News from around the world

I am back from a very good trip to the Philippines and hope to give you a report with pictures soon. I thought I was going to return on Monday, but I actually returned home on Tuesday morning about 6 a.m. I then slept for 24 hours and am now well rested.

I was gone so long that some of you forgot that I was going to be gone.

I was unable to go to Zamboanga City for the scheduled conference. David was concerned because the church there was outside of the city, where the situation is much more volatile and dangerous, especially for Americans. If the conference had been held in the city itself, we would have gone there. But being part of a team (David, Cathy, and I), we decided against going to Zamboanga. This gave us opportunity to have a day off and also to set up other meetings in Davao, where we spent the first week.

I taught mostly on the revelation of the divine law, since I knew this would be new material to them. I did not want to repeat things that they already knew. I made a lot of new contacts and also made some good friends. Take Pastor Jake, for example. He works for Dole and is currently working on a PhD. I met him early into the trip in Davao. He wanted to know if I had written material, so I gave him my website address. By the following week he had read most of The Wars of the Lord. Since that book gives my own personal journey of faith, it was a good introduction, and he got to know me through this.

Then on my last day there (Sunday), Pastor Jake volunteered to drive me an hour and a half each way to an outlying church where I was scheduled to speak. It was a last-minute decision that was made because of a mix-up in the travel schedule, and this gave us time to talk more. Jake is actually one of three pastors who share the burden after the previous pastor died. I had a wonderful teaching session in their church last Sunday afternoon, after which he drove me to a town called Kiampa, where I spoke again.

David and I also talked about setting up a Bible school or teaching center in Davao in the near future to build on what we accomplished on this trip. We have a lot to share with them that has been virtually unknown up to now. The local Bible schools have little revelation about the law or the feasts, and so their New Testament studies are also incomplete and often inaccurate. It is the same in America.

China’s One-Child Policy Abandoned

A lot of world events happened in the past two weeks while I was gone. On October 29, China ended its one-child policy after more than 35 years. They realized that it was not good for the economy. America has discovered the same thing in regard to aborting the next generation. This is the real reason why the federal government is not concerned with the problem of illegal immigration. They realize that they have to encourage it in order to gain more workers to support those on Social Security. After all, fifty million babies have been killed in recent decades.

The Fed Keeps ZIRP

On October 29 the Federal Reserve Bank retained its Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP). They are stuck with it forever, unless they decide that it is time to pull the plug on the US economy.

US Special Forces Sent to Syria

On October 30 the US announced its intention to send Special Forces to Syria. Obama downplayed this, saying that they had already been there for quite some time. Why didn’t he tell us sooner? It doesn’t matter. We already knew, even though only “conspiracy theorists” were writing about it in the past year. The point is that Russia smoked out the truth by bombing the US “moderate” allies in Syria who are fighting President Assad on our behalf.

Russian Passenger Jet Downed

On October 31 a Russian passenger jet was downed in northern Sinai (Egypt), killing all 224 people aboard. The motive was obviously to destroy the Egyptian tourist economy for turning to Russia as its ally. News accounts today say that it was a bomb planted on board. Ben Fulford says it was shot down by an Israeli jet. On November 2 he wrote:

The rogue state of Israel has been put under an “electromagnetic cordon sanitaire,” meaning that its military airplanes are grounded and its warships are unable to leave their ports, according to Pentagon officials. The blockade has now been intensified because US military and Russian government sources agree an Israeli F16 jet fighter flying out of Ramon Airforce base shot down a Russian airliner in the Sinai desert on Halloween, killing 224 people. “Israel is now stuck in its sandbox and can only bomb Gaza or shoot down airliners,” a Pentagon official added. The downing of the airliner has also now opened the way legally for Russian attacks on Israel proper, the officials said.

Fulford wrote again on November 10,

With its Halloween attack on a Russian airliner, the Israeli regime has also doomed itself by arrogantly attacking the three great powers of Russia, China and the United States. The result is Israel is under a full military blockade that will not end until Netanyahu and his fellow war-criminals make an unconditional surrender, according to Chinese, Russian and Pentagon sources. Their so-called Samson option of taking the world down with them has now been neutralized, the Pentagon sources say.

