There has been a recent flurry of agitated and panic laden emails and articles coming our way pressing the global trade collapse scenario and how we should all head for the hills with our tins of beans, automatic weapons and ammo.

The basis on which these dire warnings are being made is the dramatic drop in the Baltic Dry Index. The article that seems to have set this wave off is posted on one of the less reliable alternative news websites which gives us immediate cause for concern.

We agree that the free market capitalist system is in the process of collapsing from its current form into a new form. It seems to us that there are forces at work that wish to see a total collapse into financial, and ultimately social, anarchy while there are other forces that are seeking to establish a new world economic order modeled to their design. In the midst of such immense events it is important to remain sober and calm and not succumb to the agitation and panic that many commentators seem eager to generate.

The US military has failed to keep track of thousands of weapons shipped to Afghanistan, leaving them vulnerable to being lost or stolen, a report says.

The report has been compiled by congressional auditors, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).

It found that, in the four years up to June 2008, the US military failed to keep complete records on some 222,000 weapons entering the country.

The report will be discussed in the US House of Representatives on Thursday.

It states that weapons supplied by the US to the Afghan military "are at serious risk of theft or loss".

Tel Aviv, Asharq Al-Awsat- Israeli sources have revealed that Hezbollah Commander Imad Mughniyeh was assassinated by Israeli Mossad agents and aided by information gathered by the Central Intelligence Agency from Hezbollah commander Ali Moussa Daqduq, who was arrested in Iraq in January 2007.

The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth revealed that the CIA arrested Daqduq, a commander in the Lebanese movement near Karbala, Iraq, in 2007. He had been sent to Iran by Mughniyeh in order to receive training, following this Daqduq helped to train elements of the Mahdi army in Iraq.

Yedioth Ahronoth also alleges that Daqduq had given an accurate physical description of Mughniyeh, as well as providing information regarding his behavior, his military tactics, his known acquaintances, and the secret phone number that Mughniyeh used.

While the world slithers into the black hole of economic collapse, those that head the institutions that sit astride its nations and peoples met in Davos, Switzerland last week for the World Economic Forum. Attendance was, as always, by invitation only and that included the press so we can be sure that whatever came out of Davos 'on-the-record' was intended to. In case you doubt the ability of conference organizers to manage the information flow consider two things; there are numerous "off-the-record" briefings throughout the conference the details of which we never hear, and all those attending, including journalists, want to be invited back for they are members of the Inner Circle and rely on their membership for their place in life.

We were not invited which is somewhat galling given that in October 2005 (The Economic Collapse: An Insider's View) and then again in August 2006 (Signs of the Economic Apocalypse - Update) sott.net (or signs-of-the-times.org as it was then) was hosting podcasts in which the forthcoming collapse of the free market capitalist system was discussed in detail as well as our consistent warnings over the last five years. It is even more galling to find that Nouriel Roubini is being treated as some sort of god for saying exactly the same thing as sott.net after we said it. The upside of not being invited is that you, dear reader, can rest assured of our continued independence of both mind and spirit.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak voiced harsh criticism against Hamas on Wednesday, accusing the Islamist Palestinian movement of being responsible for the shedding of Arab blood.

"How long will Arab blood continue to be spilled, only to hear those who admit to miscalculating the scope and scale of Israel's response?" Mubarak asked in a speech marking Egypt's national day to honor its police force.

Mubarak's comment came in reference to remarks reportedly made by Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal, who admitted at the end of the three-week Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip that he did not anticipate the scope of Israel's operation. Similar sentiments were expressed by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah at the end of the Second Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.

Herzliya - With Hamas signaling it is willing to enter a cease-fire with Israel, it was the U.S.-backed Fatah party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas whose so-called military wing took responsibility for a barrage of rockets and mortars fired from the Gaza Strip today.

Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades called WND and also released an official pamphlet to take credit for firing at least five rockets and four mortars today, lightly wounding two Israeli soldiers and one civilian. Also taking responsibility was a cell claiming it was working on behalf of the Iranian-backed, Hamas-allied Islamic Jihad terrorist organization.

