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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
1/12/2017 11:42:27 PM

Europe freeze death toll rises to 65

AFP

A man digs a car out of the snow in a suburb of the Bulgarian capital Sofia after heavy snowfall on January 7, 2017 (AFP Photo/Nikolay DOYCHINOV)

Sofia (AFP) - The death toll from the cold snap hitting parts of Europe rose to at least 65 on Wednesday as Bulgarian authorities reported seven fatalities.

They included a couple in their 80s, the only inhabitants of a village in the mountainous region of Smolyan in southern Bulgaria, who were found dead in their home on Saturday.

Elsewhere in the country two Iraqi migrants died in a snowstorm, a couple both aged 55 were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning caused by faulty heating and a homeless man froze to death.

Temperatures sank to minus 18 Celsius (minus 0.4 Fahrenheit) in the capital Sofia and Bulgarian authorities said electricity and gas demand have reached 20-year highs.

Most of the deaths over the past week have been in central and south-eastern Europe, with homeless people and migrants stranded in Greece, Serbia and elsewhere most at risk.

In Turkey snow over the weekend paralysed Istanbul, forced the closure to ships of the Bosphorus Strait and the cancellation of hundreds of flights.

Maritime traffic on rivers including the Danube, one of Europe's busiest waterways, has also been severely hampered.

In Greece on Wednesday, having been caught off guard and facing heavy criticism, the government sent a navy transport ship to the island of Lesbos, to house around 500 migrants still sleeping in tents.

Greece also announced a nationwide week-long hunting ban because of the cold weather gripping most of the country.

(Yahoo News)

"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?
1/13/2017 12:11:39 AM
Oregon Woman Freezes To Death After Being Evicted For $338 In Late Rent Payments




Credit – US Uncut

Though Portland is often known for its quirkiness and microbreweries, the scourge of urban homelessness is quickly marring the reputation of Oregon’s largest city. Last Saturday, 52 year old Karen Lee Batts became the second person to die on Portland streets within the first week of 2017 due to hypothermia.
Batts had been found in the Smart Park parking garage Saturday night when Portland Police arrived on the scene, responding to a report that a woman was taking off her clothes and struggling in the freezing weather. Though Batts’ actions may seem strange, it is actually common for sufferers of late stage hypothermia to frantically undress themselves as they begin to feel extremely hot due to nerve damage. Police responding to the scene arrived too late for Batts, who had already died from exposure to the cold.

However, Batts had not been homeless for very long. Public records indicate that Batts had been evicted from her apartment complex for low-income seniors in October. Batts had been evicted because she owed $338 in rent to Cascade Management, Inc. and Northwest Housing Alternatives, LLC, the companies which managed the housing unit. Batts was evicted on October 14th for being at least one week late with her rent payment for August and was sent a 72-hour notice a month later informing her of the balance she owed. The building managers sued to evict Batts on October 6th and they won the case by default when Batts did not show up to her court hearing.

Local KATU-TV news contacted Northwest Housing Alternatives for comment and they responded that Batts had lived in the housing complex since 2007, but had undergone a “change” as of late. They also asserted that “there were a variety of lease violations that were either damage of property or late payments, also incidents against staff and other tenants.” The organization’s Executive Director, Martha McLennan, told the Williamette Week that they had tried to help Batts before she was evicted. “We hate these sorts of situations,” McLennan says. “But unfortunately, when someone decline services, there’s not much you can do. And I can say there were dozens of attempts to help.” The Oregonian also reported that Batts had long struggled to maintain a permanent residence and had previously been evicted from another affordable housing building in 1996.

Whether or not her landlords attempted to help her before kicking her out on the street, Batt’s death was completely preventable. The homeless, arguably the most marginalized and voiceless group in the United States, are consistently ignored by city governments, many of which have criminalized the very act of being homeless. Not only that but other city governments, in order to further reduce the visibility of the homeless and push them further to the sidelines, have also criminalized offering food to the homeless in public as well as other types of aid. The unfortunate and tragic fate of Karen Batts is indicative of, not a local problem, but a national one as all levels of government – along with many everyday Americans – would prefer to throw the homeless out with the garbage instead of recognizing them as human beings with inherent rights.

