Happy Fall Holidays!
SEASON OF PIRATES!
PIRATES IN BUSINESS!
PIRACY IN GOVERMENT!
PIRACY ON WALL STREET!
PIRATES ON THE HIGH SEAS!
Islamic Pirates Now Singing Out!
Yo-Ho-Ho for $20 Mil Bottle of Rum!
Oh My—–TV Car 54!—–Where Are You,
Russian Fearless Frigate, Where ARE You,
While 30 million bucks of Russian Military Arms,
Are Anchored Off Somalia Coast for Islamic Militias?
I suppose one might be tempted to fear perilous Times!
October 11, 2008
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
II Timothy 3:1 –This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
II Peter 3:3,4,8,9 – Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, [4] And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. [8] But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. [9] The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Psalm 2:1-6 – Why do the hea
then rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? [2] The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, [3] Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. [4] He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. [5] Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex
them in his sore displeasure. [6] Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.
As I indicated in previous Blogs, the present financial crisis, after much fear and anxiety, will level off next week, and probably get back up above 10,000 before year’s end and stay there, but ups and downs will stay with us for quite a while. However, the Tribulation Period, which I believe will begin at some point in time between 2010 and 2015, will put the Stock Market out of business before it ends at Armageddon.
Begin Excerpt from New Zealand via Associated Press
G7 nations pledge to fight financial crisis
12:07PM Saturday Oct 11, 2008
WASHINGTON – Finance officials from the world’s top economic powers have pledged action to combat the worst financial crisis in more than half a century.
The officials from the so-called Group of Seven countries issued a five-point plan aimed at unfreezing a credit crisis that has unhinged Wall Street and markets around the globe.
The group pledged to take “decisive action and use all available tools” to battle the crisis.
Under the plan, the countries pledged to protect major banks and to prevent their failure. They also committed to working to get credit flowing more freely, support the efforts of banks to raise money from both public and private sources, bolster deposit insurance and revive the battered mortgage financing market.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, America’s central banker, met with their counterparts from the world’s six other richest countries as the rout of financial markets sped ahead in the face of dramatic rescue efforts in the United States and abroad.
Besides the United States, the other members of the G7 meeting in Washington are Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada.
Fear has tightened its grip on investors worldwide even as the United States and other countries have taken a series of radical actions including unprecedented, coordinated interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve and other major central banks.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrials, already down 21 percent for the week, dropped nearly 700 points more in the opening minutes but made up much of that fresh loss in the last hour of trading. The index finished down 128 points to end its worst week ever.
Stock markets in Europe and Asia also took another plunge on Friday.
Begin Excerpt from DEBKAfile Weekly Exclusive
NATO stirred into anti-piracy action by overlap with E. African jihadist terror
DEBKA-Net-Weekly Exclusive
October 9, 2008, 6:11 PM (GMT+02:00)
On Oct. 3, DEBKA-Net-Weekly 367 reported that the capture of the Ukrainian arms vessel, Faina, had placed Somali piracy at the center of the war on terror. This development is beginning to stir the world powers into action against the long-running scourge. On Oct. 9, sixteen days after the Faina’s capture, NATO defense ministers meeting in Budapest finally agreed to send warships “soon” to Somali waters to safeguard vessels threatened by pirates
Six more ships were hit in the last week
The DEBKA-Net-Weekly exclusive is summarized here.
Some East African counter-terror sources report that, while previous Ukrainian arms shipments were covertly diverted from Kenya to Darfur, some also reached the hands of Islamic militias in Somalia, who are ruled by the notorious Abdullah Mohamed Fazul, the slippery al Qaeda chief in East Africa. He has been on the run for two decades since masterminding the 1998 attacks on US East African embassies, but this has not stopped him engaging in terrorist activity.
During August and September,
Fazul was on the move, sighted in such places as Mombasa, Kenya, and the coastal town of Malindi. There, some sources report he negotiated the purchase of part of the Faina cargo from its Kenyan buyers. He need the arms to share out between his Somali insurgent following and the cells associated with al Qaeda in Uganda and Tanzania.
On Sept. 15, Ugandan security agencies went on high alert following intelligence reports that the wanted man may have been planning an attack in reprisal for Kampala’s support for African Union peacekeeping operations in Somalia. Fazul was said to be recruiting. The entire East African region went on alert to net al Qaeda’s East African mastermind who, unlike his master, Osama bin Laden, does not keep his head down but flits from place to place.
According to one theory prevalent in counter-terror agencies, Fazul was short of funds for buying the Faina’s entire arms cargo, so he traded off with a tip-off to the pirates of the approaching arms vessel on the understanding that his men would receive part of the shipment at cut price.
The USS Howard guided missile destroyer and several other Western warships have been standing by for 10 days monitoring movements aboard and around the Faina at anchor 7 miles from the Somali port of Hobyo, a stronghold of the local Islamic Resistance Movement which is linked to al Qaeda. It has been fighting for nearly two years to overthrow the Mogadishu government.
The US destroyer’s captain is under orders not to move in unless an attempt is made to offload the $30 m worth cargo of 33 T-72 tanks, RPG rocket-propelled grenades, ZU-23 automatic anti-air guns or let it reach the Islamist terrorists on shore.
Although Moscow first announced the missile frigate Neustrashimy (Fearless) was speeding to the rescue, the warship has not yet arrived.
DEBKAfile’s military sources add that the frigate is meanwhile escorting a Russian flotilla led by the Peter the Great around the ports of Libya and Syria. Only then, will it head to Somalia.
Begin Excerpt from BBC News
Pirates threaten to blow up ship
Somali pirates holding a Ukrainian ship with a cargo of military tanks off the Somali coast have threatened to blow it up if they are not paid a ransom.
A pirate spokesman told news agencies by satellite telephone that the ransom of $20m (£12m) must be paid by Monday night or the ship would be destroyed.
He said the pirates were ready to die along with the crew.
US warships have surrounded the MV Faina and a Russian frigate is on its way to help in the operation.
The Kenya-bound ship, together with its mainly Ukrainian crew of 21 and cargo of 33 tanks, was seized on 25 September.
One member of the crew, believed to be Russian, died of a stroke shortly afterwards.
‘Three days’
“We held a consultative meeting for more than three hours today and decided to blow up the ship and its cargo – us included – if the ship owners did not meet our ransom demand,” Sugule Ali told the Associated Press from aboard the vessel.
“After three days, starting from tomorrow, the news of the ship will be closed.
Either we achieve our goal and get the ransom or perish along with the ship, its crew and cargo.”
The pirate spokesman repeated the ultimatum in a conversation with the Spanish news agency Efe.
Piracy is rife in the busy shipping lanes near to Somalia’s coast and along the Gulf of Aden, where dozens of boats have been hijacked this year.
Somalia has lacked a functioning central government since 1991 and has been afflicted by continual civil strife.
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