4322-ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? | View Thread

There are approximately 1.8 billion Muslims on Earth. That is approximately 24% of the world population. They live in regions spanning North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and reaching as far as Southeast Asia. There are Muslim communities in virtually every nation - and in many - they have played a pivotal, constructive, and welcomed role in national development.

If even 1% of the world's Muslims were violent terrorists bent on conquering the world, that would constitute an army 18 million strong - or in other words - larger than the next 20 largest armies on Earth combined. Most critics of Islam infer that the number is actually much higher than 1% - many suggesting that the majority of Muslims either are engaged in or support terrorism. It is logical to conclude that if even 1% were dedicated to terrorism and the "conquest of infidels," the war would have ended in their favor long ago.

It is clear that there is not even 1% across Islam engaged in or supporting terrorism. Across the Arab World, the vast majority of Muslims, Christians, other sects, and the secular, stand united against terrorism. It is clear that a mountain of lies stands between many and the truth - a mountain built so tall that it leaves entire segments of targeted populations in the perpetual darkness of ignorance.

From Whence Terror Flows

The source of terrorism is not the Qu'ran - a book that few critics of Islam have even picked up let alone genuinely read - but rather a very easily traced money trail that leads to Washington and London.

It is indeed the Western World that has created, branded, and marketed "radical Islam," which is for all intents and purposes a strictly political tool designed to provoke direct Western military interventions where possible, and fight conflicts by proxy whenever direct military intervention is not possible.

In Syria and Iraq, the US has used its terrorist proxies to do both - first to fight the government of Damascus and its allies by proxy, and when that failed, to set a pretext for direct US military intervention.

It has also been used domestically, as one former analyst once put it, "to enlist our obedience for the construction of the prison planet." Indeed, under the pretext of "fighting terrorism," the United States and much of Europe has been transformed into an invasive police state and despite stripping away the freedom and liberty of the Western World for the promise of security - the peoples of the West find themselves with neither.

For those that have been sucked up into "radical Islam," it seems very real. Just as the US uses patriotism to convince young men and women to devote their lives to foreign invasions, wars, and occupations against scores of sovereign nations around the world - predicated on "freedom, democracy, and self-determination" even as US militarism strips all of the above away from the planet - that fraction of a fraction of 1% engaged in "radical Islam" truly believe in their cause - no matter how nonexistent and contradictory it is in reality.

And "radical Islam" does not exist in a vacuum. It requires a medium to interact with. That includes a equally extreme, but opposite "radical ignorance" and fear sown across the Western population. Together, the two feed each other creating a perpetual pretext for foreign war, a perpetual sense of injustice against Muslims to which US-armed and funded terrorists can rally around, and perpetual fear and hatred spread across the Western World.

It is the age-old political tool of empires - divide and conquer - honed to perfection and supercharged through information technology - particularly social media.

Wahhabism - The Key to Arab Conquest

Part of "radical ignorance" includes a deep and profound ignorance of history. Understanding the actual inception of "radical Islam," more accurately known as Wahhabism, dispels many of the most virulent lies spread about Islam - that is has always been a barbaric, warlike ideology. Militant Islam is a relatively new phenomenon, invented by the House of Saud, then cultivated and exploited to its full potential by the British Empire and its American heirs.

The Ottoman Empire and mastery over the Arab World was coveted and contested by the British Empire. The promise of Arab independence was dangled over the heads of the founders of many of the dynasties now ruling Arabia - dynasties that were carved out through cults of personality and a violent misinterpretation of Islam known as Wahhabism. The British, after betraying the Arabs, would harness this political tool to do what all empires do best - divide and conquer - and specifically so regarding the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

As the British Empire unraveled, the Americans picked up where London left off. The Saudis and their neighboring Persian Gulf kingdoms have been propped up by the West since the end of World War 1. Since World War 2, many of the same dynasties have sat in power, armed, funded, protected, and invited into some of the most lucrative business deals and economic activity in human history.

