Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Ebola Mutation Could Increase Risk Of Spreading To US

Ebola Mutation Could Increase Risk Of Spreading To US  
October 01, 2014 |
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The perception that the United States is largely safe and immune from major epidemics and pandemics is currently under challenge. It has emerged that large stocks of antiviral medications and respirators that have been set aside for the protection of U.S government personnel and citizens is about to expire. Consequently, U.S authorities are now reported to be ill-prepared to manage the spread and impact of global pandemics such as the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, or even the current global Ebola outbreak that has the entire globe running scared.

This alarming and increasingly likely potential outcome was recently reported on by CNN.com, based on federal investigation audit report findings on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The imminent expiry of large quantities of drugs reportedly resulted from the lack of a clear plan on how to replenish their stockpiles of equipment. Additionally, excessive coverall suits and surgical masks were purchased, and poor record keeping and management were found to be the root causes of the wastages and losses.

The DHS is said to have agreed with all 11 suggestions the Inspector General's Office made to improve the program. To manage the process better and to seal the loopholes found, the department will assign an office to oversee the supplies and develop an adequate strategy for making sure the material stays current. It has applied for a shelf life extension with the Food and Drug Administration to extend the expiration dates on the antiviral medicine it has that will expire in 2015.

Hopefully, all these measures, as well as any additional ones requiring urgent implementation, can be taken in time to avert disaster should a pandemic such as Ebola find its way into the United States. The initial spread of Ebola may be quite a distance from the shores of North America, but that doesn’t mean the risk of Ebola reaching anywhere else in the world is far-fetched. A recent edition of WND.com  quotes Dr. Margaret Chan, the director-general of the World Health Organization recently stating: “The devastating Ebola virus should not be characterized as an “African disease”… The current Ebola outbreak is the largest, most severe, and most complex outbreak of Ebola we have seen since the first outbreak of the disease 14 years ago.” Dr. Chan further explained that any stigmatization of the disease suggesting a racial classification would be detrimental to United Nations effort to control the outbreak.

According to another recent exclusive report by WND.com, as many as 1.2 million people could die in West Africa in just 6 months. This outcome is based on an econometric simulation model that assumes the World Health Organization and others will be unable to control the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Six months is the minimum time the WHO projects will be necessary to contain the epidemic.

Econometrics research assistant Francis Smart at Michigan State University has concluded through his research, as well as those of others, that the strain of Ebola in the current West African epidemic could go airborne and be transmitted between humans through breathing. Smart’s calculations led him to urge health officials worldwide to use every medical resource available to contain and restrict the spread of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

Smart further wrote: “It is extremely foolish to think that any nation is immune to this disease. So far, in the entire history of Ebola outbreaks up until the present, less than 10,000 people have been infected… if my projections are anywhere close to accurate, then the number of infected people is going to be much higher than has ever occurred previously. This will create many more habitats for which the virus can possible mutate new traits that could increase its transmission rate…the possibility of it becoming airborne could result in a global spread of the disease resulting in unprecedented number of deaths worldwide… it is more than prudent to heavily invest in controlling the number of new patients infected by this disease.”

The threat of the Ebola virus mutation is acknowledged widely and presents cause for serious concern. The virus has reportedly already changed its genome, with unknown consequences. In a recent report published in dw.de, US President Barack Obama was quoted to have said that the Ebola virus, currently attacking western Africa, could mutate - making it even more dangerous due to easier transmutability, making it a “a serious danger to the United States."

An international research team has found more than 300 genetic changes that make the 214 Ebola virus genomes distinct from the viral genomes tied to previous Ebola outbreaks. Moreover, over 50 changes had occurred since the start of the 2014 outbreak, suggesting the virus is in fact mutating, and with this particular strain, a number of genetic mutations had altered proteins in the virus, potentially with disastrous effect.

Yet another indication that we are certainly in the last days that Jesus prophesied about concerning pestilences (plagues and diseases) amongst other end–time catastrophic events:
For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places (Matthew 24:7).

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/October01/016.html#pKy1ZrpYGipQ335g.99

Are You A Cultural Christian Or A Biblical Christian?

Are You A Cultural Christian Or A Biblical Christian? 
October 01, 2014 |
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Christianity is flourishing. There are more Christians today in America than ever before, both as a percentage and in total numbers. Roughly one in three Americans indicate they have asked Jesus to forgive their sins and grant them the gift of eternal life.

