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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
10/8/2017 10:34:35 AM

North Korea 'ready to test new high range missile capable of hitting US west coast'

A Russian lawmaker claims the mood in Pyongyang is "rather belligerent" and officials there showed him mathematical calculations of the planned missile test

NORTH KOREA 'BLOWS UP US AIRCRAFT CARRIER' IN PROPAGANDA VIDEO

North Korea is set to test-fire a new "high range" missile capable of hitting the US mainland, a Russian lawmaker claims.

Anton Morozov revealed Pyongyang's plans as he returned from a five-day visit to the hermit state - where the mood is "rather belligerent" - with a Russian delegation.

He claims North Korean officials gave the Russians mathematical calculations showing that the intercontinental ballistic missile could reach targets on the US west coast.

It comes just days after a CIA official revealed that Kim Jong-un's regime could launch a new missile or carry out another nuclear test next week.

North Korea has carried out a number of missile tests recently despite UN sanctions

Morozov told the Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti: "They are preparing for a new test of a longer-range missile.

"They even gave us mathematical calculations that they believe prove that their missile can hit the western coast of the United States."

He described the mood in Pyongyang as "rather belligerent", adding: "In the near future, they are going to carry out, as far as we understand, yet another launch of a missile, but this time with a longer range."

He was part of a Russian delegation which made an official visit to Pyongyang this week to discuss bilateral cooperation with the Russian ambassador to North Korea, the English-language state-run Sputnik news agency reported.

Kim Jong-un is pictured in a photo released after his regime's last nuclear test

Morozov, a member of the Russian State Duma Committee on International Affairs, has called for a prompt intervention in the situation on the Korean peninsula to avoid a new war.

Earlier this week, Yong Suk Lee, the deputy assistant director of the CIA's Korea Mission Center, revealed that North Korea's latest provocation could come on Tuesday when it celebrates the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea.

Many past nuclear or missile tests have coincided with mass public celebrations.

A test would coincide with Japan's lower house election campaigns and the Columbus Day holiday in the US. Given the time difference, it would be Monday in the US if a missile or nuclear test occurs in Pyongyang on Tuesday morning.

North Korea launches a Hwasong-12 missile

Despite UN sanctions, North Korea has recently carried out an underground nuclear test and test-fired two missiles over northern Japan, with both crashing into the Pacific Ocean.

Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times op-ed columnist who recently returned to Pyongyang for a visit, wrote that North Korea is galvanising its citizens to expect a nuclear war with the US.

Billboards in the capital show missiles destroying the US Capitol in Washington, DC, he added.

Pyongyang resident Mun Hyok-myong, a teacher, told Mr Kristof during a visit to an amusement park: “If we have to go to war, we won’t hesitate to totally destroy the United States."


A satellite image shows North Korea's Punggye-ri nuclear test site

A new report by the website 38 North, which monitors Pyongyang's activities, has suggested that a North Korean nuclear attack on Seoul and Tokyo could kill more than two million people and injure nearly eight million others.

North Korea's state-run news agency, KCNA, reported on Friday that the country's National Peace Committee (NPC) has called on the US to pull its troops out of South Korea.

US forces have been stationed in the South since the Korean War.

The committee said the 64-year-old South Korea-US Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) was an "aggressive and traitorous war document" allowing the US to control the South's army, South Korea's state-run Yonhap News Agency reported.

TV coverage of a North Korean missile launched over northern Japan in August


SOUTH KOREA SPECIAL FORCES SHOW OFF THEIR FIGHTING SKILLS


More here

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

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
10/8/2017 11:03:06 AM

Iraq-Syria border set for last major assault on IS: US general




Iraqi forces and the Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation units) hold a position as they advance towards the Islamic State group's stronghold of Hawija on September 30, 2017 (AFP Photo/AHMAD AL-RUBAYE)

Baghdad (AFP) - The "final large fight" in Iraq against the Islamic State group will take place on the border with Syria, a general in a US-led coalition against the jihadists said Saturday.

He spoke two days after Iraqi forces recaptured the northern town of Hawija, the centre of one of the jihadist group's two remaining enclaves in Iraq.

"The next fight and the final large fight will be in the Middle Euphrates River Valley... on the Iraqi-Syrian border," Brigadier General Robert Sofge, the coalition's Deputy Commanding General, told AFP.

"All campaigns will aim in that direction, and it is going to happen sooner rather than later."

IS seized vast areas of Iraq and Syria in 2014.

