4066-ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? | View Thread

TEENS PROMOTE PLANNED PARENTHOOD WITH DRESSES MADE OF CONDOMS, STICKERS

Twitter/@ecfs1878

Students Karolina Montes, 17, and Zoe Balestri, 16 – both juniors at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School (ECFS) in the Bronx – said their goal was to educate people about Planned Parenthood, reports Buzzfeed.

Balestri reportedly said

We’ve been best friends since 6th grade. This year we thought after everything that’s been happening in the world and with this country, it was important to make our dresses beautiful and fun but also to give them some sort of meaning. We decided this was the perfect way to support something we both strongly believed in.

The rules of the annual fashion show dictate that no fabric is permitted for the students’ handmade creations.

The top of Balestri’s two-piece dress was made out of condoms that said, “Don’t eff with us, don’t eff without us.”

“I thought that was really funny,” she said. “I actually sewed together the condoms with a needle. That took awhile, and I got lube all over my hands, which was kind of gross.”

On its website, the school quotes its founder humanist Felix Adler – a German-American social reformer of both Columbia and Heidelberg Universities – who said ECFS’s ideal is “to develop individuals who are competent to change their environment to greater conformity with moral ideals.”

“Through a curriculum rooted in the tenets of progressive education, students become independent thinkers as they learn that asking their own questions and seeking their own answers provides the key to the deepest kind of understanding,” the school states about its mission.

“It just seems like such an important part of our culture, that we need to have safer methods [of family planning] and we need to educate,” said Montes about the girls’ support of Planned Parenthood. “That’s the main the point, is to educate people.”

Both girls reportedly participated in the anti-Trump Women’s March.

“They’re trying to shut down Planned Parenthoods and make abortion illegal, and that really frightens and saddens me, because it’s such an amazing thing that is provided to women,” Balestri said. “I have friends who use Planned Parenthood services. It’s been there for people in high school, in college, in adulthood, for people who can’t afford to have a child, or for other circumstances. It’s necessary.”

Planned Parenthood clinics are closing rapidly throughout the country in the wake of videos released over the past two years that have led to allegations the abortion provider sells the body parts of babies aborted in its clinics for a profit.

Pro-life organization Live Action has produced a video that utilizes Planned Parenthood’s annual reports to show the actual decline in its healthcare services, while abortions have increased:

“Over the last six years, Planned Parenthood’s annual clientele has dropped half a million clients,” Live Action reports in the video. “And over the last ten years reported, Planned Parenthood has shut down over 200 facilities.”

The video adds that over the last ten years, Planned Parenthood’s annual breast exams have declined 60 percent, leaving the group with less than two percent of breast exams performed in the United States.

Additionally, the group’s annual Pap tests have decreased 77 percent, resulting in a current market share of less than one percent of these procedures, and its annual cancer screenings have decreased 68 percent, an outcome that leaves the group with less than two percent of U.S. cancer screenings performed for women.

“However, Planned Parenthood’s annual abortions have increased 27 percent,” observes Live Action, noting the group performs 34.9 percent of abortions in the nation.

Despite the stark decline in services other than abortions, Planned Parenthood’s government funding has more than doubled, from $272 million to $553 million, with the group claiming taxpayer funding is not used to pay for abortions.

“Planned Parenthood’s enterprise is crumbling, even while they are still raking in over half a billion dollars a year from taxpayers,” said Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser. “Their abortion-centered business model isn’t just morally wrong, it’s a failure. In a market where there are so many better options, women don’t need to get their health care from Planned Parenthood.”

(breitbart.com)

North Korea warns of 'bigger gift package' for U.S. after latest test

A ballistic rocket is test-fired through a precision control guidance system in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) May 30, 2017. KCNA/via REUTERS

By Ju-min Park and Jack Kim | SEOUL

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised the test of a new ballistic missile controlled by a precision guidance system and ordered the development of more powerful strategic weapons, the North's official KCNA news agency reported on Tuesday.

The missile launched on Monday was equipped with an advanced automated pre-launch sequence compared with previous versions of the "Hwasong" rockets, North Korea's name for its Scud-class missiles, KCNA said. That indicated the North had launched a modified Scud-class missile, as South Korea's military has said.

