The US' decision to deploy its state-of-the-art F-22 Raptor stealth fighters to Europe is nothing more than a provocative move, according to Richard Labeviere, chief editor of the Defense magazine of the French Institute of Higher Studies of National Defense.
Richard Labeviere, chief editor of the Defense magazine of the French Institute of Higher Studies of National Defense, has described the planned US F-22 deployment in Europe as a NATO provocation, which he said is seeking to bolster its global clout.
"There are several aspects related to this decision, which, briefly speaking, is a provocation on the part of NATO and indicates the growth in the alliance's presence in Europe and other parts of the world", Labeviere said.
According to him, Washington's decision to deploy what he referred to as the "American Rafale" was driven by commercial motives.
"The Americans are looking for a 'showcase', namely, the opportunity to show this sophisticated aircraft in action so as to contribute to its exports to other countries," Labeviere said.
He added that the F-22s took part in military operations in Iraq and Syria several times, and that Washington now seeks to arouse the interest of European customers, including those in Poland.
The second aspect pertains to the geopolitical sphere, Labeviere explained, referring to relevant requests by the Baltic states, including Lithuania, which has repeatedly voiced concern about the alleged threat emanating from Russia.
Also, the F-22s are being deployed in connection with the change in the situation in eastern Ukraine after the Ukrainian army's recent aggression against Donbass forces, according to Labeviere, who specifically pointed to Washington's desire to widen its clout around the globe.
"In addition to the above-mentioned rearrangement of NATO forces in Europe, the US is increasing its presence in the Asia-Pacific [region] and the Arctic," he said.
He recalled that F-22 jets have already been deployed at Thule Air Base in Greenland, in an apparent response to the modernization of a Russian Armed Forces base in the Russian city of Murmansk.
In late June, US Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced plans to send dozens of tanks, Bradley armored fighting vehicles and self-propelled howitzers to allied countries in the Baltics and Eastern Europe; according to Carter, the goal is to retaliate against alleged actions by Russia in Ukraine's east.
The United States plans to increase the number of military and humanitarian drills it conducts in the Asia-Pacific as part of a new strategy to counter China's rapid expansion in the South China Sea, the Philippine military said on Wednesday.
Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, highlighted key aspects of the Pentagon's freshly drafted Asia Pacific Maritime Security Strategy during talks with his Filipino counterpart, General Hernando Iriberri, during a visit to Manila.
Colonel Restituto Padilla, a military spokesman, told journalists that the report outlined Washington's set of actions in the disputed South China Sea and East China Sea, focusing on the protection of "freedom of seas", deterring conflict and coercion, and promoting adherence to international law.
China claims most of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei also have overlapping claims.
A military source, who was in the meeting between Harris and Iriberri, told Reuters the U.S. and the Philippines are expected to increase the size, frequency and sophistication of exercises in the region.
Since China's land reclamation efforts began in December 2013, it has reclaimed more than 2,900 acres (1,170 hectares) of land as of June 2015, the Pentagon said last week in a report on its Asia-Pacific Maritime Security Strategy.
The reclamation campaign significantly outweighed efforts by other claimants in size, pace and nature, the Pentagon report said.
China says the outposts will have undefined military purposes, as well as help with maritime search and rescue, disaster relief and navigation.
Just as the ‘swinging sixties’ started to gain momentum, a Jewish teenager from the East End of London took the pop world by storm with a string of hits.
Her first – Don’t Treat Me Like a Child – was appropriate enough as Helen Shapiro was only 14 at the time (1961) and it reached No 3 in the charts.
By early 1963 she was bigger than The Beatles – for a time. They actually accompanied her on a tour of the UK as her support act; she was the main attraction.
She recalls with affectionate nostalgia the banter she shared on the bus with John, Paul, George and Ringo. And it was during this tour, in February 1963, that Please, Please Me became the Fab Four’s first No 1.
Helen also made No 1 around this time with her classic upbeat number Walking Back to Happiness, but says the lyrics of the song were not fulfilled until August 26 1987 – over twenty years later – when she found Jesus!
That was 28 years ago almost to the day, as she told an audience in South Elmsall, near Doncaster, Yorkshire, on Saturday night.
And for someone who associated Christians with persecutors of her people, it was quite an amazing turnaround.
She had been confused and upset when, as a child in the school playground, someone yelled at her: “You killed Jesus Christ!”
[This is a common misconception about Jews, especially among those untutored in the Scriptures, which make it clear that Christ had to die as the spotless Lamb of God paying for the sins of the world. He had offered himself of his own accord to be nailed to a cross.]
Helen duly developed her own system of beliefs after turning to mediums and spiritists, believing that God was involved in all those things. But then, soon after her 40
th birthday, she no longer believed it and began questioning the very existence of God.
She was in the midst of this crisis when her musical director (who was unaware of it) gave her a book to read, Betrayed by Stan Telchin. It was about a respectable member of a Jewish community who was suddenly faced with a daughter announcing that she believed Jesus was the Messiah of Israel. He duly set out to prove her wrong and ended up becoming a believer himself!
Helen began studying the many prophecies of the promised Messiah in the Jewish Bible (what Christians refer to as the Old Testament) and was astonished at how accurately they seemed to be fulfilled in Jesus (Yeshua in Hebrew). These included references to a virgin birth in Bethlehem while the description of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 was surely a picture of the crucifixion, despite having been written some 600 years earlier.
