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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 11/21/2016 11:23:17 PM
	We Are Being Set Up For Higher Interest Rates, A Major Recession And A Giant Stock Market Crash NOVEMBER 21, 2016 By Michael Snyder Since Donald Trump’s victory on election night we have seen the worst bond crash in 15 years. Global bond investors have seen trillions of dollars of wealth wiped out since November 8th, and analysts are warning of another tough week ahead. The general consensus in the investing community is that a Trump administration will mean much higher inflation, and as a result investors are already starting to demand higher interest rates. Unfortunately for all of us, history has shown that higher interest rates always cause an economic slowdown. And this makes perfect sense, because economic activity naturally slows down when it becomes more expensive to borrow money. The Obama administration had already set up the next president for a major recessionanyway, but now this bond crash threatens to bring it on sooner rather than later. For those that are not familiar with the bond market, when yields go up bond prices go down. And when bond prices go down, that is bad news for economic growth. So we generally don’t want yields to go up. Unfortunately, yields have been absolutely soaring over the past couple of weeks, and the yield on 10-year Treasury notes has now jumped “one full percentage point since July”… The 10-year Treasury yield jumped to 2.36% in late trading on Friday, the highest since December 2015, up 66 basis point since the election, and up one full percentage point since July! The 10-year yield is at a critical juncture. In terms of reality, the first thing that might happen is a rate increase by the Fed in December, after a year of flip-flopping. A slew of post-election pronouncements by Fed heads – including Yellen’s “relatively soon” – have pushed the odds of a rate hike to 98%. As I noted the other day, so many things in our financial system are tied to yields on U.S. Treasury notes. Just look at what is happening to mortgages. As Wolf Richter has noted, the average rate on 30-year mortgages is shooting into the stratosphere… The carnage in bonds has consequences. The average interest rate of the a conforming 30-year fixed mortgage as of Friday was quoted at 4.125% for top credit scores. That’s up about 0.5 percentage point from just before the election, according to Mortgage News Daily. It put the month “on a short list of 4 worst months in more than a decade.” If mortgage rates continue to shoot higher, there will be another housing crash. Rates on auto loans, credit cards and student loans will also be affected. Throughout our economic system it will become much more costly to borrow money, and that will inevitably slow down the overall economy. Why bond investors are so on edge these days is because of statements such as this one from Steve Bannon… In a nascent administration that seems, at best, random in its beliefs, Bannon can seem to be not just a focused voice, but almost a messianic one: “Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement,” he says. “It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.” Steve Bannon is going to be one of the most influential voices in the new Trump administration, and he is absolutely determined to get this “trillion dollar infrastructure plan” through Congress. And that is going to mean a lot more borrowing and a lot more spending for a government that is already on pace to add 2.4 trillion dollars to the national debt this fiscal year. Sadly, all of this comes at a time when the U.S. economy is already starting to show significant signs of slowing down. It is being projected that we will see a sixth straight decline in year-over-year earnings for the S&P 500, and industrial production has now contracted for 14 months in a row. The truth is that the economy has been barely treading water for quite some time now, and it isn’t going to take much to push us over the edge. The following comes from Lance Roberts… With an economy running at below 2%, consumers already heavily indebted, wage growth weak for the bulk of American’s, there is not a lot of wiggle room for policy mistakes. Combine weak economics with higher interest rates, which negatively impacts consumption, and a stronger dollar, which weighs on exports, and you have a real potential of a recession occurring sooner rather than later. Yes, the stock market soared immediately following Trump’s election, but it wasn’t because economic conditions actually improved. If you look at history, a stock market crash almost always follows a major bond crash. So if bond prices keep declining rapidly that is going to be a very ominous sign for stock traders. And history has also shown us that no bull market can survive a major recession. If the economy suffers a major downturn early in the Trump administration, it is inevitable that stock prices will follow. The waning days of the Obama administration have set us up perfectly for higher interest rates, a major recession and a giant stock market crash. Of course any problems that occur after January 20th, 2017 will be blamed on Trump, but the truth is that Obama will be far more responsible for what happens than Trump will be. Right now so many people have been lulled into a sense of complacency because Donald Trump won the election. That is an enormous mistake. A shaking has already begun in the financial world, and this shaking could easily become an avalanche. Now is not a time to party. Rather, it is time to batten down the hatches and to prepare for very rough seas ahead. All of the things that so many experts warned were coming may have been delayed slightly, but without a doubt they are still on the way. So get prepared while you still can, because time is running out. Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here. (activistpost.com)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 11/21/2016 11:47:18 PM
