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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
11/27/2017 5:08:12 PM

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish protesters dispersed by mounted police & skunk cannons in Jerusalem (VIDEOS)

Edited time: 27 Nov, 2017 03:24


Jerusalem, Israel November 26, 2017. © Ronen Zvulun / Reuters

Some 35 ultra-Orthodox demonstrators have been arrested in Jerusalem during an anti-draft protest. The protesters disrupted road and light rail traffic, while the police deployed stinking water cannons to disperse the crowd.

Dozens of ultra-Orthodox anti draft protesters gathered in central Jerusalem on Sunday, blocking road and light rail traffic. The demonstrators protested against Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) enlistment and demanded release of a dozen jailed draft-dodgers from their community.


Riot and mounted police were deployed at the scene to contain the protest and unblock the traffic. The law enforcement reportedly used the so-called “skunk” cannons, which are loaded with stinking fluids instead of plain water. Some of the protesters have reportedly called the police officers “Nazis” in return.

At least 35 ultra-Orthodox demonstrators were arrested during the protests for “disrupting public order, blocking traffic, attacking civilians and police officers,” according to a statement issued by the Israeli police.

The protest was called by the leader of ultra-Orthodox group The Jerusalem Faction, Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach, who promised to continue anti-draft protests to defend the “dignity of the Torah.” It was violated by the “incarceration of 12 prisoners of the Torah world [draft dodgers] for extended periods,” The Times of Israel quoted the statement issued by the protests’ organizers.

Last Sunday, the Jaffa Military Court sentenced 11 ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers to jail sentences ranging from 40 to 90 days. The protest organizers, however, referred to 12 such detainees. The ruling prompted swift and angry reaction from the ultra-Orthodox Jews, as some even tried to set the drafting station in Jerusalem on fire last Sunday.

In recent months, the Jerusalem Faction has staged dozens of protests across the country, with the most major being held in the areas with large ultra-Orthodox populations, including Jerusalem, Bnei Brak and Modi’in Illit.

The issue of ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers is decades old in Israel. Orthodox Jews studying religious texts at yeshivas (Jewish religious schools) and Arab Israelis are exempt from the compulsory military draft, while all the other citizens must serve in the army once they turn 18. Men are required to serve for 32 and women for 24 months.

To claim the exemption, the ultra-Orthodox Jews must show up at an IDF draft point with a letter from their school. Many chose to do not so, while some religious leaders, including Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach, explicitly forbid their students to have any contacts with the Israeli military.


(RT)


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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
11/28/2017 12:21:30 AM
Attention

Volcanic eruptions and atmospheric compression events increasing

A view of the Mount Agung volcano erupting in Karangasem, Bali, on Monday
© AP
A view of the Mount Agung volcano erupting in Karangasem, Bali, on Monday
Volcano awakens after 290 years of silence in Iceland, Mexico and Bali eruptions continue sending ash to 30,000 ft. Atmospheric Compression events in Jamaica and Saudi Arabia and a balmy -55C in Siberia.

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(sott.net)

"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?
11/28/2017 9:13:26 AM

Ten bodies found on Japan coast opposite North Korea

Ten badly decomposed bodies have been found on Japan's coast across the sea from North Korea (AFP Photo/-)

The badly decomposed remains of ten people have been found on Japan's coast across the sea from North Korea, along with the wreckage of two boats, officials said Monday.

The discovery comes just days after a group of eight fishermen, who said they were from North Korea, washed up on the same shore.

Police said two cadavers were found in separate places on the edge of the surf on Sado island, which lies around 750 kilometres (450 miles) from North Korea across the Sea of Japan (East Sea).

The bodies had begun to putrefy, and had nothing to identify them, senior local police official Hideaki Sakyo told AFP.

However, he added, there were boxes of North Korean tobacco as well as boat parts and life jackets with Korean script nearby.

A wrecked wooden boat with squid-fishing equipment was also found on the coastline.

Separately, coastguard officials spotted eight bodies inside a battered wooden boat off northern Akita prefecture.

High waves had prevented officials from investigating since the boat was first spotted on Friday, they said.

Television footage showed a wrecked vessel with an eight-digit number on it, which washed up on Oga peninsula on Sunday.

"Nothing else was found on the beach nearby, and so far we haven't found anything" that suggests a definite link with North Korea, a coastguard spokeswoman told AFP.

Dozens of North Korean fishing vessels wash up on Japan's coast every year.

Sometimes the boats' occupants have already died at sea, a phenomenon local media refer to as "ghost ships".

Experts say some North Korean fishermen travel far out to sea in order to satisfy government mandates for bigger catches.

But their old and poorly equipped vessels are prone to mechanical and other problems, including running out of fuel, and there are few ways for them to call for rescue.

Surviving drifters frequently request to be sent home, but some of them are defectors who are eventually sent to South Korea.

Japan and North Korea have a tense relationship, with Pyongyang routinely issuing verbal threats as well as firing missiles near or above Japan.

But the Japanese coastguard occasionally rescues North Korean fishermen in maritime accidents in regional waters.

