3918-ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? | View Thread

BOKO HARAM PAID WOULD-BE TEENAGE SUICIDE BOMBER ‘LESS THAN $1’

ON 3/8/17 AT 9:11 AM

A would-be teenage suicide bomber has said Boko Haram militants paid her just 200 naira ($0.64) to blow herself up in a city in northeast Nigeria.

In footage obtained by Sky News, the 14-year-old girl said the militants had told her and a friend to detonate their explosive vests in a “crowded place” in Maiduguri, the northeastern city that has been at the epicenter of Boko Haram’s eight-year insurgency.

The girl added that she and her friend had worn the vests for three days before going into the city center. The girl removed her vest after being ordered to by police, but officers shot her friend dead after she refused to do the same.

Police disrupt a #BringBackOurGirls rally, in the Nigerian capital Abuja, on January 8. Boko Haram has regularly used young girls as suicide bombers in its insurgency.AFOLABI SOTUNDE/REUTERS

A 2016 UNICEF report found that a fifth of the suicide bombers deployed by Boko Haram were children, and that girls made up 75 percent of the child bombers.

The commander of Nigeria’s counter-insurgency operations, Major General Lucky Irabor, told Sky News that young people like the would-be bomber “are very unfortunate children, little girls, who have been involved, who have been engaged to be the couriers of these dastardly acts of the Boko Haram terrorists.”Boko Haram began launching attacks against Nigerian government and civilian targets in 2009, with the aim of establishing a militant Islamist caliphate in northeast Nigeria. The group, which has since split into two factions, has perpetrated widespread violence in Nigeria and neighboring countries, killing thousands and displacing millions. The United Nations has warned that northern Nigeria is at risk of famine, largely due to the impact of the insurgency.

A Nigerian military offensive, coupled with that of a regional joint task force, has pinned Boko Haram back and reclaimed much of the territory it once controlled in Nigeria, which was comparable to the size of Belgium at the group’s violent peak in early 2015.

But Boko Haram militants continue to carry out guerrilla-style suicide attacks, and the group is still holding the vast majority of the Chibok girls in captivity. Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls from their school in northeast Nigeria, 2014, sparking the global #BringBackOurGirls campaign. But despite the international attention, 195 of the girls remain in captivity.

(Newsweek)

We are all free-thinkers. We hold the ability to form our own opinions, daydream, overthink, critically think, and even conjure up tales of adventure and loss using our creative minds. Our minds are separate from the Self, so even though the mind is essentially an illusion, it can be thought to represent a portion of our individuality.

Have you ever thought about how much of your thoughts are truly and authentically your own? The fact of the matter is that we are subject to propaganda, false advertising, and other methods of manipulating our thoughts and perceptions every day. For a long time, the elite have used different tools to influence our thoughts and actions, a tactic often referred to as frequency control.

Here are 8 ways the elite manipulate our perception of reality:

1. Mass Marketing

It’s practically impossible to escape mass marketing advertisements in North America now. Even if you live in a rural area, you’re bound to come across a giant McDonald’s sign eventually. We’re told what to eat, what clothes to wear, and even what pharmaceutical drugs to take through advertisements!

Even though it’s illegal for Big Pharma to advertise drugs in other countries, it’s completely legal in North America. The advertisements are often misleading, overstating the benefits and completely omitting the risks or potential side effects (or simply putting them in tiny, illegible letters). The FDA has stepped in multiple times, sending pharmaceutical companies warning letters or even forcing them to take down their ads because they are false, misleading, and/or exaggerate the effects of their drugs (source). Whether it’s an ad for cancer drugs, over-the-counter meds, or even an ad targeted at parents for ADHD pills for their children, they’re often a form of false advertising.

Why do you think everyone seems to own the same things? Everyone wants the newest iPhone, the latest pair of Nikes, and more. We live in a consumeristic world, a fact that has become so blatantly obvious that North American teenagers are starting to look like clones of one another. This begs the question: How much of what you like to wear or eat is actually because you like it, and how much because you’re being told to like it?

2. Defining Social Norms

After graduating from high school, society encourages us to go to university, get a steady 9-5 job, get married, buy a house, have children, and save a ton of money for retirement. If these societal goals aren’t met, we’re deemed unsuccessful. We decide we want to get married before we’ve organically met the right person and we claim we want to have kids when we don’t even know ourselves yet. People seem to be more concerned about accomplishing these goals than actually living in the moment and enjoying life. Who was it that created this social timeline and why do we feel the need to follow it?