Here's the question: If religion is such a big part of our lives, why isn't it making more of an impact on our society? The sad reality is that claims of religious commitment run high, but impact is at an all-time low.

Here's the problem: Although Christianity is flourishing, many of us who are Christians have gotten caught up in this increasingly bankrupt culture. We have adopted many of the values of the world around us. Maybe it's the new sexual ethics of cohabitation or pornography, rampant greed and materialism, or winking at the needs of the poor. Gal. 5:9 explains why adopting these values is a problem: "A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough."

So when we try to have the best of both worlds, we exchange the truth of God for a lie and the glory of God for idols, we do what seems right in our own eyes, we get engrossed in the secular world, and we worship created things instead of the Creator.

The result? Cultural Christianity. Cultural Christianity means pursuing the God we want instead of the God who is. It is the tendency to be shallow in our understanding of God, wanting Him to be more of a gentle-grandfather type who spoils us and lets us have our own way. It is sensing a need for God, but on our own terms. It is wanting the God we have underlined in our Bibles without wanting the rest of Him too. It is God relative instead of God absolute.

What has been the result of this adaptive, cultural religion?

Two Kinds of Christians

The ease with which people now associate themselves with religion has produced two kinds of Christians: biblical Christians and cultural Christians.

Jesus was the first to clarify the different types of people who would or would not associate with Him. The parable of the sower reveals four groups of hearers of the Word of God.

Group 1: The Non-Christian

"Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved" (Luke 8:12). Christ makes clear the point that not everyone who hears about salvation will believe.

Group 2: The Cultural Christian: Type 'C'

"Those on the rocky ground are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away" Luke 8:13).

Type "C" stands for counterfeit faith. Among us are some who profess to be Christians, but in reality they are not Christians at all; they are cultural Christians—type "C." They have a counterfeit faith—a faith that is not a genuine faith in Christ. Jesus said, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 7:21).

Without sounding a false alarm, but in love, I encourage every man who finds himself to be a cultural Christian to consider whether his faith is merely a defeated faith or a counterfeit faith. If counterfeit faith is the condition of your life, don't be discouraged. God loves you with an everlasting love and wants to reconcile with you.

Group 3: The Cultural Christian: Type 'D'

"The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life's worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature" (Luke 8:14).

Sadly, there is little marginal difference between the way many Christians spend their money and the way non-Christians spend theirs. For a group whose primary commission is to be salt and light to a broken, confused world, this example does little to present a viable alternative to empty lifestyles.

Type "D" stands for defeated faith. The type "D" cultural Christian lives in defeat. There is little, if any, marginal difference between his lifestyle and the lifestyle of the man who makes no claim to be in Christ. He has never understood, perhaps because he has never been told, the difference between what it means to be a cultural Christian versus a biblical Christian. This is the category I flirted with before God brought me to my senses.

Group 4: The Biblical Christian

"But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop" (Luke 8:15).

A biblical Christian is a person who trusts in Christ, and Christ alone, for his salvation. As a result of his saving faith he desires to be obedient to God's principles out of the overflow of a grateful heart (see Rom. 1:5). Obedience doesn't save us; faith does. This explains why some men can be cultural Christians—they have a saving faith, but they have not obediently made Christ Lord over all their lives. They have not allowed the Holy Spirit to empower them.

What does it mean to be a cultural Christian today?

Lessons from Elementary School

Do you remember your elementary school teacher demonstrating the principle of diffusion? She started with a clear glass of water. Then with an eyedropper she took some red food dye from a bottle and squeezed one drop into the glass. Within moments, the water was tainted with a pinkish hue as the dye permeated the water in the glass.

To be a cultural Christian in your parents' generation was to be like a clear glass of water with one drop of red dye. In other words, the secular culture was not that different from the Christian culture. That was before the days of Internet pornography, abortion on demand, explicit sex during prime-time TV, songs that degrade women, and a drug culture that's hard to avoid. So a man could be a cultural Christian and still be somewhat close to a Christian worldview and values.

To be a cultural Christian today is like having the whole bottle of red dye poured in the glass.

A Look in the Mirror

The man in the mirror will never change until he is willing to see himself as he really is, and to commit to know God as He really is. This objectivity anchors a man; it gives him the clarity of thought he needs to be a biblical Christian.

Is the man looking back at you in the mirror a cultural Christian or a biblical Christian?

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/October01/015.html#H7mP3bogzpKPShBQ.99

Watching For A Hook - Ezekiel 38 On The Horizon?