It was with members of the Muslim Brotherhood that the US attempted to overthrow current Syrian President Bashar Al Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad with. It was the US with the Saudis and factions within Pakistan's military and government who oversaw the very creation of militant groups like Al Qaeda to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.

And it is to this very day still very much a US-European enterprise perpetuating the Saudi regime in Riyadh, arming it to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in weapons and military support, and using Riyadh admittedly as an intermediary through which Washington, London, and Brussels arm and fund the worst, most virulent terrorist organizations on Earth.

Even current US President Donald Trump - who regularly cites "radical Islam" as an enduring threat to America's national security, has signed off on immense weapon deals to the very nations the US uses to cultivate and perpetuate global terrorism.

The US and Europe Drive Terrorism, Not Islam

Each and every terrorist attack that unfolds across North America or Europe is followed by a tidal wave of propaganda aimed at further bolstering a "clash of civilizations." The fearful public either cowers or lashes out against Muslims - led by establishment voices including the newly christened "alt-right."

Muslims and Islam are blamed and the same collection of elementary talking points are rolled out to fan the flames of hatred and hysteria. Points of logic including the number of Muslims on Earth versus the actual number of terrorists are never discussed.

Also never discussed is the fact that terrorists - particularly those either members of the self-titled "Islamic State" (ISIS) and Al Qaeda, or those inspired by such groups - are indoctrinated, radicalized, armed, funded, and supported by Washington, London, Brussels, and a collection of the West's closest allies in the Middle East - namely Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan, and Israel.

It was in a leaked 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) memo that revealed the US and its allies' intent to create what it called a "Salafist principality" in eastern Syria. The memo would explicitly state that (emphasis added):

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).

On clarifying who these supporting powers were, the DIA memo would state:

The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.

The "Salafist" (Islamic) "principality" (State) would indeed be created precisely in eastern Syria as US policymakers and their allies had set out to do. It would be branded as the "Islamic State" and be used first to wage a more muscular proxy war against Damascus, and when that failed, to invite US military forces to intervene in the conflict directly.

In 2014, in an e-mail between US Counselor to the President John Podesta and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, it would be admitted that two of America's closest regional allies - Saudi Arabia and Qatar - were providing financial and logistical support to ISIS.

The e-mail, leaked to the public through Wikileaks, stated:

...we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to [ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.

Despite admissions from the United States military and high-level politicians that ISIS was literally a creation of its own intentional foreign policy and perpetuated through state-sponsorship by America's closest regional allies, both the administrations of President Barack Obama and President Trump would continue signing weapon deals, maintaining diplomatic ties, and strengthening military and economic cooperation with these state-sponsors of terror.

Simultaneously, the US and Europe also continue encouraging and protecting Saudi Arabia's global network of faux-madrases - centers of indoctrination often under the watch and even co-management of Western intelligence agencies ensuring a constant, fresh supply of potential patsies for local terrorist attacks and recruits for the West's proxy armies fighting abroad.

In other words, the problem of "radical Islam" is manufactured and perpetuated by the West. Without the money, weapons, and support provided by the US and Europe to nations like Saudi Arabia, their toxic political tools would quickly dull and be swept into the dustbin of human history. As seen in Syria itself, where hundreds of trucks per day from NATO territory are no longer able to supply ISIS positions within the country, ISIS is unable to sustain itself. It lacks genuine popular support in a region where the vast majority of Muslims, Christians, and the secular remain united against it and has no means of sustaining itself without immense and constant state sponsorship.

"Radical Islam," or Wahhabism is no different. Both continue to exist through the intentional and malicious foreign and domestic policy of Western governments and the special interests that influence them.

Know Yourself and Know Your (Real) Enemy

For those that believe that "radical Islam" is real and an enduring threat to "Western civilization," they would be wise to heed the words of ancient warlord Sun Tzu who said, "know yourself, and know your enemy and you will never be defeated."

