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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
11/5/2015 10:57:37 AM

A New, Scarier Phase in the War Against ISIS

If the group really did put a bomb on that Russian plane, we’re in big trouble.


Military investigators from Egypt and Russia stand near the debris of a Russian airliner at the site of its crash at the Hassana area in Arish city in northern Egypt, Nov. 1, 2015.
Photo by Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters

CNN and other media are reporting that U.S. and European intelligence suspect that ISIS or one of its affiliates used a bomb to bring down a Russian airplane over Sinai on Saturday, killing all 224 aboard. The reporting on this is early and it would be wise to withhold judgment until more information comes in, but this could be a very big deal. If confirmed, this attack would mark a major shift by the Islamic State and should force us to rethink the threat that the group poses to the world.

The caricature of ISIS is that its members are all wild-eyed fanatics bent on conquering the world, butchering, raping, and enslaving as they go. Unfortunately the caricature bears a strong resemblance to reality. But there is an important exception: While the Islamic State’s brutality is staggering, its operations have largely been limited in scope. The group seems new because Americans only really began to consider it a serious threat in 2014, after the beheading of journalist James Foley and the group’s sudden and massive incursion into Iraq. But it really began a decade before then in an earlier incarnation as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaida in Iraq, which emerged after the U.S. invasion in 2003. So while the group’s name has repeatedly changed and it is now led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, we have a long track record by which to judge it.

Zarqawi and his followers likewise raped, beheaded, and killed Shi’a and Sunnis suspected of supporting the American-backed Iraqi government. They too declared an Islamic government in Iraq and otherwise acted in ways painfully familiar to those who have watched the rise of ISIS the past two years. But the scope of the group’s operations for more than a decade has suggested it has been primarily focused on its local enemies: the Shi’a government of Iraq, the Alawite government of Syria, and to a lesser degree neighbors that opposed it like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Lebanon. In this fight, it primarily has used a mix of conventional and guerrilla war, with terrorist attacks designed to demoralize enemy security forces, sow unrest among its people, and foster sectarian tension. Somewhat surprisingly, despite
predictions to the contrary and years of being devastated by U.S. forces in Iraq, the Islamic State’s predecessor organizations focused on killing American soldiers in Iraq but did not prioritize international terrorism as a way of expanding the battlefield. Islamic State, meanwhile, has butchered Americans whom it captured in Syria. And it has also called for attacks in the West, but this has been done by so-called “lone wolves,” most of whom have little operational connection to the group’s core in Syria and Iraq.

Still, Baghdadi’s group has had affiliates in places as diverse as Afghanistan, Libya, Nigeria, and, notably, the Sinai that have pledged loyalty to the Islamic State and have had that pledge recognized. Yet these affiliates have so far largely followed their own agendas, embracing some of the Islamic State’s brutality—like when Libyan followers
beheaded Christians, and the Yemeni branch attacked Shi’a mosques—but not really expanding their horizons beyond their home turf. You would not want to be an American who stumbled across their path, but they were not going to bring the war to America either. They seemed more like a local problem, with Baghdadi’s boasts that they were part of a unified caliphate sounding like grandiose rhetoric with little operational meaning.

So if ISIS or its Sinai affiliate did bomb the Russian airplane, it means the organization may be changing in several important ways. First, using terrorism to attack civil aviation would be a major strategic shift. Whether it was the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijackings in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Qaddafi regime’s bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in 1988, or the 9/11 attacks, terrorist groups have long targeted airplanes. In 2009 and 2010, al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen unsuccessfully tried to
target U.S. passenger and cargo planes. The Islamic State now might be embracing this ugly practice. Civil aviation, fortunately, is already a well-guarded target. Knowing that yet another band of bloodthirsty thugs might attack it is not likely to worsen the misery of flying beyond its present levels, though it may mean you might want to cancel your spring break trip to eastern Libya.