Watching For A Hook - Ezekiel 38 On The Horizon? 
October 01, 2014 |
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The list of experts who teach that Russia, Iran and others will attack Israel in a future war called the Battle of Gog and Magog is impressive (Ezek. 38-39). So for the sake of brevity, I will simply state that God will put a hook in the jaws of Russia’s leader (Ezek. 38:4) and drag him and his allies into Israel in the latter days (Ezek. 38:16) and latter years (Ezek. 38:8). And I will make eight points about this in connection with current events.

First, Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities is not the Battle of Gog and Magog. But, if Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities, Russia and Iran have said they will counterattack and that could be the Battle of Gog and Magog.

Second, I agree with those who say Psa. 83 is a prayer about a war between Israel and her neighbors that will take place before the Battle of Gog and Magog. This war hasn’t happened, but events seem to indicate that it could happen soon. An Intifada has been raging in Jerusalem for more than two months; there is currently a temporary ceasefire between Israel and the PA, but Hamas is threatening to break it and no one expects it to hold.

Third, I agree with those who say Isa. 17 prophesies a war between Israel and Syria that will take place before the Battle of Gog and Magog. This hasn’t happened, but it is something else that could happen soon. The U.S. and several Arab allies have already attacked oil fields, refineries, Islamic State troops, other terrorists and weapons in Syria even though Russia, Iran and Syria warned us not to do it. In the past, Syria, Russia and Iran have threatened to attack Israel, if Syria is attacked. Israel has her troops on high alert and the IDF has just shot down a Syrian jet that supposedly strayed over Israeli territory.

Fourth, on Sept. 17, 2014, Israel’s Minister of Intelligence, Yuvall Steinitz said Iran is nine to eighteen months away from developing a nuclear bomb and Iran already has missiles that can deliver one. He pointed out that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “Israel will not allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons.” Nine to eighteen months will quickly come and go. Therefore, it is obvious that time is running out for Israel to act and for Russia, Iran and others to respond.

Fifth, on Sept. 18, 2014, the P5 +1 (the permanent five members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) began what they call their final round of negotiations with Iran over the abandonment of Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons. Furthermore, the two sides have agreed to resolve all of their differences by Nov. 24, 2014. So the P5 + 1 and Iran are now less than two months away from their self-imposed deadline, the talks are going nowhere and Iran says she will not give up her nuclear program. In addition to this, because of western sanctions on Russia over her actions in Ukraine, Russia has threatened to retaliate against the west by siding with Iran in these negotiations.

Sixth, in 2013, Israel included almost three billion dollars in her budget to finance a war with Iran. In 2014, Israel budgeted almost three billion dollars more for a war with Iran. In Sept. 2014, while preparing Israel’s budget for 2015, a problem arose. Israeli Finance Minister, Yair Lapid, did not want to raise taxes on the Israeli people, but Israeli Air Force Commander, Maj.-Gen. Amir Eshel, wanted more money to upgrade Israel’s Air Force and Prime Minister Netanyahu wanted more money to finance operations to deal with security threats against Israel. Some in the media took Mr. Netanyahu’s request for more money to mean that Israel will soon attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. Could it happen in the next nine months?

Seventh, Russia’s economy is in trouble. Mr. Putin is still financing a covert war in Ukraine. Western nations have gradually upped sanctions on Russia and the sanctions are finally beginning to take hold. Russia threatened to cut off the flow of natural gas to the EU, but the loss of income could be devastating. The value of the Ruble has dropped 15% against the dollar this year and a recession is looming. Russia will soon have to change her ways, deal with a recession, or find a prey with silver and gold, cattle and goods.

Eighth, based on the Jewish Talmud (not the Bible) some say a Tetrad of blood moons are an omen of war for Israel. It is a debatable issue, but no one can deny that the first blood moon in the current Tetrad occurred on April 15, 2014 (the Feast of Passover), the next blood moon will occur on October 8, 2014 (the Feast of Tabernacles) and there will be two more in 2015.

Russia is still causing trouble in Ukraine; Pres. Obama is arming the so-called friendly rebels in Syria; the U.S. and several Arab allies are attacking the Islamic State in Syria; Israel’s war with Hamas is probably not over; so it is quite possible that within months God could set the hook on Russia. Time will tell.

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/October01/014.html#xHM87AB9fyBwq0cY.99

New UN Power Structure On The Horizon? World Leaders Call For End To Veto Power

New UN Power Structure On The Horizon? World Leaders Call For End To Veto Power
October 01, 2014 |
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World leaders demanded Security Council reform during their addresses to the UN General Assembly over the past few days, calling for the addition of more permanent and non-permanent seats on the council and the elimination of the veto.