This means identifying the true source of "radical Islam's" power by tracing weapons, money, and leadership to their sources. For those that believe "Islam" is the fundamental problem, indulging in cherry picked Qu'ran verses is monumentally irresponsible. A true enemy must be honestly studied which means cherry-picked versus must be put into context, the Qu'ran as a whole, must be read, and deep and objective study must be undertaken to truly "know one's enemy."

Meeting and talking with Muslims, observing their communities, and learning their ways - if one truly believes Islam is a threat - is also fundamental in order to "know one's enemy."

Yet it is likely that many who blindly hate Islam do so as a spectator sport. They are disinterested in the truth because picking a side and rooting is the extent of their intellectual, physical, and moral depth. For others, it is a means of profiting. Finding a niche in the West's massive propaganda machine and picking up crumbs for one's bank account and ego has become a viable business model for many.

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 11/7/2017 5:21:30 PM
	Growing homeless camps contrast with West Coast tech wealth By GILLIAN FLACCUS AND GEOFF MULVIHILL, ASSOCIATED PRESS SEATTLE — Nov 6, 2017, 3:34 PM ET The Associated Press In this Sept. 28, 2017 photo, a person sleeps under a blanket on a beach near the Ocean Beach Pier in San Diego. A homeless crisis of unprecedented proportions is rocking the West Coast, leaving elected officials and outreach workers scrambling for solutions. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) In a park in the middle of a leafy, bohemian neighborhood where homes list for close to $1 million, a tractor's massive claw scooped up the refuse of the homeless - mattresses, tents, wooden frames, a wicker chair, an outdoor propane heater. Workers in masks and steel-shanked boots plucked used needles and mounds of waste from the underbrush. Just a day before, this corner of Ravenna Park was an illegal home for the down and out, one of 400 such encampments that have popped up in Seattle's parks, under bridges, on freeway medians and along busy sidewalks. Now, as police and social workers approached, some of the dispossessed scurried away, vanishing into a metropolis that is struggling to cope with an enormous wave of homelessness. That struggle is not Seattle's alone. A homeless crisis of unprecedented proportions is rocking the West Coast, and its victims are being left behind by the very things that mark the region's success: soaring housing costs, rock-bottom vacancy rates and a roaring economy that waits for no one. All along the coast, elected officials are scrambling for solutions. "I've got economically zero unemployment in my city, and I've got thousands of homeless people that actually are working and just can't afford housing," said Seattle City Councilman Mike O'Brien. "There's nowhere for these folks to move to. Every time we open up a new place, it fills up." The rising numbers of homeless people have pushed abject poverty into the open like never before and have overwhelmed cities and nonprofits. The surge in people living on the streets has put public health at risk, led several cities to declare states of emergency and forced cities and counties to spend millions - in some cases billions - in a search for solutions. San Diego now scrubs its sidewalks with bleach to counter a deadly hepatitis A outbreak that has spread to other cities and forced California to declare a state of emergency last month. In Anaheim, home to Disneyland, 400 people sleep along a bike path in the shadow of Angel Stadium. Organizers in Portland lit incense at a recent outdoor food festival to cover up the stench of urine in a parking lot where vendors set up shop. Homelessness is not new on the West Coast. But interviews with local officials and those who serve the homeless in California, Oregon and Washington - coupled with an Associated Press review of preliminary homeless data - confirm it's getting worse. People who were once able to get by, even if they suffered a setback, are now pushed to the streets because housing has become so expensive. All it takes is a prolonged illness, a lost job, a broken limb, a family crisis. What was once a blip in fortunes now seems a life sentence. "Most homeless people I know aren't homeless because they're addicts," said Tammy Stephen, 54, who lives at a homeless encampment in Seattle. "Most people are homeless because they can't afford a place to live." Among the AP's findings: — Official counts taken earlier this year in California, Oregon and Washington show 168,000 homeless people in the three states, according to an AP tally of every jurisdiction in those states that reports homeless numbers to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That is 19,000 more than were counted two years ago, although the numbers may not be directly comparable because of factors ranging from the weather to new