"The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?"
(Psalms 27:1)
Strength Of My Life
Sacred Sorrow
Sometimes a certain melancholy fills my soul,
Almost like a sacred sorrow.
I do not know whence it comes, or where it goes,
I only know the whole creation groans and travails in pain,
My God my God , why have you forsaken me.
RAM
***
Earthshaker Poster Tract
Click to view PDF online
or Right-click to download PDF
The Europeon Union Times
Russian Leader Tells Top Generals, "Prepare For Armageddon"
Posted by EU Times on Oct 6th, 2011
A grim Federal Security Services (FSB) report on Prime Minister Putin's plan to meet China's leader Hu Jintao [both pictured] in Beijing next week warns that both Russian and Chinese military forces are being placed on their 'highest alert' in anticipation of a massive land invasion believed being planned by the United States of both the Middle East and Central Asia.
The plans for this "Total Global War" the Americans are preparing to launch were first revealed to China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) by the former Blackwater mercenary Bryan Underwood who is currently being held by US authorities for spying and which we reported on in our 4 October report titled "China Warns Russia Of Coming American "Great Event."
Within hours of Putin's reading of the coming US plans for Total Global War, this report says, he wrote a rare article in the Izvestia daily outlining a grand project to integrate post-Soviet states into closer cooperation, scheduled an emergency trip to China to meet with Hu, and ordered the FSB to notify China's MSS of the arrest and detention of their spy Tun Sheniyun who was captured last year for attempting to steal sensitive information on Russia's most powerful anti-aircraft system.
As we had detailed in our previously mentioned report, the "New Great Game" moves being planned by the Americans that is striking fear into both Russia and China includes:
1.) The deliberate implosion of both the US and EU economies in order to destroy the Global Financial System that has been in place since the ending of World War II
2.) The launching of a massive conventional war by the US and EU on the North American, African and Asian Continents to include the Middle East
3.) During this all-out war the deliberate releasing of bio-warfare agents meant to kill off millions, if not billions, of innocent civilians
4.) At the height of this war the US and its allies will sue for peace and call for a new global order to be established in order to prevent the total destruction of our planet.
This past week an unidentified source within the US Department of Defense (DOD) further warned that the Obama regime was preparing for a massive "tank-on-tank" war and that US military forces are "expecting something conventional, and big, coming down the pipe relatively soon."
To how close this war may be the FSB in their report states that it will be "much sooner than later" as the Americans have pre-positioned in Iraq nearly 2,000 of their M1 Abrams main battle tanks, have pre-positioned another 2,000 of them in Afghanistan, and between the Middle East and Asia have, likewise, put into these war theaters tens-of-thousands of other typed armored vehicles.
The "final piece" for the activation of this massive armored force, standing poised like a dagger at the heart of both Asia and the Middle East, the FSB says, is the call for a "Full Mobilization" of over 1.5 million American reserve forces which can occur at "at a moments notice" as the US is currently at war and needs no further authorization from its Congress to expand their areas of operation.
Important to note about the American plan for global domination through massive warfare is that it is not really a secret, and as (curiously) revealed on the tenth anniversary of the 11 September attacks upon the United States when the US National Security Archive released a memo written by former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in September 2001 wherein he warned "If the war does not significantly change the world's political map, the US will not achieve its aim."
To what the "aim" of the United States is as their war against the world has now entered its 10th year, the FSB says, is to prevent "at all costs" the implosion of the US Dollar as the main reserve currency of the present global economic system before the West's envisioned "New World Order" can be established.
The first threat to the Americans "master plan" for global hegemony came in November 2000 when the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein quit accepting US Dollars for oil and, instead, stated his country would only accept Euros. In less than 10 months the US was attacked and used that as an excuse to topple Hussein and reestablish the US Dollar as the world's main reserve currency.
Interesting to note is the failure of Libya's former leader Gaddafi's plan to introduce the gold dinar, a single African currency that would serve as an alternative to the US Dollar and allow African nations to share the wealth, but which like Iraq's Hussein "plan" brought a swift and brutal invasion by the Americans and their Western allies to keep it from happening.