“Isaiah 53 was about how He took our sins… I was gobsmacked. And Daniel prophesied that the Messiah had to die before the temple was destroyed. It all seemed to point to Jesus.”
So now she ventured to read “the chunk on the end I’m not supposed to read. And taking my courage in both hands, I opened the New Testament.”
She wondered if she would discover “anti-Jewish poison” in view of the track record of the professing church, which had committed unspeakable crimes against her people. “No wonder we don’t come running towards this Jesus.”
She started at the beginning – Matthew’s gospel – and was surprised to find “the most Jewish thing outside the Old Testament” – the genealogy of Jesus which included a list of all the names from which Messiah must come.
“Did you know the New Testament is Jewish?” she asked the audience. “It was written by Jewish men about the most famous Jew of all, and they were living in the land of Israel according to the Law of Moses.
“Jesus rose up out of the pages to me and I fell in love with him. I was so taken with him. He looked at people’s hearts and saw all the rubbish and yet still loved them. Even in his agony he came out with gracious, comforting words. I saw that he was fulfilling one Messianic prophecy after another.”
Just to make sure the English translators hadn’t twisted anything to suit their purposes, she got hold of a Bible (the Tenach, or Old Testament to Christians) from a Jewish shop to check that it included the same Messianic prophecies.
“Blow me: there they were in all their glory. I was so relieved.”
Back to the New Testament, she read through the four gospels. “By the end of John I knew without a shadow of doubt that Jesus was the fulfilment of every Messianic prophecy; that he was the Jewish Messiah.”
She contacted her musical director and his wife, bombarded them with questions, realised that she had been deceived by her dabbling with the occult and, at 10.30pm on August 26 1987, gave her life to Jesus.
“There were no lightning flashes, but somewhere inside I knew that I knew, and that there was no turning back. The Creator and sustainer of the universe came to live in my life. I didn’t get religion. I got Jesus, and I love him.”
She had one further question and wrote to Stan Telchin, the author of the book that had started things off for her, asking: “Will I stop being Jewish by following Jesus?”
“Of course not,” he replied. “You will be fulfilling your Jewishness. He’s coming back as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.”
Acknowledging that God still has a plan for the nation of Israel, Helen emphasised that both Jew and Gentile find salvation only through the blood of Jesus.
Though we are born physically, our spirits are dead because of man’s sin and rebellion against God. That’s why we need to be born again.
And God established the system of animal sacrifices to demonstrate that only through the shedding of the blood of an innocent substitute can a sinner be saved.
“They were pointers to the once-for-all sacrifice that Jesus became that day on the cross in Jerusalem when he shed his blood for the sins of the world. That’s why he came.”
_Walking back to happiness _is also the title of Helen’s autobiography, published by Harper Collins.
This is exactly the type of market behavior that we would expect to see during the early stages of a major financial crisis. In every major market downturn throughout history there were big ups, big downs and giant waves of momentum, and this time around will not be any different.
As I have explained repeatedly, markets tend to go up when things are calm, and they tend to go down when things get really choppy. During a market meltdown, we fully expect to see days when the stock market absolutely soars. Waves of panic selling are often followed by waves of panic buying. As you will see below, six of the ten best single day gains for the Dow Jones Industrial Average happened during the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. So don’t be fooled for a moment by a very positive day for stocks like we are seeing on Tuesday. It is all part of the dance.
At one point on Tuesday, the Dow was up over 400 points, and many of the talking heads on television were proclaiming that the stock market had “recovered”. This is something that I predicted would happen yesterday…
And if stocks go up tomorrow (which they probably should), all of those same “experts” will be proclaiming that the “correction” is over and that everything is now fine.
No, everything is not “fine” now. The extreme volatility that we are witnessing just tells us that more trouble is coming. Early on Tuesday the market was “burning up energy” as short-term investors sought to “buy the dip”. But now that wave of panic buying is subsiding and the Dow is only up 240 points as I write this.
Overall, the Dow is still down more than 2,200 points from the peak of the market. Even though I specifically warned that a market crash was coming, I didn’t expect the Dow to be down this far in late August. Even after the “rally” we witnessed today, we are still way ahead of schedule.
The truth is that what we have seen so far is just the warm up act.
The main event will unfold during the months of September through December, and right now most people could not even conceive of the things that we are going to see in 2016.
But all along, there are going to be days when stocks fly higher. As I mentioned above, many of the “best days” in stock market history occurred right in the middle of the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009.
And all of the technical indicators are still screaming that U.S. stocks have a long, long way to fall. For example, just check out this chart. The long-term analysis has not changed one bit.
Often, it is the short-term news that drives markets on any particular day. Tuesday began with another massive stock selloff in Asia…
What we can’t account for are “black swan events” which could greatly accelerate this financial crisis.
A war in the Middle East, a major natural disaster or a terror attack involving weapons of mass destruction are all examples of the kinds of things that could turn this market crash into full-blown market implosion.
As we move into the critical month of September 2015, I think that it is safe to say that we should all be ready to expect the unexpected. Our world is becoming increasingly unstable, and I am extremely concerned about the period of time that we are heading into.
The nice, comfortable period of relative stability that we have been experiencing for the past few years has come to an end.
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