Multiple offensives in both countries have since cornered it in a pocket of territory stretching from Syria's Deir Ezzor to the Iraqi towns of Rawa and Al-Qaim.

Sofge said some 2,000 IS fighters were still in the area.

Coalition-backed Iraqi forces ousted IS from second city Mosul in July, going on to inflict a string of defeats on the jihadist group.

After seizing the northern town of Tal Afar in August, they focused their efforts on Hawija and the Euphrates river area close to the Syrian frontier.

- 'Moving quickly' -

The jihadists are also under pressure in eastern Syria, facing separate offensives by Russian-backed regime forces and a Kurdish-Arab force supported by the US-led coalition.

Brigadier General Andrew A. Croft, the coalition's deputy air force commander, said Iraqi security forces had been able to regroup and move quickly into new battles following their Mosul victory.

"We, as the Coalition, are moving quickly to match," he said.

Sofge said the jihadist group was shifting from a military mindset to that of an insurgent group with "sleeper cells" able to launch surprise attacks.

"The challenge for the years ahead is police work in Iraq and Syria," he said.

"IS fighters who are not killed or captured are trying to fade back into the fabric of the society."

While jihadists have tried to hide among the thousands of people displaced by fighting, Croft said some 1,000 IS fighters were captured in Hawija.

Many ended up in the hands of the Kurdish peshmerga militias in Kirkuk province.

Control of the province is a key sticking point in a bitter dispute between Baghdad and Kurdish authorities, fanned by a September referendum on Kurdish independence, held in defiance of the central government.

Iraqi pro-government forces have also advanced towards Kurdish positions since retaking Hawija.

But Croft praised what he said was a "high degree of cooperation between peshmergas and Iraqi security forces".

"It is very positive," he said.

"Much of the tension is at a political level, not only does tension (between Iraqi forces and the peshmerga) not exist, but they keep their cooperation high."


(Yahoo News)


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

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
10/8/2017 4:09:13 PM
05.09.2017 Author: Gordon Duff

The Unseen Victims of America’s War Machine

How many more lives will America’s wars claim?

When the war drums begin, the first victim is reason, this is no secret at all. I recently met with a group of Russian war veterans about this issue, how those who fight wars are victims just like the armies of refugees and the dead strewn across the landscape, now called “collateral damage” that may well represent a countless multitude.

Do remember, the Vietnam War was stopped, not by “peaceniks” but by combat veterans who hit the streets, people like John Kerry or, to a lesser extent, me. That these movements survive in a small way, in reality dissent has been criminalized in a world of fake information and even more fake leadership.

America marched to eternal war after 9/11 despite the fact that any reasonable and informed individual minimally has to brand Saudi Arabia, not “al Qaeda” as the perpetrator. I would go further and say that the partnership we saw in Syria between Saudi Arabia and Israel began well before 2001, but that would make me a conspiracy theorist, and in a time of fake everything, that must be worse somehow, though the difference is increasingly hard to understand.

Let’s remember, it was Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, based in Peshawar, Pakistan during the 1980s, that received American Raytheon Stinger missiles to shoot down Russian helicopters in Afghanistan.

Wasn’t it the same al Qaeda, under the name “Jabat al Nusra” that received the same Raytheon Stinger missiles from the CIA to shoot down Russian helicopters in Syria, until a few weeks ago when we were told that the CIA was asked to stop supporting al Qaeda.

Perhaps we might just want to consider that the War on Terror may well have been based on “alternative facts.”

In a world where America openly supplies al Qaeda with weapons of mass destruction, where Israel and Saudi Arabia fight side by side, and where “alternative facts” are used to support government policies, dissent itself is now a form of terrorism.

Military veterans aren’t all equal. Just visit Washington DC or towns like Annapolis, Maryland. There the strutting peacocks in uniform have profited greatly from war, wars they risked nothing fighting, wars they were paid to support and defend, not the nation, the United States mind you, but war itself, the business, the racket, the game.

There are real veterans out there, from every nation, tossed on the scrap heap of history when they are used up. One nation above all abuses its combat veterans, consigning them to misery and death, more than any other. That nation is the United States.

What if I told you America has lost half a million dead, military casualties of the bogus War on Terror? We all know that many Syrians have died, or so we are told by CIA backed propaganda organizations like the White Helmets and Syrian Human Rights Observatory.

What if I told you that America’s real dirty little secret is that so many of America’s military have died from Gulf War Syndrome, suicide and a pattern of unimaginably bad medical care that this in itself may well constitute a war crime?