“The world is bigger than five,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in his speech during the General Debate, referencing the five countries with veto power – the US, Britain, France, China, and Russia.

Heads of state from across the globe echoed his call for immediate reform.

The status quo has made the governing body inefficient, Peru’s President Ollanta Humala Tasso said. He asked for the addition of more permanent and non-permanent members, which, he said, should result in a more democratic process.

“The Security Council’s capacity to respond to the different crises in different parts of the world reflects the need for reforming its work methodology,” he said.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pleaded his case for Japan’s acceptance as a permanent member of the Security Council. Since joining the UN in 1956, he said, Japan has worked tirelessly to advance the causes of the UN.

“It is my wish... [that] countries sharing the same aims all work together to finally resolve a long-standing issue to reform the UN in a way that reflects the realities of the 21st century,” he said.

Discussions about council reform have been ongoing for years. France’s foreign minister first floated the idea of a “code of conduct” for the veto in 2001.

During his speech last year to the General Assembly, French President François Hollande called on the five powers to agree on a set of scenarios in which the veto should not be used, notably when resolutions address mass atrocities.

Former General Assembly president John Ashe, whose term just ended with the conclusion of the assembly’s 68th session, made Security Council reform a priority on his agenda.

He called for a permanent seat on the council for an African delegate.

Regional representation and the veto are key issues for reform.

“Our United Nations is – and must remain – a place where we reach compromise, a place of accommodation. The essence of the process of negotiations is compromise,” Ashe said last year.

By the end of Ashe’s tenure, however, the UN had made no progress on the matter.

In the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the US has vowed to always use its veto to help protect the people of Israel.

In August, State Department Deputy Spokeswoman Marie Harf said she couldn’t envision a scenario in which the US wouldn’t veto an action within the Security Council to take Israel to the International Criminal Court.

While the US’s veto might prove beneficial to Israel, overall it deadlocks the Security Council, critics say, making any real, meaningful action impossible.

As a further example, action within the council on the crisis in Ukraine has been limited in part because Russia has veto power, and it would surely veto any action condemning or holding it accountable. China and Russia both blocked early efforts by the US to take action on Syria against President Bashar Assad. 

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/October01/012.html#OdKerTCovx7xkjtT.99

Russia Threatens To Retaliate Against U.S. Military Activity In Syria

Russia Threatens To Retaliate Against U.S. Military Activity In Syria
October 01, 2014 |
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Russia has delivered a behind-the-scenes threat to retaliate if airstrikes carried out by the U.S. or its allies target the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Middle Eastern security officials told WND.

The security officials said Russia complained Sunday in quiet talks with United Nations representatives that the Obama administration’s current aerial campaign against Islamic State fighters in Syria is a violation of international agreements regarding control of Syrian airspace.

The officials said Russia warned it could potentially retaliate if U.S. or Arab airstrikes go beyond targeting Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, and instead bomb any Syrian regime targets.

The officials told WND they do not have any information about the seriousness of the Russian threat or whether Moscow meant it would retaliate directly or aid Assad’s air force in a military response.

The officials said Russian diplomats asserted terms regarding Syrian airspace were agreed upon last September as part of a sweeping deal to disarm Syria’s arsenal of chemical weapons by the middle of 2014.

At the time, the international community feared Assad could target chemical weapons inspectors acting in Syria. That fear in part lead to a deal in which Moscow says it was provided with significant responsibility over the skies of Syria, purportedly to insure against Assad’s air force acting against the international disarmament effort.

The officials further said that both the Russia and Iranian militaries are on heightened alert amid the ongoing situation in Syria.

On Saturday, U.S.-led coalition warplanes for the first time reportedly struck ISIS targets in Syria near the Turkish border as well as positions in the country’s east, according to activists and a Kurdish officials speaking to the Associated Press.

Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for Syria’s Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, told the AP the strikes targeted Islamic State positions near the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani.

U.S.-coalition strikes also reportedly targeted a local ISIS headquarters in the northern Syrian town of Tel Abyad along the Turkish border, setting an oil refinery ablaze.

“Our building was shaking and we saw fire, some 60 meters (65 yards) high, coming from the refinery,” local businessman Mehmet Ozer told Time Magazine.

Time reported the strikes were also confirmed by the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and were reported by Turkey’s Dogan news agency.

