Pope: When faith becomes an ideology, it can make Christians hostile and arrogant

Pope Francis called right-wing Christian fundamentalism a sickness.

During a daily Mass last week, Pope Francis called ideological Christianity “an illness” that doesn’t serve Jesus Christ. Instead, it “frightens” people and pushes them away from religion.

Nigel Farage on who decides who can come to Britain and claim benefits

Lindsey Williams on A Call To Decision

Brace for impact...
Lindsey Williams reveals the time line from here to January
Confiscation of pension funds, Dollar devaluation and Banks closure.

http://www.gcnlive.com/programs/callToDecision/archives.php

The End Game Memo with Greg Palast

Why I’m So Worried About Japan’s Ballooning Trade Deficit

Trade is one of the critical elements in Abenomics. Devaluing the yen would boost exports and cut imports. The resulting trade surplus would goose the economy. But the opposite is happening. It isn’t happening in small increments, with minor ups and downs, as it did in the US spread over decades, but rapidly and with a brutal relentlessness. It’s not energy imports that are driving it – they actually dropped! It’s because of a fundamental shift. And it doesn’t bode well for Japan’s economy, not at all, or for the new religion of Abenomics.

Exports rose 11.5% in September from prior year, according to the Ministry of Finance. It disappointed the wishful thinkers. Given that the yen lost about 20% of its value over those twelve months, export volume actually declined. But imports soared 16.5%, and the trade deficit hit ¥932.1 billion ($9.5 billion).

It was the worst September trade deficit ever. It continues a steep trend: August was the worst August ever, July the worst July ever, June the worst June ever, May the worst May ever. And so on! A trend that has been getting worser and worser, as they say. At a dizzying rate.

It was the 15th month in a row of trade deficits, the worst such sequence since anyone started counting, worse even than the 14-month series in 1979-1980. And there is nothing whatsoever on the horizon that signals a turnaround.

The September trade deficit was 66.7% higher than a year ago. By contrast, in September 2011, Japan had a trade surplus of ¥300 billion and in 2010 a surplus of ¥774 billion. Hefty trade surpluses in September had been the norm. For the 9 months, the deficit jumped 66% to ¥7.74 trillion from the same period last year. It more than sextupled from the same period in 2011. In 2010, Japan had a surplus of ¥4.9 trillion. An unrelenting, breath-taking deterioration.

The chart shows how the trade deficit in each month of 2013 deteriorated sharply from the equivalent month in 2012; and how those months had deteriorated from their equivalent months in 2011:

On the positive side for Japan is trade with the US as administrative barriers block US imports. The Japanese auto market, for example, remains hermetically sealed off to mass-market imports, and no Administration has been willing or able to crack it open. So the trade surplus with the US ballooned by 25% to ¥533 billion.

China and Japan might try to gouge out each other’s eyes, but they do trade. Nearly a quarter of Japan’s exports end up there, and nearly a quarter of its imports come from there. Neither country can let the political saber-rattling get in the way of trade. It would take down both economies.

Trade with China can be murky; a large portion of exports to China are transshipped through Hong Kong. So we look at China and Hong Kong as one. Exports to both combined rose 12.6% to ¥1.41 trillion, less than the yen devaluation, and actual volume declined. But combined imports soared 31% to ¥1.69 trillion, for a deficit of ¥287 billion. Japan used to be one of the few major countries that had trade surpluses with China. In the halcyon days before the financial crisis.

But don’t blame oil, natural gas (LNG), and coal for the soaring imports.

Imports of mineral fuels actually declined 1.0% in September. The only import category to decline! All other import categories jumped deep into the double digits. Among them: manufactured goods up 22.2%; machinery up 37.9%; electrical machinery up 46.6%, and within in it, semiconductors, up 59%.

Japan used to be a manufacturing powerhouse in the categories of “machinery” and “electrical machinery.” Semiconductors used to be one of the industries where Japanese companies were world leaders. But the entire industry is in the process of being phased out in Japan as companies have shifted production to overseas locations, and as foreign competitors have eaten their lunch.

The classic reasons for offshoring production of even sophisticated products – cheap labor and being closer to end customers – have played a role for many years. But the trend has gained momentum since the earthquake of March 2011, when companies were struggling with their supply chains, electricity shortages, transportation issues, and other hiccups. They could instantly reappear with the next major earthquake. One way around those problems was to diversify production to overseas locations. And it has spawned a relentless movement by Japanese companies to invest overseas, rather than in Japan.

Devaluing the yen doesn’t change that equation. It makes imports more expensive and the trade deficit worse. But it puts some cheap gloss on income statements as companies translate overseas revenues and earnings into the devalued yen. Yet they’re not repatriating the moolah, and the Japanese economy can’t benefit.

There is absolutely nothing on the horizon – not even a mirage – that indicates that this shift of money and production to entities in distant countries might ever slow down or even reverse. The real economy will bleed from these wounds, while monetary policy and gargantuan fiscal deficits are injecting addictive and ultimately toxic drugs into the system. Not a good combination.