Married or single, gay or straight, rich or poor — these norms have created labels that we use to differentiate one another. We begin to identify ourselves using them, tying them to “who we are” when the answer to that question cannot be explained by these physical illusions. The elite has essentially forced Stockholm Syndrome onto society; we are so caught up in these norms that we don’t even realize we’re trapped and imprisoned by them, and we start to love them. The moment someone else deviates from the norm, we consider them “crazy,” when in reality they’ve just woken up!

All of the advertisements and systems in place encourage us to follow this path and idolize it. Don’t get me wrong — there’s nothing wrong with going to school, getting married, having kids, and working a lot. If you’re happy and fully connected to yourself and your surroundings, then clearly this works for you. But the increasing divorce and suicide rates suggest that perhaps these societal pressures aren’t working for everyone.

3. Classifying Information and Keeping Secrets

Keeping us in the dark is something that the elite is very skilled at, especially since many people don’t even know who “the elite” are (or the shadow government). Documents upon documents are kept classified, particularly UFO files and black budget programs.

A few years ago, Edward Snowden, a former intelligence contractor, leaked the very first documentation proving the existence of clandestine black budget operations (1) (programs that are extremely classified regarding technology, information, and more). In fiscal year 2013, a staggering $52.6 billion was set aside for black budget operations. Keep in mind that this is just the reported number; some evidence suggests this number is much higher. For example, Canada’s former Minister of National Defence, Paul Hellyer, said in 2008:

It is ironic that the U.S. would begin a devastating war, allegedly in search of weapons of mass destruction when the most worrisome developments in this field are occurring in your own backyard. It is ironic that the U.S. should be fighting monstrously expensive wars allegedly to bring democracy to those countries, when it itself can no longer claim to be called a democracy when trillions, and I mean thousands of billions of dollars have been spent on projects which both congress and the commander in chief no nothing about. (2)

These projects are those that are carried out through the black budget. There are other government programs designed to keep inventions and information in the dark, such as the Invention Secrecy Act (you can read more about that in our CE article here).

Even science cannot always be trusted when it comes to withholding and falsifying information, as a whopping 50% of scientific literature is estimated to be false. And this isn’t just random scientific studies; this includes peer-reviewed articles and government studies. For example, CDC whistleblower Dr. William Thompson publicly apologized for falsifying research, much of which was considered “pro-vaccine.” Years later, he came out admitting what he’d done, and confirming that the vaccine-autism link is very real (learn more in our CE article here).

4. Education

The modern education system is filled with propaganda that only benefits the elite. For example, many people grow up thinking that North America was founded by the British. In reality, when the Europeans took over America, it represented perhaps the greatest genocide in history. American anthropologist and ethnohistorian Henry F. Dobyns estimated that more than 100 million people inhabited the Americas prior to Europe’s arrival (source). Other scholars have estimated the number to be as low as 10 million, and everything in between. For example, William M. Denovan, Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, believes there were approximately 54 million inhabitants (source).

It’s no wonder that so many people feel the need to pursue further education past high school, since they don’t actually learn valuable skills otherwise. Children are taught to follow authority, conform, and memorize information as opposed to actually thinking and leading. The following video outlines the issue with modern day education:

Another example is the education provided in medical school. Doctors aren’t taught any sort of preventative measures and they’re barely informed on proper nutrition. The Rockefellers, who dominate pharmaceutical markets, have actually helped design medical school curriculum, not to better it, but rather to push the usage of more pharmaceuticals in order to raise their profits.

Pharmaceutical companies, rather than qualified and unbiased doctors, define a lot of the information that MDs are taught, and Big Pharma often influences medical professors and funds university programs. For example, 1,600 Harvard professors stated that they or a family member have ties to drug companies that could bias their teachings or research. The pharmaceutical industry donated more than $11.5 million to Harvard in 2008 for “research and continuing education classes.” Many Harvard students have expressed concern over this and it even made mainstream news when a student was belittled by his professor for asking about the side effects of a drug his professor was unlawfully promoting in class.

This has also been a prevalent issue within psychiatry. As Dr. Irwin Savodnik of UCLA explains, “The very vocabulary of psychiatry is now defined at all levels by the pharmaceutical industry.” This is partially because the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the text most psychiatrists in the U.S. refer to to diagnose and treat their patients, is heavily biased toward using pharmaceutical drugs instead of therapy. Read more about this in our CE article here.