The only nation that has successfully abandoned the US Dollar is Iran, who since February 2009 abandoned all American currency opting instead to value their oil and gas in Euros. Iran, however, and unlike oil rich Iraq and Libya, has not been attacked due to the Iranians having acquired from Ukraine between 6-10 nuclear armed X-55 missiles (range of 3,000km [2,000 miles]) in 2005. [Note: Former Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko stated that the missiles sold to Iran did not contain their nuclear tips, a statement disputed by the FSB who states they were armed and "ready to fire."]
This FSB report further states that both Putin and Hu were "enraged" by the deception of the West in regards to Libya, who after being given "absolute assurances" by the Obama regime that they weren't planning an invasion, broke their word and did it anyway.
Russian and China, in turn, stopped the West's plan for another war this week by their vetoing the US-backed plan in the United Nations Security Council to turn Syria into another Libya. So angry did the Americans become that their furious UN envoy Susan Rice stormed out of the meeting after the West didn't get what it wanted.
Even worse for the West's war plan against Syria was its President warning this week that if his nation was attacked by NATO he would cause to be fired hundreds of missiles into Israel's most populated city of Tel Aviv within six hours, which would, of course, bring about a catastrophic nuclear response.
And in a preemptory move to counter the planned American blitzkrieg into Central Asia and Pakistan from Afghanistan, Indian Army Chief General VK Singh warned yesterday that thousands of Chinese military forces have now moved into Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir joining an estimated 11,000 more of them believed to have entered that region in the past year.
To the coming deliberate implosion by the US of the global economy, the FSB further says in their report, it now appears "certain" after a new report emerged this past from Philippa Malmgren, a former economics adviser to President George W. Bush, stating that Germany was preparing to abandon the Euro and has ordered the printing of Deutsche Marks to replace it.
Most frightening of everything in this FSB report, however, is the reply Putin gave to Russia's top generals yesterday when asked what preparations should be made and he answered.... "Prepare for Armageddon."
("Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him." Ezekiel (38:2)
Tobolsk
From Wikipedia
It was founded by Yermak Timofeyevich's Cossacks in 1585 - 1586 during the first Russian advance into Siberia near the ruins of the Siberia Khanate's capital, Qashliq. It became the seat of the Viceroy of Siberia and prospered on trade with China and Bukhara. It was there that the first school, theatre, and newspaper in Siberia were established.
A map from a 1773 atlas shows Tobolsk as the center of a large Tobolsk okrug (district) and of an even larger Province of Tobolsk, as well as the "Capital of Siberia"
After administrative division of the territory, Tobolsk remained the seat of the Governor-General of Western Siberia until the seat was moved to Omsk in the 1820s or 1830s. Bowing to the city's authority, many Siberian towns, including Omsk, Tyumen, and Tomsk, had their original arms display the Tobolsk insignia. Omsk honors the legacy to this day.
The town's importance declined when the Trans-Siberian Railway bypassed it in the 1890s.
In August 1917, after the February Revolution, Tsar Nicholas II and his family were brought here to live in relative luxury in the former house of the Governor-General. After the White Army approached the city in spring of 1918, the royal family was moved to Yekaterinburg and shot there, ending the imperial Romanov dynasty.
The economy of modern Tobolsk centers on a major oil refinery. Some traditional crafts, such as bone-carving, are also preserved.
Tobolsk is the only town in Siberia and one of the few in Russia which has a standing stone kremlin (Tobolsk Kremlin), or elaborate city-fortress, from the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. Its white walls and towers with an ensemble of churches and palatial buildings spectacularly sited on a high river bank were proclaimed a national historical and architectural treasure in 1870.
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Natural News
New World Order: Implantable RFID chips capable of remotely killing non-compliant 'slaves' are here
October 26, 2011
Share(NaturalNews) Positioned as the solution to eliminating identify theft, lost wallets and purses, and a host of other information breaches, the all-inclusive implantable RFID tracking chip is gaining momentum for widespread implementation. Recent news reports indicate that an RFID tracking chip capable of killing humans (that presumably do not comply with rogue government demands) has already been invented.
There is simply no denying the fact that "the powers that be" are working towards microchipping all of humanity. ..