Contacted by WND, the leadership of Islamic Jihad in both Gaza and the West Bank were not aware their group launched any rockets.

The claimed results of an immediate investigation launched by both Hamas and Islamic Jihad were shared with WND. The probe found the Islamic Jihad rockets were actually fired by Fatah.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad sources explained that when Hamas took over Gaza from its Fatah rivals in 2007, about 100 members of Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades joined Islamic Jihad, and it was those members who launched today's attacks.

The Spanish police announced Wednesday that they had arrested six people suspected of a £420 million fraud in a public company traded on the AIM exchange in London. No names were released, but the newspaper El Pais reported that among those arrested is a former Mossad agent, Avraham Hochman, whom the newspaper described as the one of the "brains" behind the fraud.

Global financial events seem to be moving with such speed and complexity that it can be difficult to see just where we are headed. Using an imperfect scientific analogy, we seem to be experiencing a Phase Transition, a change from one economic state to another. Just as in a Phase Transition in the physical world, a great deal of heat/energy is involved in the transition. In the economic phase transition this heat is felt keenly on both a personal material and emotional level while the intellect struggles to make sense of it all.

Naturally, we all seek to explain what we perceive in terms of the phase we have been in rather than in terms of the phase we are moving towards. We are like water molecules trying to understand the process of boiling and evaporation in the absence of any concept of being in a gaseous (vapour) state.

What is important is that we understand that we are in a controlled Phase Transition. It may seem chaotic to us but there is an underlying order to it. We are being taken to a new economic phase or Economic Order. The separation between the state and big business is long gone, we find ourselves with increasingly narrow options as our environment changes around us in ways increasingly unfamiliar. We have to apply ourselves in seeking to understand as exactly as possible the new economic environment so as to be better able to navigate our way through it.

We are moving, without doubt, towards totalitarian government first on a national, then regional and ultimately global scale. Totalitarianism has to be resisted on the street, in the market place and in our hearts and minds. Protest is crucial to resistance for it shows us that we are not alone. Similarly economic boycotts at an individual level seem as a drop in the ocean but when added together the economic actions we all take are the economy; if we all boycott a country's products then there will be no market for them; if we all take our bank deposits from the banks there will be a real banking crisis.

During the fighting in the Gaza Strip, the religious media - and on two occasions, the Israel Defense Forces weekly journal Bamahane - were full of praise for the army rabbinate. The substantial role of religious officers and soldiers in the front-line units of the IDF was, for the first time, supported also by the significant presence of rabbis there.

The chief army rabbi, Brigadier General Avichai Rontzki, joined the troops in the field on a number of occasions, as did rabbis under his command.

Officers and soldiers reported that they felt "spiritually elevated" and "morally empowered" by conversations with rabbis who gave them encouragement before the confrontation with the Palestinians.

The sickening horrors to which the Zionists have subjected the Palestinians for more than sixty years defy credulity. I received this message from Barbara Lubin, founder of Middle East Children's Alliance today:

I entered the Gaza Strip on Wednesday night with my friend and fellow activist Sharon Wallace after waiting ten hours at the Egypt/Gaza. The destruction and trauma is even greater than I expected. In just two short days I met with families who were given minutes to evacuate their homes and are now living in overcrowded UN schools; I saw the ruins of bombed greenhouses; I looked out the window at fields and roads torn up by the tread of Israeli tanks; and I visited two universities where MECA supports students with scholarships-severely damaged by Israeli bombs.

Out of all the devastation I have seen so far, there is one story in particular that I think the world needs to hear. I met a mother who was at home with her ten children when Israeli soldiers entered the house. The soldiers told her she had to choose five of her children to "give as a gift to Israel." As she screamed in horror they repeated the demand and told her she could choose or they would choose for her. Then these soldiers murdered five of her children in front of her. The concept of "Jewish morality" is truly dead. We can be fascists, terrorists, and Nazis just like everybody else.