Ayatollah: Kill All Jews, Annihilate Israel

The Iranian government, through a website proxy, has laid out the legal and religious justification for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of its people.Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a “‘jurisprudential justification” to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”

The doctrine includes wiping out Israeli assets and Jewish people worldwide.
The article, written by Alireza Forghani, an analyst and a strategy specialist in Khamenei’s camp, now is being run on most state-owned sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’ Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine.

Because Israel is going to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran is justified in launching a pre-emptive, cataclysmic attack against the Jewish state, the doctrine argues.

On Friday, in a major speech at prayers, Khamenei announced that Iran will support any nation or group that attacks the “cancerous tumor” of Israel. Though his statement was seen by some in the West as fluff, there is substance behind it.

Iran’s Defense Ministry announced this weekend that it test-fired an advanced two-stage, solid-fuel ballistic missile and boasted about successfully putting a new satellite into orbit, reminding the West that its engineers have mastered the technology for intercontinental ballistic missiles even as the Islamic state pushes its nuclear weapons program.

The commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Seyyed Mehdi Farahi, stated in August that the Safir missile, which is capable of transporting a satellite into space, can easily be launched parallel to the earth’s orbit, which will transform it into an intercontinental ballistic missile. Western analysts didn’t believe this would happen until 2015. Historically, orbiting a satellite is the criterion for crediting a nation with ICBM capability.

Forghani details the Islamic duty of jihad as laid out in the Quran for the sake of Allah and states that “primary jihad,” according to some Shiite jurists, can only occur when the Hidden Imam, the Shiites’ 12th Imam Mahdi, returns. Shiites believe Mahdi’’s return will usher in Armageddon.

In the absence of the hidden Imam, Forghani says, “defensive jihad” could certainly take place when Islam is threatened, and Muslims must defend Islam and kill their enemies. To justify such action, Alef quotes the Shiites’ first imam, Ali, who stated “Waging war against the enemies with whom war is inevitable and there is a strong possibility that in near future they will attack Muslims is a must and the duty of Muslims.” In this regard, Ayatollah Khamenei has issued a fatwa in which he has even authorized carrying out primary jihad in the age of the absence of the Hidden imam under the authorization of Vali Faghih.

The article then quotes the Quran (Albaghara 2:191-193): “And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution [of Muslims] is worse than slaughter [of non-believers] … and fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah.”

It is the duty for all Muslims to participate in this defensive jihad, Forghani says. A fatwa by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini made it clear that any political domination by infidels over Muslims authorizes Muslims to defend Islam by all means. Iran now has the ICBM means to deliver destruction on Israel and soon will have nuclear warheads for those missiles.

In order to attack Iran, the article says, Israel needs the approval and assistance of America, and under the current passive climate in the United States, the opportunity must not be lost to wipe out Israel before it attacks Iran.

Under this pre-emptive defensive doctrine, several Ground Zero points of Israel must be destroyed and its people annihilated. Forghani cites the last census by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics that shows Israel has a population of 7.5 million citizens of which a majority of 5.7 million are Jewish. Then it breaks down the districts with the highest concentration of Jewish people, indicating that three cities, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa, contain over 60 percent of the Jewish population that Iran could target with its Shahab 3 ballistic missiles, killing all its inhabitants.

Forghani suggests that Iran’s Sejil missile, which is a two-stage rocket with a trajectory and speed that make it impossible to intercept, should target such Israeli facilities as: the Rafael nuclear plant, which is the main nuclear engineering center of Israel; the Eilun nuclear plant; another Israeli reactor in Nebrin; and the Dimona reactor in the nuclear research center in Neqeb, the most critical nuclear reactor in Israel because it produces 90 percent enriched uranium for Israel’s nuclear weapons.

Other targets, according to the article, include airports and air force bases such as the Sedot Mikha Air Base, which contains Jericho ballistic missiles and is located southwest of the Tel Nof Air Base, where aircraft equipped with nuclear weapons are based. Secondary targets include power plants, sewage treatment facilities, energy resources, and transportation and communication infrastructures.

Finally, Forghani says, Shahab 3 and Ghadr missiles can target urban settlements until the Israelis are wiped out.

Forghani claims that Israel could be destroyed in less than nine minutes and that Khamenei, as utmost authority, the Velayete Faghih (Islamic Jurist), also believes that Israel and America not only must be defeated but annihilated.