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/October01/011.html#DcKCRWGEOqqlXFYS.99

The US’ Unauthorised Air Strikes in Syria: Against or Favouring Wahhabism and the Islamic State?

The US’ Unauthorised Air Strikes in Syria: Against or Favouring Wahhabism and the Islamic State?

Global Research, September 30, 2014


Since the night of September 22/23, US fighter planes have been carrying out strikes with missiles and drones against targets in and around Raqqah, the city in the Northern part of Syria where are located the headquarters of ISIS’ self-proclaimed ‘Islamic state’. Four of the US’s Middle Eastern allies are known to be taking part in these aerial strikes. They signify not just an extension in the warfare the US had previously launched against ISIS positions in Northern Iraq, but herald a decisive break with President Obama’s past efforts to wind down and bring to an end the US’s involvement in Middle Eastern wars. Once again, as when the US had started its aggression for the overthrow of the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussain (2003), – the current air strikes are clearly illegitimate.
They have neither been authorized by the Syrian government, nor by the UN’s Security Council. Although the start of the bombardments inside Syria was preceded by efforts to craft a broad international coalition at meetings held in Great Britain (NATO), in France and in Saudi Arabia some of the US’s European allies have expressly stated that the bombardments of Syrian targets lack a legal basis. Meanwhile, leading spokespersons of the US’s Military Industrial Complex, such as army chief Dempsey and Defense Secretary Hagel, have speculated on an another imperial ground war, aimed at dislodging ISIS from Syria and Iraq.
To bring out the fact that the US’s war on ISIS is controversial from the beginning, it is useful to look at the nature of Middle Eastern governments that have committed support to the US. Towards recruiting participants for its war plans, gaining logistical support and financial backing, the US in the first part of September held a meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where 10 countries took part. In an editorial published in the US’s most respectable daily on the very day the air strikes over Syria started, the coalition resulting from this Saudi meeting was described as ‘the unlikeliest of coalitions!’ This in view of the huge funding and other backing ISIS has been receiving from countries that joined the same Saudi meeting.
Yet only a few months back one had a hard time tracing reliable data in Western media or at internet on the history of ISIS’ funding. Some researchers of US think tanks such as the Brookings Institution were quoted as stating that ISIS has been mobilizing support from Gulf states for years. Only recently has the world’s mainstream press woken up to the fact that Wahhabi clerics and other backers have been voicing pro-ISIS propaganda on t.v. channels in Qatar, and that the Saudi and Kuwaiti government have not hindered, but allowed ISIS-sympathizers to publicly canvass for donors. Worse Turkey, Syria’s neighbor, has been facilitating oil exports from areas ISIS controls. Indeed, one wonders for how long Western intelligence agents active in the Middle East have been asleep.
US officials, pressed by these media reports, now argue that Gulf state governments should curb any funding of ISIS from their territories. But is the matter merely one of a lax attitude by Gulf states towards Sunni extremism? How come this issue is being addressed only now, whereas the rise of ISIS and other new ‘al-Qaida’-type forces started way back in the middle of the previous decade, when US forces were battling against Sunni extremist groups in the context of their Iraq occupation? The point is of course that cooperation with Wahhabism, Sunni fundamentalism´s leading current, has been built into the very strategy which the hegemonic Western powers -, first Great Britain, then the US – have been pursuing for long.
The UK did so from well before the founding of Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi kingdom (1932). Further, Western allies such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf states may finally been seen to distance themselves from ISIS, – but the reality is that the ideology and practices of these countries’ rulers and their Wahhabi clergy closely resemble those of ISIS’s top leadership! Just as in ISIS’ ‘Caliphate’, people who don’t conform to the country’s strict laws are regularly beheaded in Saudi Arabia. Just as in areas ‘liberated’ by ISIS in Iraq, numerous Sufi shrines have been demolished here in the past. Saudi rulers have pledged to the US that they will help train fighters against ISIS, and have proposed that Saudi clerics inculcate these combatants with proper Islamic views. Yet is there any sharp line of demarcation between Saudi Wahhabism and ISIS’s extremism?
Clearly, after over a decade of unsuccessful efforts to combat international ‘terrorism’, US foreign policy is enmeshed in a web of self-inflicted internal contradictions. But then there may be other, hard reasons explaining the US decision to forge an alliance with cousins of ISIS’s Sunni extremism. Here Qatar is probably the most telling example right now. Though Qatar’s rulers profess their own variety of Wahhabism and have been enthusiastic supporters of Sunni fundamentalist forces operating throughout the Middle East for years, – the tiny Gulf state’s air base Al Udeid hosts the regional headquarters of CENTCOM, the command centre of US military personnel and hardware in the Middle East. Given the controversy over Qatar’s role in helping ISIS get funding from people who have amassed oil wealth, – its rulers have now been told to keep a low profile and tone down their international role. Yet no incriminating revelations by US think tanks or press reports prevent the US from maintaining the closest possible arms’ trade-ties with the government of Qatar. In the middle of July last, US officials announced that negotiations had been concluded towards the sale of Patriot missiles, Apache helicopters, and other weapons, valued at 11 Billion US Dollars! And this deal was stated to be the ‘very biggest’ arms’ trade-deal of the US in 2014.
Some six years back, Obama was elected the US’s President by the American people on an anti-war ticket. Yet being put under huge pressure from the side of the US’s transatlanticized Military Industrial Complex, he has launched air strikes that are causing massive devastations and further disruption of life in both Syria and Iraq. Just a year ago, in September of 2013, Obama felt compelled to call off air strikes planned against Syria’s government of Assad. The evidence over the use of chemical weapons was shaky, and Russia mediated a sensible compromise.
This time round, the relentless, nightly aerial bombardments are ostensible directed against Assad’s jihadi opponents, meaning the barrel of Obama’s gun is now pointing in reverse direction. Surely, the current air strikes were preceded by a publicity offensive that was well orchestrated, and a significant part of the public in the West believes the strikes are justified. Yet as the above story on the new war alliance the US has crafted with Arab states indicates, – by no stretch of imagination can it be argued that the current war systematically aims at weakening the international influence of intolerant forms of Islam. Already, critics argue that the air war only threatens to prolong, nay vastly increase the suffering of people all over the Middle East. As did the wars initiated in 2001 and 2003, respectively against the Taliban in Afghanistan and against Saddam’s Iraq. The UN should immediately take the US to task, demand it halt its unjust war waged with intolerant Wahhabi regimes, and take its own responsibility.
Dr. Peter Custers is internationally reknowned as Bangladesh and South Asia specialist. He is a theoretician on the production/exports of arms and the world economy, and the author of ’Questioning Globalized Militarism’ (Merlin Press/Tulika, 2007)
Copyright © 2014 Global Research