5. Fake News

It’s no secret that the elite control mainstream media (MSM). They orchestrated 9/11 to be reported as a “terrorist attack,” for election data to be falsified, and for us to be fed propaganda at all levels, especially when it comes to war. If you’re only watching MSM, you likely have no idea what’s actually going on in Syria, with Russia, or in regards to any foreign conflict or wars.

The CIA’s Operation MOCKINGBIRD is the government program referring to its interest and relations with MSM. MOCKINGBIRD stemmed from the CIA’s forerunner, the Office for Strategic Services (OSS, 1942-47), which, during World War II, created a working relationship with journalists and psychological warfare experts operating primarily in the European theatre.

This banned Saturday Night Live segment perfectly sums up how MSM is controlled and operated by the elite:

6. Entertainment Industry

A lot of what we buy, how we feel, and what we value is determined by the entertainment industry. Society tends to idolize celebrities, watching their every move on reality TV shows and in magazines and allowing them to inspire our choices, especially our buying habits. There’s a lot of strange elite and occult symbolism found in music videos and movies, which, if you’re interested in, you can read about on Vigilant Citizen. It’s even been speculated that Monarch Mind Control, an extension of the governmental program MK Ultra, has been used in Hollywood (read our CE article here).

Not many people know this, but the CIA has an entire department dedicated to the entertainment industry. It’s run through the CIA’s Entertainment Industry Liaison Office, which collaborates in an advisory capacity with filmmakers. The CIA doesn’t just offer guidance to filmmakers, it even offers money. In 1950, the agency bought the rights to George Orwell’s Animal Farm and then funded the 1954 British animated version of the film. Its involvement had long been rumoured, but only in the past decade have those rumours been substantiated. The link between Hollywood and the CIA isn’t something new (you can read more about that in our CE article on whistleblower Roseanne Barrhere).

7. Food

Tons of people over-eat, indulging in foods that are terrible for our bodies and are extremely low frequency. Food is designed to energize us; it should be benefiting our health, not cutting years off our lives. This begs the question: Are we eating foods that are unhealthy because we like the taste or because we’ve been manipulated into doing so? We are surrounded by advertisements for food (most of which is terrible for us), and food has shifted from being a means of sustenance to a global industry.

Corporations play a significant role in defining what’s healthy and what should be considered legal or illegal in regards to the food industry. For example, the USDA Food Guide Pyramid states you should eat 2-3 servings of milk, yogurt, and cheese, despite the fact that only 75% of people can actually digest milk properly, as well as 2-3 servings of meat, poultry, fish, dry beans, eggs, and nuts per day. Walter Willett of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard University states that “individuals can be very healthy with no dairy consumption at all,” and numerous studies have proven that meat consumption can cause cancer, heart disease, obesity, and many more health complications. However, according to the USDA guidelines, that’s incorrect. So, where did the disconnect occur between the government and science?

Well, the government has heavy ties to the dairy industry, as the government has helped food providers become more dairy-based, and implemented milk education into school programs. Check out this video that elaborates on the government’s ties to the dairy industry here.

The USDA has heavy ties to many advertisements and campaigns encouraging consumers to purchase meat. The U.S. government spends $38 billion annually to subsidize the meat and dairy industries, in comparison to only 0.04% of that on fruits and vegetables. If the government didn’t benefit from meat and dairy sales, our recommended intake of animal products would look significantly different.

8. Financial System

When it all comes down to it, the elite have control over the financial system, and finances control us. We live in a society that functions off of the money that circulates throughout it. Money is the very basis of all societal systems, and it is one of the key motivators behind the elite’s actions.

“A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many, and various, and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.”

– John C. Calhoun, 7th Vice President of the United States

The following video clip is from the Thrive documentary, created by Foster Gamble, the heir to the Proctor & Gamble Corporation:

Final Thoughts

The elite control so many aspects of our lives that it can sometimes be difficult to even think of our lives as being our own anymore. However, it’s important that we don’t meet this with fear. By educating one another, we can begin to recognize how these systems affect us and look at things objectively.

If you find yourself surrounded by billboards or listening to propaganda on the news, ask yourself: How is this affecting my decisions and my life? By raising our consciousness, increasing our vibration, and educating ourselves, we can shield ourselves from this type of manipulation and frequency control!