The North's test launch of a short-range ballistic missile landed in the sea off its east coast and was the latest in a fast-paced series of missile tests defying international pressure and threats of more sanctions.

Kim said the reclusive state would develop more powerful weapons in multiple phases in accordance with its timetable to defend North Korea against the United States.

"He expressed the conviction that it would make a greater leap forward in this spirit to send a bigger 'gift package' to the Yankees" in retaliation for American military provocation, KCNA quoted Kim as saying.

South Korea said it had conducted a joint drill with a U.S. supersonic B-1B Lancer bomber on Monday. North Korea's state media earlier accused the United States of staging a drill to practise dropping nuclear bombs on the Korean peninsula.

The U.S. Navy said its aircraft carrier strike group, led by the USS Carl Vinson, also planned a drill with another U.S. nuclear carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, in waters near the Korean peninsula.

A U.S. Navy spokesman in South Korea did not give specific timing for the strike group's planned drill.

North Korea calls such drills a preparation for war.

Monday's launch followed two successful tests of medium-to-long-range missiles in as many weeks by the North, which has been conducting such tests at an unprecedented pace in an effort to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of hitting the mainland United States.

Such launches, and two nuclear tests since January 2016, have been conducted in defiance of U.S. pressure, U.N. resolutions and the threat of more sanctions.

They also pose one of the greatest security challenges for U.S. President Donald Trump, who portrayed the latest missile test as an affront to China.

"North Korea has shown great disrespect for their neighbor, China, by shooting off yet another ballistic missile ... but China is trying hard!" Trump said on Twitter.

PRECISION GUIDANCE

Japan has also urged China to play a bigger role in restraining North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's top national security adviser, Shotaro Yachi, met China's top diplomat, State Councillor Yang Jiechi, for five hours of talks near Tokyo on Monday after the North's latest test.

Yachi told Yang that North Korea's actions had reached a new level of provocation.

"Japan and China need to work together to strongly urge North Korea to avoid further provocative actions and obey things like United Nations resolutions," Yachi was quoted as telling Yang in a statement by Japan's foreign ministry.

A statement from China's foreign ministry after the meeting made no mention of North Korea.

North Korea has claimed major advances with its rapid series of launches, claims that outside experts and officials believe may be at least partially true but are difficult to verify independently.

A South Korean military official said the North fired one missile on Monday, clarifying an earlier assessment that there may have been more than one launch.

The test was aimed at verifying a new type of precision guidance system and the reliability of a new mobile launch vehicle under different operational conditions, KCNA said.

However, South Korea's military and experts questioned the claim because the North had technical constraints, such as a lack of satellites, to operate a terminal-stage missile guidance system properly.

"Whenever news of our valuable victory is broadcast recently, the Yankees would be very much worried about it and the gangsters of the south Korean puppet army would be dispirited more and more," KCNA cited leader Kim as saying.

(Reporting by Jack Kim and Ju-min Park; Additional reporting by James Pearson in SEOUL, Ben Blanchard in BEIJING, and Elaine Lies in TOKYO; Editing by Dan Grebler and Paul Tait)

(Reuters)

Mad Dog Mattis Says US Now Focused On “Annihilation” Of ISIS; Civilian Casualties “Fact Of Life”

MAY 30, 2017

By Brandon Turbeville

In a signal that the United States is about to ramp up the aggression in its war on Syria, Secretary of Defense, Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis has announced that the U.S. strategy to “defeat ISIS” is changing, stating that a new policy of “attrition” is over and the new policy of “annihilation” is about to begin.

Speaking to CBS’ Face The Nation, Mattis said,

Our strategy right now is to accelerate the campaign against Isis. It is a threat to all civilized nations. And the bottom line is we are going to move in an accelerated and reinforced manner, throw them on their back foot.
We have already shifted from attrition tactics, where we shove them from one position to another in Iraq and Syria, to annihilation tactics where we surround them. Our intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home to North Africa, to Europe, to America, to Asia, to Africa. We’re not going to allow them to do so. We’re going to stop them there and take apart the caliphate.

The United States, however, has long supported the terrorist group both in terms of funding and outright military assistance ever since the organization became publicly known as ISIS ( simply name change from al-Qaeda, an American created and controlled terrorist organization).