But what many people do not realize is that this technology exists now, and has already been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in humans. Not only do these chips "silently and invisibly" store and transmit personal data, but they can also be encoded to perform a variety of other functions.
Beginning at 00:42, the YouTube clip contains a segment on a "killer" RFID microchip that, upon being remotely triggered, can send a lethal dose of cyanide into a person's skin. The FOX News reporter that introduces the segment can be heard saying that the chip "will kill you if you get out of line".
Later in the YouTube compilation around 04:45, Chairman and CEO of Applied Digital Solutions Scott Silverman, who happens to have a "VeriChip" in his own arm, promotes the technology as useful and beneficial during a CNBC segment. Several of the hosts can be heard questioning Silverman about the "slippery slope" of the technology, and how it could be used to control the world's populations.
The PositiveID Corporation, which produces the VeriChip, has also announced that the Israeli Military recently ordered implantable microchips for its soldiers. The stated reason for this is that the chips will supposedly aid in "disaster preparedness and emergency management".
Assuming that they will only be used for the benign-sounding purposes that their proponents claim (which is highly unlikely), human microchips are a privacy nightmare that is much worse than credit cards and cash. Because human microchips transmit information via RFID and GPS signals, criminals can easily hijack personal information by intercepting transmission signals.
***
Reuters
Vatican calls for global authority on economy, raps "idolatry of the market"
By Philip Pullella
Oct 24, 2011
(Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican October 23, 2011/Giampiero Sposito)
The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a "global public authority" and a "central world bank" to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises. The document from the Vatican's Justice and Peace department should please the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn.
"Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority," was at times very specific, calling, for example, for taxation measures on financial transactions. "The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence," it said.
It condemned what it called "the idolatry of the market" as well as a "neo-liberal thinking" that it said looked exclusively at technical solutions to economic problems. "In fact, the crisis has revealed behaviours like selfishness, collective greed and hoarding of goods on a great scale," it said, adding that world economics needed an "ethic of solidarity" among rich and poor nations.
"If no solutions are found to the various forms of injustice, the negative effects that will follow on the social, political and economic level will be destined to create a climate of growing hostility and even violence, and ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions, even the ones considered most solid," it said.
It called for the establishment of "a supranational authority" with worldwide scope and "universal jurisdiction" to guide economic policies and decisions.
Asked at a news conference if the document could become a manifesto for the movement of the "indignant ones", who have criticised global economic policies, Cardinal Peter Turkson, head of the Vatican's Justice and Peace department, said: "The people on Wall Street need to sit down and go through a process of discernment and see whether their role managing the finances of the world is actually serving the interests of humanity and the common good. "We are calling for all these bodies and organisations to sit down and do a little bit of re-thinking."
The Economic Collapse
The Coming Derivatives Crisis That Could Destroy The Entire Global Financial System
Most people have no idea that Wall Street has become a gigantic financial casino. The big Wall Street banks are making tens of billions of dollars a year in the derivatives market, and nobody in the financial community wants the party to end. The word "derivatives" sounds complicated and technical, but understanding them is really not that hard. A derivative is essentially a fancy way of saying that a bet has been made. Originally, these bets were designed to hedge risk, but today the derivatives market has mushroomed into a mountain of speculation unlike anything the world has ever seen before. Estimates of the notional value of the worldwide derivatives market go from $600 trillion all the way up to $1.5 quadrillion. Keep in mind that the GDP of the entire world is only somewhere in the neighborhood of $65 trillion. The danger to the global financial system posed by derivatives is so great that Warren Buffet once called them "financial weapons of mass destruction". For now, the financial powers that be are trying to keep the casino rolling, but it is inevitable that at some point this entire mess is going to come crashing down. When it does, we are going to be facing a derivatives crisis that really could destroy the entire global financial system.
Most people don't talk much about derivatives because they simply do not understand them.
Perhaps a couple of definitions would be helpful.
The following is how a recent Bloomberg article defined derivatives....
Derivatives are financial instruments used to hedge risks or for speculation. They're derived from stocks, bonds, loans, currencies and commodities, or linked to specific events such as changes in the weather or interest rates.