(Yahoo)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
11/28/2017 9:49:22 AM
Congressional leaders face internal pressure to act on harassment


House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi struggled to answer questions Sunday about harassment allegations against Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mi.) (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

At first, Pelosi, the first female House speaker, stressed that he needed to have “due process” and called Conyers “an icon of history.” Then she hinted that eventually Conyers would “do the right thing.”

By lunchtime, Conyers announced he would step down from the committee post. “I very much look forward to vindicating myself and my family before the House Committee on Ethics,” he wrote in a statement that Pelosi’s advisers circulated to the media.

Some female members had demanded that Conyers resign his seat. Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.), who last week called for him to step down, told CNN on Friday that voters are “sick and tired of the rules in Washington” being different from those for the rest of the country.

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), who is leading a fight for tougher penalties against lawmakers, stopped short of demanding that Conyers resign in her Sunday appearance on “This Week.” But she joined her colleagues in criticizing the ethics committee process as too slow in handling most investigations.

She advocated that the panel receive more funding so it could “move very swiftly, not wait years,” to investigate the Conyers allegations.

Speier said there needed to be an entire shift in culture, from the bottom up, that would make it easier for victims to come forward and would end the process of allowing lawmakers to use taxpayer funds to secretly settle these cases.

“We say zero tolerance, but I don’t believe that we put our money where our mouths are,” she said.

This week, the House is scheduled to vote on a measure sponsored by Speier and Comstock that would require mandatory training on harassment and discrimination for all lawmakers, staff and interns who work in Congress.

Many staffers have said they have no idea how to file complaints, and those that have gone through that process have described it as cumbersome. Comstock said she and Speier were just beginning their work on the issue, promising further action after this first bill passes.

In particular, she singled out how Conyers settled a sexual harassment complaint brought by a former staffer in 2015, leaving the woman on the payroll as a temporary employee and paying out just under $30,000. That payout came from the lawmaker’s regular allowance for staff salaries and other administrative costs, different from a separate account overseen by the Office of Compliance, which has paid out more than $15 million in settlements of sexual harassment cases and other instances of discrimination.

“No more secret payments,” Comstock said.

After more than a week in seclusion, Franken gave his first interviews to his home-state media, defending himself against allegations that he inappropriately groped or forcibly kissed four women. The Senate’s ethics panel is investigating.

Franken pledged to return to the Capitol on Monday in a bid to win over his state’s voters, declining to resign after allegations that he groped several women in photo opportunities and that he forcibly kissed an entertainer while on a USO tour in 2006 before he was a senator.

“I’m embarrassed and ashamed. I’ve let a lot of people down and I’m hoping I can make it up to them and gradually regain their trust,” Franken told the Star Tribune, his first interview since the allegations emerged Nov. 16.

He denied that he intentionally grabbed women’s backsides during photos, saying that he did not remember the particular pictures in question.

Pelosi also suggested that the Franken case was partly different because one of his alleged victims has publicly accepted his apology — in contrast to women in Alabama who have said Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore tried to have improper relationships with them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s, working as a local prosecutor.

“I don’t think that you can equate Senator Franken with Roy Moore. It’s two different things,” the Democratic leader said.

The allegations against Barton involved consensual behavior. He apologized last week after a nude picture of him appeared on social media, part of what The Washington Post later reported was a years-long relationship with a woman who confronted him over his other relationships with women he met online. Barton has not discussed the allegations.

Barton, 68, has until Dec. 11 to file for reelection in Texas’s 6th Congressional District, which includes his home town, Ennis, and portions of the cities of Arlington and Fort Worth. As of Sunday, the only candidate listed on the Texas secretary of state’s website was the Democrat whom Barton defeated by nearly 20 percentage points last year.

Last week Barton told the Texas Tribune he was still deliberating whether to run for another term.

(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?
11/28/2017 10:23:24 AM
The grizzlies are coming


Visitors watch grizzly bears at the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, Mont. The center has seven bears, all sent there after having some sort of conflict with humans. (Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post)


This story has been optimized for offline reading on our apps. For a richer experience, you can find the full version of this story here. An Internet connection is required.

Dean Peterson, a rangy fourth-generation rancher with a handlebar mustache, is used to factoring in all sorts of challenges as he works his vast spread in the Big Hole Valley.Summer wildfires that can sweep down the pine-blanketed mountains to the west, harsh winters that can endanger his thousand-plus head of cattle.

Yet in the back of his mind these days is a threat most of his forefathers never faced: grizzly bears. Settlers pushing West had all but exterminated the hulking predators by the time Peterson’s great-grandfather arrived here in the late 1800s.

A year ago, however, a trail camera in the nearby forest snapped a grainy photo of a grizzly crossing a stream, marking the first confirmed sighting in the valley in a century. Then in May, Peterson was stunned to see one lope across a snow-dusted road as he drove a four-wheeler a few miles from his property.

“It will happen,” the 51-year-old rancher says of the looming presence of grizzlies. And he is equally matter of fact about what they’ll mean for both him and his neighbors. “It will be more difficult to run cattle.”

