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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
9/19/2017 11:22:18 AM

Jihadists eye ‘train derailments & food poisoning in Europe’ – French media

Edited time: 18 Sep, 2017 08:55


A picture taken on August 19, 2017 shows police officers outside the train station of Nimes © Jaime Reina / AFP

French police have issued a confidential note based on an analysis of “jihadist propaganda,” warning of possible lone-wolf attacks causing trains to derail and even food poisoning, Le Parisien newspaper reports, citing the document.

“Due to recent jihadist propaganda urging plans for train derailment, particular attention should be paid to any reports of intrusion or attempted sabotage on the premises of railways,” a seven-page report compiled by the police directorate at the beginning of September reads, as cited by Le Parisien.

The document, which focuses on aspects of “jihadist propaganda” over the past three months, warns that terrorists are instructed to make explosives “as shown in tutorials,” conceal their radicalization, calling on “lone wolves” to cause “train derailments, forest fires or food poisoning" in Europe.

The highest police authorities confirm in the report, citing the propaganda analysis, that “the threats of attack remain very high”in France. The confidential document notes that apart from the railway network, increased vigilance is requested for schools and universities, including “sensitive products or materials” which jihadists may steal from laboratories for homemade explosives.

Tourist attractions such as churches, considered “a symbol of the western way of life,” are also listed among the potential targets most vulnerable to attack. The police report also mentions the threat of assaults in which people are attacked by speeding cars. Similar incidents happened this summer in London and Barcelona.

It is highly recommended that car rental companies check the identity of their customers and “report without delay any suspicious behavior” or “theft of vehicles.”

On Friday, a man armed with a knife threatened a soldier patrolling the Chatelet metro station in Paris. The assailant made statements referring to ‘Allah’ and ‘Daesh’ (Arabic pejorative for Islamic State) and was arrested without harming the Operation Sentinel soldier.

The French army's anti-terrorism Operation Sentinel was established following the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris.
On August 9, at least six French soldiers were injured, three of them seriously, when they were hit by a vehicle in a northwestern Paris suburb. The incident took place in Levallois-Perret commune, only 6km from the capital. The suspect was arrested hours after the incident on a motorway in northern France.

In June, police shot and injured a man who attacked three officers with a hammer near Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris while shouting “this is for Syria.” The man, who injured one of the officers, was also armed with two knives, French media reported. One officer was hit in the head with the hammer, prompting police to shoot at the attacker. The assailant had also threatened passersby before targeting the three police officers, according to BFM TV.

France declared a state of emergency following attacks in Paris in November 2015, in which more than 130 people were killed. It has been extended several times; the latest extension was in July and is expected to last until November 1.

Leader of the French right-wing National Front (FN) Marine Le Pen said earlier this week that terrorism should be treated as an “act of war,” and proposed the idea of creating special courts to judge terrorism-related cases.


(RT)

"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?
9/19/2017 4:28:49 PM

Iraq VP warns against 'second Israel' in Kurdistan
AFP

An Israeli flag is waved alongside Kurdish flags during an event in Iraqi Kurdistan's capital of Arbil to urge people to vote in a September 25 independence referendum (AFP Photo/SAFIN HAMED)

Baghdad (AFP) - An Iraqi vice president warned Sunday that Baghdad would not tolerate the creation of "a second Israel" after the Jewish state became the only country to support a planned Kurdish independence referendum in northern Iraq.

The leaders of autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan must "call off the (September 25) referendum that is contrary to the constitution and does not serve the general interests of the Iraqi people, not even the particular interests of the Kurds", said Vice President Nuri al-Maliki.

"We will not allow the creation of a second Israel in the north of Iraq," Maliki, a Shiite former prime minister, said at a meeting with US ambassador Douglas Silliman, in a statement released by the vice president's office.

A country set up on a religious or ethnic base, like the Jewish state established in 1948, would not be acceptable, Maliki said.

He warned that an independence vote would have "dangerous consequences for the security, sovereignty and unity of Iraq", and called for dialogue between Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government in the northern city of Arbil.

As opposed to Muslim countries in the region as well as the United States and Western allies, Israel has come out in apparent support of the referendum.

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed the Kurds' aspirations for a state of their own, without specifically referring to the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

"While Israel rejects terror in any form, it supports the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to attain a state of its own," a statement from his office said.

An Israeli flag was flown alongside Kurdish flags at a rally in Arbil on Friday in support of the referendum.

The United Nations has urged Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani to drop plans for the controversial referendum and enter internationally-backed talks with Baghdad aimed at reaching a negotiated deal within three years.


(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?
9/19/2017 4:44:27 PM

Hawaii Becomes First U.S. State To Go Cashless For Marijuana Sales

"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?
9/19/2017 5:14:34 PM
The world as we know it is about to end — again — if you believe this biblical doomsday claim



NASA senior scientist David Morrison debunked an apocalyptic claim that a planet called Nibiru is on a collision course with Earth. (NASA)

A few years ago, NASA senior space scientist David Morrison debunked an apocalyptic claim as a hoax.