counting methods. — During the same period, the number of unsheltered people in the three states - defined as someone sleeping outside, in a bus or train station, abandoned building or vehicle - has climbed 18 percent to 105,000. — Rising rents are the main culprit. The median one-bedroom apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area is significantly more expensive than it is in the New York City metro area, and apartments in San Francisco are listed at a higher price than those in Manhattan. — Since 2015, at least 10 cities or municipal regions in California, Oregon and Washington - and Honolulu, as well - have declared states of emergency due to the rise of homelessness, a designation usually reserved for natural disasters. "What do we want as a city to look like? That's what the citizens here need to decide," said Gordon Walker, head of the regional task force for the homeless in San Diego, where the unsheltered homeless population has spiked by 18 percent in the past year. "What are we going to allow? Are we willing to have people die on the streets?" ——— With alarming frequency, the West Coast's newly homeless are people who were able to survive on the margins - until those margins moved. For years, Stanley Timmings, 62, and his 61-year-old girlfriend, Linda Catlin, were able to rent a room in a friend's house on their combined disability payments. Last spring, that friend died of colon cancer and the couple was thrust on Seattle's streets. Timmings used their last savings to buy a used RV for $300 and spent another $300 to register it. They bought a car from a junk yard for $275. Now, the couple parks the RV near a small regional airport and uses the car to get around. They have no running water and no propane for the cook stove. They go to the bathroom in a bucket and dump it behind a nearby business. They shower and do laundry at a nonprofit and buy water at a grocery depot. After four months, the stench of human waste inside the RV is overwhelming. Every inch of space is crammed with their belongings: jugs of laundry detergent, stacks of clothes, pots and pans, and tattered paperback novels. They are exhausted, scared and defeated, with no solution in sight. "Between the two of us a month, we get $1,440 in disability. We can't find a place for that," he said. "Our income is (about) $17,000 ... a year. That puts us way out of the ballpark, not even close. It might have been enough but anymore, no. It's not." A new study funded by the real estate information firm Zillow and conducted by the University of Washington found a strong link between rising housing prices and rising homelessness numbers. A 5 percent rent increase in Los Angeles, for example, would mean about 2,000 more homeless people there, the authors said. Nationally, homelessness has been trending down, partly because governments and nonprofit groups have gotten better at moving people into housing. That's true in many West Coast cities, too, but the flow the other direction is even faster. And on the West Coast, shelter systems are smaller. "If you have a disability income, you make about $9,000 a year and renting a studio in Seattle is about $1,800 a month and so that's twice your income," said Margaret King, director of housing programs for DESC, a nonprofit that works with Seattle's homeless. "So everybody who was just hanging on because they had cheap rent, they're losing that ... and they wind up outside. It's just exploded." Nowhere is that more evident than California's Silicon Valley, where high salaries and a tighthousing market have pushed rent out of reach for thousands. In ever-shifting communities of the homeless, RVs and cars cluster by the dozens in the city where Google built its global headquarters and just blocks from Stanford University. Ellen Tara James-Penney, a lecturer at San Jose State University, has been sleeping out of a car for about a decade, ever since she lost her housing while an undergraduate at the school where she now teaches four English courses, a job that pays $28,000 a year. Home is an old Volvo. "I've basically been homeless since 2007, and I'm really tired," she said. "Really tired." She actually got her start in the high tech industry, before being laid off during the tech meltdown of the early 2000s. Like many who couldn't find work, she went to college, accumulating tens of thousands of dollars in student debt along the way. Now 54, she grades papers and prepares lesson plans in her car. Among her few belongings is a pair of her grandmother's fancy stiletto pumps, a reminder to herself that "it's not going to be like this forever." Increased housing costs aren't just sweeping up low-income workers: The numbers of homeless youth also is rising. A recent count in Los Angeles, for example, found that those ages 18 to 24 were the fastest-growing homeless group by age, up 64 percent, followed by those under 18. Los Angeles and other cities have made a concerted effort to improve their tallies of homeless