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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 12/7/2016 11:12:22 AM
	IOM says 21,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar crackdown to Bangladesh Tue Dec 6, 2016 10:44AM In this photograph taken on November 26, 2016, Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims look on in a refugee camp in Teknaf, in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar. (Photo by AFP) The International Organization for Migration (IOM) says nearly 21,000 Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar have fled persecution and violence to Bangladesh in the past two months. "An estimated 21,000 Rohingyas have arrived in Cox's Bazar district between October 9 and December 2," Sanjukta Sahany, head of the IOM office in Bangladesh's southeastern district bordering Rakhine, said Tuesday. Most of those who crossed the border have taken refuge in makeshift settlements, official refugee camps and villages, she added. The figure is based on the data collected by UN agencies and international NGOs. Myanmar's military has launched a fresh wave of crackdown on Muslims since an alleged attack on the country’s border guards on October 9 left nine policemen dead. The government blamed the Rohingyas for the assault. There have been numerous accounts by eyewitnesses of summary executions, rapes and arson attacks against Muslims since the crackdown began. The military has blocked access to Rakhine and banned journalists and aid workers from entering the zone. At least 30,000 Rohingyas have been internally displaced in Rakhine, while thousands of others have tried to reach Bangladesh over the past month to seek refuge among the Rohingya people who already live there. The United Nations has warned that ongoing human rights violations against the Rohingyas in Rakhine could be tantamount to “crimes against humanity.” The Bangladesh government has also come under fire for pushing back Rohingya refugees, with Muslim groups and the opposition urging the country to open its border to the displaced people. Bangladeshi activists from Islamic organizations march towards the Myanmar embassy in Dhaka on December 6, 2016 to protest against the persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. (Photo by AFP) On Tuesday, Bangladesh police said its forces had banned 10,000 Muslim protesters from marching to the Myanmar embassy in Dhaka to demonstrate against the ongoing "genocide" of the Rohingyas. Rakhine has been the scene of communal violence at the hands of Buddhist extremists since 2012. Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands have been forced from homes and live in squalid camps in dire conditions in Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. The government denies full citizenship to the 1.1 million-strong Rohingya population, branding them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. However, many believe the Rohingyas are a community of ancient lineage in Myanmar. According to the UN, the Rohingyas are one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. (PRESS TV)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 12/7/2016 2:29:41 PM
	DONALD TRUMP'S SYRIAN CIVIL WAR PARADOX BY OWEN MATTHEWS AND SOPHIA SLATER ON 12/6/16 AT 8:30 AM A civil defense member runs at a market hit by air strikes in Aleppo's rebel-held al-Fardous district, Syria October 12. ABDALRHMAN ISMAIL/REUTERS The leaflets fell from the sky over Aleppo, offering dire warnings. “If you don’t leave these areas quickly,” they admonished civilians, “you will be annihilated. Save yourselves.… Everyone has left you alone to face your doom.…” As Syrian government forces continue to steamroll through eastern Aleppo, the rebel opposition’s last stronghold in this war-ravaged city, the leaflets aren’t just a warning for residents; they’re also an indication that President Bashar al-Assad is poised for victory. It was only a year ago that the rebels seemed on the verge of taking Aleppo, once Syria’s bustling commercial capital. But due to a massive Russian bombing campaign, the ophthalmologist turned strongman has held on to power—and reduced the city to rubble. Yet even with Aleppo under the regime’s control, the Syrian Civil War would still be far from over, and the conflict promises to be as much of a nightmare for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump as it has been for his predecessor, Barack Obama. This is not how the U.S. had hoped the war would end—Washington once hoped that moderate rebels would take over a democratic, post-Assad Syria. That didn’t happen, and much of the Sunni-dominated opposition has largely morphed into a bewildering array of radical jihadi groups. Now, the White House has run out of options to challenge Assad, and for all its condemnation of the regime’s assault on Aleppo, the Obama administration has also done nothing to stop it. “Essentially, U.S. policy has become to acquiescence in Assad’s retaking of Syria,” says Joshua Landis, the head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. “It’s clear that the Obama administration has decided that it cannot risk dislodging Assad from Damascus. The rebels are too Islamist, too radical.” Instead, over the past year, the U.S. and its allies have concentrated on two things: “fighting ISIS and avoiding starting a war with the Russians by accident,” says one senior European diplomat who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record. This