	Zuckerberg Just Revealed Facebook’s 7-Point Plan To Censor “Fake News” And It’s Chilling NOVEMBER 21, 2016 By Claire Bernish Until corporate media and the neoliberal establishment refused to acknowledge their direct role in the election of Donald Trump and threw a temper-tantrum about misinformation on social media to scapegoat blame, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg balked at the notion faulty reports circulating on social media had anything at all to do with the November 8th shocker. “Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99 percent of what people see is authentic. Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post to his platform last Saturday. “The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics. Overall, this makes it extremely unlikely hoaxes changed the outcome of this election in one direction or the other.” Now, rather than stand by that original assertion, Zuckerberg instead cast all logic aside and unleashed a Machiavellian seven-point plan to eradicate the “very small amount” of false information — read: all opinion not in lockstep with the establishment narrative — from the newsfeeds of Facebook’s billion-plus users. Because, apparently, we can’t be trusted to think for ourselves. “The bottom line is: we take misinformation seriously,” Zuckerberg wrote late Friday evening, apparently forgetting what he posted exactly one week ago. “Our goal is to connect people with the stories they find most meaningful, and we know people want accurate information. We’ve been working on this problem for a long time and we take this responsibility seriously. We’ve made significant progress, but there is more work to be done.” Curiously, the head of the Facebook Ministry of Truth neglected to explain how the 65 corporate presstitutes and myriad mendacious mainstream outlets exposed in WikiLeaks’ Podesta Files for colluding with the Clintonite establishment were awarded a free pass to spread propagandic disinformation — and, frequently, flagrant lies. Worse, what Zuckerberg wrote next should send chills down the spines of anyone who has ever been forced to deal with fallout from the social media platform’s already-rampant and oft-inexplicable censorship via erroneous and revenge reporting on posts, arbitrary unpublishing of pages, ghosting, and newsfeed suppression — as well as those who look to Facebook for alternatives to vapid mainstream media: Historically, we have relied on our community to help us understand what is fake and what is not. Anyone on Facebook can report any link as false, and we use signals from those reports along with a number of others — like people sharing links to myth-busting sites such as Snopes — to understand which stories we can confidently classify as misinformation. Similar to clickbait, spam and scams, we penalize this content in News Feed so it’s much less likely to spread. Snopes? Really? The same Snopes that took it upon itself to “debunk” an inside joke in meme form that happened to go viral? In just those three sentences, Zuckerberg does more to expose the innate perils of censorship than any scholarly tome on the subject ever could — personal opinion always operates the censor’s heavy hand. It’s inescapable fact that what one individual deems devoid of value, another may find sacrilegiously offensive — while another may laugh off as innocuous. Dismissing that scripture — or, perhaps, forgetting it formed the foundation for First Amendment protections of free speech, press, and expression — Zuckerberg laid out his plan to combat the ‘relatively small percentage of misinformation,’ encompassing the following points: Stronger detection. The most important thing we can do is improve our ability to classify misinformation. This means better technical systems to detect what people will flag as false before they do it themselves. Easy reporting. Making it much easier for people to report stories as fake will help us catch more misinformation faster. Third party verification. There are many respected fact checking organizations and, while we have reached out to some, we plan to learn from many more. Warnings. We are exploring labeling stories that have been flagged as false by third parties or our community, and showing warnings when people read or share them. Related articles quality. We are raising the bar for stories that appear in related articles under links in News Feed. Disrupting fake news economics. A lot of misinformation is driven by financially motivated spam. We’re looking into disrupting the economics with ads policies like the one we announced earlier this week, and better ad farm detection. Listening. We will continue to work with journalists and others in the news industry to get their input, in particular, to better understand their fact checking systems and learn from them. In other words, apart from spam detection, which other websites and platforms have effectively combated for years, Facebook’s plan to ‘detect’ misinformation will be based on what any idiot says. Although the people of this planet generally operate from a place of honesty and integrity, let’s face it, humans have nasty penchants for retribution, revenge, sanctimonious arrogance, self-righteousness, misjudgment, mischaracterization, hyperbole, and — most imperatively — making mistakes. Relying on people’s personal assessments of possibly-false news items as the primary driver of what deserves to be branded with a Scarlet Letter “F” is a system destined to fail everyone before it even begins. Facebook still does not provide the means to rebut post and link removals or the sudden unpublishing of pages — the platform has, in essence, a shoot first, ask questions later attitude when it receives a report something violated its Community Standards. This has already imperiled owners of perfectly legitimate pages with millions of fans to the arduous process of challenging unjustified reports and coping in the meantime with devastating loss of revenue. Nowhere in Friday’s announcement does Zuckerberg address those concerns — which will exponentially increase if and when the plan begins. With little to no recourse to defend against what will undoubtedly be an explosion of posts erroneously flagged as ‘false information,’ Facebook is brazenly handing over the censor’s black marker to a populace already too lackadaisical to bother investigating questionable news items. Therein lies the greatest threat to a free press and free speech this country has seen since Red Scare McCarthyism — Facebook, backed by a polarized public, will be the arbiter of acceptable thought — and those who dare question or criticize that thought will pay with their livelihoods. Far worse, everyone will pay the price of lost access to information. We’re already starting to. Responses to Zuckerberg’s announcement post seemed largely ambivalent, and many took the opportunity to question the validity of the authoritarian plan. “Please just be a neutral platform that display original voice from people as long as the content are not illegal. Do not try to treat your users are idiots and need somebody to tell them what is right what’s wrong. Fake or non-fake, people will figure it out. It’s dangerous such decision or filtering will be done by your company or any other power. This will be called censorship if it happens in China or Russia,” user Chen Li implored. Others chided the head of Facebook for the disingenuous failure to apply the same standards to the mendacious corporate media. “Mark, will you also fight government sponsored propaganda of the United States?” asked user Jiri Klouda. “What about articles where