The key word there is "speculation". Today the folks down on Wall Street are speculating on just about anything that you can imagine.
The following is how Investopedia defines derivatives....
A security whose price is dependent upon or derived from one or more underlying assets. The derivative itself is merely a contract between two or more parties. Its value is determined by fluctuations in the underlying asset. The most common underlying assets include stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, interest rates and market indexes. Most derivatives are characterized by high leverage.
A derivative has no underlying value of its own. A derivative is essentially a side bet. Usually these side bets are highly leveraged.
At this point, making side bets has totally gotten out of control in the financial world. Side bets are being made on just about anything you can possibly imagine, and the major Wall Street banks are making a ton of money from it. This system is almost entirely unregulated and it is totally dominated by the big international banks.
Over the past couple of decades, the derivatives market has multiplied in size. Everything is going to be fine as long as the system stays in balance. But once it gets out of balance we could witness a string of financial crashes that no government on earth will be able to fix.
The amount of money that we are talking about is absolutely staggering. Graham Summers of Phoenix Capital Research estimates that the notional value of the global derivatives market is $1.4 quadrillion, and in an article for Seeking Alpha he tried to put that number into perspective....
If you add up the value of every stock on the planet, the entire market capitalization would be about $36 trillion. If you do the same process for bonds, you'd get a market capitalization of roughly $72 trillion.
The notional value of the derivative market is roughly $1.4 QUADRILLION.
I realize that number sounds like something out of Looney tunes, so I'll try to put it into perspective.
$1.4 Quadrillion is roughly:
-40 TIMES THE WORLD'S STOCK MARKET.
-10 TIMES the value of EVERY STOCK & EVERY BOND ON THE PLANET.
-23 TIMES WORLD GDP.
It is hard to fathom how much money a quadrillion is.
If you started counting right now at one dollar per second, it would take 32 million years to count to one quadrillion dollars.
Yes, the boys and girls down on Wall Street have gotten completely and totally out of control.
In an excellent article that he did on derivatives, Webster Tarpley described the pivotal role that derivatives now play in the global financial system....
Far from being some arcane or marginal activity, financial derivatives have come to represent the principal business of the financier oligarchy in Wall Street, the City of London, Frankfurt, and other money centers. A concerted effort has been made by politicians and the news media to hide and camouflage the central role played by derivative speculation in the economic disasters of recent years. Journalists and public relations types have done everything possible to avoid even mentioning derivatives, coining phrases like "toxic assets," "exotic instruments," and - most notably - "troubled assets," as in Troubled Assets Relief Program or TARP, aka the monstrous $800 billion bailout of Wall Street speculators which was enacted in October 2008 with the support of Bush, Henry Paulson, John McCain, Sarah Palin, and the Obama Democrats.
Most people do not realize this, but derivatives were at the center of the financial crisis of 2008.
They will almost certainly be at the center of the next financial crisis as well.
For many, alarm bells went off the other day when it was revealed that Bank of America has moved a big chunk of derivatives from its failing Merrill Lynch investment banking unit to its depository arm.
So what does that mean?
An article posted on The Daily Bail the other day explained that it means that U.S. taxpayers could end up holding the bag....
This means that the investment bank's European derivatives exposure is now backstopped by U.S. taxpayers. Bank of America didn't get regulatory approval to do this, they just did it at the request of frightened counterparties. Now the Fed and the FDIC are fighting as to whether this was sound. The Fed wants to "give relief" to the bank holding company, which is under heavy pressure.
This is a direct transfer of risk to the taxpayer done by the bank without approval by regulators and without public input.
So did you hear about this on the news?
Probably not.
Today, the notional value of all the derivatives held by Bank of America comes to approximately $75 trillion.
JPMorgan Chase is holding derivatives with a notional value of about $79 trillion.
It is hard to even conceive of such figures.
Right now, the banks with the most exposure to derivatives are JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and HSBC Bank USA.
Morgan Stanley also has tremendous exposure to derivatives.
You may have noticed that these are some of the "too big to fail" banks.
The biggest U.S. banks continue to grow and they continue to get even more power.