Even more importantly, a new civil-airliner attack would mean the battlefield is expanding. It would mean that rather than striking Russian bases and personnel in Syria, the Islamic State is hitting them wherever they might be found—in this case leaving an Egyptian tourist resort. Here the Islamic State’s affiliates become important, for they greatly expand the range of where ISIS could conceivably launch an attack.

The attack on a Russian plane may seem intuitive given Putin’s recent intervention in Syria, but this too would be a shift. In the past the organization focused on local enemies and on Muslims it considered deviant, not Western or other foreign powers. Russia is particularly loathed among jihadists and now many ordinary Sunni Muslims, so there’s a chance the Islamic State is making an exception. The Muslim world has been outraged that Moscow has been slaughtering Sunni Muslims by essentially serving as Bashar al-Assad’s air force. (Although, ironically, the Russians have
focused their firepower on the moderate Syrian opposition, not ISIS.) And Russia’s longstanding brutality in Chechnya and past intervention in Afghanistan make it a time-honored foe. So striking Russia improves the Islamic State’s credibility as the avenging angel of Sunnism.

But the United States is high on the most-hated list, too. America
devastated al-Qaida in Iraq’s ranks in the last decade, and now the United States is bombing ISIS positions in Syria. So if Russia is being targeted internationally, it makes sense to assume Americans will soon be in the crosshairs, too. In fact, this suggests the more aggressive the United States is in Iraq and Syria against ISIS, the more likely the organization is to respond with international terrorism.

The Islamic State
has attracted more than 100 Americans and several thousand Europeans to fight in its ranks, so it is well-poised to attack the West should it so choose. I’ve argued before that this threat is real but often exaggerated. Part of my logic was that Western security services are on alert and that many of the volunteers don’t want to do terrorism at home, but an important factor in my thinking was the local and regional focus of the Islamic State itself. For years now this has largely held true despite frequent doomsaying. But terrorist groups are dynamic, and if the Islamic State is now prioritizing foreign enemies, this is an important shift.

Reports of a bomb are still tentative, and even if they are true it’s still too soon to say that the group now is becoming more global in its targeting; one airplane attack may not make a pattern. But we might look back on the downing of Metrojet Flight 9268 as the moment the threat of ISIS transformed itself from a regional menace to a global danger.

Daniel Byman is a professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings. His latest book is Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Global Jihadist Movement: What Everyone Needs to Know. Follow him on Twitter.


"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?
11/5/2015 1:41:29 PM
By November 4, 2015

When Will America Jail Their Banksters Like Iceland is Doing?



James Hall, Guest
Waking Times

The most dramatic contrast in the rule of law against the architects of financial theft can be seen in the way America protects their banksters and the accountability that Iceland imposed on their financial crooks. The fact that the orthodox financial press refuses to cover the incarceration of Iceland’s Bankers Face 74 Years in Prison While US Banks Profit After Your Bailout, is clear proof who really controls the political and economic institutions in the United States. As for the courts, America has long ago shredded the rule of law in this country.

Five top bankers from Iceland’s two largest banks — Landsbankinn and Kaupþing — were found guilty of embezzlement, market manipulation, and breach of fiduciary duties. Though the country’s maximum penalty for financial crimes currently stands at six years, the Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments to extend the limit. Most of those convicted have so far been sentenced to between two and five years.”

Pray tell, when will the public wake up from their systematic induced lobotomy from a culture designed to purge even a fundamental understanding of money, finance and economics? A society based upon psychosurgery has produced the densest population on the planet. Stuck on Stupid does not say enough about the fools that keep obeying the dictates of the financial elites.

In a demonstration of supreme chutzpah, former Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Shalom Bernanke points the finger at his brethren tribe of moneychangers, while spinning out the con that the Fed came to the rescue. Ben Bernanke: More execs should have gone to jail for causing Great Recession, exemplifies just how inept the media presstitutes are in allowing the bag man for the banksters to deflect the true culprit of the cause of financial ruin.

