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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
1/28/2015 10:34:46 AM

Japan turns to 'I am Kenji' Facebook page on hostage crisis

Associated Press


Protesters chant "Free Goto" during a demonstration in front of the Prime Minister's Official residence in Tokyo, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2015. The plight of freelance journalist Kenji Goto, taken captive by Islamic State group militants, has gripped Japan, and the people’s hopes for his safety are now on Facebook with a simple, unifying plea: “I am Kenji.” As of Tuesday, the “I am Kenji” Facebook page had more than 25,000 “likes” and is continuing to grow. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)


TOKYO (AP) — The plight of freelance journalist Kenji Goto, taken captive by Islamic State group militants, has gripped Japan, and the people's hopes for his safety are now on Facebook with a simple, unifying plea: "I am Kenji."

The video, posted online last week, showing Goto and another Japanese hostage, has dominated mainstream media here, a relatively crime-free nation unaccustomed to such violence.

But as government officials made stately pronouncements on TV news, regular people were taking action of their own — online, with some rallying to Goto's support and others mocking the terrorists with images — in a quiet but massive show of defiance.

"We want Kenji to come home," said Taku Nishimae, a Japanese filmmaker living in New York, who started the "I am Kenji" Facebook page, right after seeing last week's video threatening the hostages' lives.

The page, with thousands of "likes," asks people to post self-portraits and other photos with a sign that says: "I am Kenji."

It's a reference to the "Je Suis Charlie," or "I Am Charlie," slogan showing solidarity with Charlie Hebdo, the Paris weekly newspaper where 12 people were killed in a terrorist attack earlier this month.

"Let's show that we're united, and tell that it's unjust to kill innocent citizens and it's meaningless to turn entire nation against you," the Facebook page says in English and Japanese.

Nishimae, 52, stressed the page is not about taking political sides, or even about freedom of the press, but a more general human statement, like a desperate prayer.

A screengrab of the 'I AM KENJI' Facebook page. (via Facebook)

A screengrab of the 'I AM KENJI' Facebook page. (via Facebook)

About a thousand people have posted photos, some of them portraits holding handwritten messages, some identifying themselves as Muslim, but all with the same message.

The slogan has taken off. "I am Kenji" was among the signs held up at a demonstration of about 1,000 people outside the prime minister's office over the weekend, demanding the government do more to save the hostages.

"It's great people are getting inspired," said Nishimae, who has known Goto, 47, for 12 years and has worked with him on documentary movies. "Even now, I can't believe it. But it is Kenji. It feels so unreal."

They had hit it off right away, he recalled. Goto devoted his life to telling the stories of refugees and children in war zones, and had worked with UNICEF.

Robert Campbell, an American professor of Japanese literature at the University of Tokyo, did not know Goto personally and posted his "I am Kenji" photo out of impulse. But he wanted more people to know Goto's work and added a translation he did into English of Goto's blog on the suffering of the people of Syria, which starts: "Why did they have to die?"

"It's a small act that we can all do. It is important," Campbell, 57, said. "You feel connected to other people. That's all very good."

Campbell, a 30-year resident of Japan, said he sensed a change from the stereotype of Japanese being standoffish, afraid to speak up and preoccupied with appearances. And "I am Kenji" highlights that change, he said, with more Japanese "putting down their apprehension of being judged."

Another video over the weekend appeared to show hostage Haruna Yukawa had been killed and demanded a prisoner exchange for Goto. That video had not been verified, but Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said it is likely credible.

A stream of doctored images from the first video have appeared on Japanese Twitter, including cutesy manga-like figures juxtaposed on top of the images of the two kneeling hostages as well as the masked man standing in the middle.

Nobuyuki Hayashi, a consultant and technology journalist, who knew Goto in junior high school, says he finds Twitter chatter disturbing, because of the anonymity that allows people to voice irresponsible and sometimes hurtful views.

"We needed to avoid these Japanese netizens cloaked under anonymity to make any constructive discussion," Hayashi said.

Many Japanese are worried for Goto, but don't know what to do and feel frustrated, he said. The Facebook page allowed them to do something. They can also see the concerns of others around the world.

"And that is encouraging," Hayashi said. "And we can all hope that, when Kenji returns to Japan sometime soon, he would be happy to see so many people supporting him."

___

"I am Kenji" Facebook page: http://on.fb.me/1znvAfy

__

Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at https://twitter.com/yurikageyama


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
1/28/2015 10:43:08 AM

Russian Nuclear Weapons Cannot Be Stopped By US Defenses, Says Russian Deputy Prime Minister


on


Russian S-400 air defense mobile missile launching systems were part of a military parade during celebrations marking Independence Day in Minsk July 3, 2014.

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
1/28/2015 10:53:31 AM

Scores of foreign fighters among Kobane dead

AFP

Image grab from video uploaded by Servan Minbec channel on Youtube on January 26, 2015, shows Syrian rebel fighters celebrating after placing a flag of the Fajr al-Hurreya brigade (Dawn of Freedom), on top of a hill in Kobane, know as Ain al-Arab (AFP Photo/)


Washington (AFP) - Large numbers of foreign fighters are among the jihadists killed in the battle for the Syrian town of Kobane, a senior US official said Tuesday, saying the concerted campaign was halting the militants' march.