No, there’s no such thing as a planet called Nibiru, he said. No, it’s not a brown dwarf surrounded by planets, as iterations of the claim suggest. No, it’s not on a collision course toward Earth. And yes, people should “get over it.”

But the claim has been getting renewed attention recently. Added to it is the precise date of the astronomical event leading to Earth’s destruction. And that, according to David Meade, is in six days — Sept. 23, 2017. Unsealed, an evangelical Christian publication, foretells the Rapture in a viral, four-minute YouTube video, complete with special effects and ominous doomsday soundtrack. It’s called “September 23, 2017: You Need to See This.”

Why Sept. 23, 2017?

Meade’s prediction is based largely on verses and numerical codes in the Bible. He has homed in one number: 33.

“Jesus lived for 33 years. The name Elohim, which is the name of God to the Jews, was mentioned 33 times [in the Bible],” Meade told The Washington Post. “It’s a very biblically significant, numerologically significant number. I’m talking astronomy. I’m talking the Bible … and merging the two.”

And Sept. 23 is 33 days since the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse, which Meade believes is an omen.

Capital Weather Gang's Angela Fritz takes us back in time to show how mankind has reacted to eclipses over thousands of years. (Claritza Jimenez, Daron Taylor, Angela Fritz/The Washington Post)

He points to the Book of Revelation, which he said describes the image that will appear in the sky on that day, when Nibiru is supposed to rear its ugly head, eventually bringing fire, storms and other types of destruction.

The belief, as previously described by Gary Ray, a writer for Unsealed, is that the constellation Virgo — representing the woman — will be clothed in sunlight, in a position that is over the moon and under nine stars and three planets. The planet Jupiter, which will have been inside Virgo — in her womb, in Ray’s interpretation — will move out of Virgo, as though she is giving birth.

To make clear, Meade said he’s not saying the world will end Saturday. Instead, he claims, the prophesies in the Book of Revelation will manifest that day, leading to a series of catastrophic events that will happen over the course of weeks.

“The world is not ending, but the world as we know it is ending,” he said, adding later: “A major part of the world will not be the same the beginning of October.”

Meade’s prediction has been dismissed as a hoax not only by NASA scientists, but also by people of faith.

Ed Stetzer, a professor and executive director of Wheaton College’s Billy Graham Center for Evangelism, first took issue with how Meade is described in some media articles.

“There’s no such thing as a Christian numerologist,” he told The Post. “You basically got a made-up expert in a made-up field talking about a made-up event.… It sort of justifies that there’s a special secret number codes in the Bible that nobody believes.”

Meade said he never referred to himself as a Christian numerologist. He’s a researcher, he said, and he studied astronomy at a university in Kentucky, though he declined to say which one, citing safety reasons. His website says he worked in forensic investigations and spent 10 years working for Fortune 1000 companies. He’s also written books. The most recent one is called “Planet X — The 2017 Arrival.”

Stetzer said that while numbers do have significance in the Bible, they shouldn’t be used to make sweeping predictions about planetary motions and the end of Earth.

That is not to say that Christians don’t believe in the Bible’s prophesies, Stetzer said, but baseless theories that are repeated and trivialized embarrass people of faith.

“We do believe some odd things,” he said. “That Jesus is coming back, that he will set things right in the world, and no one knows the day or the hour.”

The doomsday date was initially predicted to be in May 2003, according to NASA. Then it was moved to Dec. 21, 2012, the date that the Mayan calendar, as some believed, marked the apocalypse.

Morrison, the NASA scientist, has given simple explanations debunking the claim that a massive planet is on course to destroy Earth. If Nibiru is, indeed, as close as conspiracy theorists believe to striking Earth, astronomers, and anyone really, would’ve already seen it.

“It would be bright. It would be easily visible to the naked eye. If it were up there, you could see it. All of us could see it. … If Nibiru were real and it were a planet with a substantial mass, then it would already be perturbing the orbits of Mars and Earth. We would see changes in those orbits due to this rogue object coming in to the inner solar system,” Morrison said in a video.

Doomsday believers also say that Nibiru is on a 3,600-year orbit. That means it had already come through the solar system in the past, which means we should be looking at an entirely different solar system today, Morrison said.

“Its gravity would’ve messed up the orbits of the inner planets, the Earth, Venus, Mars, probably would’ve stripped the moon away completely,” he said. “Instead, in the inner solar system, we see planets with stable orbits. We see the moon going around the Earth.”

And if Nibiru is not a planet and is, in fact, a brown dwarf, as some claims suggest — again, we would’ve already seen it.

“Everything I’ve said would be worse with a massive object like a brown dwarf,” Morrison said. “That would’ve been tracked by astronomers for a decade or more, and it would already have really affected planetary objects.”