“With publication of his memoir, The Courage to Act, on Tuesday by W.W. Norton & Co., Bernanke has some thoughts about what went right and what went wrong. For one thing, he says that more corporate executives should have gone to jail for their misdeeds. The Justice Department and other law-enforcement agencies focused on indicting or threatening to indict financial firms, he notes, “but it would have been my preference to have more investigation of individual action, since obviously everything what went wrong or was illegal was done by some individual, not by an abstract firm.”

The eradication of honest species is a direct result of the debt created fiat money system operated by the Federal Reserve. Acceptance of the Central Banking scheme, as legitimate is the fundamental curse of modern economics.

It comes as no shock that the street protests against the banksters has been infiltrated by the masters of the universe to insulate the central bank from the authentic outrage that sincere protestors express. However, mere demonstrations will not secure criminal indictments from a Department of Injustice that masquerades as the “Peoples’ Sheriff”.

The Iceland experience is a most hopeful action taken against the monetary criminal elites, who operate as the global alchemist of counterfeit usury.

Zero-hedge published the account, First They Jailed The Bankers, Now Every Icelander To Get Paid Back In Bank Sale.

“Because Icelanders took control of their government, they effectively own the banks. Benediktsson believes this will bring foreign capital into the country and ultimately fuel the economy — which, incidentally, remains the only European nation to recover fully from the 2008 crisis. Iceland even managed to pay its outstanding debt to the IMF in full — in advance of the due date.”

Wow, rejoice and praise the Lord . . .

John 2:15 – King James Bible – And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables.

Now one need not be a Christian or even a believer in a Supreme Being to see the wisdom in righteous anger. The following point is made in Why Did Jesus Drive The Money Changers From The Temple?

“Think about it: Immediately after Jesus dealt with the opportunists, he became a magnet for the very ones whom others so often take advantage of. It may be that when we take a courageous stand for righteousness, some will recognize and appreciate that stand. The world is full of downtrodden people who are looking for someone to stand up for them. If we don’t do it, who will?”

The nation of Iceland stepped up with the greatest of bravery to assert their national sovereignty and righteous inherent autonomy. Defying the banksters cabal and ridding the exploitation of the IMF is not only possible, but necessary.

Since a financial analysis of Corporatocracy dissects business activities, the ordinary protestor opposing Wall Street often makes a mistake by railing against capitalism believing that both are synonymous. The average American has a rudimentary understanding of finance at best. In the current condition of the popular culture, most pay even less lip service to the lessons of scripture.

Blocking out both disciplines inflicts a void of profound economic knowledge. The Banksters of high finance share the lineage of the Pharisees from biblical times. Today, stealing from the public has become a computerized science.

Unless and until the American populace matures and shows the responsibility to confront the very nature and basis of the debt extortion formula, used by the banksters, the successful resistance that Iceland adopted will not be seen in the United States. In all the discussions during this presidential election cycle, no one is making the case to abolish the Federal Reserve, not even Rand Paul.

The study of economics is more about human nature than forecasts. As long as the most corrupt are rewarded for their offenses, the banking cartel will remain a den of thieves.

Community banking must be resurrected and a Glass–Steagall Banking Act reinstituted to separate commercial from investment banking. A host of more permanent measures to eliminate the operations and functions of the Fed must then follow.

**This article was originally featured at BATR and reprinted here with permission.**

~~ Help Waking Times to raise the vibration by sharing this article with friends and family…


"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?
11/5/2015 2:06:11 PM

The Latest: Sweden seeks to relocate migrants

Associated Press

President of the European Council Donald Tusk, left, and Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Lofven speak during a joint press conference at the Swedish Government headquarters Rosenbad in Stockholm, Sweden, Wednesday Nov. 4, 2015. (Maja Suslin /TT via AP)


ATHENS, Greece (AP) — The latest as tens of thousands of people flood into Europe in search of a new life. All times local.