Russia could ditch US dollar in 2-3 years – head of Russia's #2 bank



Russia could ditch US dollar in 2-3 years – head of Russia's #2 bank

Published time: September 30, 2014 14:19


Andrey Kostin, President - Chairman of the Board, member of the Supervisory Council, VTB Bank. (RIA Novosti/Mihail Mokrushin)
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Two to three years would be enough time for Russia to switch to international settlements to the ruble, Andrey Kostin, head of Russia’s second-biggest bank VTB, said.
“Two to three years is enough, not only to launch [settlements in rubles], but also to complete these mechanisms. But much will depend on how banks will cope with the task,” Kostin said in an interview with Izvestia newspaper.
Kostin first put forward the idea of switching to national currencies in international settlements about a decade ago, which means a move to the ruble shouldn’t be considered a counter-sanction measure.
"I did not find understanding in this matter with the previous leadership of the Central Bank [10 years ago ] They believed that since the [US] dollar works, we shouldn’t do anything, and settlements in rubles will just bring additional risks. Under the new leadership the position of the Central Bank changed. I think that soon we will achieve a major breakthrough,” Kostin said.
Creating a national payment system and establishing a domestic rating agency are among other priorities for the bank, the VTB head added.

SWIFT action

The media has reported on the possibility of the US and EU widening sanctions to exclude Russia from the SWIFT global money transfer system.
Kostin said the move would become “a point of no return” and that any further dialogue would be impossible if SWIFT was cut off.
“If you look at Iran’s experience, shutting down SWIFT only happens when all relations; political, economic, cultural, even diplomatic, break down,” the VTB boss said.
“I don’t know how [Western] banks could block SWIFT and then expect cooperation in the fight against terrorism and nuclear disarmament.”
However, replacing SWIFT within Russia won’t be difficult, Kostin said.
“We have a [similar] system at the Central Bank of Russia and others. The Central Bank has tested this system, and we can switch to it at any moment.”
He said that domestic payments account for about 90 percent of VTB settlements and won’t be affected. Across the entire Russian banking system the share of domestic payments is even higher, Kostin explained.