unnamed government officials intentionally share false information with journalists, often with grave consequences. Like for example in the lead up to the Iraq war, or many other wars. We’d like to know that if you are going to fight against disinformation that it will be applied evenly and not just in one sided way as the mass market US media companies do.” Some noted how the platform’s censorship and arbitrary suppression already irreparably harms honest businesspeople. “You advertised Facebook as a great place for businesses to have pages, small businesses did well, like mine did. My 783k page that took years to build was unpublished, thousands of people have had their pages removed without reason, businesses are suffering, you are taking food off the table, heat from people’s homes and kids presents away from under the tree. The Sad thing is you don’t seem to care; you won’t listen to us. I hope you have a great Christmas Mark Zuckerberg because lots of people won’t be able to because of you,” wrote Laura Holmes. Facebook’s plan might, indeed, rid the platform of misinformation — but, to be sure, it will also rid the platform of dissenting voices, the debate of controversial topics, editorial opinions provoking new thought, and alternative news outlets whose integrity proved the corporate media worthless. This plan will, in short, rid Facebook of the truth — that beautiful diversity of thought we once celebrated, rather than snuffed. Claire Bernish writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared. Image Credit: Anthony Freda Art (activistpost.com)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 11/22/2016 11:01:01 AM
	Tue Nov 22, 2016 \| 5:16am EST Tsunami hits Japan after strong quake near Fukushima disaster site Quake rocks Japan nuclear plant By Yuka Obayashi and Elaine Lies \| TOKYO A powerful earthquake rocked northern Japan early on Tuesday, briefly disrupting cooling functions at a nuclear plant and generating a small tsunami that hit the same Fukushima region devastated by a 2011 quake, tsunami and nuclear disaster. The magnitude 7.4 earthquake, which was felt in Tokyo, sent thousands of residents fleeing for higher ground as dawn broke along the northeastern coast. There were no reports of deaths or serious injuries hours after the quake hit at 5:59 a.m. (2059 GMT Monday). It was centered off the coast of Fukushima prefecture at a depth of about 10 kilometers (6 miles), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. A wave of up to 1.4 meters (4.5 ft) high was recorded at Sendai, about 70 km (45 miles) north of Fukushima, with smaller waves hitting ports elsewhere along the coast, public broadcaster NHK said. Television footage showed ships moving out to sea from harbors as tsunami warnings wailed after alerts of waves of up to 3 meters (10 feet) were issued. "We saw high waves but nothing that went over the tidal barriers," a man in the city of Iwaki told NTV television network. Aerial footage showed tsunami waves flowing up rivers in some areas, and some fishing boats were overturned in the port of Higashi-Matsushima before the JMA lifted its warnings. The U.S. Geological Survey measured Tuesday's quake at magnitude 6.9, down from an initial 7.3. All Japan's nuclear power plants in the area have been shut down in the wake of the March 2011 disaster, which knocked out cooling systems at Tokyo Electric Power Co's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, causing reactors to melt down and spew radiation into the air, soil and sea. A tidal surge is seen in Sunaoshi River after tsunami advisories were issued following an earthquake in Tagajo, Miyagi prefecture, Japan November 22, 2016, in this video grab image released by Miyagi Prefectural Police via Kyodo. Mandatory credit Miyagi Prefectural Police/Kyodo/via REUTERS The cooling system for a storage pool for spent nuclear fuel at the reactor at its Fukushima Daini Plant was initially halted on Tuesday, said a spokeswoman for Tokyo Electric Power, known as Tepco, but was restarted soon after. Only two reactors are operating in Japan, both in the southwest. Nuclear plants need cooling systems operating even when in shutdown to keep spent fuel cool. Tohoku Electric Power Co said there was no damage to its Onagawa nuclear plant, while the Kyodo news agency reported there were no irregularities at the Tokai Daini nuclear plant in Ibaraki prefecture. COAST EVACUATED Japanese Minister for Disaster Management Jun Matsumoto told reporters there had been no reports of significant injuries. One woman suffered cuts to her head from falling dishes, Kyodo reported, citing fire department officials. Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world's most seismically active areas. Japan accounts for about 20 percent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater. The March 11, 2011, quake was magnitude 9, the strongest quake ever recorded in Japan. The massive tsunami it generated knocked out the Fukushima Daiichi plant, causing the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl a quarter of a century earlier. Systems have been updated since the 2011 disaster to spread warnings more quickly, said Tsunetaka Omine, head of the Disaster Management Division in Iwaki, a city in Fukushima prefecture. Previously, there were complicated directions on where to evacuate. "But now, we basically just tell people to head away from the sea, to the highest possible ground," Omine said. Authorities now also send tsunami warnings to every mobile phone in the area and broadcast on local radio. Staying in a traditional Japanese inn on the coast in the city of Ofunato with a dozen international high school students on a study tour, teacher Kathy Krauth said the shaking began just seconds after a quake alarm on her phone went off. “I felt like the lessons of 3-11 were really taken to heart," said Krauth, who teaches a class on the March 2011 disaster and its aftermath. “The feeling was, we just don’t know, but we’re going to be as cautious as we can.” Nissan Motor Co said it would suspend work at its engine factory in Fukushima at least until the latest tsunami warning was lifted. A spokesman said there were no injuries or damage at the plant, which was badly damaged in the 2011 disaster. Toyota Motor Corp said all its factories in northeastern Japan were operating as usual. Japan's famous Shinkansen bullet trains were halted along one stretch of track and some other train lines were also stopped. Japanese financial markets were little affected, with the Nikkei 225 index closing up 0.3 percent and the yen steady against the U.S. dollar. (Additional reporting by Chris Gallagher, Jon Herskovitz, Osamu Tsukimori, Aaron Sheldrick and William Mallard; Writing by Lincoln Feast; Editing Paul Tait) (REUTERS)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel

1162

61587

Lima

RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?

11/22/2016 2:09:10 PM

HAMAS CHIEF KHALED MESHAAL: ISRAEL IS ‘PLAYING WITH FIRE’ BY SILENCING MOSQUES

BY JACK MOORE ON 11/21/16 AT 11:40 AM

The leader-in-exile of Palestinian militant group Hamas has warned Israel that it is “playing with fire” over a draft bill that would silence mosque loudspeakers from uttering the traditional call to prayer.

Khaled Mashaal lives in Qatar, running Hamas’s political bureau outside of the Gaza Strip, the coastal enclave it has controlled since 2007.

“What the Israeli occupation state is doing at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, as well as preventing the call to prayer in Jerusalem, is playing with fire,” Meshaal told Turkey’s Anadolu Agency in a statement Sunday, referring to the compound that houses a contested Jerusalem holy site. “This created a fierce reaction in the Palestinian community and the whole of the Islamic nation.”

Last week, Israeli ministers, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,approved a draft bill to limit the volume on religious places of worship in the country, including mosques that serve Arabs, a large section of the country’s population. The call to prayer from mosques is traditionally announced five times a day through loudspeakers, including once in the morning before dawn.

A Palestinian protester burns an Israeli flag during a rally gathering Muslims, Christians and Samaritans to protest against an Israeli draft bill that would limit the volume of calls to prayer at mosques in Israel and Jerusalem, Nablus, November 20.JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP/GETTY

Right-wing sections of Israeli society complain about the noise bellowing into the everyday lives of Jewish communities and disrupting their sleep, but Palestinian Muslims view the bill as an attack on their culture and way of life.

The text of the proposed ban, which still needs to go through three rounds of voting by the Israeli parliament before becoming law, says that hundreds of thousands of Israelis “suffer habitually and daily from loud and unreasonable noise that is caused by the call of muezzin from mosques.”

The Israeli media has reported that Netanyahu’s 25-year-old son, Yair, is behind the push to pass the legislation. The Israeli leader has reportedly said in government meetings that, as a resident of the Israeli town of Caesarea, he cannot stand the call to prayer noise from the neighboring Arab town of Jisr al-Zarqa.