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This article (Oregon Woman Freezes To Death After Being Evicted For $338 In Late Rent Payments) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and True Activist.



"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?
1/13/2017 9:45:37 AM

Syrian army says Israel fires rockets at air base near Damascus

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi
Reuters

Clouds hover over the capital city of Damascus, Syria. (AP)

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian army command said on Friday that Israeli artillery fired rockets at a major military airbase outside Damascus, and warned Israel of repercussions for what it called a "flagrant" attack.

Explosions were heard in the capital, and residents in the southwest suburbs saw a large plume of smoke rising from the area, while video footage downloaded on social media showed flames leaping from parts of Mezzah military airport's compound.

Syrian state television quoted the army as saying several rockets were fired from an area near the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel just after midnight which landed in the compound of the airbase, used by President Bashar al-Assad's elite Republican Guards.

"Syrian army command and armed forces warn Israel of the repercussions of the flagrant attack and stresses its continued fight against (this) terrorism and amputate the arms of the perpetrators," the army command said in a statement.

Israel neither confirms nor denies involvement in striking targets inside Syria. Asked about Friday's incident, an Israeli military spokeswoman said: "We don't comment on reports of this kind."

The Syrian army statement did not disclose if there were any casualties, but said the rockets caused a fire. Earlier, state television said several major explosions hit Mezzah military airport's compound and ambulances were rushed to the area.

Government forces had in the past used the base to fire rockets at former rebel-held areas in the capital's suburbs.

The airport, located just a few kilometers from Assad's presidential palace, had been a base used to fire rockets at former rebel-held areas in the suburbs of Damascus.

Israel in the past has targeted positions of Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah group inside Syria where the Iranian-backed group is heavily involved in fighting alongside the Syrian army.

In November, the Syrian army said Israeli jets fired two missiles on an area west of the capital, close to the Damascus Beirut-highway, in an attack mounted from Lebanese air space.

Diplomatic sources say Israel has in the past few years targeted advanced weapons systems, including Russian-made anti-aircraft and Iranian-made missiles and bombed the elite Fourth Armoured Division base on Qasioun mountain in the capital.

An air strike in Syria in December 2015 killed a prominent Hezbollah leader, Samir Qantar. Israel welcomed Qantar's death, saying he was preparing attacks from Syrian soil, but stopped short of confirming responsibility for eliminating him.

Earlier that year, an Israeli air strike in Syria killed six members of Hezbollah, including a commander and the son of late military chief Imad Moughniyah near the Golan Heights.

Israeli defense officials have voiced concern that Hezbollah's experience in the Syrian civil war, where it has played a significant role and recently helped the Syrian army regain the eastern sector of the city of Aleppo, has strengthened it.

Rebels operating in the area have said Hezbollah's major arms supply route into Damascus from the Lebanese border has been targeted on several occasions in recent years by air strikes. This has included strikes on warehouses and convoys of weapons.

Damascus airport was also hit by air strikes in 2013.

Israel has been largely unscathed by the Syrian civil war, with only sporadic incidents of stray shells falling on its territory.

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi, additional reporting by Ori Lewis in Jerusalem, Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Hugh Lawson)


(Yahoo News)



"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?
1/13/2017 9:51:55 AM
Surge in targeted killings of al-Qaida operatives in Syria

BEIRUT — The convoy of vehicles was driving on a dirt road in northwestern Syria when the aerial attack by the U.S.-led coalition struck, turning the vehicles into balls of fire and the people inside into unrecognizable charred corpses.

Among the eight dead was Khattab al-Qahtani, a senior al-Qaida official from the Persian Gulf region with reported ties to Osama bin Laden, as well as a Syrian al-Qaida commander from the country’s east and a militant belonging to the Turkistan Islamic Party, a faction of Chinese jihadis fighting in Syria.

The New Year’s Day attack was the first in a wave of airstrikes that has targeted al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria at an unprecedented rate, killing more than 50 militants allied with the international terror group since the beginning of the year.

