Watchman Newsletter

Indonesia hit by 6.4-magnitude earthquake

CNN (Link) (March 13, 2010)

A 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck Indonesia on Sunday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

There were no immediate reports of injuries, deaths, or damages on the island nation.

The quake struck at 9:57 a.m. local time (7:57 p.m. ET Saturday).

The epicenter was 285 kilometers (180 miles) southeast of Ternate, on Indonesia's Moluccas island group, and 2,415 kilometers (1,500 miles) east of Jakarta, the nation's capital.

The quake struck at a depth of 52.4 kilometers (32.6 miles).

No tsunami warning was issued following the quake.

Report: U.S. vows to halt Israeli building in East Jerusalem

Haaretz (Link) (March 13, 2010)

U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell promised Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that the U.S. will bring a halt to Israeli building in East Jerusalem, a Palestinian official told the newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi on Saturday.

“In a telephone conversation, Mitchell said the U.S. would make sure Israel stops building in the area,” the Palestinian official told the London-based Arabic daily newspaper.

The U.S. has recently expressed frustration over Israel’s announcement on Tuesday of new settlement construction, a move that deeply embarrassed visiting U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and imperiled U.S. plans to launch indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

In an interview with CNN aired Friday night, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Israel’s announcement of new construction of homes in a Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem was “insulting” to the United States.

EU hints Israel must renew peace talks if it wants closer ties

Haaretz (Link) - Reuters (March 13, 2010)

The European Union could use closer trade ties as leverage to urge Israel to resume peace talks with the Palestinians, the EU’s top diplomat said on Saturday ahead of a trip to the region.

EU high representative for foreign affairs, Catherine Ashton, who begins her first visit to the Middle East on Sunday, said the European Union would be active in getting peace talks to resume and had influence in the issue.

“We’re a huge supplier of aid and development in that region. We are strong with Israel in terms of trade and Israel wants to enhance its relationship with us, it wants to upgrade relations,” she said when asked what leverage the EU could have in talks given that the United States has struggled to be heard.

“Our ambition is that they know - because they do - that the solution lies in a negotiated settlement. Our view is that it needs to happen quickly and now, with the opportunity that that affords Israel ... to be able to enhance the relationships it wants with us in any event for the future.”

Strong quakes torment Chile as president sworn in

Associated Press (Link) - Eva Vergara, Federico Quilodran and Brad Haynes (March 12, 2010)

The earth shook and shook Thursday as dignitaries walked in for the swearing-in of Sebastian Pinera as Chile’s president. It shook some more as they waited for him.

People in the balconies of the vast congressional hall in coastal Valparaiso shouted warnings as a massive light fixture rocked overhead, and heads of state nervously eyed the ceiling. But a steely calm prevailed, and Pinera strode in smiling.

The 60-year-old president and his ministers then quickly swore their oaths, and the audience of 2,000 headed for the exits and the hills, joining an evacuation called out of concern that Thursday’s repeated aftershocks would set off another tsunami.

Inauguration Day was peppered with more than a dozen significant aftershocks, amply demonstrating Pinera’s challenges after last month’s magnitude-8.8 quake, one of the biggest in modern history.

Chile’s first elected right-wing president in 52 years won office promising to improve the economy. Now, he says he’ll be the “reconstruction president.” His advice to citizens: “Let’s dry our tears and put our hands to work.”

But relief efforts stalled Thursday as more than 10 earthquakes shook Chile in a span of six hours. The strongest, at 6.9, nearly matched the 7.0-magnitude quake that devastated Haiti on Jan. 12.

Israeli army to seal off West Bank as tensions rise

Telegraph UK (Link) (March 12, 2010)

The action was taken “for security reasons” including a risk of attacks, the spokesman said. The area was sealed off at midnight on Thursday.

Israeli police have also said they would bar Muslim men under the age of 50 from prayers on Friday at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound, one of Islam’s holiest sites, fearing unrest.

The moves come after violent clashes at the site, which is also holy to Jews, during last week’s Muslim prayers, and fresh tensions over Israeli plans to build 1,600 homes for Jewish settlers in mostly Arab east Jerusalem.