Mattis then launched into a familiar but incredibly hypocritical retort regarding the horror of killing women and children, something the United States has become quite adept at doing, particularly in the last two decades. He said,

We have got to dry up their recruiting,” he said. “We have got to dry up their fundraising. The way we intend to do it is to humiliate them, to divorce them from any nation giving them protection, and humiliating their message of hatred, of violence. Anyone who kills women and children is not devout. They … cannot dress themselves up in false religious garb and say that somehow this message has dignity.

Yet when the specific question of civilian casualties came up, Mattis appeared to be paving the way for an increase in the wholesale slaughter of innocent people in Iraq and Syria. Indeed, Mattis’ response appeared to be designed to set the stage and prepare the American people for the horror show that is about to be unleashed in the Middle East with renewed vigor. Mattis said,

Civilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of situation. We do everything humanly possible consistent with military necessity, taking many chances to avoid civilian casualties at all costs.
The American people and the American military will never get used to civilian casualties. And we will – we will fight against that every way we can possibly bring our intelligence and our tactics to bear.

But, while Mattis feigns sorrow over the death of innocent people, he is obviously quite resigned to civilian deaths since his announcement is one of foreshadowing that seems to be taken straight out of the Israeli playbook. Of course, Mattis is not alone since the US military brass as well as the American people seem quite comfortable with civilian deaths in wars that their country has started.

Laughably, Mattis goes on to attempt to defend the killing of more than 100 civilians in Mosul by a U.S. airstrike as having been the fault of ISIS since the Western-backed organization would not allow civilians to leave the area being bombed. He then argues that the explosions were so massive because the U.S. airstrike hit a building in which ISIS was storing weapons and munitions. Fair enough. There is an argument to be made for his position (assuming, of course, the U.S. was actually fighting ISIS).

However, Mattis’ claims are eerily similar to those made by the Syrian and Russian militaries regarding similar incidents, most notably the alleged chemical weapons attacks in Khan Sheikhoun. At the time, however, the U.S. dismissed such claims out of hand, pretending that they were simply lies and more examples of the cruelty of Assad and his omniscient Russian allies. The idea that a military would unwittingly bomb a warehouse of munitions causing civilian deaths was, according to the West, preposterous. That is, unless the West needs a convenient excuse. When such is the case, the integrity and honor of the West is beyond question.

In fact, even as Mattis’ interview was published, the headlines in the corporate media were alight with accusations of Syrian military atrocities committed as a result of Assad’s much-maligned indiscriminate barrel bombs. But I digress . . .

Mattis also followed in the footsteps of the previous two administrations by reminding Americans that we are the good guys, something Americans need to be reminded of lest they forget or have a different perspective as a result of judging by what they see and the fruit their country bears. “We’re not the perfect guys, but we are the good guys. And so we’re doing what we can,” he said.

At least he admits America isn’t perfect. It’s important to give yourself an out when you are planning on murdering more innocent people. Both Bush and Obama can attest to this.

This article may be freely shared in part or in full with author attribution and source link.

Image Credit: The Anti Media

(activistpost.com)

Today (* ) is also World Hunger Day.

What better occasion to post a document on the end of starvation by Werner Erhard, that has contributed endless insights to me since I first read it in 1979.

It’s also the document’s Fiftieth Anniversary (1977).

This is one of two sources for the context of a world that works for everyone (the other being an event around that time by that name). So it has special significance for me.

I’ve never read a clearer discussion of why and how the world doesn’t work and what we can do about it. I’ve also never read a more empowering statement of the case for what we call the lightworker.

Werner would never have dreamed that what we call lightworkers might one day become philanthropists.

The standards that he set fifty years ago – primarily for integrity – remain out in front of me, perhaps of us. They were high ones to reach.

We post here only the first chapter, with a link to the entire document. It’s well worth reading for all humanitarian philanthropists.

The Hunger Project Source Document:

The End of Starvation: Creating an Idea Whose Time Has Come

by Werner Erhard, 1977

http://www.wernererhard.net/thpsource.html

You and I want our lives to matter. We want our lives to make a real difference – to be of genuine consequence in the world. We know that there is no satisfaction in merely going through the motions, even if those motions make us successful or even if we have arranged to make those motions pleasant. We want to know we have had some impact on the world. In fact, you and I want to contribute to the quality of life. We want to make the world work.

