Oil Price: Saudi Arabia Cuts Subsidies As Budget Deficit Soars - by Andy Tully

The price of crude oil has dropped so low that Saudi Arabia is facing a growing budget deficit, prompting the rich oil kingdom to make sharp cuts in its budget, levy new taxes and reduce government subsidies for water, electrical power and even gasoline.

This is an abrupt change in the country, OPEC’s largest oil producer, which has used its vast oil revenues to prop up the national economy to serve a population of about 30 million people. But even Saudi Arabia can’t sustain such practices when it runs a $98 billion deficit this year – about 15 percent of its gross domestic product.

As a result, Riyadh announced Monday it will cut government spending by 14 percent in the coming fiscal year as it sees no quick end to the depression in oil prices, especially now that Iran, expected to be free of Western sanctions in the near future, will return to the global oil market.

And without even waiting for 2016 to arrive, the government immediately raised the price of retail gasoline by 50 percent, from 0.60 of a riyal to 0.90 of a riyal per liter of premium gasoline – or from 16 cents to 24 cents. That may not seem a huge cost compared with even today’s lower gasoline prices in the West, but it’s crucial in a country that relies on cars because there is no public transportation.

Certainly the low price of oil isn’t the only reason Saudi Arabia is running a deficit. It’s also spending generously on military action in the Middle East. It is giving financial support to rebels opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom Riyadh wants out. And since last spring it has waged an air war in Yemen against Houthi rebels, who are supported by Iran, a religious rival of Saudi Arabia.

But the biggest reason for the deficit is the price of oil. In June 2014, the average global price for a barrel of crude was above $110. Increased production in non-OPEC countries began to create a supply imbalance, putting downward pressure on oil prices. Now a barrel of oil costs less than $40.

Read more: Saudi Arabia Cuts Subsidies As Budget Deficit Soars | OilPrice.com

The Netherlands, US, Switzerland: The Down-to-Earth Solution to Climate Change - by Ken Roseborro

Research conducted by the Rodale Institute in the U.S., the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture in Switzerland and the Louis Bolk Institute in the Netherlands has found that organic farming methods are
effective at removing carbon dioxide (CO2)—the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change—from the atmosphere.

The Carbon Underground is coordinating global research to demonstrate the potential of sustainable agriculture and land management to sequester carbon and mitigate climate change.

Read more: The Down-to-Earth Solution to Climate Change

Weapons Industry: ISIS weapons sourced from Russia, China, US and EU

The terror group have used these weapons to commit gross war crimes in both Syria and Iraq and also to take control over areas across Syria and Iraq.

The report draws on expert analysis of thousands of verified videos and images and details how IS fighters are using arms, mainly looted from Iraqi military stocks, which were manufactured and designed in more than two dozen countries, including EU states.

Other weapons have been acquired during battle, through illicit trade as well as through defection of fighters across Syria and Iraq.

Patrick Wilcken, Researcher on Arms Control, Security Trade and Human Rights at Amnesty International said the vast and varied weaponry being used by militants was “a textbook case of how reckless arms trading fuels atrocities on a massive scale.”

Note EU-Digest: the solution is simple: but the implementation is nearly impossible. National governments in cooperation with the UN must register all local and international arms dealers and trace their sales and whenever possible prosecute them.The least National Governments can do is to make the life of weapons dealers more difficult. It proves once again, given the actual facts, how hypocritical governments are when it comes to curbing their profitable weapons industry.

Read more: ISIS weapons sourced from Russia, China, US and EU

Kurds - 15,000 in Dusseldorf march protesting Turkey's crackdown on Kurds

Around 15,000 people marched in Dusseldorf on Saturday to protest against Turkey's military crackdown against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels, local police said.

The marchers, demonstrating on behalf of Germany's federation of Kurdish groups, Nav-Dem, also slammed the European Union for striking a refugee "deal" with Ankara, promising three billion euros in return for holding back refugee flows.

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A police spokesman said the turnout at the protest was far higher than the 7,000 people expected by the organisers.
 
After a ceasefire for more than two years, fighting resumed last summer between Turkish security forces and the PKK, dashing hopes of ending a conflict that has left more than 40,000 people dead since 1984.

Turkish security forces are currently imposing curfews in several towns in the Kurdish-dominated southeast in a bid to root out PKK rebels from urban centres.

Read more: Flash - 15,000 in Dusseldorf march protesting Turkey's crackdown on Kurds - France 24

Islam and the West: An Irreconcilable Conflict? - by Pat Buchanan

"I worry greatly that the rhetoric coming from the Republicans, particularly Donald Trump, is sending a message to Muslims here ... and ... around the world, that there is a 'clash of civilizations.'"

So said Hillary Clinton in Saturday night's New Hampshire debate.

Yet, that phrase was not popularized by Donald Trump, but by Harvard's famed Samuel Huntington. His "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" has been described by Zbigniew Brzezinski as providing "quintessential insights necessary for a broad understanding of world affairs in our time."

That Clinton is unaware of the thesis, or dismisses it, does not speak well of the depth of her understanding of our world.

Another attack on Trump, more veiled, came Monday in an "open letter" in The Washington Post where four dozen religious leaders, led by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, charge "some politicians, candidates and commentators" with failing to follow Thomas Jefferson's dictum:

"I never will, by any word or act ... admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others."   
Intending no disrespect to Jefferson, if you do not inquire "into the religious opinions of others" in this world, it can get you killed.
   
"We love our Muslim siblings in humanity," said the signers of Cardinal McCarrick's letter, "they serve our communities as doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, journalists, first responders, and as members of the U.S. Armed forces and Congress."