The army said some medical and religious workers, teachers, journalists and others would be exempted from the West Bank closure.

Since the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising in September 2000, Israel has usually sealed off the West Bank ahead of major holidays, saying the move is necessary to prevent attacks, but only rarely on other occasions.

“The IDF (armed forces) will continue to operate in order to protect the citizens of Israel while maintaining the quality of life of the Palestinian population in the area,” the military said in a statement.

Israel’s new gas fields will do little for peace

The National (Link) - Robin Mills (March 11, 2010)

Middle Eastern country finds large gas reserves. In our hydrocarbon-rich region, this would hardly be news, were it not for the identity of the country: Israel.

Golda Meir, the former Israeli prime minister, used to joke that Israel was the only place in the Middle East without oil. But in January last year, the US company Noble Energy found gas in the Mediterranean: not as good as oil, but a valuable second prize. More recent drilling confirms it is a giant discovery, probably just the first of several.

Suddenly, Israel can look forward to independence from energy imports, a cleaner environment, maybe even earnings from gas exports. But in this troubled region, such a bonanza is not likely to bring benefits to the Palestinians, nor peace. It may even contribute to further conflict.

Ninety kilometres offshore from the northern Israeli port of Haifa, in waters 1,700 metres deep, through a thick layer of salt, the exploration well was tough to drill and cost US$140 million (Dh514.2m). Yet the discovery, named Tamar, was the second largest in the world in the past two years, and was immediately followed by another find nearby.

Budget deficit sets record in February

Associated Press (Link) - Martin Crutsinger (March 10, 2010)

The government ran up the largest monthly deficit in history in February, keeping the flood of red ink on track to top last year’s record for the full year.

The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the February deficit totaled $220.9 billion, 14 percent higher than the previous record set in February of last year.

The deficit through the first five months of this budget year totals $651.6 billion, 10.5 percent higher than a year ago.

The Obama administration is projecting that the deficit for the 2010 budget year will hit an all-time high of $1.56 trillion, surpassing last year’s $1.4 trillion total. The administration is forecasting that the deficit will remain above $1 trillion in 2011, giving the country three straight years of $1 trillion-plus deficits.

The administration says the huge deficits are necessary to get the country out of the deepest recession since the 1930s. But Republicans have attacked the stimulus spending as wasteful and a failure at the primary objective of lowering unemployment.

The administration defends the economic stimulus bill that Congress passed in February 2009 with a price tag at the time of $787 billion as the right medicine to get the economy back on its feet. President Barack Obama has said even more is needed to battle an unemployment rate that remained stuck in February at 9.7 percent.

Despite heavy lobbying, EU parliament endorses Goldstone report

EU Observer (Link) - Leigh Phillips (March 10, 2010)

Despite an intensive lobbying effort on the part of European Jewish groups, the European Parliament has endorsed the Goldstone report, the UN’s official investigation into the bombardment of the Gaza Strip in January 2009, a report that accuses Israel of war crimes and calls for the prosecution of Israeli officials in the Hague.

In a 335-to-287 vote splitting the house between left and right, MEPs backed a joint resolution from the centre left, far left, Greens and Liberals calling on the EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and the bloc’s member states to “publicly demand the implementation of [the report’s] recommendations and accountability for all violations of international law, including alleged war crimes.”

In April, 2009, a team of UN investigators headed by South African jurist Richard Goldstone, a former member of the South African Constitutional Court and chief prosecutor with the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, was established to look into violations of international human rights law during the Gaza conflict in which Israeli forces killed over 1,400 Palestinians and Hamas killed 13 Israelis.

While the report found that both sides had committed war crimes, Tel Aviv has since attempted to rubbish the document, an effort that has met with success in the US Congress, which last November passed a resolution calling the report “irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy.”

EU parliamentary deputies in recent days have been inundated by lobbying emails from the European Jewish Congress over the vote. A spokesperson for the group told this website that it had been “definitely a really major effort by the EJC, but it’s only a work in progress and there’s still a lot of work to do.”