In the throes of a brutal civil war now in its sixth year, Syria has one of the largest and most active concentrations of al-Qaida fighters in the world. The U.S.-led coalition has been targeting the extremist group for years, hunting some of its most senior officials, including members of the so-called Khorasan group, which Washington describes as an internal branch of al-Qaida that plans attacks against Western interests.

It’s not clear what is behind the recent surge in targeted killings.

Analysts say that since al-Qaida began recruiting hundreds of fighters in Syria to expand its role in the country’s civil war against President Bashar Assad’s forces, informers might have infiltrated the group, which has also become more visible, setting up command centers and other outposts around northern Syria, making it easier to target.

“Had it not been for their agents they wouldn’t have been able to do anything,” a local al-Qaida commander told The Associated Press via text message from northern Syria. “They spray a product on top of the vehicle that cannot be seen with the naked eye but can be detected by the drone,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with the group’s regulations.

The stepped-up attacks could also be linked to a cease-fire brokered by Russia and Turkey that went into effect on Dec. 30, and excludes the Islamic State group and Syria’s al-Qaida affiliate, known as the Fatah al-Sham Front. Turkey and Russia back rival sides in the Syrian conflict and their new push to try to end the war includes talks between the Syrian government and the opposition to be held later this month in Kazakhstan.

The intensified attacks also come at a time when the Islamic State group, an al-Qaida rival, is under intense pressure and losing territory in Iraq and Syria. Iraqi forces are on the offensive in the northern city of Mosul, the main IS stronghold in Iraq, while U.S.-backed Kurdish-led fighters are marching toward the Syrian city of Raqqa, IS’s de facto capital.

“Daesh is on the verge of collapse and this is diverting the attention toward al-Qaida,” said Dana Jalal, a Sweden-based expert on jihadi groups, referring to IS by its Arabic acronym. “The new Russian-Turkish alliance is also leading to fresh intelligence information.”

Jalal said Turkey is now sharing intelligence about the al-Qaida affiliate with Russia, as well as the U.S.-led coalition. Turkey has been a main point for foreign fighters to cross into Syria and borders the country’s northern Idlib province, where thousands of Fatah al-Sham fighters are based.

Reflecting the intensity of the attacks, the group distributed a list this week of suggested ways for its fighters to avoid being targeted by airstrikes, urging total “electronic silence,” the use of camouflage and devices that disrupt the frequency used to control drones and only using buildings “with multiple exits.” The Fatah al-Sham statement was carried by the SITE Intelligence Group, a U.S. group that monitors militant internet traffic.

The rise in attacks on al-Qaida fits in with the U.S. government’s contention that it is gaining traction against a range of militant groups, including Fatah al-Sham and IS in Syria and Iraq. The U.S. has also stepped up attacks against IS militants in both countries, including a high-profile operation Sunday that targeted an IS force in the eastern Syrian province of Deir el-Zour.

In that attack, commandos flown in aboard four helicopters intercepted a vehicle carrying several IS militants, killing all of them and flying off with the bodies, Syrian opposition activists said. U.S. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis confirmed that a raid took place Sunday but did not provide details.

There was no comment by the Pentagon on the surge in attacks this year, but the U.S. has announced numerous successful strikes in recent months.

Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, wrote in a Facebook post that Fatah al-Sham’s decision to operate more openly makes it vulnerable to air attacks and external infiltration. Since July 2015, U.S. aircraft have killed some of al-Qaida’s most senior figures in strikes in northern Syria, including Kuwait-born Mohsen al-Fadli, Sanafi al-Nasr of Saudi Arabia and Ahmed Salama Mabrouk of Egypt, who was killed in October. Rifai Ahmad Taha, an Egyptian militant with decades of experience with the terror network, was killed in a U.S. strike in April.

This month’s attacks come as Fatah al-Sham has been trying to improve its image and distance itself from al-Qaida. In July, its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, publicly showed his face for the first time in a video in which he announced the group was changing its name and cutting ties with the international terror organization. Sitting next to him was Mabrouk, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike three months later.