Why don’t the numbers come out you ask? The answer is simple, collecting data on the endless number of American military victims of America’s wars is a crime. Records aren’t kept, statistics are forbidden because, if a problem is unproven, it doesn’t exist.

This is a big game in Washington, America’s injustice to women and minorities, particularly the pattern of victimization of the poor by the criminal justice system can’t be addressed because there are prohibitions against documenting injustice in America.

I recently went over this with a member of the US Civil Rights Commission, quickly assessing that their pattern of failures has predictable roots, nothing in the US is counted, no records are kept, dead military veterans, jailed mothers with small children, those who committed minor drug offenses but serve decades in prison, no, this is only a small part of it, but today we are going to talk about the military, where I have my expertise.

In 1970, I returned from Vietnam and began medical treatment in the huge government system run by the Veterans Administration. My own injuries seemed minor as I entered the filthy hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan where amputees lived on gurneys all over the building, stored in kitchen areas, storage closets, overflowing urine bags, the stench of gangrene, the moaning of endless pain and hopelessness.

This is what was really there, I saw it, I remember every minute of it. In 1938, American author and screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo, wrote an anti-war novel called Johnny Got His Gun. Trumbo was later blacklisted as a Russian sympathizer and banned from writing though, secretly supported by actor Kirk Douglas, Trumbo penned the screenplay of the academy award winning film, Spartacus.

Trumbo’s novel was about the Veterans Administration health care system and how a severely disfigured combat veteran of World War I was hidden for years in a storage closet where he was attacked by rats. Employees who went to his aid were threatened and silenced, just like today.

In 1938, disabled veterans were an inconvenience. They still are, except at election time when each new candidate promises to address the wrongdoing of their predecessor and, of course, in the end, nothing whatsoever changes.

The Trumbo novel, fiction, is almost identical to the scandal at the massive Walter Reed complex where members of congress receive their medical care. The rundown and rat infested buildings at Walter Reed, during the Bush 43 administration, were used to store disabled military, until the Washington Post found out about it anyway.

In a facility where there are luxury suites for members of congress to receive the most expensive medical care in the world, free of charge, paid for by American taxpayers, disabled combat veterans lived in filth, in many cases medical treatment withheld until they agreed to sign away their rights to disability pension benefits. As American humorist Jim W. Dean so often says, “You just can’t make this stuff up.”

My own experiences go back to Vietnam, this was my war. Few are aware that Democratic Senator Phil Hart pushed to have Marines retasked from amphibious assault efforts which were producing casualties 400% of World War II levels. I served with one of those units.

When veterans returned from Vietnam, the suicides began, PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, it would be eventually called. The same was true of other wars but no one counted them either, the suicide deaths eventually hit the hundreds of thousands for Vietnam. For other wars the numbers may have been higher, but then we will never know as no one counted. They still don’t.

Then there is that other thing, “Agent Orange,” the defoliant used across Vietnam that was laced with dioxin, a powerful carcinogen. Chemical companies were sued for this decades ago, billions were paid out, almost all to lawyers. Veterans received nothing. How many died from Agent Orange?

The number runs between 700,000 and 1.1 million. Vietnamese have died by the millions and are still dying but we can’t talk about that either.

The number who died of Gulf War Syndrome is certainly in the tens of thousands and those who investigated where harassed and threated by military intelligence operatives, something Veterans Today carefully documented. It is also said, albeit not so publicly, that many have died of diseases like multiple myeloma. The cause of that disorder is exposure to ionizing radiation from things like partially depleted uranium projectiles or the suspected clandestine use of prohibited fission based weapons.

When illegal weapons are used, nuclear, biological or chemical, the military veterans who become victims are forced to die from the disease of official denial and anyone who thinks nuclear, biological and chemical arsenals aren’t deployed against targets in the Middle East is a fool.

There are two basic business units for what is now called the Department of Veterans Affairs. One unit denies claims, loses paperwork and has built the largest “Skinner Box” in history to force the sick and disabled to simply “go away.”

All processes from applications for pensions to seeking medical care itself is made as frustrating and burdensome as possible. Even a phone call can lead to long and pointless recorded announcements, which lead to more of the same and, eventually, systems that either hang up the phone or route calls to recording devices that are often never checked.

The other is “medical mistreatment.” Here, the world’s largest and most expensive health care system, yes, it is really that big, shuffles millions of patients in and out without treatment plans, testing or follow up care. Care is rationed with waiting lists for things like expensive dental work or knee replacement surgery taking more than a decade.