Aviation Week: Hamas, Hizbullah May Push Israel to War

Israel National News (Link) - Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu (March 9, 2010)

Worrisome escalations in arms stockpiling by Hamas and Hizbullah have convinced defense analysts that another war with Israel is on the horizon this year or in 2011, according to the highly respected Aviation Week.

The publication relied on intelligence estimates that the two terrorist organizations, sponsored by Iran and Syria, have armed themselves far beyond their stockpiles of 2006, when both Hamas and Hizbullah kidnapped Israeli soldiers within a three-week period. The Hizbullah abduction of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev came during a missile attack on the north and led Israel into the 34-day Second Lebanon War. Both soldiers were killed.

Three weeks earlier, Hamas attacked an IDF checkpoint at a Gaza crossing, killed two soldiers and kidnapped Gilad Shalit, who still is presumed alive in captivity.

Aviation Week noted that while Hamas and Hizbullah probably do not want an all-out war now, the current relative calm “may be illusory -- Tehran and Damascus could encourage Hamas and Hizbullah to attack Israel in furtherance of their regional aims.” The journal added that “Iran has also threatened retaliation if Israel attacks its nuclear program; and with popular unrest a constant threat to the leadership in Tehran, a war with Israel, fought through Hamas or Hezbollah, could be one way of diverting Iranian public attention away from the regime.”

Looook how many zeroes in deficit now!

WorldNet Daily (Link) - Jerome R. Corsi (March 8, 2010)

As the Obama administration prepares to finance a 2010 budget deficit expected to top $1.5 trillion, the American public is largely unaware that the true negative net worth of the federal government reached $70.7 trillion last year. That’s more than $70,000,000,000,000. The figure is five times last year’s U.S. GDP and exceeds the world GDP by about $10 trillion.

“The future of this course is hyperinflation,” said John Williams, editor of the electronic newsletter Shadow Government Statistics. “We are headed to a point where the magnitude of U.S. federal budget deficits will undermine investor confidence in the U.S. Treasury.”

At that point, Williams suggested the Federal Reserve will have to become the U.S. government’s lender of last resort, and as the U.S. government monetizes the debt, “we will have no choice but to head down the path of hyperinflation.”

Williams argues the total U.S. obligations, including Social Security and Medicare benefits to be paid in the future, have effectively placed the U.S. government in bankruptcy. He comes to that conclusion even without taking into consideration any future and continuing social welfare obligations embedded in the Obama administration’s planned massive overhaul of health care insurance.

Plans emerge for ‘European Monetary Fund’

EU Observer (Link) - Andrew Willis (March 8, 2010)

Plans for a European Monetary Fund emerged over the weekend as the ongoing debt crisis in Greece forces European politicians to rethink the euro area’s institutional architecture.

The loan-providing fund could be part of wider Franco-German scheme to reinforce economic co-operation and surveillance within the 16-member eurozone, with the European Commission signaling its readiness to come up with proposals.

“The commission is ready to propose a European instrument like this that would have the support of eurozone members,” the EU’s economic and monetary affairs commissioner Olli Rehn told the Financial Times Deutschland, in an article published on Monday (8 March).

Mr Rehn emphasised that any financial aid from a European fund would be linked to “strict conditions.” At present, the EU has a balance of payments facility to provide struggling non-eurozone countries with loans, but no mechanism to help the 16 sharing the single currency.

German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble was the first to come out publicly with news of the radical plans. He said he would “present proposals soon” for a new eurozone institution that has “comparable powers of intervention” to the Washington-based International Monetary Fund.

6.0 magnitude earthquake rocks Turkey

One India (Link) (March 8, 2010)

A 6.0 magnitude earthquake hit eastern Turkey in the wee hours of Monday, Mar 8 killing at least 41 people and trapping many under the rubble of destroyed buildings.

The earthquake rocked Basyurt in Elazig province at 4:32 am (local time). It was followed by 30 aftershocks, say reports.

The casualties are being taken to the state hospital in the nearby town of Kovancilar.

Initially Elazig Crisis Centre said that 41 people were killed while 10 out of the 50 injured were in a critical condition. However, no confirmed report on the number of injured has come up as rescue workers, hospital workers, locals continue their efforts to help the wounded.