Israel bolsters border with Egypt following terror alert

Recent intelligence reveals that an Islamic Jihad terror cell from Gaza is attempting to infiltrate Israel via Sinai. As a result, Israel's navy has sent additional warships to its maritime border with Egypt. Meanwhile, Iran reported yesterday that its warships will make another round in the Red Sea in coming weeks.

Is Michele Bachmann Jewish?

No...but some Republican donors think she is, and it seems to be working in her favor. The New York Post reports:

Some Jewish donors are telling fund-raisers for Romney, a Mormon, that while they like him, they'd rather open their wallets for the "Jewish candidate," who they don't realize is actually a Lutheran, The Post has learned. "It's a real problem," one Romney fund-raiser said. "We're working very hard in the Jewish community because of Obama's Israel problem. This was surprising." Like other Republicans, Romney is trying to capitalize on President Obama's waning support among Jewish voters, who are upset with his administration's policies toward Israel.

Although Bachmann is not Jewish, she spent a summer working on a kibbutz in Israel (albeit as part of ministry work) and is a staunch supporter of the Jewish state. As she told the Weekly Standard earlier this summer:

If you consider what it was like in 1948 and literally watch flowers bloom in a desert over time — I don’t know if any nation has paralleled the rise of Israel since 1948.

By referring to Bachmann as the Jewish candidate, perhaps donors have not so much confused her religious affiliation, but rather have pinpointed her as Israel's strongest supporter among the Republican field. In response to a question on the relationship between America and Israel's security at the Republican Jewish Coalition, Bachmann said the following:

I am convinced in my heart and in my mind that if the United States fails to stand with Israel, that is the end of the United States . . . [W]e have to show that we are inextricably entwined, that as a nation we have been blessed because of our relationship with Israel, and if we reject Israel, then there is a curse that comes into play. And my husband and I are both Christians, and we believe very strongly the verse from Genesis [Genesis 12:3], we believe very strongly that nations also receive blessings as they bless Israel. It is a strong and beautiful principle.

Jewish? No. Honorary Jew? Perhaps.

The redemption will not be monetized

Liberty? (Source: Flickr)

Porter Stansberry of Stansberry's Investments has created a new video presentation on the gloomy future of the dollar and the US economic system as we know it. Stansberry is credited with predicting the crash of many companies in the 2008 economic crisis, yet he claims that the worst is yet to come. According to his predictions, many Americans could soon face skyrocketing prices of basic commodities such as milk, bread and gas, coupled with closed banks, failing credit card companies, and bans on buying gold and foreign currencies.

America's consumption-led way of life led the country to borrow frivolously using short-term loans on which they were unable to pay interest. When major banks collapsed in 2008, debts were absorbed by the U.S. government and other world governments from which it borrows. The reason Americans don't feel these debts to their fullest is because the response of the US monetary system for the past decade has been to print dollars whenever it's in a bind. The US is the only debtor that can print more of the world's reserve currency -- US dollars -- anytime it wants. Because it can always print more dollars, the US can never go broke, since its currency forms the foundation of the world's economic system since World War 2.

The danger of this strategy comes when other countries realize what's going on and start to discount the value of the US dollar. Ever since the US has become accustomed to consuming more than producing, the real value of the dollar has sunk. According to Stansberry, this consumption-led way of life will become impossible to maintain. If other countries begin to price basic commodities in a currency other than dollars, those commodities will become much more expensive to Americans, and the frivolity of US monetary policy of the last decade will be felt rapidly. Rising oil prices would cripple the US economy and way of life, affecting the cost of transporting food, farming, commuting to work, air travel  prices.

Stansberry claims the world's preference for currencies other than the dollar has already begun, even if most Americans find it hard to believe. Robert Fisk recently wrote that Europe and Gulf states are conspiring to end dollar dealings for oil and instead move to a combination of Asian and new currencies to govern the oil market. China has recently been reported as investing more in the Yen than in the dollar. Americans are used to being able to use dollars wherever they travel, but Stansberry claims a major bank in Mexico has refused to accept dollars on the grounds of the weakening of the currency.