When you look at making the world work, you are confronted by, and cannot pass over, the fact that each year 15 million of us die as a consequence of starvation. This unparalleled failure for humanity enables us to see that the world’s unworkability is located in the very condition in which we live our lives. Thus, it is not people “out there” who are starving; people are starving “here” – in the space in which you and I live. You and I are working to make our lives work in the same condition that results in hunger and starvation.

Starvation both maintains and dramatizes a world that does not work. Persisting throughout history, it has accounted for more deaths and suffering than all epidemics, wars, and natural disasters combined. During the past five years alone, more people have died as a consequence of starvation than from all the wars, revolutions, and murders of the past 150 years. As you read this, 28 people are dying in our world each minute as a consequence of hunger, three-quarters of them children.

The bare statistics are so shocking that we rarely examine the further impact of starvation on our own lives. Hunger, by its persistence, seems to invalidate that our lives could matter. It seems to prove that we are capable only of gestures. It suppresses the space in which each of us lives.

Yet, precisely because the impact of starvation on our lives is so great, its existence is actually an opportunity. It is an opportunity to get beyond merely defending what we have, beyond the futility of self-interest, beyond the hopelessness of clinging to opinions and making gestures.

In fact, in experiencing the truth underlying hunger, one comes to realize that the ordinarily unnoticed laws that determine the persistence of hunger on this planet are precisely the laws that keep the world from working. And the principles of the end of hunger and starvation in the world are the very principles necessary to make the world work.

So this paper is not an explanation, a solution, an opinion, or a point of view about the problem of hunger. It is an examination of what is so about the persistence of hunger, aimed at answering two questions:

1. What are the laws governing and determining the persistence of hunger on our planet? Not the reasons, however cogent; not the justifications, however comforting; not the systems of explanation, however consistent or clever. If we were merely looking for reasons to explain the persistence of hunger and starvation, we could logically deduce them from the facts.

Fundamental laws and principles, however, cannot be deduced. One knows them by creating them from nothing, out of one’s Self. One does not arrive at fundamental laws and principles as a function of what is already known. Such laws and principles do not merely explain; they illuminate. They do not merely add to what we know; they create a new space in which knowing can occur. The test of whether we are dealing with fundamental laws and principles, or with mere reasons and explanations, is whether there is a shift from controversy, frustration, and gesturing, to mastery, motion, and completion.

2. What are the principles of the end of hunger and starvation on the planet? Not new programs of solution, no matter how saleable or clever; not different or better opinions, no matter how arguable; not points of view, no matter how agreeable. This discussion is not about another good idea. It is about revealing the fundamental principles of the end of hunger and starvation on our planet.