9:15 p.m.

Sweden says it will request to transfer some migrants to other European countries under an EU relocation plan.

In a joint news conference Wednesday with EU president Donald Tusk, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said the country's migration authorities are overstretched by the large influx.

With about 160,000 asylum-seekers expected this year, he noted that "Sweden has taken by far the highest number of asylum-seekers per capita" in the 28-member bloc.

"Sweden is not able to receive people in the way that we want to," he added. "That is why tomorrow (Thursday) my government will decide to request the relocation of migrants from Sweden to other EU member states."

EU plans already call for the relocation of 160,000 refugees from Italy, Greece and Hungary — the main entry points into the EU — but only a few have been transferred to other countries so far.

Lofven didn't say how many migrants Sweden wants to relocate.

___

7:35 p.m.

Slovenian lawmakers have blocked a bid for a referendum on granting the army more powers in managing the influx of migrants coming into the country from Croatia.

Parliament voted 71-6 Wednesday to block the initiative by Radio Student which had started collecting the 40,000 signatures needed to call the popular vote.

Lawmakers have cited a constitutional provision which prohibits votes on any urgent measures for the country's defense and security.

Slovenia has stepped up the army's role saying its police have been overwhelmed by the tens of thousands of refugees streaming into the country on their way toward Western Europe.

Supporters of the referendum have said the move was unnecessary and has led to a militarization of society. More than 140,000 refugees so far have entered the country.

___

7:25 p.m.

An official says calm has returned at a camp on a British army base in Cyprus where 114 migrants are currently housed following some "isolated incidents of disorder" that included the torching of a couple of tents.

Sean Tully, a spokesman for Britain's two military bases Cyprus told the AP that authorities "understand that the migrants are frustrated" after their two boats landed on the shores of RAF Akrotiri last month instead of reaching their intended destination Greece.

Tully says that none of the 114 who hail from "several Middle Eastern nations" will be allowed to reach the U.K. He said Cyprus is now processing asylum applications from "a handful" of migrants.

Tully said those who don't claim asylum remain the responsibility of the bases and may be returned to their "point of origin."

___

7:20 p.m.

The government official overseeing the Netherland's response to the migrant crisis says the country has offered 35 more staff to the European Union's Frontex border agency.

State Secretary for Justice Klaas Dijkhoff said Wednesday the Dutch government recently offered to send interpreters, military police and port police to help tackle the flow of people pouring into Europe. The new Dutch contingent comes on top of 120 extra staff pledged to Frontex earlier this year by the Netherlands.

In a written statement issued after meeting German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere in Berlin, Dijkhoff called the flow of migrants, "the biggest test of European cooperation in recent history" and a "common problem that we must solve together."

___

5:10 p.m.

Every day on Greek's eastern island of Lesbos, volunteers are helping to save the lives of refugees braving the perilous sea journey from Turkey.

Essan Daod, a Palestinian surgeon, has helped deliver a baby on the beach, treated countless broken bones and revived more unconscious infants than he can remember. He says some days are "like a battlefield," especially Oct. 28, when a large smuggling boat sank, killing 40 people. Some 240 others were rescued.

Spanish lifeguards from Proactiva Open Arms seem to be there every time a dinghy in distress reaches northern Lesbos, using jet skis to bring migrants tossed in the rough seas to shore.

And as the weather and the water turn colder, volunteers from Norway are helping refugees get warm as they step of the boats onto Lesbos — handing out shoes, dry clothing, blankets and soup. Hernrik Kjellmo Larsen, 23, says "we saw what was happening and thought we just can't stand for this."

___

4:45 p.m.

Greece's national Olympic committee says it strongly opposes the idea of using a former Olympic velodrome in Athens to temporarily shelter refugees who are reaching the country by the thousands each day.

The committee said Wednesday that all available sporting venues are "absolutely necessary" to help Greek athletes prepare for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio. It said the velodrome is the only available racing venue in the country and using it for refugees would cause competitive cycling to "completely wither" in Greece.

