In the warning to the Jewish people in Jerusalem and across Israel that they are about to be eliminated from their land:

“We are living in a time when the battle with the Jews has drawn near, as our Prophet Muhammad was reported to have said: ‘You fight the Jews until the trees and the stones will say: Oh servant of Allah, oh Muslim, there is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.’” Sara declared.

The sheik continued his warning from the Quran, telling of the impending “battle with the Jews,” who he called “the most evil of Allah’s creations.” The Islamic cleric also referred to the Muslim holy book when prophesying that soldiers submitting to Allah will exterminate the Jews from existence while “liberating” the Palestinians. Sara then summoned his god to put an early end to the Jews. “Oh Allah, hasten the day of their killing,” the Muslim cleric said amidst another chant of “Amen” coming from the crowd. “Oh Allah, hasten the day we fight them.”

The Muslim inciter prepared those around him to get ready for an Islamic takeover of Israel and the world. “Oh Allah, hasten the day of their slaughter,” Sara continued, blanketed by more calls of “Amen” from onlookers. “Oh Allah, hasten the establishment of the state of the Islamic Caliphate.”

Hamas dominates Gaza and fought a 50-day war with Israel earlier this year. Under its charter, the movement is committed to Israel's destruction. Israel, the United States and several other nations have designated Hamas a terrorist organisation due to its long record of attacks and its refusal to renounce violence. Hamas, which was founded in 1987, won Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006 and reinforced its power in Gaza the following year after ousting its Fatah rivals. Its supporters see it as a legitimate resistance movement against Israel, with whom it has fought for years.

Hamas contested the decision and on Wednesday the EU's General Court found it had been "based not on acts examined and confirmed in decisions of competent authorities but on factual imputations derived from the press and the internet". The court said it was therefore annulling Hamas' designation but would temporarily keep existing measures against the group "in order to ensure the effectiveness of any possible future freezing of funds".

But European Commission spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic said the EU continued to "consider Hamas a terrorist organisation" and would consider its response to the ruling. The Israeli economy minister called the court's decision immoral. "Israel is strong and can defend itself against its enemies, but those who will suffer from strengthening terrorist groups will be the Europeans themselves," Naftali Bennett warned.

Arab spokesmen were so skillful and able to manipulate history that today the UN, Europe, America and the chattering classes, which have no religion at all, are all reinforcing the Arab claim that any who died on the Temple Mount were martyred defenders of holy places, mowed down by savage, unprovoked “Israeli settlers”.

But the world's feeble attempts to erase Jewish history from Jerusalem and the Land of Israel don't cut the mustard. The contrary proof is simply undeniable and overwhelming. And those who advocate the Arab view are liars and charlatans. But at this point, only people like Moshe Feiglin can peacefully liberate the Temple Mount. Because Israel as a nation and as a state is losing the holy site. Those who ascend, like Feiglin and other brave people, are the only obstacle to the Temple Mount's final islamization.

But Jews are stronger than their leaders. A few weeks ago, I visited Jerusalem and I wanted to see the synagogue in Agassi street, Har Nof, where four rabbis had been killed by Israeli Arabs. In the synagogue of the massacre I met a rabbi, Avraham Nadler, who told me: “The terrorists targeted us because we, the religious Jews, are the symbol of unity of the country. We must grow and get stronger after the attack”.

The Israeli authorities must show the same fortitude and moral clarity in front of anti-Semitism and terrorism, which is now focused on Temple Mount. Bring freedom to the House of God or prepare to lose the entire State of Israel. Everybody wants to control those few sacred acres. Will the Jews take what is theirs?

More than seven years after the start of the financial crisis, banks have made strides towards improving financial stability but they are still struggling and pose risks. The move by western nations towards bail-in regimes whereby “too big to fail” banks confiscate individual and companies' deposits has been put in place with very little public discussion or awareness of the risks and ramifications of bail-ins.

If bail-ins take place, which now seems almost certain when banks get into difficulty again, there is a very significant risk that bail-ins alone will lead to a collapse in consumer and business confidence as consumers and businesses see their savings and capital confiscated. This alone will likely compound a difficult economic environment and lead to sharp recessions and depressions - economic contagion.

