed them unto this day;
5 And what he did unto you in the wilderness, until ye came into this place;
6 And what he did unto Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, the son of Reuben: how the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their households, and their tents, and all the substance that was in their possession, in the midst of all Israel:
7 But your eyes have seen all the great acts of the LORD which he did.
8 Therefore shall ye keep all the commandments which I command you this day, that ye may be strong, and go in and possess the land, whither ye go to possess it;
9 And that ye may prolong your days in the land, which the LORD sware unto your fathers to give unto them and to their seed, a land that floweth with milk and honey.
10 For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs:
11 But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven:
12 A land which the LORD thy God careth for: the eyes of the LORD thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year.
13 And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments which I command you this day, to love the LORD your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul,
14 That I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil.
15 And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full.
16 Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them;
17 And then the LORD'S wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which the LORD giveth you.
18 Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.
19 And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
20 And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates:
21 That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.
22 For if ye shall diligently keep all these commandments which I command you, to do them, to love the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, and to cleave unto him;
23 Then will the LORD drive out all these nations from before you, and ye shall possess greater nations and mightier than yourselves.
24 Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours: from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be.
25 There shall no man be able to stand before you: for the LORD your God shall lay the fear of you and the dread of you upon all the land that ye shall tread upon, as he hath said unto you.

PROPHETS PORTION

ISAIAH 49:14-51:3
14 But Zion said, The LORD hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me.
15 Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.
16 Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.
17 Thy children shall make haste; thy destroyers and they that made thee waste shall go forth of thee.
18 Lift up thine eyes round about, and behold: all these gather themselves together, and come to thee. As I live, saith the LORD, thou shalt surely clothe thee with them all, as with an ornament, and bind them on thee, as a bride doeth.
19 For thy waste and thy desolate places, and the land of thy destruction, shall even now be too narrow by reason of the inhabitants, and they that swallowed thee up shall be far away.
20 The children which thou shalt have, after thou hast lost the other, shall say again in thine ears, The place is too strait for me: give place to me that I may dwell.
21 Then shalt thou say in thine heart, Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children, and am desolate, a captive, and removing to and fro? and who hath brought up these? Behold, I was left alone; these, where had they been?
22 Thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people: and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders.
23 And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers: they shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt know that I am the LORD: for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me.
24 Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the lawful captive delivered?
25 But thus saith the LORD, Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered: for I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children.
26 And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine: and all flesh shall know that I the LORD am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob.

ISAIAH 50:1-11
1 Thus saith the LORD, Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.
2 Wherefore, when I came, was there no man? when I called, was there none to answer? Is my hand shortened at all, that it cannot redeem? or have I no power to deliver? behold, at my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a wilderness: their fish stinketh, because there is no water, and dieth for thirst.
3 I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering.
4 The Lord GOD hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: he wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned.
5 The Lord GOD hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back.
6 I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting.
7 For the Lord GOD will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.
8 He is near that justifieth me; who will contend with me? let us stand together: who is mine adversary? let him come near to me.
9 Behold, the Lord GOD will help me; who is he that shall condemn me? lo, they all shall wax old as a garment; the moth shall eat them up.
10 Who is among you that feareth the LORD, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let him trust in the name of the LORD, and stay upon his God.
11 Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks: walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow.

ISAIAH 51:1-3
1 Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the LORD: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.
2 Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him.
3 For the LORD shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.

NEW TESTAMENT PORTION

MATTHEW 4:1-11
1 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
2 And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.
3 And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
5 Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,
6 And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
7 Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;
9 And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
10 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
11 Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.

LUKE 4:1-13
1 And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness,
2 Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered.
3 And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread.
4 And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.
5 And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
7 If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.
8 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
9 And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence:
10 For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee:
11 And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
12 And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
13 And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season.

JAMES 5:7-11
7 Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.
8 Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.
9 Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned: behold, the judge standeth before the door.
10 Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience.
11 Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.