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 5/31/2017 10:34:47 AM
	TEENS PROMOTE PLANNED PARENTHOOD WITH DRESSES MADE OF CONDOMS, STICKERS Twitter/@ecfs1878 by DR. SUSAN BERRY29 May 2017 Two teens from a private progressive New York high school showed their support for Planned Parenthood by creating dresses for their school’s fashion show out of the abortion vendor’s bright pink stickers and condoms. Follow ECFS @ecfs1878 These Planned Parenthood Dresses Totally Stole One High School's Fashion Show https://www.buzzfeed.com/jinamoore/these-planned-parenthood-dresses-totally-stole-one-high?utm_term=.ebDLmnayx … via@itsjina 2:50 PM - 25 May 2017 These Planned Parenthood Dresses Totally Stole One High School's Fashion Show "Don't eff with us. Don't eff without us." buzzfeed.com Retweets 3 likes Twitter Ads info & Privacy VIDEO Planned Parenthood set to close 4 Iowa clinics Students Karolina Montes, 17, and Zoe Balestri, 16 – both juniors at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School (ECFS) in the Bronx – said their goal was to educate people about Planned Parenthood, reports Buzzfeed. Balestri reportedly said We’ve been best friends since 6th grade. This year we thought after everything that’s been happening in the world and with this country, it was important to make our dresses beautiful and fun but also to give them some sort of meaning. We decided this was the perfect way to support something we both strongly believed in. The rules of the annual fashion show dictate that no fabric is permitted for the students’ handmade creations. The top of Balestri’s two-piece dress was made out of condoms that said, “Don’t eff with us, don’t eff without us.” “I thought that was really funny,” she said. “I actually sewed together the condoms with a needle. That took awhile, and I got lube all over my hands, which was kind of gross.” On its website, the school quotes its founder humanist Felix Adler – a German-American social reformer of both Columbia and Heidelberg Universities – who said ECFS’s ideal is “to develop individuals who are competent to change their environment to greater conformity with moral ideals.” “Through a curriculum rooted in the tenets of progressive education, students become independent thinkers as they learn that asking their own questions and seeking their own answers provides the key to the deepest kind of understanding,” the school states about its mission. “It just seems like such an important part of our culture, that we need to have safer methods [of family planning] and we need to educate,” said Montes about the girls’ support of Planned Parenthood. “That’s the main the point, is to educate people.” Both girls reportedly participated in the anti-Trump Women’s March. “They’re trying to shut down Planned Parenthoods and make abortion illegal, and that really frightens and saddens me, because it’s such an amazing thing that is provided to women,” Balestri said. “I have friends who use Planned Parenthood services. It’s been there for people in high school, in college, in adulthood, for people who can’t afford to have a child, or for other circumstances. It’s necessary.” Planned Parenthood clinics are closing rapidly throughout the country in the wake of videos released over the past two years that have led to allegations the abortion provider sells the body parts of babies aborted in its clinics for a profit. Pro-life organization Live Action has produced a video that utilizes Planned Parenthood’s annual reports to show the actual decline in its healthcare services, while abortions have increased: “Over the last six years, Planned Parenthood’s annual clientele has dropped half a million clients,” Live Action reports in the video. “And over the last ten years reported, Planned Parenthood has shut down over 200 facilities.” The video adds that over the last ten years, Planned Parenthood’s annual breast exams have declined 60 percent, leaving the group with less than two percent of breast exams performed in the United States. Additionally, the group’s annual Pap tests have decreased 77 percent, resulting in a current market share of less than one percent of these procedures, and its annual cancer screenings have decreased 68 percent, an outcome that leaves the group with less than two percent of U.S. cancer screenings performed for women. “However, Planned Parenthood’s annual abortions have increased 27 percent,” observes Live Action, noting the group performs 34.9 percent of abortions in the nation. Despite the stark decline in services other than abortions, Planned Parenthood’s government funding has more than doubled, from $272 million to $553 million, with the group claiming taxpayer funding is not used to pay for abortions. “Planned Parenthood’s enterprise is crumbling, even while they are still raking in over half a billion dollars a year from taxpayers,” said Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser. “Their abortion-centered business model isn’t just morally wrong, it’s a failure. In a market where there are so many better options, women don’t need to get their health care from Planned Parenthood.” (breitbart.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? 5/31/2017 11:20:51 AM