The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) announced the "liberation" of Kobane on Monday, depriving the Islamic State group (IS) of a strategic prize to add to its territory in Syria and Iraq.

The United States says Kurdish fighters are now in control of about 90 percent of the town on the Syrian-Turkish border.

"ISIL is now, whether on order or whether they are breaking ranks, is beginning to withdraw from the town," a senior State Department official told reporters.

But he warned that the militants, also known as ISIL, were "adaptive and resilient" and no-one was declaring "mission accomplished" yet.

The US and some 60 coalition partners is engaged in the "first phase of a multi-year campaign," he stressed.

But a victory in Kobane was an important milestone in trying to change "the narrative" of the militants who have attracted thousands of foreign fighters to their ranks, mostly disaffected youth drawn by the promise of adventure.

IS had poured some of its best foreign fighters into Kobane, the State Department official said, but in the last six weeks the losses had begun to cause splits in the ranks.

The group has even executed foreign fighters for refusing orders to deploy to the town.

Observers say IS lost nearly 1,200 fighters in the battle, of a total of 1,800 killed, despite outgunning YPG forces with sophisticated weaponry captured from Iraqi and Syrian military bases.

"We don't get into body counts, but it's in the four figures in terms of the overall number of ISIL fighters that have been killed," the State Department official confirmed.

Many foreign fighters -- many of them Australians, Belgians, Canadians and Chechens -- were among them, he said, refusing to give exact figures other than to say "it was hugely, hugely significant."

"The entire notion of this organization which is on the march, inevitable expansion, (its) overall momentum has been halted at Kobane," he added.

The US began airstrikes on IS to stop its march on Kobane in September and in October airdropped in critical supplies to the anti-IS fighters.

Washington also worked with Turkey to open a land corridor to allow peshmerga fighters to help defend the beleaguered town.

With the eyes of the international media watching the militants "wanted to raise the largest flag they ever made over Kobane," the US official said.

"Kobane shows that you're not going to be part of something great .. so the whole narrative that ISIL is trying to put out, Kobane really puts a dent in it."



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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
1/28/2015 11:01:48 AM

Fiery Islamic State group cleric gives voice to radicals

Associated Press

In this undated image obtained from a militant website on Dec. 12, 2014, Turki al-Binali, a Bahraini citizen who is also known among jihadis by two other names: Abu Sufian al-Silmi and Abu Hummam al-Athari, gives a lecture to dozens of worshippers and jihadi fighters inside a mosque in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in mid-2014. Al-Binali has risen in the ranks of the Islamic State group to become one of its top and most influential religious figures. (AP Photo)


BEIRUT (AP) — Turki al-Binali has crisscrossed the Islamic State group's self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq with a pistol holstered at his side, delivering fiery sermons in which the 30-year-old provides religious justification for its bloody rampage across the region.

The young Bahraini preacher, who has emerged as one of the extremists' leading ideologues, promotes a version of Islam that has been rejected, not only by mainstream religious authorities, but even by veteran jihadi clerics now increasingly out of touch with the new generation of radicals.

Al-Binali, who sports long hair and a dark beard, is not the most senior cleric in the group — that title belongs to a secretive Iraqi named Abdullah Abdul-Samad — but he is perhaps the most visible, said Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraq-based researcher who closely follows jihadi groups.

"He is a very important part of the religious council of Daesh," al-Hashimi said, using an alternate Arabic acronym for the group. "He is like the fence that defends the ideology of Daesh from penetration." Al-Binali also wrote the official biography of the group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The young preacher has given lectures and engaged online with critics and supporters. His edicts and statements are printed and distributed in areas under the group's control, said an Islamic State group fighter in Syria, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he is not a spokesman for the group.

Al-Binali hails from a prominent Bahraini family and rose to become a well-known figure in the tiny Gulf nation's ultra-conservative Salafi movement. He studied for a time at Dubai's Islamic and Arabic Studies College but was deported because of his ideology, according to a biography written by Austrian jihadi Mohammed Mahmoud. He continued his studies at Islamic universities in Bahrain and Beirut before traveling to Syria last year and joining the Islamic State group, according to jihadi websites.

In a photo posted on jihadi websites, he's shown in a mosque in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in July, wearing a white gown and turban with a pistol holstered under his arm, preaching to dozens of worshippers and jihadi fighters.

In its march across the region, the Islamic State group has massacred hundreds of captives, mainly Syrian and Iraqi soldiers, sometimes displaying their heads in public squares. Its clerics have justified such acts by citing a verse from the Quran that reads: "So, when you meet (to wage jihad in God's cause) those who disbelieve, smite at their necks until you have killed and wounded many of them, then bind a bond firmly."