Undeniably true. But, unfortunately, that is not the end of the matter.

Did the worst attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor, 9/11, have nothing to do with the Islamic faith?    
Did Fort Hood and the San Bernardino massacres, the London subway bombings and the killings at Charlie Hebdo, as well as the slaughter at the Bataclan in Paris, have nothing to do with Islam?
   
Does the lengthening list of atrocities by terrorist cells of ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Qaida, al-Shabaab and the Nusra Front have nothing to do with Islam? Is it really illiberal to inquire "into the religious opinions" of those who perpetrate these atrocities? Or is it suicidal not to?

There has arisen a legitimate question as to whether Islamism can coexist peacefully with, or within, a post-Christian secular West.

For, as the Poet of the Empire, Rudyard Kipling, wrote: "Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat."

As of 1960, the Great Wave of immigration into the United States from Southern and Eastern Europe had been halted for 35 years. And the children of these millions had been largely assimilated and Americanized.
  
Yet, 50 years after the Turkish gastarbeiters were brought in the millions into Germany, and Algerians and other North Africans were brought into France, no such wholesale assimilation had taken place.

Why not? Why are there still large, indigestible communities in France where French citizens do not venture and French police are ever on alert?

What inhibits the assimilation that swiftly followed the entry of millions of Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Jews into the United States from 1890 to 1920? Might it have something to do with Islam and its inherent resistance to a diversity of faiths?

Set aside faith-based terrorism and Islamist terrorism, and consider the nations and regimes of the Middle and Near East.

Iran holds presidential elections every four years, but is a Shiite theocracy where the Ayatollah is a virtual dictator. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni kingdom and home to Wahhabism, a Sunni form of puritanism.   
Those ruling regimes are rooted in Islam.
  
And while secular America embraces expressions of religious pluralism and sexual freedom, homosexuality and apostasy are often viewed as capital crimes in Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia.    
Where Islam is the ruling faith, the Quran is secular law.
   
Catholic historian Hilaire Belloc saw our future on its way, even before World War II: "[I]n the contrast between our religious chaos and the religious certitude still strong throughout the Mohammedan world ... lies our peril."

Historically, Christianity came to dominate the Roman Empire through preaching, teaching, example and martyrdom. Islam used the sword to conquer the Middle and Near East, North Africa and Spain in a single century, until stopped at Poitiers by Charles Martel.

And this is today's crucial distinction: Islam is not simply a religion of 1.6 billion people, it is also a political ideology for ruling nations and, one day, the world.

To the True Believer, Islam is ultimately to be imposed on all of mankind, which is to be ruled by the prescriptions of the Quran. And where Muslims achieve a majority, Christianity is, at best, tolerated.

Nor is this position illogical. For, if there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet, all other religions are false and none can lead to salvation. Why should false, heretical and ruinous faiths not be suppressed?

Behind the reluctance of Trump and other Americans to send another U.S. army into a region that has seen wars in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan leave us with ashes in our mouths, lies a wisdom born of painful experience.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

From: Islam and the West: An Irreconcilable Conflict? - Rasmussen Reports™

Christmas: celebrating the birthday of my hero - Jesus Christ - by RM

Bethlehem

This morning as I was waking up I remembered a program the other night which focused on people which have influenced history over the years gone by..

I  can't remember them all by name as I write this,  but it was quite a long list. Some they mentioned had stuck to my mind, and I arranged them randomly:  Cleopatra, Wolf Messing, Saud bin Abdul Aziz, Napoleon, Nero, Jeanne d'Arc, Ben Gurion, Hitler, Gandhi, Buddha, Ben Laden, Churchill,  Ataturk, Socrates, Mandela, Saladin, Mother Teresa, Djamila Bouhired, Attila the Hun, Yassar Arafat,  Simon Bolivar, Mao, Samora Machel, etc., etc. 

The makers of this TV program, in order not to step on any sensitive religious toes, however, left out most of the  key "religious figures", who have profoundly impacted history and are even doing so today. 

Among those left out, I really only have one favorite - Jesus Christ, whose birthday we are celebrating every year on this day.. 

He is my hero for several reason. First because I don't consider him "religious" in the sense how we humans qualify religion as such .

Jesus is unique in the sense that his message was only about love -" love your neighbor as yourself" and he never encouraged violence or revenge. Even when he was nailed to the cross by the Romans and Jews he cried out: "God forgive them because they don't know what they are doing".  A message of love which still resonates all around the world.

Yes indeed, among all these people listed , or not, during that TV presentation,  Jesus Christ is on the top of my list.

Merry Christmas and may Peace on Earth become a reality and part of daily life around the globe - also for you in 2016.

EU-Digest 

Turkey: Unknown Explosion at Istanbul Charter Flights Airport Kills One, Wounds Another- by Conor Gaffey

An explosion at a Turkish airport on Wednesday has killed one woman and wounded another according to Turkish television, AFP reports.

The explosion, the cause of which remains unknown, occurred on the tarmac outside the terminal building at Sabiha Gökçen airport, which is on the Asian side of Istanbul. Airport cleaner Zehra Yamac, 30, sustained head wounds during the blast and was hospitalized but died of her wounds hours later. Another airport cleaner was also wounded.

The explosion occurred around 2am local time, Turkish daily Hurriyet reported. Hurriyet also named the wounded victim as Canan Burgulu, who is receiving treatment at the Marmara Education and Research Hospital in Istanbul.

Read more: Unknown Explosion at Istanbul Airport Kills One, Wounds Another