	Tue May 30, 2017 \| 11:22am EDT North Korea warns of 'bigger gift package' for U.S. after latest test A ballistic rocket is test-fired through a precision control guidance system in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) May 30, 2017. KCNA/via REUTERS By Ju-min Park and Jack Kim \| SEOUL North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised the test of a new ballistic missile controlled by a precision guidance system and ordered the development of more powerful strategic weapons, the North's official KCNA news agency reported on Tuesday. The missile launched on Monday was equipped with an advanced automated pre-launch sequence compared with previous versions of the "Hwasong" rockets, North Korea's name for its Scud-class missiles, KCNA said. That indicated the North had launched a modified Scud-class missile, as South Korea's military has said. The North's test launch of a short-range ballistic missile landed in the sea off its east coast and was the latest in a fast-paced series of missile tests defying international pressure and threats of more sanctions. Kim said the reclusive state would develop more powerful weapons in multiple phases in accordance with its timetable to defend North Korea against the United States. "He expressed the conviction that it would make a greater leap forward in this spirit to send a bigger 'gift package' to the Yankees" in retaliation for American military provocation, KCNA quoted Kim as saying. South Korea said it had conducted a joint drill with a U.S. supersonic B-1B Lancer bomber on Monday. North Korea's state media earlier accused the United States of staging a drill to practise dropping nuclear bombs on the Korean peninsula. The U.S. Navy said its aircraft carrier strike group, led by the USS Carl Vinson, also planned a drill with another U.S. nuclear carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, in waters near the Korean peninsula. A U.S. Navy spokesman in South Korea did not give specific timing for the strike group's planned drill. North Korea calls such drills a preparation for war. Monday's launch followed two successful tests of medium-to-long-range missiles in as many weeks by the North, which has been conducting such tests at an unprecedented pace in an effort to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of hitting the mainland United States. Such launches, and two nuclear tests since January 2016, have been conducted in defiance of U.S. pressure, U.N. resolutions and the threat of more sanctions. They also pose one of the greatest security challenges for U.S. President Donald Trump, who portrayed the latest missile test as an affront to China. "North Korea has shown great disrespect for their neighbor, China, by shooting off yet another ballistic missile ... but China is trying hard!" Trump said on Twitter. PRECISION GUIDANCE Japan has also urged China to play a bigger role in restraining North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's top national security adviser, Shotaro Yachi, met China's top diplomat, State Councillor Yang Jiechi, for five hours of talks near Tokyo on Monday after the North's latest test. Yachi told Yang that North Korea's actions had reached a new level of provocation. "Japan and China need to work together to strongly urge North Korea to avoid further provocative actions and obey things like United Nations resolutions," Yachi was quoted as telling Yang in a statement by Japan's foreign ministry. A statement from China's foreign ministry after the meeting made no mention of North Korea. North Korea has claimed major advances with its rapid series of launches, claims that outside experts and officials believe may be at least partially true but are difficult to verify independently. A South Korean military official said the North fired one missile on Monday, clarifying an earlier assessment that there may have been more than one launch. The test was aimed at verifying a new type of precision guidance system and the reliability of a new mobile launch vehicle under different operational conditions, KCNA said. However, South Korea's military and experts questioned the claim because the North had technical constraints, such as a lack of satellites, to operate a terminal-stage missile guidance system properly. "Whenever news of our valuable victory is broadcast recently, the Yankees would be very much worried about it and the gangsters of the south Korean puppet army would be dispirited more and more," KCNA cited leader Kim as saying. (Reporting by Jack Kim and Ju-min Park; Additional reporting by James Pearson in SEOUL, Ben Blanchard in BEIJING, and Elaine Lies in TOKYO; Editing by Dan Grebler and Paul Tait) (Reuters)
	"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? 5/31/2017 1:26:08 PM
	Mad Dog Mattis Says US Now Focused On “Annihilation” Of ISIS; Civilian Casualties “Fact Of Life” MAY 30, 2017 By Brandon Turbeville In a signal that the United States is about to ramp up the aggression in its war on Syria, Secretary of Defense, Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis has announced that the U.S. strategy to “defeat ISIS” is changing, stating that a new policy of “attrition” is over and the new policy of “annihilation” is about to begin. Speaking to CBS’ Face The Nation, Mattis said, Our strategy right now is to accelerate the campaign against Isis. It is a threat to all civilized nations. And the bottom line is we are going to move in an accelerated and reinforced manner, throw them on their back foot. We have already shifted from attrition tactics, where we shove them from one position to another in Iraq and Syria, to annihilation tactics where we surround them. Our intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home to North Africa, to Europe, to America, to Asia, to Africa. We’re not going to allow them to do so. We’re going to stop them there and take apart the caliphate. The United States, however, has long supported the terrorist group both in terms of funding and outright military assistance ever since the organization became publicly known as ISIS ( simply name change from al-Qaeda, an American created and controlled terrorist organization). Mattis then launched into a familiar but incredibly hypocritical retort regarding the horror of killing women and children, something the United States has become quite adept at doing, particularly in the last two decades. He said, We have got to dry up their recruiting,” he said. “We have got to dry up their