I have no way of proving or disproving this, so I leave it to you to ponder. If we hear of Israeli jets continuing to attack beyond their borders (say, in Syria), then this might undermine the reports that he has received from his sources.

Saudi Arabia

The Saudi war against Yemen is not going well for them either, according to reports from Iran’s Fars News Agency. On Nov. 7, they reported “Yemeni Forces Capture Saudi City”. If true, this means Yemeni forces are overrunning some Saudi oilfields near the border.

http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13940816000617

Saudi Arabia is now running a huge $25 billion fiscal deficit, due to the drop in oil prices. It is said that at this rate they could be completely out of cash by 2020. Of course, they would be bankrupt long before that. If they have to take money out of the markets, this would have a serious effect on a lot of hedge funds and stock markets.

This comes on the heels of earlier bad news for the Saudis that was reported on Oct. 26 by the New York Post.

Yet another Saudi prince is being accused of royally screwing up.

Prince Abdel Mohsen bin Walid bin Abdulaziz was detained Monday along for allegedly trying to fly two tons of drugs out of Lebanon aboard his private plane at Beirut International Airport, according to multiple reports.

“The smuggling operating is the largest one that has been foiled through the Beirut International Airport,” a source told Agence France-Presse.

Airport security seized 40 suitcases allegedly stuffed with more than 4,000 pounds of the amphetamine Captagon and cocaine….

People are routinely killed in Saudi Arabia for drug offenses. A Pakistani smuggler was executed by government officials just hours after Prince Abdel was busted, according to Salon.

http://nypost.com/2015/10/28/saudi-prince-busted-with-two-tons-of-isis-drug-and-cocaine-on-his-private-plane-officials/

Bankers Rewrite Rules for Derivatives

Meanwhile, it appears that a high-level banker/politician meetings was held in the Napa Valley in California over the past week end to rewrite trillions of dollars worth of derivatives contracts that the big banks have incurred. This seems to be a ploy to head off certain collapse of the Big Four banks when our “recovering” economy hits the wall.

Wall Street is poised to expand a rewrite of financial contracts worth trillions of dollars in an effort to persuade regulators that giant banks can be wound down without hurting the broader economy….

The goal is to prevent a recurrence of the messy bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in 2008, which helped spark a broader crisis in credit markets….

A spokesman for the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, a group overseeing the rewrite whose members include banks, declined to comment. Spokesmen for JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs had no comment….

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-09/banks-rewrite-contracts-worth-trillions-to-shed-too-big-to-fail

This Bloomberg article is probably designed to give a partial report of the meeting without revealing the most important matters being discussed. It is clear that this is a matter of banker strategy, rather than government legislation. The derivatives problem is so massive that it threatens the entire economy of the world, so it is not surprising that they would try to formulate some kind of strategy ahead of time. They know that it is only a matter of time before it blows up in their faces, as it did in 2008.

The 2008 bailout of the big banks did not solve any of the underlying problems. In fact, the bailout only encouraged the big banks to increase the problem, believing that the government would have to bail them out whenever necessary. Many economists are warning that the banks are heading toward the cliff.

Iraq News

On Nov. 3 Chalabi died of a heart attack in Baghdad. It was reported that he had just given documentary evidence of Maliki’s corruption to Sistani, the chief ayatollah in Iraq. The coincidence of timing, of course, makes us wonder if his heart attack was induced. His family has sent for a few medical experts from the West to do an autopsy to determine the real cause of his death.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi dinar is still not an internationally tradable currency, in spite of the fact that sanctions were lifted more than a year ago. It appears that they cannot restore its international status until it revalues. Why have they not made it tradable at the present domestic rate of 1166 per dollar? There is no real reason for the delay other than that they intend to revalue it drastically at the time it becomes internationally tradable.

Tomorrow we come again to the anniversary of the event on this date in 2013. I was in Lake Sebu in the Philippines teaching at a conference and “feeding 100 men” (which was the 9^th sign of Elisha in 2 Kings 4:42-44). As always, it is a watch date.