position—leaving Assad in place and focusing on fighting the Islamic State group (ISIS), in coordination with the Russians, if necessary—is precisely the one advocated by Trump during the 2016 campaign. “Trump has merely articulated what has been the U.S.’s actual policy” for at least a year and a half, says Landis. For perhaps the first time this year, that puts Obama and Trump in agreement on foreign policy. Both are skeptical of the neoconservative doctrine of democracy through regime change—and both agree that ISIS, not Assad, is the main threat to world (and American) security. Even Trump’s idea of fighting ISIS alongside Putin is Obama’s ; for months, Secretary of State John Kerry was discussing joint operations against the militants with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Geneva. It was Hillary Clinton, as Obama’s secretary of state, who was pushing for “regime change and democracy promotion in the wake of the [2011] Arab Spring,” says the senior diplomat. But by 2014, after the U.S. failed to find democratic and secular allies on the ground in both Libya and Syria, the White House “gave up on regime change. Obama put the brakes on.” Assad Has Won Syrians who have been evacuated from eastern Aleppo, reach out for Russian food aid in government-controlled Jibreen area in Aleppo, Syria November 30. The text on the bag, which shows the Syrian and Russian national flags, reads in Arabic: "Russia is with you." OMAR SANADIKI/REUTERS Trump’s Syria policy is far from clear—but he has been a vocal critic of regime change in Libya and Iraq. But the Syrian problem might not be any easier for him to solve than it was for Obama. Even if ISIS can be destroyed on the ground and Assad fights the remaining rebels in Syria to a standstill, military victory will not bring any simple political solution. “There is no chance that [Assad’s] generals will sit down with rebel groups like Ahrar al-Sham and come up with form of workable government,” says Landis. And the regime’s victory would strengthen Iran, the nation most Trump advisers see as the greatest threat to U.S. interests and allies in the Middle East. In April, Trump promised to hire “new voices,” instead of old foreign-policy hands “who have perfect résumés but very little to brag about except responsibility for a long history of failed policies and continued losses at war.” As Aron Lund, a Syria expert with the Carnegie Institute in Washington, D.C., points out, the New York real estate mogul’s understanding of policy detail during the campaign was vague. His stated positions included “bombing the hell” out of ISIS, complaining that the Kurds deserved more support and toying with the idea of a “safe zone” within Syria. When it comes to Syria, Trump’s foreign policy team, Lund notes, includes an eccentric mix of lobbyists and right-wing pundits. One prominent adviser to the Trump campaign is Jack Kingston, a former Republican congressman from Georgia, and he’s a paid lobbyist for the Syrian opposition. Trump’s list of foreign policy advisers also includes Walid Phares, a controversial Fox News commentator and former member of the Lebanese Forces militia, who regularly castigates the White House for not having intervened early enough in Syria. Phares recentlyattacked Obama for not having “finished off” Assad during the early years of the war. The president-elect, however, seems only vaguely familiar with the views of his ostensible adviser and at one point even appeared to believe that Phares, a lifelong Christian activist, was Muslim. His team is equally disjointed on Russia. Republican Representative Mike Pompeo of Kansas, Trump’s pick to head the CIA, has been skeptical of Moscow’s ’s motives in Syria, telling a foreign policy forum in Washington last year that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “heck bent on changing the geopolitical future.” He also suggested Russia’s real goal is trying to establish a foothold in the Middle East. Trump’s new national security adviser, Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, on the other hand, has appeared frequently on Kremlin-sponsored RT television and has long been an advocate of working with Putin. “Russia has its own national security strategy, and we have to respect that,” Flynn said on RT in April. “We have to try to figure out: How do we combine the United States’ national security strategy along with Russia’s national security strategy, despite all the challenges that we face?” For Trump, however, making a deal with Assad and Putin is less a matter of ideology than of acknowledging the reality on the ground, which is why taking Aleppo in the final months of Obama’s presidency has become a priority for Moscow and Damascus. “I think we have to concede that Assad has won,” says a senior British military commander, on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. “The only way to end the horrific humanitarian catastrophe is to give him the victory.” ‘There’s Nothing Left’ To allow Assad to remain in power would be a massive failure for the United Nations; his forces have killed too many civilians and done so indiscriminately. But for many Syrian analysts, it is also necessary. Letting him remain is the only real way to end the war, the only way to help the nearly one million people living under siege in Syria, not to mention the 9 million who are internally displaced or the almost 5 million refugees, who want to come