(collective-evolution.com)

Iraqi forces fight IS in Mosul as bomb blasts hit Tikrit wedding

A displaced Iraqi woman cries while fleeing her home, as Iraqi forces battle with Islamic State militants, in western Mosul, Iraq March 8, 2017. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra

MOSUL/ERBIL, Iraq - Iraqi forces battled Islamic State militants in their stronghold of Mosul on Wednesday and took control of the last major road leading west from the city, before bomb blasts ripped through a wedding party near Tikrit, killing more than 20 people.

The blasts in the village of Hajjaj, reported by local officials and medics as suicide attacks, were not immediately claimed, although Islamic State has carried out similar actions as it comes under pressure in Mosul.

A police source said two blasts hit the wedding and two more targeted security forces at the scene shortly afterwards. There were ongoing clashes between security forces and militants in the area, he said.

Inside Mosul, troops battled the ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim fighters, who hid among the remaining civilian population and deployed snipers and suicide car bombs to defend their last major Iraq stronghold.

The U.S.-backed campaign to crush the militants saw Iraqi forces recapture the eastern side of the city in January. They launched their assault on the western half last month.

The retreat of Islamic State's self-styled caliphate, which leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared from a mosque in Mosul's old city in 2014, has been accompanied by bomb attacks in areas outside the group's control, including Baghdad and cities in neighboring Syria.

The caliphate has spanned large areas in northern Iraq and eastern Syria. Losing Mosul would deal a fatal blow to Islamic State's hold over territory in Iraq.

Fighting is expected to get tougher as Iraqi troops push further into the more densely populated areas in the western half of the city, including the old city.

Militants used car bombs in their counter-attack on Tuesday night around the Nineveh governorate building, Major General Ali Kadhem al-Lami of the Federal Police's Fifth Division told a Reuters correspondent near the site. "Today we're clearing the area which was liberated," he said.

Military officials had said that Rapid Response troops, an elite interior ministry division, recaptured the provincial government headquarters on Tuesday. They also took the central bank branch and a museum where militants had filmed themselves destroying priceless statues in 2015.

"The museum is completely empty of all artifacts. They were stolen, possibly smuggled," Lami said. Reuters could not get access to the museum to verify his comments.

Lami said most of the fighters that had fought around the governorate building were local, but some were foreigners.

"An order was issued for foreign fighters with families to withdraw with them. Those who do not have a family should stay and fight, whether foreign or local," he said.

The few families remaining in the nearby Dawasa district said the militants had set some of their homes on fire as security forces advanced and that the militants had fought among themselves.

LAST ROAD FROM MOSUL

On Wednesday, the Iraqi military said the army and Shi'ite paramilitary forces had taken full control of the last major road leading west out of Mosul towards the town of Tal Afar, state TV reported.

The 9th Armoured Division and two Shi'ite fighting groups had "isolated the right bank (western side of Mosul) from Tal Afar", it said.

The road links Mosul to Tal Afar, another Islamic State stronghold 60 km (40 miles) to the west, and then to the Syrian border.

Shi'ite militias taking part in the Mosul campaign began to close in on Tal Afar late last year, after the offensive was launched. They linked up then with Kurdish fighters to encircle the jihadists.

A 100,000-strong force of Iraqi military units, Shi'ite forces and Kurdish fighters, backed by a U.S.-led coalition, has fought since October in the Mosul campaign.

The jihadist group has lost most of the cities it captured in northern and western Iraq in 2014 and 2015. In Syria, it still holds Raqqa city as its stronghold, as well as most of Deir al-Zor province.

But it is losing ground to an array of separate enemies, including U.S.-backed forces and the Russian-backed Syrian army. It has carried out bombings in Iraqi and Syrian cities as its caliphate has shrunk.

The bombings in Hajjaj village, north of Tikrit, late on Wednesday were not immediately claimed, but are similar to attacks carried out in recent months by Islamic State.

In November deadly and apparently diversionary bomb attacks by the group hit Tikrit and Samarra, both north of Baghdad.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Iraq would continue hitting Islamic State targets in Syria and in neighboring countries if they give their approval.

Abadi on Feb. 24 announced the first Iraqi air strike on Syrian territory, targeting Islamic State positions in retaliation for bomb attacks in Baghdad.