Back in 2002, the top 10 U.S. banks controlled 55 percent of all U.S. banking assets. Today, the top 10 U.S. banks control 77 percent of all U.S. banking assets.
These banks have gotten so big and so powerful that if they collapsed our entire financial system would implode.
You would have thought that we would have learned our lesson back in 2008 and would have done something about this, but instead we have allowed the "too big to bail" banks to become bigger than ever.
And they pretty much do whatever they want.
A while back, the New York Times published an article entitled "A Secretive Banking Elite Rules Trading in Derivatives". That article exposed the steel-fisted control that the "too big to fail" banks exert over the trading of derivatives. Just consider the following excerpt from the article....
On the third Wednesday of every month, the nine members of an elite Wall Street society gather in Midtown Manhattan.
The men share a common goal: to protect the interests of big banks in the vast market for derivatives, one of the most profitable -- and controversial -- fields in finance. They also share a common secret: The details of their meetings, even their identities, have been strictly confidential.
So what institutions are represented at these meetings?
Well, according to the New York Times, the following banks are involved: JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup.
Why do those same five names seem to keep popping up time after time?
Sadly, these five banks keep pouring money into the campaigns of politicians that supported the bailouts in 2008 and that they know will bail them out again when the next financial crisis strikes.
Those that defend the wild derivatives trading that is going on today claim that Wall Street has accounted for all of the risks and they assume that the issuing banks will always be able to cover all of the derivative contracts that they write.
But that is a faulty assumption. Just look at AIG back in 2008. When the housing market collapsed AIG was on the wrong end of a massive number of derivative contracts and it would have gone "bust" without gigantic bailouts from the federal government. If the bailouts of AIG had not happened, Goldman Sachs and a whole lot of other people would have been left standing there with a whole bunch of worthless paper.
It is inevitable that the same thing is going to happen again. Except next time it may be on a much grander scale.
When "the house" goes "bust", everybody loses. The governments of the world could step in and try to bail everyone out, but the reality is that when the derivatives market comes totally crashing down there won't be any government on earth with enough money to put it back together again.
A horrible derivatives crisis is coming.
It is only a matter of time.
Stay alert for any mention of the word "derivatives" or the term "derivatives crisis" in the news. When the derivatives crisis arrives, things will start falling apart very rapidly.
LeeRockwell.com
If Europe Should Fail
by Clive Maund - CliveMaund.com
Recently by Clive Maund: Gold Market Update 10/17/11
Action yesterday across markets was bearish and set alarm bells ringing - in particular the action in the PM sector, where the Head-and-Shoulders bottom pattern that we have observed in PM sector stock indices appears to be aborting. If it does abort it will probably mean that the broad market will go into the tank, and that is precisely what we we can expect to happen if Europe should fail.
It has to be said that up until now we - and most of the rest of the world - have blithely assumed that, confronted with catastrophe, European leaders will overcome their differences and solve Europe's problems by printing up a few trillion euros to paper over the cracks, US style, and keep the show on the road for a year or two longer, but it is now becoming increasingly apparent that the scale of the problems is so gargantuan that there may be no credible or workable solution. The sad fact of the matter is that the bungling, discordant self-serving buffoons who run Europe may well have left it too late. If Europe should fail - and the markets look set to pass judgement on it next week, after a weekend of crucial meetings, then the consequences will be unthinkable, yet think about them we must.
If Europe should fail this is what we can expect to happen - European banks will crash and burn and take down major US banks, which are already walking wounded basket cases anyway. We are likely to see a lengthy unscheduled "bank holiday" - banks will slam their doors and if your money is still inside their vaults then you are out of luck. Major disruptions in supply and distribution of food and fuel in particular will trigger general panic, and riots and mob violence will spread rapidly - what we have seen on TV happening in Greece will suddenly happen on the streets of the US and many other countries. Stockmarkets will crash in a manner that will make 2008 seem like a "walk in the park". Virtually every asset class and investment will crater - especially commodities, stocks and Real Estate. The euro will be vaporized. The tidal wave of funds liberated by this mass panic are going to have to go somewhere and normally we would expect them to go into the US dollar and Treasuries, but with US banks failing even this cannot be relied upon. The one surefire investment category that will shine - provided that is that the markets or brokerage houses etc involved with these transactions don't themselves fail - is "misfortune securities", meaning bear ETFs and Puts.