Biologists and their maps agree: The bears are coming to southwestern Montana. Since 1975, when this icon of the American West was listed as an endangered species, grizzlies in the ­Yellowstone National Park eco­system to the south have more than quadrupled their range and population. Well to the north, grizzlies in the Glacier National Park region also are spreading out.

The bear pioneers are now migrating so far that they are viewed as the vanguard of a possible union between the two populations, a connection that could help ensure the bears’ health and genetic diversity. At some point, conservationists hope, grizzlies might even set up shop in the Idaho wilderness, recolonizing a small portion of the vast territory they once occupied.

But as grizzlies fan out from the parks that have long been their refuges, they are encountering more people, roads and development — and more temptation in the form of trash and livestock. While their presence raises the risk to humans and makes activities like hunting and hiking more perilous, the reality is that bears tend to be on the losing end of interactions with humans. At least 58 died in 2016 and 51 as of mid-November this year, most killed by people who accidentally hit them with cars, crossed paths with them while hunting or shot them for harming animals or property.

Americans have spent four decades and millions of dollars to rescue grizzlies from the brink of extinction. Now, experts say, one big question is whether people can live alongside them.

“They’re big, they can be dangerous, and they compete with us for some food resources,” said Steve Primm, a conservationist who has forged relationships with Peterson and other ranchers in the Big Hole Valley, trying to get them to see the animals as something with which they can coexist. “If we’re living with grizzly bears, then that’s showing that we’ve got quite a strong commitment to living with the natural world.”

Conflicts with people helped to drive the Yellowstone grizzly population to as low as 136 in the 1970s, according to government figures. It has since officially rebounded to around 700, and federal biologists say the number could be as high as 1,000. Such progress prompted the Interior Department to delist that region’s bears this summer, with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, a Montana native, hailing the turnaround as proof that the Endangered Species Act works.

Lawsuits are now seeking to overturn the government’s action, citing the Yellowstone population’s genetic isolation and the spiritual importance of the species to Native American tribes. Some also point to the grizzlies’ growing footprint and contend that climate change has caused natural food sources to dwindle, putting the bears in danger as they pursue elk gut piles that hunters leave in woods in the fall or calves born on ranches in the spring.

Dean Peterson is a fourth-generation rancher in Montana’s Big Hole Valley, where grizzlies are being seen for the first time in a century. (Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post)A grizzly bear feasts on a bison carcass in Yellowstone National Park’s Hayden Valley in early September. (Deby Dixon/For The Washington Post)

Frank van Manen, a U.S. Geological Survey biologist who leads the government’s Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, said research does not support that argument. The Yellowstone ecosystem has reached its “carrying capacity,” he said — forcing male grizzlies, in particular, to seek more space. Their movement is creating new challenges.

“Is it realistic to expect this population to expand beyond where it is now?” van Manen asked. “It becomes more of a society question. It has to do with tolerance, and it has to do with where do we want grizzly bears?”

Delisting could entail a new risk, given the possibility in all three states in the Yellowstone ecosystem — Montana, Wyoming and Idaho — of allowing grizzly trophy hunting at some point. While federal scientists say limited hunts would not necessarily harm the overall population, critics decry what they see as an unnecessary additional threat.

Of prime concern to some are the far-flung bears on the ecosystem’s periphery in Montana, the ones that could meet up with their brethren to the north. The bear photographed ambling through the narrow lodgepole pines near Peterson’s ranch last year is among those that scientists think could eventually help make a historic link.

The rancher does not see it in such sweeping terms. “I just look at it as another one of God’s creations,” he said, sitting in his living room, where a silky charcoal wolf pelt and the heads of other animals he has bagged adorn the walls. “It’s just another species out there, and yeah, it’s had a hard time. It got hunted near extinction, because it was hard for people to live around.”

That doesn’t have to be the case in the 21st century, conservationists say. A project in the Blackfoot River Valley, south of Glacier, has for years used electric fencing, carcass removal and range riders — people who sweep the land, monitoring for bear activity — to reduce conflicts. Property owners have employed similar techniques in an area just north of Yellowstone. One ranch there, its fields visible from a public road, has even become a prime grizzly viewing spot.

“I’ve seen a lot of bears,” said van Manen, smiling in the late-afternoon light as he watched a female grizzly and two cubs romp down a hill on the ranch and then stand on their hind legs to scan the horizon. “But I get excited every time.”

Beaverhead County, where Peter­son’s ranch sits, is a different scenario. The local dump consists of two fly-swarmed open containers that could be an accessible bear buffet. Bear-resistant garbage cans are not the norm. Elk hunters, who try to obscure their scent and walk quietly through the woods there, aren’t as accustomed to carrying bear spray despite studies showing it is a powerful deterrent that can save ­human and bear lives.

And as the biggest beef-producing county in the state, Beaverhead has lots of cattle grazing on ranches and in nearby forests. Dead livestock is typically left to decompose or is buried; either way, the carcass can attract grizzlies.

The potential for problems worries Primm, who wants to see the bears “get off on the right foot” in the Big Hole Valley. He knows grizzlies that find one food source near humans will come back for more.

More here


(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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