Patients who can’t walk because of easily treatable conditions are given canes or wheel chairs and sent away. Tests when conducted are often never reviewed and there is no accounting of any kind. No professional license is needed because federal government facilities are above state law and there are no national regulatory agencies for health care professionals. Yes, you can lose a license to practice for very serious violations and work for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The number of instances of patient abuse, even killings, is insanely high but also quickly suppressed. Veterans service organizations, who help “police” this system are generously paid off and remain silent, more a part of the problem themselves, even more than this corrupt bureaucracy.

What is really being hidden is the cost of America’s wars. You see, the new professional military that Nixon gave the US after Vietnam is a “garrison army,” not a combat army. Troops who fight year after year, even in air conditioned comfort, we are told, paid 20 times, corrected for inflation, what was paid to those who fought in Vietnam, eventually become institutionalized and unable to maintain normal employment.

When, because of physical or psychological conditions which will invariably result from multiple deployments manifest, these soldiers are more often forced out, charged with an offense of some kind, or disallowed from continuing service and receiving a retirement pension. This places those who qualify, and not all qualify, in a medical system designed to make dying seem attractive.

Were one a conspiracy theorist, one might well postulate that using ISIS or similar organizations to fight America’s wars could be a money saving ploy. Certainly Israel provides far better medical care to al Qaeda and ISIS fighters than America does to her own troops. Instead of killing them off after they are no longer needed, with poor medical care, America can just start bombing them. America’s governmental bureaucracy offers both “fake” medical care and “fake” bombing and accepts each as business as usual.

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”


(journal-neo.org)


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

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
10/8/2017 5:16:24 PM

Hundreds of thousands rally against Catalan independence in Barcelona

Edited time: 8 Oct, 2017 16:25



The rally, designed to defend the unity of Spain, was organized by the Catalan Civil Society (SCC) group, with the
slogan‘Let’s recover our common sense!’

“Everyone has the right to say their opinion. [Until] today I had the impression that [people] who were against independence couldn’t speak. Today is a great day when everyone in Catalonia can speak,” a French woman living in Barcelona told RT.

When asked about the federal police presence in the region, the woman justified the measure saying that “we can’t forget that Catalonia is still Spain.”

Wrapped in a Spanish flag, another local believes Prime Minister Rajoy should follow the rules and exercise his powers. “He is in charge of our government, he must do something. He must remove some powers from autonomic government, because they’re not following the rules.”

Others saw the Sunday gathering as an opportunity for the Catalans to go out to the streets and say “We’re Spanish as well. You’re not touching our Catalonia, because Catalonia is for everyone and Spain is for everyone.”

“People of peace that are here, we don’t want war, we don’t want conflict with Catalonia. This is our flag, and Catalonia’s is our flag,” the man says, wrapped in the red and yellow Spanish flag. “Viva Espana! Viva Catalonia!”the man called out, as the crowd cheered and joined in his chant.


More than 2.2 million people across Catalonia cast their ballots in last Sunday’s referendum, which saw a 90-percent vote in favor of a split from Spain. The police crackdown on the independence referendum in the affluent Spanish region led to over 800 people being injured and mass protests, with 700,000 people taking to the streets of Barcelona to vent their anger and voice support for the local authorities.

In the wake of the referendum, Catalan regional leader Carles Puigdemont pledged to present the results to the local parliament, despite the Spanish Constitutional Court ruling the referendum illegal. The court subsequently suspended the upcoming Monday session of the Catalan parliament, during which it was expected to address the outcome of the popular vote.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said, in an exclusive interview with El Pais on Saturday, that “Spain is not going to be divided and the nation’s unity will be maintained… We believe that we know what the Spanish people are thinking. And they should know that the government also knows what it has to do."

“The ideal would be not to have to take drastic measures, but for that to happen there would have to be some rectifications. I would like the threat of a declaration of independence to be withdrawn as quickly as possible,” hesaid.

On Monday, the European Commission backed the Spanish government’s stance that the referendum was against the law and called the police crackdown an “internal matter” for Spain.

This led to accusations of hypocrisy voiced against the EU, with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic saying: “How come that in the case of Catalonia the referendum on independence is not valid, while in the case of Kosovo, secession [from Serbia in 2008] is allowed even without a referendum?”

The EU sided with Spain’s national government, and failed to explicitly condemn the violent suppression of the vote.

European Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans described the baton charges and rubber bullets used against voters and protesters as a “proportionate” use of force that EU states are entitled to deploy to protect the law.

READ MORE: EU Parliament defends 'proportionate force' after brutal Catalan referendum crackdown

“It is a duty for any government to uphold the rule of law, and this sometimes requires the proportionate use of force,” Timmermans told the European Parliament in Strasbourg during a debate on Catalonia.


(RT)


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

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
10/8/2017 5:38:49 PM

Economic Slowdown Confirmed: The U.S. Economy Lost Jobs Last Month For The First Time In 7 Years

Don’t worry – even though the employment numbers are terrible the mainstream media insists that everything is going to be wonderful for the U.S. economy in the months ahead. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy lost 33,000 jobs during September. That was the first monthly decline in seven years, and as you will see below, overall 2017 is on pace for the slowest employment growthin at least five years. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics insists that the downturn in September was due to the chaos caused by Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma, and they are assuring us that happier times are right around the corner.

Economists were projecting that we would see an increase of around 80,000 jobs last month, and we need to add at least 150,000 jobs each month just to keep up with population growth. So the -33,000 number was a huge disappointment.

But even though we lost 33,000 jobs last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the unemployment rate fell from 4.4 percent to 4.2 percent.

Yes, I know that doesn’t make any sense at all, but that is what they are telling us.

Perhaps if several volcanoes go off inside this country, terrorists detonate a dirty bomb in one of our major cities and Godzilla invades the west coast next month the unemployment rate will drop all the way to zero.

Of course I am being facetious, but I just want to point out the absurdity of what we are being told. There is no way in the world that the official unemployment rate should be at “a new 16-year low”.

In the end, perhaps September will end up being a bit of an anomaly. But as I mentioned above, we have been witnessing a broader trend build for months. According to CNBC, we are on pace for “the slowest jobs growth in at least five years”…

In addition to September’s rough month, the July number was revised lower from 189,000 to 138,000 though August got a bump higher from 156,000. In all, though, 2017 thus far has seen the slowest jobs growth in at least five years.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Employment is not booming. In fact, things haven’t been this slow “in at least five years”. An economic slowdown is here, and yet most people are totally oblivious to what is happening.

And let me share something else with you. The following chart shows the average duration of unemployment since the late 1940s…

This chart shows that workers remain unemployed far longer than they did in the “good old days”, but I want you to pay special attention to the very end of the chart.

The duration of unemployment is really starting to spike up again quite dramatically, and that is a very, very troubling sign for the U.S. economy overall, because spikes in this number almost always correspond with recessions.

But the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that we don’t have anything to be concerned about. In fact, they are blaming all of the bad numbers from last month on Harvey and Irma

Our analysis suggests that the net effect of these hurricanes was to reduce the estimate of total nonfarm payroll employment for September. There was no discernible effect on the national unemployment rate. No changes were made to either the establishment or household survey estimation procedures for the September figures. For both surveys, collection rates generally were within normal ranges, both nationally and in the affected states. In the establishment survey, employees who are not paid for the pay period that includes the 12th of the month are not counted as employed. In the household survey, persons with a job are counted as employed even if they miss work for the entire survey reference week (the week including the 12th of the month), regardless of whether or not they are paid. For both surveys, national estimates do not include Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands.

And the “experts” that are being quoted by the mainstream media are assuring us that“the labor market remains in good shape”

“Despite the decline (in job gains), it’s really clear that the labor market remains in good shape,” says Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors.

The unemployment rate, which is calculated from a different survey than the headline job totals, edged lower. That’s because gains in the number of people employed outpaced an increase in the labor force, which includes people working and looking for jobs. In that survey of households, workers are counted as employed even if they were temporarily idled by the storms.

Hopefully they are right.

Hopefully happy times are here again and an economic boom is right around the corner.

Unfortunately, the longer term trends tell an entirely different story. Our economic infrastructure has been gutted, we have shipped millions of good paying jobs overseas, the middle class is slowly being eradicated, and we are living in the terminal phase of the greatest debt bubble in human history.

We have been able to maintain our ridiculously inflated standard of living for an extended period of time by borrowing absolutely colossal mountains of money year after year. But no debt bubble lasts forever, and this one will not either.

The debt-fueled “prosperity” that we see all around us today is an enormous temporary illusion, and when the illusion collapses the economic pain is going to be greater than anything we have ever seen before in modern American history.

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.


(The Economic Collapse)


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

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