Meshaal’s threat alludes to a reaction from Palestinians if Israel proceeds with the bill. In April, the group’s leader in the Gaza Strip, Ismail Haniyeh, told a rally in the coastal enclave that the Jerusalem bus bombing, which wounded 21 people in the same month, had demonstrated the group’s commitment to a new Palestinian uprising, or Intifada. Palestinian teenager Abdel Hamid Abu Srour carried out the attack and Hamas claimed him as one of their own. Hamas has fought three wars against Israel since 2008.

The Palestinians have launched two uprisings against Israel’s military occupation in the past three decades, one from 1987 to 1991 and the second from 2000 to 2005. In what some media outlets termed the “stabbing Intifada,” Palestinians have in the last year carried out a series of knife, car-ramming and shooting attacks against Israelis in Jerusalem, other Israeli cities and the West Bank.

The attacks have left 35 Israelis and two American tourists dead. In the same period, since the beginning of October 2015, Israeli soldiers, police and armed civilians have killed at least 226 Palestinians, 154 that Israel said were attackers.

The Palestinian leadership argues that the attacks have been inspired by anger at a moribund peace process with Israel, continued settlement building in the West Bank and alleged violations of the status quo at the Jerusalem holy site that Muslims refer to as the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary.

It is the third-holiest site in Islam, behind Medina and Mecca, and the holiest in Judaism. Jews refer to the site as the Temple Mount, but are forbidden from praying there by a Palestinian-Jordanian Islamic waqf, or trust, that oversees the site.

(Newsweek)

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

Luis Miguel

1162

61587

Lima

RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?

11/22/2016 2:56:43 PM

21 HOURS AGO

Russia: New missiles in Kaliningrad answer US 'shield'

Russian exclave to receive new S-400 and nuclear-capable Iskander missile systems in response to NATO's defence system.

Russia plans to install S-400 surface-to-air missiles and nuclear-capable Iskander systems in the exclave of Kaliningrad, in retaliation for the NATO deployment of its so-called "defence shield" in Eastern Europe.

The RIA news agency reported on Monday that Viktor Ozerov, chairman of the defence committee in the Federation Council, Russia's upper house of parliament, said in remarks reported by RIA news agency on Monday that Moscow was forced to react to the planned US missile shield erected so close to the country.

Kaliningrad is located between Poland and Lithuania.

Also on Monday, President Vladimir Putin also raised the issue of how Russia should respond to what it perceives as the threat from US-led forces in Eastern Europe.

"Why are we reacting to NATO expansion so emotionally? We are concerned by NATO's decision-making?" RIA quoted him as saying in an interview for a documentary to broadcast on Russian TV later on Monday.

"What should we do? We have, therefore, to take countermeasures, which means to target with our missile systems the facilities, that, in our opinion, start posing a threat to us," Putin said.

The Kremlin says the shield's aim is to neutralise Moscow's nuclear arsenal long enough for the United States to strike Russia in the event of war. Washington and NATO deny that.

Pavel Felgenhauer, a defence analyst of Novaya Gazeta newspaper, told Al Jazeera from Moscow that the decision on the deployment of the missiles was made years ago, and announcing it now could be aimed at creating "a bit of mischief".

"This deployment of ballistic missiles with longer range, and anti-aircraft missiles with a longer range too, was pre-planned years before, but announcing it now is maybe trying to create a bit more tension ... inside NATO," he said.

He also said the prospect of a good relationship with the incoming administration in Washington was not as welcome in Moscow as it might be believed.

"There is a seriously very powerful party here in Moscow that doesn't want agreement with [US President-elect Donald] Trump. They want some level of continued confrontation with the United States, to preserve the procurement and defence budget that is, at present, on high levels."

Russia has previously said it periodically sends Iskanders to Kaliningrad, but until now, it has said these were routine drills. Moscow has not linked the moves explicitly with what it calls a NATO military build-up on its western borders.

The US launched a new ground-based missile defence system in Romania in May and an additional anti-missile platform is being built in Poland.

Russia says the missile system breaches a 1987 deal with the US and threatens peace in Europe.

(al-jazeera)

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Tsunami hits Japan after strong quake near Fukushima disaster site

HAMAS CHIEF KHALED MESHAAL: ISRAEL IS ‘PLAYING WITH FIRE’ BY SILENCING MOSQUES

21 HOURS AGO

Russia: New missiles in Kaliningrad answer US 'shield'

Russian exclave to receive new S-400 and nuclear-capable Iskander missile systems in response to NATO's defence system.