fundraising. The way we intend to do it is to humiliate them, to divorce them from any nation giving them protection, and humiliating their message of hatred, of violence. Anyone who kills women and children is not devout. They … cannot dress themselves up in false religious garb and say that somehow this message has dignity. Yet when the specific question of civilian casualties came up, Mattis appeared to be paving the way for an increase in the wholesale slaughter of innocent people in Iraq and Syria. Indeed, Mattis’ response appeared to be designed to set the stage and prepare the American people for the horror show that is about to be unleashed in the Middle East with renewed vigor. Mattis said, Civilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of situation. We do everything humanly possible consistent with military necessity, taking many chances to avoid civilian casualties at all costs. The American people and the American military will never get used to civilian casualties. And we will – we will fight against that every way we can possibly bring our intelligence and our tactics to bear. But, while Mattis feigns sorrow over the death of innocent people, he is obviously quite resigned to civilian deaths since his announcement is one of foreshadowing that seems to be taken straight out of the Israeli playbook. Of course, Mattis is not alone since the US military brass as well as the American people seem quite comfortable with civilian deaths in wars that their country has started. Laughably, Mattis goes on to attempt to defend the killing of more than 100 civilians in Mosul by a U.S. airstrike as having been the fault of ISIS since the Western-backed organization would not allow civilians to leave the area being bombed. He then argues that the explosions were so massive because the U.S. airstrike hit a building in which ISIS was storing weapons and munitions. Fair enough. There is an argument to be made for his position (assuming, of course, the U.S. was actually fighting ISIS). However, Mattis’ claims are eerily similar to those made by the Syrian and Russian militaries regarding similar incidents, most notably the alleged chemical weapons attacks in Khan Sheikhoun. At the time, however, the U.S. dismissed such claims out of hand, pretending that they were simply lies and more examples of the cruelty of Assad and his omniscient Russian allies. The idea that a military would unwittingly bomb a warehouse of munitions causing civilian deaths was, according to the West, preposterous. That is, unless the West needs a convenient excuse. When such is the case, the integrity and honor of the West is beyond question. In fact, even as Mattis’ interview was published, the headlines in the corporate media were alight with accusations of Syrian military atrocities committed as a result of Assad’s much-maligned indiscriminate barrel bombs. But I digress . . . Mattis also followed in the footsteps of the previous two administrations by reminding Americans that we are the good guys, something Americans need to be reminded of lest they forget or have a different perspective as a result of judging by what they see and the fruit their country bears. “We’re not the perfect guys, but we are the good guys. And so we’re doing what we can,” he said. At least he admits America isn’t perfect. It’s important to give yourself an out when you are planning on murdering more innocent people. Both Bush and Obama can attest to this. This article may be freely shared in part or in full with author attribution and source link. Image Credit: The Anti Media (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? 5/31/2017 4:16:45 PM
	US Starts Providing Weapons to Syrian Kurds May 30, 2017 at 5:13 pm Written by Anti-Media News Desk (MEE) The United States said on Tuesday it started distributing arms to Syrian Kurdish militia battling to help retake the city of Raqqa from the Islamic State group (IS), moving ahead with a war plan that has angered NATO ally Turkey. Pentagon spokesman Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway said the Kurdish fighters received small arms and vehicles from the US military. He believed the arms were distributed earlier on Tuesday. Another US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the distribution of the arms had started in the past 24 hours, based on authority given by President Donald Trump earlier this month. There was no immediate reaction from Turkey, which has warned the United States that its decision to arm Kurdish forces fighting IS in Syria could end up hurting Washington. Turkey views the YPG as the Syrian extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which has fought an insurgency in southeast Turkey since 1984 and is considered a terrorist group by the United States, Turkey and Europe. The United States regards the YPG as a valuable partner in the fight against IS militants in northern Syria. Washington says that arming the Kurdish forces is necessary to recapturing Raqqa, IS’s de facto capital in Syria and a hub for planning attacks against the West. US officials have told Reuters that the United States was also looking to boost intelligence cooperation with Turkey to support its fight against the PKK. It was unclear if the effort would be enough to soothe Turkey’s fears, however. Ankara worries that advances by the YPG in northern Syria could inflame the PKK insurgency on Turkish soil. It has also voiced concern that weapons given to the YPG would end up in the hands of the PKK. Turkey’s concerns about the YPG were significant enough for Ankara to launch its own military operation inside Syria in August 2016, dubbed Euphrates Shield. The operation had the dual goals of targeting IS and the Kurdish militia, particularly to prevent the YPG from controlling a strip of territory along the Syria-Turkey border. “It is absolutely unacceptable to take the YPG-PYD into consideration as partners in the region, and it’s going against a global agreement we reached,” Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after meeting Trump in Washington earlier this month. By MEE and agencies / Republished with permission / Middle East Eye / Report a typo