home. “[The situation in Aleppo] is the beginning of the end,” says Abdullah, an activist who declined to give his last name, fearing punishment for speaking out. He is beginning to make plans to leave the city where he was born, where he once played on the streets and where he attended college. “There is nothing left,” he says, “The city we knew is gone.” The destruction of Aleppo, once Syria’s second largest city, has been steady and brutal. First there was urban warfare; then came the barrel bombs, which Assad’s forces dropped, many analysts say, with the explicit goal of killing as many civilians as possible. As more bombs fell, the city became a giant tomb, where survivors struggled to find medical care and put their children in makeshift schools. Yet life in Aleppo has grown significantly worse since September 2015, when the Russians began relentlessly bombing the city on Assad’s behalf. Moscow has employed the same strategy it used to destroy Grozny, the Chechen capital. This strategy has broken the stalemate and helped the regime, but it has killed and terrified more Syrian civilians than ever. Members of the White Helmets, a volunteer Syrian rescue team, recall attempting to save civilians trapped beneath the rubble, only to have the Russians launch a “double tap”—a second bomb launched to cause maximum damage to first responders. Things only got worse for civilians. Then came the “submit or starve” policy, where access to food was tightly regulated as a means of control over local people who dared to resist Assad. This was all part of the siege of eastern Aleppo, efforts which included deliberate targeting of doctors and medical facilities, largely by Russian aircraft. The result: There are only 30 doctors and left in the city to treat Aleppo’s entire population. As Human Rights Watch deputy director Ole Solvang put it in a recent press release: “Those who ordered and carried out these attacks should be tried for war crimes.” An Impossible Contradiction Even after Aleppo falls, President-elect Trump will have to address the war in Syria, whether he wants to or not. Ignoring the conflict, and its aftermath, will not make it go away; a failed state in the Levant would be a disaster for all sides. ISIS recruitment is on the rise, and many of the group’s fighters are fleeing Mosul as Iraqi, Kurdish and American forces continue to advance. Some will return home to Europe or North America, where the authorities fear they will strike—just as they did last year in Paris and Brussels. Whereas Obama’s policy was simply to fight ISIS abroad, with a rapidly increasing number of Syrian civilians dying, Trump will be forced to acknowledge what Obama ignored: the civil war and the humanitarian catastrophe. “Even if fighters put down their arms tomorrow, there would still be an emergency humanitarian situation for at least a year,” says Jens Laerke, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ Geneva spokesman. Until now, the U.S. has remained committed to a unified Syria, but the war has divided the country. Uprooting extremists and providing humanitarian protection in Syria would have to be world’s priority. But who is going to do it? The Russians who helped to destroy the country? The Iranians who sent fighters and military trainers into Homs and the Damascus suburbs? As one U.N. senior official working on the Syria file tells Newsweek: “If Assad wants the international community to help rebuild his country, he is going to have to negotiate.” The bigger problem for Trump will be that Assad’s victory, and the eventual success of the Iraqi campaign in Mosul, will be a major triumph for Iran. It will also outrage and alienate America’s longstanding Sunni allies such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who have been the Syrian opposition’s most active supporters. Obama negotiated a historic deal with Tehran, offering an end to sanctions in exchange for Iran surrendering its nukes—and the most difficult part was getting Tehran’s enemies to sign off on it. Trump has threatened to scrap that deal, potentially destabilizing the delicate truce between Iran and its neighbors. His stated policies represent an impossible contradiction—to help Assad, an ally of Iran, in Syria, but isolate the country elsewhere. How Trump resolves this paradox will determine where the U.S. stands on the escalating tension between Middle Eastern superpowers Saudi Arabia and Iran—a massive proxy war in which Syria, Iraq and ISIS are just bit players. (Newsweek)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 12/7/2016 4:40:58 PM
	“Bloody Friday” Fearporn: Now ISIS Claims It Will Attack Trump’s Inauguration DECEMBER 5, 2016 By Melissa Dykes The Express is reporting that ISIS (you know, the Western-backed rebels that have come to be called ISIS), is planning an attack on Trump’s inauguration. Apparently they’re referring to it as “Bloody Friday”: ISLAMIC STATE is planning a ‘Bloody Friday’ assault on the SAME DAY as Donald Trump is inaugurated as US president, it can be revealed. And the Islamic terror organisation is reported to have recruited a number of new English speaking operatives in recent months in a major bid to communicate messages ahead of the event. US special forces will be on high alert when Mr Trump takes over as 45th President of the United States on Friday, January 20, 2017, in Washington, DC. But security analysts have been following communications between members of the