The government has not confirmed press reports that it wants to house refugees in the velodrome. Several disused former Olympic venues in Athens are being used to temporarily shelter migrants, more than 600,000 of whom have reached Greece this year.

___

4:20 p.m.

Hungarian prosecutors are taking over the criminal case in which 71 refugees were found dead in the back of a truck in neighboring Austria.

The Office of Hungary's Prosecutor General said Wednesday it had accepted a request by the Austrian justice ministry to take over the proceedings.

Five men — four Bulgarians and one Afghan — have been arrested in Hungary in connection with the deaths. The 71 bodies, many still unidentified, were discovered Aug. 27 in a refrigerated truck parked in the safety lane of the main Budapest-to-Vienna A4 highway.

Prosecutors say the truck set off from the central Hungarian city of Kecskemet before traffickers picked up the migrants near Hungary's southern border with Serbia. They say the refugees likely suffocated to death while the truck was still in Hungary.

___

3:55 p.m.

Turkey's president has accused European nations of being too selective and discriminatory in their policies of accepting refugees, saying they will one day be remembered for their "shameful" attitudes.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday that European nations had "panicked" in the face the hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers reaching EU borders, whereas Turkey had already accepted 2.5 million Syrian refugees.

He said European countries were accepting refugees according "to their education, faith, ability, age and health" without humanitarian considerations.

Erdogan says "the problem in Syria and Iraq will one day end and these people will return to their countries, their cities and their homes. What they will remember is Turkey's humanitarian stance and the shameful attitude displayed by the West."

___

3:05 p.m.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras says Greece has taken on a "responsibility beyond its means" in handling the massive influx of refugees entering the European Union while enduring a financial crisis.

Speaking Wednesday after meeting with European Parliament President Martin Schulz, Tsipras said the financial crisis had caused a "humanitarian crisis domestically" and his government wanted European creditors to show "the same solidarity that we are showing to the refugees."

At a separate news conference in Athens, however, EU financial affairs commissioner Pierre Moscovici indicated it was unlikely the EU would relax bailout conditions for Greece.

The bailout rules must be implemented and "nothing must lead to relaxing the reforms," he said.

___

2:50 p.m.

Norwegian police say a record number of 196 asylum-seekers in one day have crossed into Norway from Russia at a remote Arctic border post.

Police said Wednesday the migrants arrived Tuesday, mostly by riding across on newly bought bicycles because pedestrian crossings are not allowed at the border in Storskog.

Norwegian NTB news agency said 174 refugees had arrived Monday from Russia and more than 3,000 people have used that route to enter northern Norway.

__

1:30 p.m.

France says authorities have detained eight people accused of being involved in a smuggling ring that brings migrants to Britain by rubber boat from the northern French city of Dunkirk.

Thousands fleeing war and poverty have gathered around the French port cities of Calais, Dunkirk and others in hopes of sneaking across the English Channel in ferries or undersea trains to Britain. More than a dozen have died this year attempting the dangerous journey.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Wednesday that smugglers were charging up to 12,000 euros ($13,100) for the trip across the Channel.

Cazeneuve said French authorities have dismantled 200 smuggling networks and detained more than 3,000 people so far this year in investigating human trafficking networks.

He said French-British cooperation against illegal migration has been reinforced since he met Monday with British Home Secretary Theresa May.

___

1:10 p.m.

Cyprus police say a court has ordered three men held for eight days on suspicion of people smuggling after crews rescued 26 people on a boat in trouble off the Mediterranean island's southeastern tip.

Police spokesman Andreas Angelides told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the men — aged 30, 48 and 35 — are being investigated on charges of helping migrants enter Cyprus illegally and of conspiracy to commit a crime.

Angelides said each of 26 people — including 13 children — had paid $1,000 to board the boat, which is believed to have left Friday from Tripoli, Lebanon.