"I respect the sovereignty of states, and I have secured the approval of Syria to strike positions (on its territory)," Abadi told a conference in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya on Wednesday.

"I will not hesitate to strike the positions of the terrorists in the neighboring countries," he said. We will keep on fighting them."

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Maher Chmaytelli in Baghdad; Writing by John Davison; Editing by Larry King and Catherine Evans)

(REUTERS)

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 3/9/2017 9:59:58 AM
	Bacon, soda & too few nuts tied to big portion of US deaths LINDSEY TANNER Associated PressMarch 7, 2017 CHICAGO (AP) — Gorging on bacon, skimping on nuts? These are among food habits that new research links with deaths from heart disease, strokes and diabetes. Overeating or not eating enough of the 10 foods and nutrients contributes to nearly half of U.S. deaths from these causes, the study suggests. "Good" foods that were under-eaten include: nuts and seeds, seafood rich in omega-3 fats including salmon and sardines; fruits and vegetables; and whole grains. "Bad" foods or nutrients that were over-eaten include salt and salty foods; processed meats including bacon, bologna and hot dogs; red meat including steaks and hamburgers; and sugary drinks. The research is based on U.S. government data showing there were about 700,000 deaths in 2012 from heart disease, strokes and diabetes and on an analysis of national health surveys that asked participants about their eating habits. Most didn't eat the recommended amounts of the foods studied. The 10 ingredients combined contributed to about 45 percent of those deaths, according to the study. It may sound like a familiar attack on the typical American diet, and the research echoes previous studies on the benefits of heart-healthy eating. But the study goes into more detail on specific foods and their risks or benefits, said lead author Renata Micha, a public health researcher and nutritionist at Tufts University. The results were published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Micha said the foods and nutrients were singled out because of research linking them with the causes of death studied. For example, studies have shown that excess salt can increase blood pressure, putting stress on arteries and the heart. Nuts contain healthy fats that can improve cholesterol levels, while bacon and other processed meats contain saturated fats that can raise levels of unhealthy LDL cholesterol. In the study, too much salt was the biggest problem, linked with nearly 10 percent of the deaths. Overeating processed meats and undereating nuts and seeds and seafood each were linked with about 8 percent of the deaths. The Food and Drug Administration's recent voluntary sodium reduction guidelines for makers of processed foods and taxes that some U.S. cities have imposed on sugar-sweetened beverages are steps in the right direction, Micha said. A journal editorial said public health policies targeting unhealthy eating could potentially help prevent some deaths, while noting that the study isn't solid proof that "suboptimal" diets were deadly. The study's recommended amounts, based on U.S. government guidelines, nutrition experts' advice, and amounts found to be beneficial or harmful in previous research. "Good" ingredients —Fruits: 3 average-sized fruits daily —Vegetables: 2 cups cooked or 4 cups raw vegetables daily —Nuts/seeds: 5 1-ounce servings per week — about 20 nuts per serving —Whole grains: 2 ½ daily servings —Polyunsaturated fats, found in many vegetable oils: 11 percent of daily calories —Seafood: about 8 ounces weekly "Bad" ingredients —Red meat: 1 serving weekly — 1 medium steak or the equivalent —Processed meat: None recommended —Sugary drinks: None recommended —Salt: 2,000 milligrams daily — just under a teaspoon. ___ Online: Diet guidelines: http://tinyurl.com/j5lcrv8 ___ Follow AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/lindsey-tanner (Yahoo News)
	"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? 3/9/2017 10:13:50 AM
	Former NSA Whistleblower: ‘Trump Is Absolutely Right, Everything Was Being Monitored’ March 8, 2017 at 9:41 am Written by Anti-Media News Desk (ZHE) Legendary NSA whistleblower William Binney (and creator of NSA’s global surveillance system) confirmed to Fox News, that President Trump is “absolutely right” to claim he was wiretapped and monitored… he was. As Zero Hedge noted previously, Binney is the NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees, the 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency and the NSA’s best-ever analyst and code-breaker, who mapped out the Soviet command-and-control structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted Soviet invasions before they happened (“in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet Union’s command system, which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and Russian atomic weapons”). Binney is the real McCoy. Binney resigned from NSA shortly after the U.S. approach to intelligence changed following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He “became a whistleblower after discovering that elements of a data-monitoring program he had helped