The gravity of this crisis is such that we are not simply talking about protecting investments and making opportunistic gains out of the mayhem that will ensue, if Europe should fail, we are talking survival issues as well, as due to the interconnected nature of the global economy things could become very ugly, very fast across a broad front. If you want to learn what life is like when banks suddenly slam their doors, then you should read up on the Argentinian crisis of the early ninties. The middle class suddenly found themselves disconnected from their savings, and as many of them lost their jobs at about the same time, they became instantly destitute, and forced to swap their possessions for food. Crime soared and people who had been used to living relatively cushy lives suddenly found themselves living on the edge in a law-of-the jungle nightmare. If Europe should fail this is what may quickly become reality not just in Europe but in the acutely fragile and vulnerable US and many other other countries as well. Other undesirable consequences will be unemployment rising to incredible unprecedented levels, so that students leaving college will have almost ZERO chance of finding work. The travel industry, much of which is non-essential, will be devastated with airlines slashing flights and going bust and hotels suffering extremely low occupancy rates.
With things rapidly coming to a head in Europe, this catastrophic chain of events could be set in motion as early as next week. So stop and think about this for a moment - What will you do, and what situation will you find yourself in, if banks slam their doors within the next couple of weeks? - are you starting to see what I am driving at? Good, then here is what you do. You go down to the bank either today (Thursday) or tomorrow - we have the luxury of another day - and draw out a stash of cash - sufficient to keep you and your family in food and essentials for at least a month and preferably more like 3 months. When you stroll into the bank it will feel surreal, everything will appear normal and people will be standing in short lines and chatting and smiling etc, and you may find yourself thinking "That Maund's lost it - he's completely off his rocker", but if the danger I have described should become reality then you are going to be mighty glad you visited the bank this week, instead of turning up in a couple of weeks to find the doors shut and a huge crowd of desperate people outside hurling rocks at the windows. If this danger does not become reality, and there is a miracle solution to Europe's problems and everything returns to "normal", then you have lost nothing and you can stroll down to the bank again and pay the funds back into your account in a few weeks time, once you are convinced it is safe to do so. No-one will think you are crazy because of course you don't have to tell anyone why you are drawing out the money.
What would be the effect on the Precious Metals sector, if Europe should fail? - sadly it will crater along with the rest of the market and we saw early evidence of that with the "shot across the bows" yesterday when the sector fell heavily on a broad market retreat. Now, we don't know for sure that Europe will fail, but the situation is very precarious and it looks like a 50:50 chance at this point that this dire scenario will prevail, or at least a 30:70 chance that it will. The danger is sufficiently great that we need to be aware of it ahead of time, so that we don't get caught out and go into blind panic along with the mob. What you do about this will depend on your own personal situation and investment orientation. There are various ways to handle it - you can pull in close stops on PM investments, which is recommended, hedge with bear ETFs and/or options, and the more aggressive and opportunistic amongst you can set yourselves up to make a fortune in options if the markets crater, accepting fully the risk of losing your stake if the crisis is averted or at least postponed significantly.
Let's hope Europe doesn't fail - but be ready if it does.
20th October 11.
Footnote posted a day later on 21st - there isn't much that suprises me these days, but I have received some news from a subscriber, Bob, in the US, that has left me dumbfounded, and disappointed I must say as I was looking forward to being responsible for causing a run on the banks. Here is what he told me -
"Clive, in your post "If Europe Should Fail" you have recommended your subscribers "draw out a stash of cash". I have been attempting to do this with my local bank for over a week and this is what I have learned. The only "cash" the banks have at their facilities is the bare minimum for making change, cashing paychecks, etc. More than 99% of their so called cash "assets" is electronic money and not "cash" money. They are generally happy to transfer this electronic money elsewhere but if you want the real thing, "cash", the bank will, in most cases, either deny your request or put you off for, in some instances, more than a week. Many of my contacts across the US are reporting having the same problems I am having getting any significant amount of cash out of their local banks."
The meaning of this is clear - Take what you can while you can.