group who are planning large scale attacks on that day, it has been claimed. The story is ridiculously vague, not specifying if the attack will be on Washington D.C. or even if it will be in America or not. The authors wrote it with passive phrases like “it can be revealed” and “it has been claimed,” without even so much as saying “unnamed sources said” like CNN or FOX News does over here. They mention security analysts but don’t even clarify if those are the people who made the claim or what. And really, US Special Forces would be on high alert anyway for any president getting sworn in. This kind of propaganda fearporn is meant to do one thing: terrorize people. At this point, the propaganda is getting so vague and people are so accustomed to it, it’s unclear how this even works on anyone anymore or why they even bothered. (H/T: Weasel Zippers) Delivered by The Daily Sheeple We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos (Click for details). Contributed by Melissa Dykes of The Daily Sheeple. Image Credit: SHTFplan.com (activistpost.com)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 12/7/2016 4:54:58 PM
	American acceptance of torture only matched by Nigeria & Israel – Red Cross poll Published time: 6 Dec, 2016 13:48 © Reuters A Red Cross poll has found that about half of American respondents believe that torture is a solution for extracting information. The US was matched only by Nigeria, Israel and Palestine. The global ‘People on War’ poll that surveyed 17,000 people in 16 countries has revealed that indifference to torture has grown substantially since the late ’90s, especially where it concerns the five permanent UN Security Council members. By contrast, those living in war-torn countries like Afghanistan showed very little acceptance of such methods and a greater regard for international law. View image on Twitter Follow ICRC ✔@ICRC Torture isn’t just wrong... it’s illegal. Yet 27% of those surveyed think otherwise: http://icrc.org/peopleonwar #PeopleonWar 7:46 AM - 5 Dec 2016 109 Retweets 63 likes According to the poll results, it appears that war crimes are now being looked at as simply a part of war – an attitude increasingly prevalent in the US, where just under half of all respondents (46 percent) support the use of torture. Only Thirty percent disagreed, with the remainder were undecided. The American shift in opinion was also by far the biggest the authors have seen: none of the other P5 members (Russia, China, France, the UK) came close in figures. On average, one in three people in the US believed torture was “part of war.” Together with the Afghans, the Yemenis showed the greatest aversion to torture with the record-breaking figure of 100 percent against. This is a country that has been in the grip of war for 50 years and now witnessing a resurgence in fighting since March 2015, with thousands of lives lost. Globally, eight out of 10 people believe civilian casualties should be avoided as much as possible when going into enemy territory. The same number believe that targeting civilian infrastructure, such as hospitals and schools, is wrong. Read more Torture evidence ignored by Home Office to reject asylum claims, charity claims But more than a third of the respondents (36 percent) believe in torturing enemy combatants for information. Only slightly under half (48 percent) in 2016 believed this to be wrong. And 26 percent in P5 countries believe in grinding the enemy down by depriving them of essentials like food and water. At the turn of the millennium, in 1999, a sizeable 66 percent globally said torture was wrong. ICRC spokesman Ewan Watson talked to DW to explain the alarming rise and the discrepancy in results, and the alarming rise in indifference is seen by him as an unsurprising development for our modern age. “With all the images we receive from the world front lines via internet we, in countries not affected by war, have a distance to the reality of people's suffering,” he said. The more concealed root of this shift are seen by Watson to originate in the so-called War on Terror, whose invasion of popular culture particularly desensitized people to the use of torture. “If you look at films which show torture in action, this notion of the ticking time bomb, that you must torture somebody to reveal information that will stop something tragic happening. All that provides a kind of rational framework for torture to happen,” he added, recalling that multiple studies have testify to the technique’s ineffectiveness at obtaining information – instead breeding hatred and enemies. Torture is internationally recognized as an illegal practice under the Geneva Conventions. (RT)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 12/7/2016 5:47:11 PM