develop — nicknamed ThinThread — were being used to spy on Americans,” PBS reported. On Monday he came to the defense of the president, whose allegations on social media over the weekend that outgoing President Barack Obama tapped his phones during the 2016 campaign have rankled Washington. “‘I think the president is absolutely right. His phone calls, everything he did electronically, was being monitored,’ Bill Binney, a 36-year veteran of the National Security Agency who resigned in protest from the organization in 2001, told Fox Business on Monday. “Everyone’s conversations are being monitored and stored, Binney said.” Binney also told Sean Hannity’s radio show earlier Monday, “I think the FISA court’s basically totally irrelevant.” The judges on the FISA court are “not even concerned, nor are they involved in any way with the Executive Order 12333 collection,” Binney said during the radio interview. “That’s all done outside of the courts. And outside of the Congress.” Binney also told Fox the laws that fall under the FISA court’s jurisdiction are “simply out there for show” and “trying to show that the government is following the law, and being looked at and overseen by the Senate and House intelligence committees and the courts.” “That’s not the main collection program for NSA,” Binney said. * * * What Binney did not delve into, however, was if Obama directed surveillance on Trump for political purposes during the campaign, a core accusation of Trump’s. But Binney did say events such as publication of details of private calls between President Trump and the Australian prime minister, as well as with the Mexican president, are evidence the intelligence community is playing hardball with the White House. “I think that’s what happened here,” Binney told Fox. “The evidence of the conversation of the president of the U.S., President Trump, and the [prime minister] of Australia and the president of Mexico. Releasing those conversations. Those are conversations that are picked up by the FAIRVIEW program, primarily, by NSA.” Since Binney designed the NSA’s electronic surveillance system, he would know. By Tyler Durden / Republished with permission / Zero Hedge / Report a typo
	"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? 3/9/2017 10:45:37 AM
	BOKO HARAM PAID WOULD-BE TEENAGE SUICIDE BOMBER ‘LESS THAN $1’ BY CONOR GAFFEY ON 3/8/17 AT 9:11 AM A would-be teenage suicide bomber has said Boko Haram militants paid her just 200 naira ($0.64) to blow herself up in a city in northeast Nigeria. In footage obtained by Sky News, the 14-year-old girl said the militants had told her and a friend to detonate their explosive vests in a “crowded place” in Maiduguri, the northeastern city that has been at the epicenter of Boko Haram’s eight-year insurgency. The girl added that she and her friend had worn the vests for three days before going into the city center. The girl removed her vest after being ordered to by police, but officers shot her friend dead after she refused to do the same. Police disrupt a #BringBackOurGirls rally, in the Nigerian capital Abuja, on January 8. Boko Haram has regularly used young girls as suicide bombers in its insurgency.AFOLABI SOTUNDE/REUTERS A 2016 UNICEF report found that a fifth of the suicide bombers deployed by Boko Haram were children, and that girls made up 75 percent of the child bombers. The commander of Nigeria’s counter-insurgency operations, Major General Lucky Irabor, told Sky News that young people like the would-be bomber “are very unfortunate children, little girls, who have been involved, who have been engaged to be the couriers of these dastardly acts of the Boko Haram terrorists.”Boko Haram began launching attacks against Nigerian government and civilian targets in 2009, with the aim of establishing a militant Islamist caliphate in northeast Nigeria. The group, which has since split into two factions, has perpetrated widespread violence in Nigeria and neighboring countries, killing thousands and displacing millions. The United Nations has warned that northern Nigeria is at risk of famine, largely due to the impact of the insurgency. A Nigerian military offensive, coupled with that of a regional joint task force, has pinned Boko Haram back and reclaimed much of the territory it once controlled in Nigeria, which was comparable to the size of Belgium at the group’s violent peak in early 2015. But Boko Haram militants continue to carry out guerrilla-style suicide attacks, and the group is still holding the vast majority of the Chibok girls in captivity. Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls from their school in northeast Nigeria, 2014, sparking the global #BringBackOurGirls campaign. But despite the international attention, 195 of the girls remain in captivity. (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? 3/9/2017 2:34:33 PM