As the Fukushima fiasco hobbled from cover-ups to partial revelations, mega-utility TEPCO always pretended the situation was under control. But days after Tokyo scored the 2020 Olympics, that pretense fell apart. Now Prime Minister Abe begged for international help. Read… After Snatching Olympics, Japan Suddenly Admits Fukushima Not “Under Control,” Begs For International Help

Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/why-im-so-worried-about-japans-ballooning-trade-deficit/#sFo4sEDV57epUi20.99

This Lack Of Syrian Aggression Will Not Stand, Saudi's Furious At US

That Saudi Arabia has been furious at the US for refusing to be the monarchy's puppet Globocop, and in the last minute declining to bomb Syria following Putin's gambit in which World War III seemed a distinctly possible consequence of John Kerry's hamheaded "YouTube-substantiated" false flag campaign, is no secret. However, while the US has largely forgotten this latest foreign policy debacle and the humiliation it brought upon the Department of State, Saudi Arabia is nowhere close to forgetting. Or forgiving. And this time the anger comes from the one man who truly matters, and whom we dubbed several months ago as the puppetmaster behind the Syrian campaign: the man in charge of Saudi intelligence, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan.

The WSJ reports overnight, that Prince Bandar told European diplomats this weekend that he plans to scale back cooperating with the U.S. to arm and train Syrian rebels in protest of Washington's policy in the region, participants in the meeting said. This demonstratively framed announcement follows Saudi Arabia's surprise decision on Friday to renounce a seat on the United Nations Security Council. "The Saudi government, after preparing and campaigning for the seat for a year, cited what it said was the council's ineffectiveness in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian and Syrian conflicts."

In short: Bin Sultan has decided to take the stage and make it quite clear that this lack of aggression by the US will not stand. The question is: what can or will he do?

Diplomats here said Prince Bandar, who is leading the kingdom's efforts to fund, train and arm rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, invited a Western diplomat to the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah over the weekend to voice Riyadh's frustration with the Obama administration and its regional policies, including the decision not to bomb Syria in response to its alleged use of chemical weapons in August.

"This was a message for the U.S., not the U.N.," Prince Bandar was quoted by diplomats as specifying of Saudi Arabia's decision to walk away from the Security Council membership.

U.S. officials said they interpreted Prince Bandar's message to the Western diplomat as an expression of discontent designed to push the U.S. in a different direction. "Obviously he wants us to do more," said a senior U.S. official.

Obviously. What is odd is that the "proxy" intelligence chief appears to have usurped foreign policy decision-making from the Saudi king himself.

Top decisions in Saudi Arabia come from the king, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud, and it isn't known if Prince Bandar's reported remarks reflected a decision by the monarch, or an effort by Prince Bandar to influence the king. However, the diplomats said, Prince Bandar told them he intends to roll back a partnership with the U.S. in which the Central Intelligence Agency and other nations' security bodies have covertly helped train Syrian rebels to fight Mr. Assad, Prince Bandar said, according to the diplomats. Saudi Arabia would work with other allies instead in that effort, including Jordan and France, the prince was quoted as saying.

If there was any confusion that the entire Syrian campaign was purely at the behest of the Qataris and the Saudis as we first suggested in May, it can finally be put to bed.

The monarchy was particularly angered by Mr. Obama's decision to scrap plans to bomb Syria in response to the alleged chemical-weapons attack in August and, more recently, tentative overtures between Mr. Obama and Iran's new president.

Diplomats and officials familiar with events recounted two previously undisclosed episodes during the buildup to the aborted Western strike on Syria that allegedly further unsettled the Saudi-U.S. relationship.

In the run-up to the expected U.S. strikes, Saudi leaders asked for detailed U.S. plans for posting Navy ships to guard the Saudi oil center, the Eastern Province, during any strike on Syria, an official familiar with that discussion said. The Saudis were surprised when the Americans told them U.S. ships wouldn't be able to fully protect the oil region, the official said.

Disappointed, the Saudis told the U.S. that they were open to alternatives to their long-standing defense partnership, emphasizing that they would look for good weapons at good prices, whatever the source, the official said.

In the second episode, one Western diplomat described Saudi Arabia as eager to be a military partner in what was to have been the U.S.-led military strikes on Syria. As part of that, the Saudis asked to be given the list of military targets for the proposed strikes. The Saudis indicated they never got the information, the diplomat said.

"The Saudis are very upset. They don't know where the Americans want to go," said a senior European diplomat not in Riyadh.

To be sure, not just Prccne Bandar is angry - everyone else in Saudi is now fuming at Obama too:

In Washington in recent days, Saudi officials have privately complained to U.S. lawmakers that they increasingly feel cut out of U.S. decision-making on Syria and Iran. A senior American official described the king as "angry."

Another senior U.S. official added: "Our interests increasingly don't align."

Fair enough: but what can it do? It is no secret, that as the primary hub of the petrodollar system which is instrumental to keeping the dollar's reserve status, Saudi has no choice but to cooperate with the US, or else risk even further deterioration of the USD reserve status. A development which would certainly please China... and Russia, both of which are actively engaging in Plan B preparations for the day when the USD is merely the latest dethroned reserve currency on the scrap heap of all such formerly world-dominant currencies.

Perhaps the only party that Saudi can lash out at, since it certainly fears escalating its animosity with the US even more, is Russia. And perhaps it did yesterday, when as we reported, a suicide-bombing terrorist incident captured on a dashcam killed many people, and was supposedly organized by an Islamist extremist - of the kind that Bandar told Putin several months ago are controlled and funded by Saudi intelligence chief.

If true, and if Saudi wants to project its impotence vis-a-vis the US by attacking Russia, this will likely culminate with the Sochi winter Olympics. So will Prince Bandar be crazy enough to take on none other than the former KGB chief? And more importantly, just like in the US Syrian fiasco, what happens when and if Putin retaliates against the true power that holds the USD in place?

Credit to Zero Hedge

Hollywood Unmasked

Warning: graphic images