There is also the financial contagion risk. Many of the bonds are held by pensions funds, institutions and even leveraged investors like hedge funds. If much of the loss-absorbing debt is held by leveraged investors then there is a risk of contagion across the financial system and the contagion boomerang back to banks.

Oh what a tangled web, we weave...

In the summer of 2008, the price of oil utterly collapsed and we all remember what happened after that. Well, the same patterns that we witnessed back in 2008 are happening again. As the price of oil crashed in 2008, so did prices for a whole host of other commodities. That is happening again. Once commodities started crashing, the market for junk bonds started to implode. That is also happening again. Finally, toward the end of 2008, we witnessed a horrifying stock market crash.

Could we be on the verge of another major one? Last week was the worst week for the Dow in more than three years, and stock markets all over the world are crashing right now. Bad financial news continues to roll in from the four corners of the globe on an almost hourly basis. Have we finally reached the “tipping point” that so many have been warning about?

All this comes as subprime auto loans for financially stretched buyers are surging. And the so-called too-big-to-fail banks that needed a taxpayer bailout in 2008 now loom even larger than before the crisis: America's five biggest banks account for 44 percent of bank assets, up from 38 percent in 2007, according to SNL Financial.

The trend toward pre-crisis lending practices worries analysts who favored far-reaching reforms to safeguard the system. "We're on a very dangerous trajectory," said Simon Johnson, professor of global economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Johnson said he fears that last week's congressional vote shows that bank lobbyists still carry the political clout to dilute financial regulations.

The kingdom has two targets in its latest oil war: it is trying to squeeze US shale oil — which requires higher prices to remain competitive with conventional production — out of the market. More broadly, the Saudis are also punishing two rivals, Russia and Iran, for their support of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in the Syrian civil war. Since the Syrian uprising began in 2011, regional and world powers have played out a series of proxy battles there.

While Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been arming many of the Syrian rebels, the Iranian regime —and to a lesser extent, Russia — have provided the weapons and funding to keep Assad in power. Since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the traditional centers of power in the Arab world — Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states — have been nervous about the growing influence of Iran: its nuclear ambitions, its sway over the Iraqi government, its support for the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas, and its alliance with Syria.

The conflict is now a full-blown proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which is playing out across the region. Both sides increasingly see their rivalry as a winner-take-all conflict: if the Shi’ite Hezbollah gains an upper hand in Lebanon, then the Sunnis of Lebanon — and by extension, their Saudi patrons — lose a round to Iran. If a Shi’ite-led government solidifies its control of Iraq, then Iran will have won another round.

Today, the House of Saud rushes to shore up its allies in Bahrain, Yemen, Syria and wherever else it fears Iran’s nefarious influence. And the kingdom is striking back at Iran, and Russia, with its most effective weapon.

In Venezuela, plunging crude oil prices have already sparked social unrest and political uncertainty. Following the OPEC meeting, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro ordered his government to slash the budget of his oil-dependent and economically weak nation. In Russia, the tumbling oil market - combined with Western sanctions linked to the Ukraine crisis - has sparked a collapse in the ruble.

The plunge in crude prices since June has hit Russia particularly hard, as half of the country's revenues stem from energy exports. Russia's central bank hiked its interest rate for the second time in a week on Monday in an attempt to halt the ruble's plunge, which has sparked huge rises for consumer goods. Norway, on the other hand, unexpectedly cut interest rates on Thursday in an effort to counteract the impact of plunging oil prices and stimulate the Nordic nation's oil-dependent economy.

In the Middle East, Iraq - which is battling Islamic State (IS) militants - will take a major hit from the plunging cost of crude, according to expert Richard Mallinson at consultancy Energy Aspects. "For now the Iraqi prime minister (Haider al-Abadi) is managing to hold together his political coalition and has halted IS advances with various international support," Mallinson said. "Iraqi politicians will find it difficult to cut spending in the current context and so the country is potentially facing a serious economic crisis in the next year or two."