	Thu Mar 9, 2017 \| 2:05am EST Iraqi forces fight IS in Mosul as bomb blasts hit Tikrit wedding A displaced Iraqi woman cries while fleeing her home, as Iraqi forces battle with Islamic State militants, in western Mosul, Iraq March 8, 2017. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra By Isabel Coles and John Davison MOSUL/ERBIL, Iraq - Iraqi forces battled Islamic State militants in their stronghold of Mosul on Wednesday and took control of the last major road leading west from the city, before bomb blasts ripped through a wedding party near Tikrit, killing more than 20 people. The blasts in the village of Hajjaj, reported by local officials and medics as suicide attacks, were not immediately claimed, although Islamic State has carried out similar actions as it comes under pressure in Mosul. A police source said two blasts hit the wedding and two more targeted security forces at the scene shortly afterwards. There were ongoing clashes between security forces and militants in the area, he said. Inside Mosul, troops battled the ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim fighters, who hid among the remaining civilian population and deployed snipers and suicide car bombs to defend their last major Iraq stronghold. The U.S.-backed campaign to crush the militants saw Iraqi forces recapture the eastern side of the city in January. They launched their assault on the western half last month. The retreat of Islamic State's self-styled caliphate, which leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared from a mosque in Mosul's old city in 2014, has been accompanied by bomb attacks in areas outside the group's control, including Baghdad and cities in neighboring Syria. The caliphate has spanned large areas in northern Iraq and eastern Syria. Losing Mosul would deal a fatal blow to Islamic State's hold over territory in Iraq. Fighting is expected to get tougher as Iraqi troops push further into the more densely populated areas in the western half of the city, including the old city. Militants used car bombs in their counter-attack on Tuesday night around the Nineveh governorate building, Major General Ali Kadhem al-Lami of the Federal Police's Fifth Division told a Reuters correspondent near the site. "Today we're clearing the area which was liberated," he said. Military officials had said that Rapid Response troops, an elite interior ministry division, recaptured the provincial government headquarters on Tuesday. They also took the central bank branch and a museum where militants had filmed themselves destroying priceless statues in 2015. "The museum is completely empty of all artifacts. They were stolen, possibly smuggled," Lami said. Reuters could not get access to the museum to verify his comments. Lami said most of the fighters that had fought around the governorate building were local, but some were foreigners. "An order was issued for foreign fighters with families to withdraw with them. Those who do not have a family should stay and fight, whether foreign or local," he said. The few families remaining in the nearby Dawasa district said the militants had set some of their homes on fire as security forces advanced and that the militants had fought among themselves. LAST ROAD FROM MOSUL On Wednesday, the Iraqi military said the army and Shi'ite paramilitary forces had taken full control of the last major road leading west out of Mosul towards the town of Tal Afar, state TV reported. The 9th Armoured Division and two Shi'ite fighting groups had "isolated the right bank (western side of Mosul) from Tal Afar", it said. The road links Mosul to Tal Afar, another Islamic State stronghold 60 km (40 miles) to the west, and then to the Syrian border. Shi'ite militias taking part in the Mosul campaign began to close in on Tal Afar late last year, after the offensive was launched. They linked up then with Kurdish fighters to encircle the jihadists. A 100,000-strong force of Iraqi military units, Shi'ite forces and Kurdish fighters, backed by a U.S.-led coalition, has fought since October in the Mosul campaign. The jihadist group has lost most of the cities it captured in northern and western Iraq in 2014 and 2015. In Syria, it still holds Raqqa city as its stronghold, as well as most of Deir al-Zor province. But it is losing ground to an array of separate enemies, including U.S.-backed forces and the Russian-backed Syrian army. It has carried out bombings in Iraqi and Syrian cities as its caliphate has shrunk. The bombings in Hajjaj village, north of Tikrit, late on Wednesday were not immediately claimed, but are similar to attacks carried out in recent months by Islamic State. In November deadly and apparently diversionary bomb attacks by the group hit Tikrit and Samarra, both north of Baghdad. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Iraq would continue hitting Islamic State targets in Syria and in neighboring countries if they give their approval. Abadi on Feb. 24 announced the first Iraqi air strike on Syrian territory, targeting Islamic State positions in retaliation for bomb attacks in Baghdad. "I respect the sovereignty of states, and I have secured the approval of Syria to strike positions (on its territory)," Abadi told a conference in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya on Wednesday. "I will not hesitate to strike the positions of the terrorists in the neighboring countries," he said. We will keep on fighting them." (Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Maher Chmaytelli in Baghdad; Writing by John Davison; Editing by Larry King and Catherine Evans) (REUTERS)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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