	Tech companies move to target terrorist propaganda online TAMI ABDOLLAH Associated PressDecember 6, 2016 WASHINGTON (AP) — Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube are joining forces to more quickly identify the worst terrorist propaganda and prevent it from spreading online. The new program announced Monday would create a database of unique digital "fingerprints" to help automatically identify videos or images the companies could remove. The move by the technology companies, which is expected to begin in early 2017, aims to assuage government concerns — and derail proposed new federal legislation — over social media content that is seen as increasingly driving terrorist recruitment and radicalization, while also balancing free-speech issues. Technical details were being worked out, but Microsoft pioneered similar technology to detect, report and remove child pornography through such a database in 2009. Unlike those images, which are plainly illegal under U.S. law, questions about whether an image or video promotes terrorism can be more subjective, depending on national laws and the rules of a particular company's service. Social media has increasingly become a tool for recruiting and radicalization by the Islamic State group and others. Its use by terror groups and supporters has added to the threat from so-called lone-wolf attacks and decreased the time from "flash to bang" — or radicalization to violence — with little or no time for law enforcement to follow evidentiary trails before an attack. Under the new partnership, the companies promised to share among themselves "the most extreme and egregious terrorist images and videos we have removed from our services — content most likely to violate all our respective companies' content policies," according to a joint announcement Monday evening. When such content is shared internally, the other participating companies will be notified and can use the digital fingerprints to quickly identify the same content on their own services to judge whether it violates their rules. If so, companies can delete the material and possibly disable the account, as appropriate. Most social media services explicitly do not allow content that supports violent action or illegal activities. Twitter, for example, says users "may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease." "We really are going after the most obvious serious content that is shared online — that is, the kind of recruitment videos and beheading videos more likely to be against all our content policies," said Sally Aldous, a Facebook spokeswoman. The White House praised the joint effort. "The administration believes that the innovative private sector is uniquely positioned to help limit terrorist recruitment and radicalization online," said National Security Council spokesman Carl Woog. "Today's announcement is yet another example of tech communities taking action to prevent terrorists from using these platforms in ways their creators never intended." The new program caps a year of efforts to tamp down on social media's use by terrorist groups. Lawmakers last year introduced legislation that would require social media companies to report any online terrorist activity they became aware of to law enforcement. The bill by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Richard Burr, R-N.C., was criticized for not defining "terrorist activity," which could have drowned government agencies in reports. The bill was opposed by the Internet Association, which represents 37 internet companies, including Facebook, Snapchat, Google, LinkedIn, Reddit, Twitter, Yahoo and others. The bill came days after Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, went on a shooting attack in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people and injuring 21 others. A Facebook post on Malik's page around the time of the attack included a pledge of allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State group. Facebook found the post — which was under an alias — the day after the attack. The company removed the profile from public view and informed law enforcement. Such a proactive effort had previously been uncommon. Twitter moved toward partial automation in late 2015, using unspecified "proprietary spam-fighting tools" to find accounts that might be violating its terms of service and promoting terrorism. The material still required review by a team at Twitter before the accounts could be disabled. "Since the middle of 2015, we have suspended more than 360,000 accounts for violating Twitter's policy on violent threats and the promotion of terrorism," said Sinead McSweeney, Twitter's vice president of public policy. "A large proportion of these accounts have been removed by technical means, including our proprietary spam-fighting tools." Facebook has also used image-matching technology to compare images to ones it's already removed. The effort lets Facebook review images to avoid removing legitimate and protected uses, such as a photograph published by a news organization, a spokeswoman said. Terrence McNeil of Ohio was charged in 2015 with soliciting the killings of U.S. service members over social media, including Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter. Federal prosecutors accused him of posting a series of photographs on his Facebook account to praise the death of a Jordanian pilot who was burned to death by the Islamic State group — showing him before, during and after his death, including an image of him engulfed in flames, according to the complaint. In January, the White House dispatched top officials, including FBI Director James Comey, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers, to Silicon Valley to discuss the use of social media by violent extremist groups. Among the issues they discussed was how to use technology to help quickly identify terrorist content. The four companies say they will be looking at involving additional companies in the future. ___ Follow Tami Abdollah on Twitter at https://twitter.com/latams (Yahoo News)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

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