Some call Nibiru “Planet X,” as Meade did in the title of his book. Morrison said that’s a name astronomers give to planets or possible objects that have not been found. For example, when space scientists were searching for a planet beyond Neptune, it was called Planet X. And once it was found, it became Pluto.

Stetzer encouraged Christians to be critical, especially in an information era marred with fake news stories.

“It’s simply fake news that a lot of Christians believe the world will end on September 23,” Stetzer wrote. “Yet, it is still a reminder that we need to think critically about all the news.”

He took issue with a Fox News story with a headline that appears to give credence to the doomsday claim — and was published in the Science section under the label “Planets.”

“Every time end-of-the-world predictions resurface in the media, it is important that we ask ourselves, ‘Is this helpful?’ ” Stetzer wrote. “Is peddling these falsehoods a good way to contribute to meaningful, helpful discussions about the end of times?”

Julie Zauzmer contributed to this story.

Kristine Phillips is a general assignment reporter for The Washington Post. Contact her at kristine.phillips@washpost.com.
Follow @kristinegWP




(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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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
9/19/2017 11:26:45 PM
7.1 magnitude earthquake kills at least 94 in Mexico, collapses buildings; reports of people trapped


Photo credit. REUTERS

CBS/AP September 19, 2017, 5:50 PM
Last Updated Sep 19, 2017 7:16 PM EDT

MEXICO CITY -- A powerful earthquake jolted central Mexico on Tuesday, cracking building facades and scattering rubble on streets in the capital on the anniversary of a devastating 1985 quake.

State and city officials said the national death toll from the earthquake climbed to 119.

Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera told local media that at least 30 people died in the capital, where buildings collapsed or were badly damaged at 44 points throughout the city. Between 50 and 60 people were pulled alive from the rubble by citizens and rescue workers in the city.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had a magnitude of 7.1 and was centered near the Puebla state town of Raboso, about 76 miles southeast of Mexico City.

The quake caused buildings to sway sickeningly in Mexico City and sent panicked office workers streaming into the streets, but the full extent of the damage was not yet clear.

Puebla Gov. Tony Galil tweeted that there had been damaged buildings in the city of Cholula including collapsed church steeples.

In Mexico City, thousands of people fled office buildings and hugged to calm each other along the central Reforma Avenue as alarms blared, and traffic stopped around the Angel of Independence monument.

Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said there are reports of people trapped in collapsed buildings, though the number is not clear. He told the Televisa network that 20 or more buildings collapsed or suffered serious damage.

When the quake hit, freelance reporter Manuel Rueda was walking outside a bank in the city's financial district when buildings began to shake. "People here are are used to encountering these types of situations, but this time, I definitely sensed more fear from people," he said on CBSN.

In the Roma neighborhood, which was struck hard by the 1985 quake, piles of stucco and brick fallen from building facades littered the streets. Two men calmed a woman seated on a stool in the street, blood trickling from a small wound on her knee.

At a nearby market, a worker in a hardhat walked around the outside warning people not to smoke as a smell of gas filled the air.

Market stall vendor Edith Lopez, 25, said she was in a taxi a few blocks away when the quake struck. She said she saw glass bursting out of the windows of some buildings. She was anxiously trying to locate her children, whom she had left in the care of her disabled mother.

Pictures fell from office building walls, objects were shaken off of flat surfaces and computer monitors toppled over. Some people dove for cover under desks. Local media broadcast video of whitecap waves churning the city's normally placid canals of Xochimilco as boats bobbed up and down.

Video on social media showed debris falling from Mexico City's National Employment Service building. Residents can be heard screaming and crying as some ran away from the building.

President Trump tweeted his support for Mexico on Tuesday afternoon: "God bless the people of Mexico City. We are with you and will be there for you."

Earlier in the day, workplaces across the city held preparation drills on the anniversary of the 1985 quake, a magnitude 8.1 shake, which killed thousands of people and devastated large parts of Mexico City.

Much of Mexico City is built on former lakebed, and the soil is known to amplify the effects of earthquakes even hundreds of miles away.

"Aftershocks are definitely a problem because Mexico city itself is based on a lake, parts of Mexico City are sinking, therefore it doesn't take much to cause buildings to fall and ruin a heavily populated area," Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist, said on CBSN.

The city's international airport suspended operations Tuesday, tweeting that airport personnel are checking the structures for damage. It wasn't immediately clear how many flights have been affected.

Earlier this month, dozens were killed after another earthquake struck, off Mexico's southern coast. It toppled hundreds of buildings, triggering tsunami evacuations and sending panicked people fleeing into the streets in the middle of the night.

Don Blakeman, a seismologist with the United States Geological Survey, said on CBSN that Mexico is very seismically active and the two earthquakes aren't necessarily related.

Initial calculations show that more than 30 million people would have felt moderate shaking from Tuesday's quake. The U.S. Geological Survey predicts "significant casualty and damage are likely and the disaster is potentially widespread."

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

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