The radicals ruling Iran today not only posses over 1,000 ballistic missiles but are on the verge of ICBM delivery and have sufficient enriched uranium for six nuclear bombs even as they continue to highly enrich uranium despite four sets of U.N. sanctions.

WND previously reported when Iran was warning of a coming great event.

The Iranian secret documentary “The Coming Is Upon Us” clearly indicates that these radicals believe the destruction of Israel will trigger the coming of the last Islamic Messiah and that even Jesus Christ, who will convert to Islam, will act as Mahdi’s deputy, praying to Allah as he stands behind the 12th Imam.






WND

Magnitude 6.7 quake in Cebu Region, Philippines

At least 43 people killed, 40 missing and 100 injured, many buildings damaged or destroyed, at least 9 bridges damaged and some landslides occurred in Negros Oriental.

he broad-scale tectonics of the Philippine Islands are dominated by the west-northwest convergence of the Philippine Sea plate with respect to the Sunda plate. This motion, about 10 cm/year at the latitude of the earthquake of February 6, 2012, is accommodated by subduction along the east and west sides of the Philippines Archipelago and by motion of microplates and distributed deformation within the Archipelago. The February 6 earthquake occurred as thrust-faulting within the archipelago. Several earthquakes similar in size to the February 6 earthquake occurred within the archipelago in eastern Negros, Cebu, and Bohol in the twentieth century. In 1948 a magnitude 8.1 earthquake occurred about 150 km to the west of the February 6 earthquake in a zone of shallow seismicity that is associated with subduction along the Negros Trench on west side of the Philippines Archipelago.

160,000 in Moscow for mass rallies despite -20C freeze

Jobs revival myth!!!!

A tiny growth rate is an exaggeration in US economy

Last Friday (January 27) the US Bureau of Economic Analysis announced its advance estimate that in the last quarter of 2011 the economy grew at an annual rate of 2.8% in real inflation-adjusted terms, an increase from the annual rate of growth in the third quarter.

Good news, right?

Wrong. If you want to know what is really happening, you must turn to John Williams at shadowstats.com.

What the presstitute media did not tell us is that almost the entire gain In GDP growth was due to “involuntary inventory build-up,” that is, more goods were produced than were sold.

Net of the unsold goods, the annualized real growth rate was eight-tenths of one percent.

And even that tiny growth rate is an exaggeration, because it is deflated with a measure of inflation that understates inflation. The US government’s measure of inflation no longer measures a constant standard of living. Instead, the government’s inflation measure relies on substitution of cheaper goods for those that rise in price. In other words, the government holds the measure of inflation down by measuring a declining standard of living. This permits our rulers to divert cost-of-living-adjustments that should be paid to Social Security recipients to wars of aggression, police state, and banker bailouts.

When the methodology that measures a constant standard of living is used to deflate nominal GDP, the result is a shrinking US economy. It becomes clear that the US economy has had no recovery and has now been in deep recession for four years despite the proclamation by the National Bureau of Economic Research of a recovery based on the rigged official numbers.

A government can always produce the illusion of economic growth by underestimating the rate of inflation. There is no question that a substitution-based measure of inflation understates the inflation that people experience. More proof that there has been no economic recovery is available from those data series that are unaffected by inflation. If the economy were in fact recovering, these date series would be picking up. Instead, they are flat or declining, as John Williams demonstrates.

For example, according to the government’s own data, payroll employment in December 2011 is less than in 2001. Meanwhile, there has been a decade of population growth. The presstitute media calls the alleged economic recovery a “jobless recovery,” which is a contradiction in terms. There can be no recovery without a growth in employment and consumer income.

Real average weekly earnings (deflated by the government’s CPI-W) have never recovered their 1973 peak. Real median household income (deflated by the government’s CPI-U) has not recovered its 2001 peak and is below the 1969 level. If earnings were deflated by the original methodology instead of by the new substitution-based methodology, the picture would be bleaker.

Consumer confidence shows no recovery and is far below the level of a decade ago.

How does an economy recover without a recovery in consumer confidence?

Housing starts have remained flat since 2009 and are below their previous peak.

Retail sales are below the index level of January 2000.

Industrial production remains below the index level of January 2000.