The extremist group also has beheaded two American journalists, two British aid workers and an American aid worker. It presented the killings as a response to U.S.-led airstrikes and said it was justified in beheading the five captives because they had entered territory controlled by the extremists without an agreement of protection. A German journalist received such protection and was allowed to report on the group late last year before returning unharmed.

Al-Binali himself has provided religious justification for the enslavement of hundreds of women from Iraq's Yazidi minority.

Writing in an online forum, he said: "There is no doubt that enslaving women of infidel warriors" is permitted. He pointed to a religious opinion by a 13th century cleric who said that in wartime, "it is not permitted to kill women and children but they become slaves to Muslims."

Leading Islamic authorities have condemned the Islamic State group's atrocities and rejected its self-styled caliphate as illegitimate because it was declared unilaterally without the consensus of established clerics. But such criticism matters little to the militants, who view mainstream religious authorities as tools of the region's autocratic states.

More problematic is pushback from veteran jihadis, including some closely affiliated with al-Qaida. The Islamic State group broke away from the global network founded by the late Osama bin Laden in 2013 over a bitter ideological rift, and has battled al-Qaida's affiliate in Syria.

Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, a Jordanian cleric who once mentored Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the slain head of al-Qaida in Iraq, has condemned the Islamic State group's brutality. Abu Qatada, another radical Jordanian preacher deported from Britain, described its members as "criminals." And Al-Qaida's powerful Yemeni affiliate has explicitly rejected the beheading of captives.

But when it comes to recruiting a new generation of radicals, the Islamic State group has been buoyed by its sleek online media operations and its battlefield successes.

"There is certainly an issue of generational divide here: that (the Islamic State) is attracting the younger 'intellectuals' and fighters," said Aymenn al-Tamimi, an expert on Syrian and Iraqi militants.

Al-Binali has struck back at his mainstream critics, disputing the widespread comparison of the Islamic State to the Khawarej, an early Islamic movement that later generations of scholars considered so extreme as to have left the faith entirely.

But as recently as November he warned the leadership of his own movement that it faces "slow collapse" unless it can get well-known extremist clerics on board, according to an anonymous Twitter account called "wikibaghdady" that frequently publishes inside information about the group.

There is no independent confirmation of the "wikibaghdady" reports, but Radwan Mortada, an expert on jihadi groups who writes for Lebanon's Al-Akhbar daily newspaper, said he believes the reports are largely accurate.

After al-Binali's appeal, the leadership gave him the green light to approach clerics from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Yemen and elsewhere to try to win them over and convince them to come settle in Islamic State group-controlled areas, according to the Twitter account.

The unnamed clerics rejected the offer, it said.

___

Associated Press writer Reem Khalifa in Manama, Bahrain, contributed to this report.

___

Follow Bassem Mroue on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bmroue .


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
1/28/2015 3:43:01 PM

Israel air force hits Syrian army after Golan rocket fire

AFP

Israeli fighter jets hit two military bases in the Quneitra region of Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group (AFP Photo/Jack Guez)


Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli warplanes struck Syrian army targets on the Golan Heights early Wednesday hours after rockets hit the Israeli-held sector, in what the Jewish state said was "a clear message" to Damascus.

The incident took place just 10 days after another Israeli air strike on the same areas of the Syrian Golan killed six Hezbollah fighters and an Iranian general, sending tensions soaring on the strategic plateau, half of which is occupied by Israel.

Nobody was injured by Tuesday's rocket fire from Syria, which Israel said was "intentional". The Israeli air force responded nearly 12 hours later by striking Syrian army targets around midnight (2200 GMT).

"Earlier today (Tuesday), rockets hit the Golan Heights. In response, a short while ago the IDF targeted Syrian army artillery posts," an army statement said, indicating it held Damascus responsible "for all attacks emanating from its territory."

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said Israel would not tolerate any fire on its territory and would respond to any attack, whether by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or any other group.

"The overnight attack by the air force against regime targets in an area under Assad's control in Syria is a clear message that we will no put up with any fire at Israeli territory or any breach of our sovereignty, and we will respond with force and determination," he said in a statement.

He warned Israel would "exact a heavy price" from anyone attacking its territory.

Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said Israel had hit two military bases in the Quneitra area.

"The strikes targeted two bases in the area under the Syrian army's 90th Brigade, in Quneitra province. There were no immediate reports of casualties," he said.

Following Tuesday's rocket attack, Israeli army spokesman Peter Lerner said the fire was "intentional, not spillover from the Syrian civil war" as has often been the case in the past.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Israel would "respond with force".

Washington expressed support for Israel's right to self-defence, but said it did not want "an escalation of the situation".

"We call upon all parties to avoid any action that would jeopardise the long-held ceasefire between Israel and Syria and abide by the 1974 disengagement of forces agreement," State Department spokesman Jen Psaki said.

There have been repeated incidents of fire across the ceasefire line since the Syrian uprising erupted in March 2011.

Israel seized 1,200 square kilometres (460 square miles) of the Golan during the Six Day War of 1967, then annexed it in 1981 in a move never recognised by the international community.


"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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