Headline News 08/12/2017

Headlines

• Government Borrowing Threatens the UK Economy and Leaves it Open to a Venezuela-Style Crash, Bank of England Official Warns

• Trump Ticks the Box on Another Campaign Promise at the Expense of Inflaming the Muslim World

• Pakistan Air Force Chief Orders U.S. Drones to be Shot Down if They Enter the Country's Airspace

Details

Government Borrowing Threatens the UK Economy and Leaves it Open to a Venezuela-Style Crash, Bank of England Official Warns

Soaring Government borrowing poses a serious threat to the British economy, putting it at risk of a Venezuela style crash, a Bank of England official has warned. Richard Sharp, a member of the Bank's Financial Stability Committee, told an audience at University College London last night the UK is 'heavily indebted' and 'suffering from anaemic growth'. He said that since he entered finance, Venezuela has changed from being a robust, stable economy similar to Britain to economic ruin. Bank officials rarely intervene on the political ramifications of economic decisions and Mr Sharp speaking out is likely to provoke irritation. Bank Governor Mark Carney has repeatedly infuriated Brexiteers with pessimistic forecasts of the economy. Pointing to the fact that Britain has racked up an additional £1 trillion of debt since 2008, he added: 'What does seem to me to be apparent is that we have a debt level which gives us limited capacity for national manoeuvre. 'It is important to remain aware of the fact that if we lose our fiscal space, financial stability is jeopardised.'Mr Sharp suggested that the level of borrowing the Government has subjected the country to means Britain could be at risk of a Venezuela style collapse. 'When I started in finance Venezuela was a AAA credit ... Venezuela is now in default. 'It is important to me that we recognise that the UK's debt levels may be stretched given the risk that unexpected shocks may materialise,' he added. His comments come a week after Chancellor Philip Hammond's Budget, in which he pledged to splurge an extra £25 billion, despite Brexit contributing to a rapidly deteriorating economic outlook. Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party has also promised to borrow an extra £250 billion to implement policies such as re-nationalisation and pay rises for public sector workers. [Source: The Daily Mail]

Brexit has immensely damaged Britain’s chances of correcting its debt burdens. With the EU talks stalled and very little headway made in trade agreements with the US, India and China, the UK will not only be forced to borrow more, but will not be able to service its debts.

Trump Ticks the Box on Another Campaign Promise at the Expense of Inflaming the Muslim World

President Donald Trump on Wednesday stirred the pot across the Muslim world by announcing that the US would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state. Some regional leaders didn't even wait for the announcement to become official before predicting a violent response. "He is declaring war in the Middle East, he is declaring war against 1.5 billion Muslims (and) hundreds of millions of Christians that are not going to accept the holy shrines to be totally under the hegemony of the Jewish state," Manuel Hassassian, the Palestinian general delegate to the UK, told the BBC on Wednesday. Turkey's deputy prime minister said the move "will be a major catastrophe." Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the move a "red line" for Muslims. The militant Palestinian Sunni Muslim group Hamas used the occasion to call for another intifada, or uprising, against the Jewish state. An Iranian-backed militia operating in Iraq said the move would give some "legitimate reason to target American forces." In response, US embassies across the Middle East braced for violence. Despite the fury it provoked, "the Trump announcement will change nothing on the ground itself," Michael Koplow, the policy director at the Israel Policy Forum, an advocacy group supporting a two-state solution, wrote at the Jewish Telegraph Agency.

The Jewish state considers Jerusalem its capital. The policy platforms of successive Democratic candidates have considered Jerusalem to be the Jewish state’s capital, and the US Congress passed legislation recognizing Jerusalem as the Jewish state 's capital back in 1995 (the legislation allowed the president to postpone the official recognition, something all subsequent presidents had done until this week). Yet Hamas frequently calls for intifadas. Iranian-backed forces have several times attacked or imperiled US forces operating in the Middle East. Turkey and the Jewish state last year normalized relations after six years of difficult silence. Absent from Trump's speech was a timetable for moving the US Embassy. "As a practical matter, no embassy is constructed today anywhere in the world in shorter than three or four years — no embassy," a Trump administration official told the Washington Examiner. The US will probably first study sites and evaluate security concerns before then beginning a lengthy construction process that is likely to stretch past Trump's current term in office. As far as endangering the already dubious peace process, Trump on Wednesday sought to convey that the US took no position on how Jerusalem should ultimately be divided in a two-state solution. Besides inflaming an already inflamed Middle East, Trump's announcement makes a few material changes. As Koplow points out, it will irk the US's Sunni Arab allies who support the Palestinians and don't want to be seen as siding with the US and the Jewish state. Domestically, the move allows Trump to tick the box on another campaign promise unilaterally. "Some say [past presidents] lacked courage, but they made their best judgments based on facts as they understood them at the time," Trump said during the announcement. The Jewish state is pleased by the decision. The Palestinian Authority protests it. Fundamentalist groups have called for violence against the Jewish state and the US. Trump's secretaries of state and of defense cautioned against the move out of security concerns, but Trump is the executive. Politically at home, Trump has executed on a promise and again demonstrated that for his administration, antagonizing the Muslim world is an acceptable price to pay. [Source: Business Insider]

The time for pathetic speeches by the coward leaders of the Muslim world is at an end. Only the re-establishment of Khilafah Rashidah (Righteous Caliphate) upon the method of the Prophethood can liberate occupied Palestine as well as all the occupied territories of the Muslim world.

Pakistan Air Force Chief Orders U.S. Drones to be Shot Down if They Enter the Country's Airspace

The head of the Pakistan Air Force has has ordered his force to shoot down drones that enter the country's airspace including ones belonging to the U.S. The orders from Chief Sohail Aman are a complete turnaround from the air force's previous position in which it condemned drone strikes on its soil but had never threatened to shoot the unmanned aerial vehicles down. The announcement was made public about two weeks after a US drone strike targeted a militant compound in Pakistan's tribal region near the Afghan border, killing three militants, 'We will not allow anyone to violate our airspace. 'I have ordered PAF to shoot down drones, including those of the US, if they enter our airspace, violating the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity,' Air Chief Marshal Sohail Aman told an audience in Islamabad. The comment was all the more surprising given that the U.S. is supposedly a close ally of Pakistan with it's own military often complicit in allowing American led missile strikes on militant positions which have been occurring since 2004. Yet, after each drone strike, the Pakistan foreign office has issued statements condemning the actions stating they will not tolerate strikes on its territory.This time the Pakistan administration appears to be talking tough by taking a firm line over future drone strikes in its country .It's believed that senior members of terrorist groups have been killed in such attacks but that hundreds of civilians, including women and children and also been killed as well. There has been no response so far from the White House. [Source: The Daily Mail]

Empty words and rhetoric mean very little from the Air Chief. If Pakistan sincerely wants to end American hegemony then it should start by seizing the American embassy—the center of all plots against Pakistan—and expelling all US personnel. Surely this is the very least that can be done.