To repeat, the only indicator of economic recovery is the GDP deflated with an understated measure of inflation.

The US economy cannot recover, because the US economy depends on consumer expenditures for more than 70% of its activity. The offshoring of middle class jobs has stopped the rise in middle class income and caused a drop in consumer spending power.

The Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan compensated for the absence of US consumer income growth with a policy of easy credit and a policy of driving up home prices with low interest rates. This policy allowed people to refinance their homes and to spend the inflated equity in their homes that Greenspan’s policy created.

In other words, an increase in consumer indebtedness and dissavings drove the economy in the place of the missing growth in consumer incomes.

Today, consumers are too indebted to borrow, and banks are too insolvent to lend. Therefore, there is no possibility of further debt expansion as a substitute for real income growth. An offshored economy is a dead and exhausted economy.

The consequences of a dead economy when the government is wasting trillions of dollars in wars of naked aggression and in bailouts of fraudulent financial institutions is a government budget that can only be financed by printing money.

The consequence of printing money when jobs have been moved offshore is an inflationary depression. This catastrophe could begin to unfold this year or in 2013. If Europe’s problems worsen, flight into dollars could delay sharp rises in US inflation until 2014.

The emperor has no clothes, and sooner or later this will be recognized.


Paul Graig Roberts

Optimal sovereign debt default seminar in Portugal

Treasury Bears And Extinction Events

Treasury Bears and Extinction Events

The real meaning of a treasury bear market may not be a flight out of treasuries into another asset class. Rather it real import could be the lack of liquidity available anywhere for nearly any asset class.

History seldom repeats precisely, but it does rhyme as they say.  And there are different types of bear markets:  bear steepening and bear flattening. Despite the complications, history and imagination are our only guides.

Bear Market in Treasuries

First for some rough context, monthly yield curves for the 1977-1982 Bear market are shown against the yields curves of January 1977 and December 1986 (in red).  What you see is a massive sell-off across the curve combined with flattening and inversion of the short end.

See the close up below for something more digestible.  There was serious volatility, mostly at the wings.  Yields on the 1Y exploded from 8.16% in June 1980 to 16.52% in September 1981.  Yields on the 30Y moved from 9.17% in August 1979 to 14.68% in September 1981. 

 

Takeaways

This section is premised on ample liquidity.  It is all I’ve ever known in Treasuries, but it may not be appropriate.  

• Roll-down wasn’t possible at the mid-curve, but it was possible to get roll-down on the front end.  It was a high-risk play, because the volatility was amazing and would rip your face off.  In just a couple of months, the whole curve could invert on you.
• You could make money shorting 20s30s, but I can’t imagine anybody doing that more than as a punt.  I don’t know if traders then bought or sold things like a 10s20s30s butterfly.
• A major point is that you really had to stick your neck out to make money in Treasuries.  The “old” adage now is nobody ever got fired for buying treasuries—although it isn’t quite true.  Seems that there was likely an even older adage about treasuries and how awful they were. 

Presumptions of Liquidity

Liquidity acts in a financial system like ample water, ambient temperature, and clean air act in an ecosystem.  It makes trading strategies proliferate.  Further, it makes meaningful intermediation possible, fostering the growth in high yield bonds and marketable loans.  Yes, derivatives like vanilla stock options and others too.

A financial system without liquidity is like a tropical ecosystem dried into a desert.  Without liquidity, it is an open question whether the arbitrage pricing revolution will outlast the antiquated mark-ups of reinsurers.  Liquidity makes random processes stationary, which is crucial to make the probabilistic foundations of risk neutral pricing work.  Is it intuitively possible to price (and even more buy and sell) credit and interest rate risk without some liquidity in the underlying?  How can a bank generate carry when the curve is flat and there is no appreciable differential anywhere that has a minimum tolerance of liquidity?

I put together an impressionistic schema to convey my point about liquidity.  It not only demonstrates instruments stop functioning, but even wholesale trading strategies have to be abandoned.  Traders will not only have a limited palette of instruments; for survival, they will also have to simplify trading strategies to those that are proven across extremely wide environments.  In financial markets, liquidity is what makes innovation possible.  Innovation adds complexity and diversity to an ecosystem, but it doesn’t make the system robust.  Even miniscule changes in environment cause life to revert back to sparsely populated rhythms.

Zero Hedge