Hezbollah and Israel
Here We Go Again?

Hezbollah and Israel - old enemies - appear to be squaring off again. This month's newsletter features more Middle East news. The economy though is not out of the news and, again, we are reminded of the need to prepare for the future.

Note that I am simply sharing items of interest. That does not imply that I agree with what is presented.

Israel is preparing to invade Lebanon with massive ground troops.

Israel will not spare any kind of weaponry, including phosphorous and cluster bombs.

Israel is secretly evacuating its northern region residents.

Israel intends to create a new security zone inside Lebanon, south of the Litani to enhance her long term occupation.

"While the war of words is escalating around the clock between Israel on the one side and Hezbollah and Syria on the other, analysts in the Middle East and Europe strongly believe that war is inevitable and will break out within a few months."

A Defensive Buildup In The Gulf
By: George Friedman / Stratfor Global Intelligence.com / February 1, 2010

"This weekend's newspapers were filled with stories about how the United States is providing ballistic missile defense (BMD) to four countries on the Arabian Peninsula. The New York Times carried a front-page story on the United States providing anti-missile defenses to Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman, as well as stationing BMD-capable, Aegis-equipped warships in the Persian Gulf.

"Obviously, the work is no longer 'quiet.' In fact, Washington has been publicly engaged in upgrading defensive systems in the area for some time."

Egyptian Sources: Israel Prepares to Strike Iran From Gulf and N. Iraq
DEBKAfiles.com / February 3, 2010

"Arab voices were fanning Middle East war fever Wednesday night, Feb. 3. debkafile's military sources report that not only are Syrian leaders beating war drums -- Syrian foreign minister Walid Muallem said in Damascus: 'Israelis, do not test the power of Syria since you know the war will move into your cities' -- but Egyptian military sources have put out information purporting to outline Israel's preparations to strike Iran.

"They report that the Israeli Navy together with the US Fifth Fleet have for some weeks been charting Persian Gulf waters and Iranian shorelines in preparation for attacks by Israeli naval and special operations forces."

Iran's Supreme Leader: West Can't Save Israel
Haaretz.com / February 8, 2010

"Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei said Sunday that Western support of Israel was ineffective, telling a top Palestinian militant leader that its obliteration was imminent according to the will of God.

"He praised the Palestinian resistance movement and declared that it had proven itself stronger despite the military superiority of the Israel Defense Forces."

"In his comments, Khameini joined a long list of top Iranian officials, especially President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who have said on several occasions in the past that Israel should be destroyed."

Impending Explosion: U.S. Intensifies Threats to Russia and Iran
By: Rick Rozoff / Rogers Digital.com Media News / February 19, 2010

"Washington and its NATO allies launched two of the three major wars in the world over the past eleven years in March -- against Yugoslavia in 1999 and against Iraq in 2003. The war drums are being pounded anew and the world may be headed for a catastrophe far worse than those in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

"The United States, separately and through the military bloc it controls, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is accelerating military deployments and provocations throughout Eurasia and the Middle East. Embroiled with fellow NATO members in the largest-scale military offensive of the joint war in Afghanistan launched eight years ago last October and well on the way to both extending and replicating the Afghan aggression in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula [1], Washington and its allies are also taunting and threatening Russia as well as surrounding Iran with military forces and hardware preparatory to a potential attack on that nation.

"The rapid pace of the escalation -- almost daily reports of missile shield expansion in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, the Persian Gulf and Turkey; heightened and progressively more bellicose words and actions directed against Iran -- is occurring at a breakneck and almost dizzying speed, drawing in larger and larger tracts of Europe and Asia."

Drowning In Debt: What the Nation's Budget Woes Mean for You
Economists Predict Cutbacks, Tax Increases that 'Aren't Even Imaginable'
By: Devin Dwyer / ABC News.com / February 17, 2010

"American political and economic leaders have sounded the alarm for years about the red ink rising in reports on the federal government's fiscal health.

"But now the problem of mounting national debt is worse than it ever has been before with -- potentially dire consequences for taxpayers, according to a report by the nonpartisan Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform.

"'It keeps me awake at night, looking at all that red ink,' said President Obama in Nashua, N.H., on Feb. 2. 'Most of it is structural and we inherited it. The only way that we are going to fix it is if both parties come together and start making some tough decisions about our long-term priorities.'

"Obama will sign an executive order tomorrow that establishes a bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to make recommendations on how to reduce the country's debt."

"Buy Farmland and Gold" Advises Dr Doom
By: Leo Lewis / Times Online.com / February 22, 2010

"The world's most powerful investors have been advised to buy farmland, stock up on gold and prepare for a 'dirty war' by Marc Faber, the notoriously bearish market pundit, who predicted the 1987 stock market crash.

"The bleak warning of social and financial meltdown, delivered today in Tokyo at a gathering of 700 pension and sovereign wealth fund managers."

So whether Hezbollah and Israel go to war or war breaks out elsewhere or the economy implodes or whatever might happen there are obviously sign in the news that line up with BIble prophecy.