Rough seas and strong winds hampered the rescue operation late Tuesday, but authorities believe all on the boat were saved.

___

10:40 a.m.

France's top security official says 200 human-trafficking networks have been dismantled since the beginning of the year, including 30 in the tense Calais region where thousands of migrants are hoping to cross the Channel for a better life in Britain.

In an interview with Europe 1 radio Wednesday, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said any French citizens caught trafficking would be punished. Ahead of a news conference by the local prosecutor, he did not confirm the Europe 1 report of a French fisherman's arrest in a smuggling network in the northern port of Dunkirk.

Northern France, in particular the Calais region, has become the increasingly desperate temporary resting spot for thousands of migrants fleeing war and poverty at home. Dunkirk, 50 kilometers (30 miles) away, is also a major port.

___

10:05 a.m.

Germany's federal police are conducting raids against international human trafficking networks across Germany. More than 500 officers were conducting searches of 24 homes in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony and Baden-Wuerttemberg.

A federal police spokesman said Wednesday they were targeting "criminal, internationally operating trafficking groups." The spokesman, who did not give his name in line with department policy, said the raids were still ongoing.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants have flooded to Germany in recent months seeking to escape war and poverty and start a new life. Many of them pay smugglers to take them across the border into the country.

—by Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin

___

9:45 a.m.

Greece's coast guard says 65 people have been rescued from a boat carrying people from Turkey to the nearby Greek island of Lesbos but five bodies were recovered from the water.

The coast guard said Wednesday the bodies were three children and two men. The migrant boat ran into trouble north of Lesbos on Tuesday night.

The coast guard says a total of 457 people were rescued between Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning in the Aegean Sea in 13 separate incidents.

More than 600,000 people have arrived in Greece so far this year, with most arriving on Lesbos. From there, they make their way to the Greek mainland on ferries and head north to more prosperous European Union countries.

Thousands of migrants are stranded on Lesbos due to a ferry strike that began Monday.

___

8:30 a.m.

Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn says the symbolic gesture of Wednesday's relocation of the first 30 refugees from Greece to his country is "only a start, but a very, very important start."

He and other EU officials say the practice of some EU countries to erect barbed wire fences at their borders in an effort to keep refugees out was not in line with European values.

Asselborn says "walls, fences and barbed wire cannot be part of the European Union."

He said that if Europe fails to change such images as well as bouts of xenophobia, "then the values of the European Union are destroyed in some way."

___

7:45 a.m.

The first group of refugees to be relocated from Greece has boarded a plane in Athens bound for Luxembourg.

They include six families from Syria and Iraq. They form the start of a program to relocate refugees who have arrived in Greece from nearby Turkey to other European Union countries without them having to make the arduous and often dangerous journey across the Balkans on foot.

More than 600,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Greece so far this year, most in the last few months. Hundreds of others have died as their overloaded, unseaworthy boats overturned or sank in the Aegean.

On Tuesday night, four people — two children and two men — drowned trying to reach Greece.

"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?
11/5/2015 2:19:02 PM

Tens of thousands march in Moscow as Putin extols patriotism

AFP

Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) poses for a selfie with young activists at the Red Square in Moscow on November 4, 2015 during celebrations for National Unity Day (AFP Photo/Natalia Kolesnikova)


Moscow (AFP) - President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday extolled patriotism as tens of thousands marched through Moscow in the Kremlin-choreographed show of unity amid tensions with the West.

Russia marked National Unity Day at a time of growing social and economic problems in the country as well as simmering tensions with the West.

Some 85,000 people marched through central Moscow, police said, while more modest gatherings of hardline nationalists also took place in the Russian capital.

Unity Day was introduced under Putin to mark the 1612 expulsion of Polish occupiers and has grown in importance, alongside a rise in both state-sponsored nationalism and its less controlled far-right version.

Accompanied by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, the rabbi and the chief mufti of Russia, Putin laid flowers at the Red Square monument to Kuzma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky, who helped rid Moscow of the Poles four centuries ago.