Added to the picture, Iran - the second biggest oil producer in the 12-nation OPEC cartel after kingpin Saudi Arabia - is gaining increasing power within Iraq. "Iran is getting even more influential in Iraq, and those two countries together could start to challenge the level of Saudi crude oil exports in coming years," said Petromatrix analyst Olivier Jakob.

Pegida’s growing presence has presented politicians with a dilemma over how to uncouple the strong neo-Nazi element believed to form the core of the protests from ordinary Germans with grievances against the government, who make up the bulk of the protesters. Almost two-thirds of Germans, according to a poll for news magazine Spiegel by the TNS institute, believe that Angela Merkel’s government is not doing enough to address concerns about immigration and asylum seekers, and 34% think Germany is enduring a process of “Islamisation”.

Political scientists have said the group’s presentation of itself as a harmless protest movement is what makes it so insidious. “Something quite new is brewing here,” said Hajo Funke, a researcher into rightwing extremism at the Free University in Berlin. “We haven’t seen rudiments like these of an extreme rightwing inspired mass movement for years”. Funke said that even the group’s name was incendiary. “It’s nothing short of a veritable call to arms by far-right populists,” he said, suggesting that the message triggered comparisons to Third Reich propaganda.

While the meeting covered various issues – including the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the turmoil in the Middle East – Kerry noted that the US is still committed to closing Guantanamo. “The US commitment to the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison was also illustrated and the desire expressed for the Holy See’s assistance in seeking adequate humanitarian solutions for current inmates,” Vatican spokesperson Father Federico Lombardi told the Vatican Insider.

With more than 130 detainees still at Guantanamo, the US is perhaps hoping the Vatican’s many international connections could convince countries to change their minds and take detainees into their own facilities, the Vatican Insider reported. There has been no information regarding what the Vatican would do to help.

For example, in the Indian debate, "the argument that Russia had re-drawn internationally recognized borders in Europe," is not taken seriously - after all, the West had done the same in destroying Yugoslavia, according to a report by the CDU-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation. A Norwegian think tank notes that Brazilian foreign policy makers are no longer inclined to remain silent on western countries' human rights violations, while loudly criticizing those of others. Observers find that the world "order" under western domination is beginning to crumble.

In May the "Policy Brief" of the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center reported that in Brazil, one is reminded of "the West’s highly selective support of demonstrations and coup d’états in other countries." For example, Brazilians recall that "despite its principled rhetoric" the West wasted no time in recognizing illegitimate putsch regimes - in Venezuela (2002), in Honduras (2009), and in Egypt (2013) and "actively support repressive governments when they used force against protest movements, eg in Bahrain."

Brazilian observers ask, why did nobody propose excluding the US from the G-8 in 2003 when it violated international law by invading Iraq? Why is Iran an "international pariah," while Israel’s nuclear weapons are quietly tolerated? Why are systematic human rights abuses and a lack of democratic legitimacy "in countries supportive of the US acceptable, but not in others?"

"Commentators in Brazil have argued that these inconsistencies and double standards are in their totality far more damaging to international order than any Russian policy," according to the Norwegian "Policy Brief." "If asked which country was the greatest threat to international stability, most Brazilian foreign policymakers and observers would not name Russia, Iran and North Korea, but the US."

On Thursday, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen and Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere resolved to present to the cabinet in the middle of next week a draft parliamentary mandate that allows for a huge expansion of the Bundeswehr (German army) deployment in Iraq. For the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, the government is to send combat troops into a war zone without a mandate from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) or United Nations (UN) mandate.

Almost 70 years after the end of World War II, the German elite wants to free itself from all the restrictions imposed on it following the historical crimes of the Third Reich. The German army is to be able to deploy anywhere in the world and at any time to defend German political and economic interests. This far-reaching initiative is the result of a systematic campaign.

At the Munich Security Conference earlier this year, Steinmeier, von der Leyen and Federal President Joachim Gauck used virtually the same words to announce the end of military restraints on Germany. Since then, the government has put this programme into action in Ukraine and the Middle East. In doing so, it has been accompanied by a wave of unprecedented war propaganda on the part of the media.

At the end of the year, the German military is now to be exempt from all restrictions. The federal government is supported in this project by the opposition parties.