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 6/1/2017 10:55:15 AM
	Werner Erhard: The End of Starvation: Creating an Idea Whose Time Has Come May 28, 2017 by Steve Beckow Today (* ) is also World Hunger Day. What better occasion to post a document on the end of starvation by Werner Erhard, that has contributed endless insights to me since I first read it in 1979. It’s also the document’s Fiftieth Anniversary (1977). This is one of two sources for the context of a world that works for everyone (the other being an event around that time by that name). So it has special significance for me. I’ve never read a clearer discussion of why and how the world doesn’t work and what we can do about it. I’ve also never read a more empowering statement of the case for what we call the lightworker. Werner would never have dreamed that what we call lightworkers might one day become philanthropists. The standards that he set fifty years ago – primarily for integrity – remain out in front of me, perhaps of us. They were high ones to reach. We post here only the first chapter, with a link to the entire document. It’s well worth reading for all humanitarian philanthropists. The Hunger Project Source Document: The End of Starvation: Creating an Idea Whose Time Has Come by Werner Erhard, 1977 http://www.wernererhard.net/thpsource.html You and I want our lives to matter. We want our lives to make a real difference – to be of genuine consequence in the world. We know that there is no satisfaction in merely going through the motions, even if those motions make us successful or even if we have arranged to make those motions pleasant. We want to know we have had some impact on the world. In fact, you and I want to contribute to the quality of life. We want to make the world work. When you look at making the world work, you are confronted by, and cannot pass over, the fact that each year 15 million of us die as a consequence of starvation. This unparalleled failure for humanity enables us to see that the world’s unworkability is located in the very condition in which we live our lives. Thus, it is not people “out there” who are starving; people are starving “here” – in the space in which you and I live. You and I are working to make our lives work in the same condition that results in hunger and starvation. Starvation both maintains and dramatizes a world that does not work. Persisting throughout history, it has accounted for more deaths and suffering than all epidemics, wars, and natural disasters combined. During the past five years alone, more people have died as a consequence of starvation than from all the wars, revolutions, and murders of the past 150 years. As you read this, 28 people are dying in our world each minute as a consequence of hunger, three-quarters of them children. The bare statistics are so shocking that we rarely examine the further impact of starvation on our own lives. Hunger, by its persistence, seems to invalidate that our lives could matter. It seems to prove that we are capable only of gestures. It suppresses the space in which each of us lives. Yet, precisely because the impact of starvation on our lives is so great, its existence is actually an opportunity. It is an opportunity to get beyond merely defending what we have, beyond the futility of self-interest, beyond the hopelessness of clinging to opinions and making gestures. In fact, in experiencing the truth underlying hunger, one comes to realize that the ordinarily unnoticed laws that determine the persistence of hunger on this planet are precisely the laws that keep the world from working. And the principles of the end of hunger and starvation in the world are the very principles necessary to make the world work. So this paper is not an explanation, a solution, an opinion, or a point of view about the problem of hunger. It is an examination of what is so about the persistence of hunger, aimed at answering two questions: 1. What are the laws governing and determining the persistence of hunger on our planet? Not the reasons, however cogent; not the justifications, however comforting; not the systems of explanation, however consistent or clever. If we were merely looking for reasons to explain the persistence of hunger and starvation, we could logically deduce them from the facts. Fundamental laws and principles, however, cannot be deduced. One knows them by creating them from nothing, out of one’s Self. One does not arrive at fundamental laws and principles as a function of what is already known. Such laws and principles do not merely explain; they illuminate. They do not merely add to what we know; they create a new space in which knowing can occur. The test of whether we are dealing with fundamental laws and principles, or with mere reasons and explanations, is whether there is a shift from controversy, frustration, and gesturing, to mastery, motion, and completion. 2. What are the principles of the end of hunger and starvation on the planet? Not new programs of solution, no matter how saleable or clever; not different or better opinions, no matter how arguable; not points of view, no matter how agreeable. This discussion is not about another good idea. It is about revealing the fundamental principles of the end of hunger and starvation on our planet. (The rest of the document can be read athttp://www.wernererhard.net/thpsource.html.) (*) Sorry for posting this only now.
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Werner Erhard: The End of Starvation: Creating an Idea Whose Time Has Come