Later in the day he extolled patriotism at the unveiling of an exhibition which is dedicated to the country's history between 1914 and 1945 and was put together by the government and the Church.

"Love for the homeland was the strongest and invincible feeling, it inspired, helped and saved," the Russian strongman said at the ceremony.

Putin, who has been in power for the past 15 years, sees nationalism as one of his most powerful weapons for maintaining a strong base of support and challenging the West.

In Russia's second city, Saint Petersburg, nationalist activists scrapped plans to hold an annual march and instead held a vigil in honour of those who died in a plane crash as they travelled from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to Saint Petersburg last weekend.

Some 300 people took part in the event commemorating the 224 victims, an AFP correspondent reported.

One of the participants, Natalia Godlevskaya, 40, said: "We should be together at this tragic moment."

"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?
11/5/2015 2:25:58 PM

Democratic senator: Obama still has no strategy for Syria

November 4, 2015


Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Tim Kaine, D.-Va., says he has yet to see a “credible strategy” for battling the Islamic State in Syria. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Sen. Tim Kaine said Wednesday that President Obama still does not have a clear strategy for confronting the so-called Islamic State in Syria. Kaine, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a Virginia Democrat, also cautioned his party’s candidates not to prioritize issues like restrictions on gun ownership above improving the economy.

“I don’t think any Democrat need to fear taking a position in favor of reasonable gun rules, like universal background record checks,” he told Yahoo News in an interview broadcast on Sirius/XM Channel 124.

“I don’t think any Democrat should be afraid of it. And I’ve been advising my colleagues that. I think it’s fine,” Kaine explained. “I think the one sensitivity is, because most voters are still primarily concerned about the economy, that if you talk about an issue that they agree with you on — but you don’t talk about the issue that they really want to hear about — then it may not be that good.”

Some analysts have blamed support for restrictions on gun purchases for Democratic electoral defeats this week in Kentucky and Virginia.

Kaine, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, gave a very cautious welcome to Obama’s shift in policy on Syria last week. The White House announced Friday that the president had ordered up to 50 U.S. special operators to be based in that war-torn country. Those elite commandos will advise and assist rebels who are battling the Islamic State but who also find themselves under fire from forces loyal to strongman Bashar Assad. Kaine said that the White House still lacks a clear strategy for taking on the Islamic State in Syria nearly 16 months after U.S. bombs first starting striking the group.

“They’ve got to put a credible Syria strategy on the table,” Kaine said. “They’ve got to put a strategy on the table that deals with the ISIL third of the problem, with the Assad third of the problem, and with the massive humanitarian disaster third of the problem. And they’re just not doing that.”

Kaine said the administration’s approach to taking on the Islamic State in Iraq was relatively clear, but “in Syria, it’s just not really a strategy.”

The senator also said it’s past time for Congress to debate and vote on a resolution to authorize — and potentially restrict — military operations against the Islamic State. The White House insists that it has all of the legal authorities it needs in the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against al-Qaida, but Kaine forcefully rejected that position as an “Alice in Wonderland argument.”

Kaine lamented that the Obama who ran for president in 2007 vowing to rein in American military intervention has given way to a commander in chief who has embraced a potentially dangerous view of executive war-making power. The senator worried that this assertiveness and congressional unwillingness to challenge the White House would leave a terrible legacy to the next president.

“I’m a strong supporter of the president. I think ISIL is evil. I think the United States should be undertaking military action against ISIL. But not without a vote of Congress,” he said. “Because if we allow this president, or any president, to wage a war for 16 months without needing the permission of Congress, we’re setting a horrible precedent.”

And, Kaine continued, “I would think this president would want to finish his term in office as somebody who had imposed some order on a disorderly, kind of carte blanche grant of power rather than walking out of office having participated in a broad expansion of the doctrine of undeclared executive war.”

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

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