***
MailOnline
The Braz-alien rainforest: Is this creature pictured in the Amazon jungle a visitor from outer-space?
By Simon Tomlinson
21st October 2011
As biologically diverse as the Amazon is, this peculiar creature would not appear to be a natural inhabitant of the Brazilian jungle or, indeed, Earth for that matter.
Standing just a few feet from a mesmerising flashing light, this unidentified being could offer proof that we are not alone in the universe.
The image comes from a video obtained by noted paranormal writer Michael Cohen and is claimed to have been filmed by two British tourists visiting the Mamaus region of the Amazon.
Proof? A still from a video apparently taken by British tourists in Mamaus region of the Amazon showing an alien-like creature standing in the jungle
Alien environment: Children pose for the camera while, behind them, a bright light flashes (circled right) and what looks like a small being stands to the right of a tree (circled left)
While the camera is focused on some young children, seen in the distance behind them is a silvery light.
However, it is only when the eyes are diverted to the surrounding jungle does it become apparent that there is a small being standing side-on just to the right of a tree, appearing to arch its back.
It is the 'unmistakable' form of an 'alien'. No explanation is offered as to what the light may be.
While for many the images can simply be dismissed as a well-executed hoax, Mr Cohen, who runs the noted paranormal website allnewsweb.com, suggests the photos go some way to proving the existence of aliens.
He said: 'This is highly compelling footage that will be hard to discredit.
Just leaving his craft? The lone figure appears to arch its back, perhaps stretching, as the light flashes nearby
Unexplained activity: The bright light is undoubtedly linked to the extraterrestrial, but what could it be? The area has been known for an intense UFO presence
'It comes from an area known for experiencing intense UFO activity. It is rather apparent that aliens are interested in this region due to its biological diversity.
'The area was also the focus of a high-level Brazilian government investigation known as Operation Prato, where the army was sent in to monitor and confirm an alien presence in the region.'
He said the Brazilian government denied there was an Operation Prato for years before conceding it did occur and released large amounts of files associated with it.
Having obtained the footage, Mr Cohen, who is well known within UFO and paranormal circles, was inundated with requests from Hollywood producers keen to use his proof.
'This footage will be used in direct collaboration with an American film and will serve to highlight this as proof of this footage's veracity,' he said.
("For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." Ephesians 6:12)
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CNN
Girls given equal rights to British throne under law changes - CNN.com
By the CNN Wire Staff
2011-10-28
The changes would apply to any future children of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, pictured here at their wedding in April.
London (CNN) -- Sons and daughters of British monarchs will have an equal right to the throne under changes to the United Kingdom's succession laws agreed to Friday, British Prime Minister David Cameron said.
The leaders of the 16 Commonwealth countries which have the queen as head of state approved the changes unanimously at a Commonwealth of Nations summit in Australia, he said. The individual governments of those 16 countries must still agree the law changes for them to take effect.
The constitutional changes would mean a first-born girl has precedence over a younger brother. They also mean that a future British monarch would be allowed to marry a Catholic.
The laws would apply to any future children of Prince William and Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, who married this year.
Speaking alongside his Australian counterpart Julia Gillard in Perth, Cameron described Friday's agreement by the heads of government of the 16 nations as "something of a historic moment."
Attitudes have changed fundamentally over the centuries, he said in a televised address, and outdated rules should evolve with them.
"The idea that a younger son should become monarch instead of an elder daughter simply because he is a man, or that a future monarch can marry someone of any faith except a Catholic -- this way of thinking is at odds with the modern countries that we have become," he said.
"Put simply, if the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were to have a little girl, that girl would one day be our queen. "
Cardinal Keith O'Brien, leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, said he welcomed the plans to reform the Act of Settlement.
"I am pleased to note that the process of change, which I hope will lead to repeal of the Act has started and I look forward to studying the detail of the proposed reforms and their implications in due course," he said in a statement.
Queen Elizabeth is in Australia for the three-day Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
The Commonwealth is an association of 54 nations with ties to the United Kingdom. Only 16 share the queen as head of state.
CNN's James Partington contributed to this report.
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"They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.
He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him."
(Psalms 126:5-6)