Three days after the Jan. 1 airstrike that killed eight militants, warplanes of the U.S.-led coalition struck one of Fatah al-Sham’s largest centers in the town of Sarmada, killing 25 people, including seven jihadis. A day later, the U.S. said five militants were killed in one strike and more than 15 in another.

On Jan. 6, Fatah al-Sham announced a leading member, Younis Shoueib, also known as Abul-Hassan Taftanaz, was killed along with his son in an airstrike in the country’s north. He was reportedly close to al-Golani, the Fatah al-Sham leader.

On Wednesday, airstrikes in the northwestern town of Saraqib killed at least 10 suspected Fatah al-Sham militants. The strikes reportedly destroyed two vehicles and three motorcycles.

Ali Al-Omar, the head of Ahrar-al-Sham, a rebel faction in Syria that has maintained good ties with Fatah al-Sham, said in an interview aired on Thursday that the escalation in strikes targeting the al-Qaida-linked group’s leaders was helping Assad by excluding other militant groups fighting alongside the government, such as the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group.

“Targeting a faction that is confronting the regime and whose members are mostly Syrians is biased and is a position against the revolution and in support of the regime,” he said.

___

Associated Press writers Sarah El Deeb in Beirut and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

(The Washington Post)

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

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
1/13/2017 10:02:34 AM
This is an interesting development ...
______________________________________________


US assassination drone strikes kill 64 in Yemen in 3 days


Press TV
Published on Mar 12, 2012

US assassination drone strikes have killed at least 64 people in southern Yemen during attacks in the past three days on the provinces of Abyan and Bayda.


Quote:

UK adoption of US drone assassination model ‘shocking’ – campaigners

Edited time: 12 Jan, 2017 14:16


An MQ-9 Reaper © Isaac Brekken / AFP

Britain will look to the US drone assassination model as it seeks to update its own rules of war, a move campaigners say is deeply concerning.

Sir Jeremy Wright QC, the government’s senior lawyer, will give a speech on the law as it relates to targeted killing. Wright will speak at the International Institute for Strategic Studies on Wednesday.

The key issue which he is expected to address is that of ‘imminence’ – the circumstances required to legitimate a pre-emptive strike – and the potential for collateral damage – killing civilians – in order to ‘save’ lives elsewhere.

Wright is expected to insist that the threshold for deadly action and for collateral damage are not being lowered, but rather brought up to date.

So we really want to see the principles [of pre-emptive self-defense] that the US have already adopted, which we think strikes the right balance of all the different factors,” he will say according to a draft of the speech seen by the Guardian newspaper.

[The Al-Qaeda attack on the US in] 2001 was a big leap forward and I think it’s important that international law also takes a big leap. The threat now is different again … [but] we are not lowering the threshold [for authorizing attacks].

Wright will cite a series of tests devised by another government lawyer, Sir Daniel Bethlehem, to assess the legal basis for deadly military violence.

This is used to weigh the pros versus cons of a potential strike, including in terms of damage to people or property, and the potential for a better opportunity to strike presenting itself at some point in the future.

He will say that the current system of pre-emption dates back to an 1837 incident when British troops seized an American ship off the coast of Canada.

If we are trying to define ‘imminence’ in relation to a test that was developed in the 1840s, we are going to struggle,” Wright told the Guardian ahead of his speech.

He said the nature of threat had changed vastly since then and that the UK wanted to update its rules of engagement in this respect.

He will also say that the UK is a “world leader in promoting, defending and shaping international law.

Critics of drone warfare, however, fear that the move towards the American model is a dangerous one.


The UK has been working hand-in-glove with the US on developing drone warfare so while this move is shocking it’s not surprising,” Chris Cole of the Drone War campaign group told RT on Wednesday.

It’s likely that we will see Obama’s ‘Terror Tuesday’ style meetings now take place in the UK, conducted presumably by a sub-committee of the National Security Council, where a list of overseas suspects will be regularly reviewed, with some of them then placed on a ‘kill list’ for dispatch by UK drones.

Cole also pointed out that the UK had already killed under the banner of imminence, arguing that “the drone killing of Reyaad Khan in August 2015 may have been the UK’s first targeted killing outside of a warzone – but it’s unlikely to be the last.

(RT)

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