You can watch Stansberry's video presentation here. The presentation is long, and there's no way to rewind, fast-forward or pause (as far as I know), but there's a lot of good information in there, the gist of which I've summarized here. Stansberry's warning is intended for investors and those seeking to avoid the hit to their investments and retirement funds. Beyond this, these warnings also serve to herald the decline not only of the dollar, but of the consumption-led lifestyle which has become the universal currency of life in the last several decades. In this week's Haftorah (weekly reading of the Prophets), we read the following:

 חנם נמכרתם ולא בכסף תגאלו

You were sold for nothing, and without money will you be redeemed (Isaiah 52:3)

Today the values of consumerism seem so fundamental to life itself, so much as we can not even accept the basic human rights of a person who does not "work"--a view completely foreign to Torah, in which a poor person is a representation of a loan which God owes that person which we can pay for Him. After spending a week on Rothschild Boulevard, I believe one of the major achievements of Israel's latest protest movement is the introduction of a way of life which aspires to exist outside of the economic system which the government has imported from America. No one knows where it is heading--not even those who are considered its "leaders".

The tyranny of a life led by consumption is crumbling, and in its midst the ground is clearing for the reemergence of the values and dreams that have laid dormant for our two thousand years of exile. We need not rely on the empty promises of anarchy, socialism, or secular democratic utopias imported from states fallen, nor on doctrines of asceticism, minimalism or other dogmas that champion the Greek split between body and soul. After all, our people left Egypt not hungry and miserable, but laden with its stashes of gold and silver. The answers the times seek are ever-bubbling in the overflowing spring of the soul of our people, who throughout two thousand years of exile awaited the pure soil and air of the Land of Israel like a child waiting for its mother to return home, for the place where it can rekindle the spirit of prophecy and the bond between humanity and God for the sake of all of creation.

Friday is Gimmel Elul, the Yartzeit of Rav Kook, who saw these days.

China will support unilateral Palestinian sate bid

China has joined the list of countries who support a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state in September.

According to Israel's foreign ministry, 130-140 states are expected to vote in favor of a unilateral Palestinian state--independence without formal peace agreement with Israel. Only five countries have promised Israel that they will vote against the Palestinian bid: the U.S., Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic. Other nations with otherwise "warm" relations are expected to be absent or abstain rather than vote against. Whether the EU's 27 countries with vote in favor, abstain or oppose remains in question.

Palestinians will bring their bid to the UN Security Council on September 20th, but the General Assembly vote, needed to pass with a two thirds majority should the US veto the motion, will take place only in October.

8 injured in Tel Aviv terror attck

On late Sunday night a 20-year-old Nablus resident stabbed a Tel Aviv cab driver, stole his cab, and drove it towards the HaOman 17 nightclub where one thousand high schoolers were celebrating the end of the summer. The man subsequently stepped out of the car, yelled Allah Akbar, and began stabbing people. Luckily, nearly all the teenagers were inside the club at the time of the attack, preventing what could have been a far worse outcome. The man was abruptly tackled to the ground outside the club by Border Police officers, but not before stabbing and injuring eight border police officers and security guards. Police are now trying to figure out how the terrorist knew about the youth party at the nightclub in the first place. 


Aviv Kriyaf, one of the injured security guards, told YNet the following: "I have no doubt that he tried to reach the teenagers. I am scared to think about what could have happened had he succeeded (h"v). There were thousands of children there who by miracle were unharmed." 

21 trapped in upstate NY hotel

Officials are concerned that the Gilboa Dam has been breached after all signals to the dam were lost this morning. Downstream from the dam, twenty-one people are stranded in a hotel threatened by the river's rising levels. Via myFOXNY:

A massive effort was underway Sunday to rescue 21-people, including several children, trapped in a Catskills motel as fast rising storm waters surrounded the building. The motel is in Prattsville, N.Y.  The N.Y. National Guard deployed 129 soldiers and several speed boats to try to get to the Green County motel.

John Esquivel spoke on the phone with Fox 5 News.  He is with his family in the Moore's Motel.  He says, when they woke up this morning, they saw rising water.  By the time they got ready to leave, the entire building was surrounded by a 450 yard wide river.

Everyone in the building rushed up to the second floor.  Brown, debris filled waters rose over the entire first floor of the building.  All power and phone service was lost in the building.
Their main concern was if a dam above the motel were to break.

"If that dam breaks, we're going to be in worse shape," Esquivel said in a phone interview with Fox 5 News...Things got so desperate that the adults starting planning what they were going to do if the build started breaking apart or floating away.  Their plans included tying sheets to each other so they would not be carried apart.  They were worried as several mobile homes and cars rushed by, but did not strike the building they are trapped inside.

Update: 51 People Saved From Upstate Motel

Irene vs. Katrina

Source: The Weather Channel

Irene in Infrared, August 27th (The Weather Channel)

Irene from space (NASA)