youth, which likely accounts for some of the increase. One of the reasons is the combined cost of housing and tuition, said Will Lehman, policy supervisor at Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. A recent study by the University of Wisconsin found that one in five Los Angeles Community College District students is homeless, he said. "They can pay for books, for classes but just can't afford an apartment. They're choosing to prioritize going to school," Lehman said. "They don't choose their situation." ——— Michael Madigan opened a new wine bar in Portland a few years ago overlooking a ribbon of parks not far from the city's trendy Pearl District. Business was good until, almost overnight, dozens of homeless people showed up on the sidewalk. A large encampment on the other side of the city had been shut down, and its residents moved to the park at his doorstep. "We literally turned the corner one day ... and there were 48 tents set up on this one block that hadn't been there the day before," he said. Madigan's business dropped 50 percent in four months and he closed his bar. There are fewer homeless people there now, but the campers have moved to a bike path that winds through residential neighborhoods in east Portland, prompting hundreds of complaints about trash, noise, drug use and illegal camping. Rachel Sterry, a naturopathic doctor, lives near that path and sometimes doesn't feel safe when she's commuting by bike with her 1-year-old son. Dogs have rolled in human feces in a local park; recent improvements she's made to her small home are overshadowed by the line of tents and tarps a few dozen yards from her front door, she said. "I have to stop and get off my bike to ask people to move their card game or their lounge chairs or their trash out of the way when I'm just trying to get from point A to point B," she said. "If I were to scream or get hurt, nobody would know." For Seattle resident Elisabeth James, the reality check came when a homeless man forced his way into a glass-enclosed ATM lobby with her after she swiped her card to open the door for after-hours access. After a few nerve-wracking minutes, the man left the lobby but stayed outside, banging on the glass. Police were too busy to respond so James called her husband, who scared the man away and walked her home. The man, she believes, just wanted to get out of the rain. A neighborhood pocket park has become a flashpoint, too: When James took her 2-year-old grandchild there, she saw people injecting heroin. "I'm not a NIMBY person, but I just think that we can do so much more," said James, who founded an activist group called Speak Out Seattle last year. "I wanted to do something that was effective, that brought frustrated people together to find solutions. We're spending a lot of money to house people and we're getting a bigger problem." The crisis is not limited to large metropolises. In Oregon City, a suburban, working-class town of 36,000 people, the police department this summer added a full-time position for a homeless outreach officer after roughly half the calls concerned trash, trespassing, human waste and illegal encampments. The city has no overnight shelters and never had a significant homeless population until about three years ago. On a recent fall day, officer Mike Day tromped into a greenbelt across from a strip mall to check on a man he recently connected with a counselor, calmed an intoxicated man and arranged emergency care for a man who was suicidal. "How many social workers have you met that go into the woods to follow up with the homeless population and to help with mental health? This is a bit of a hybrid position, certainly, and maybe it's not exactly the role of a police officer - but it's a creative approach to find a solution to the problem," he said. The question was, "What can we do differently? Because right now, it's not working." ——— All along the West Coast, local governments are scrambling to answer that question - and taxpayers are footing the bill. Voters have approved more than $8 billion in spending since 2015 on affordable housing and other anti-homelessness programs, mostly as tax increases. Los Angeles voters, for example, approved $1.2 billion to build 10,000 units of affordable housing over a decade to address a ballooning homeless population that's reached 34,000 people within city limits. Seattle spent $61 million on homeless-related issues last year, and a recent budget proposal would increase that to $63 million. Four years ago, the city spent $39 million on homelessness. Sacramento has set a goal of moving 2,000 people off the streets in the next three years and may place a housing bond before voters in 2018. Appeals for money have angered residents who see tent encampments growing in their cities despite more spending. "Those are like whack-a-mole because they just sprout up and then they disappear and then they sprout up somewhere else," said Gretchen Taylor, who helped found the Neighborhood Safety Alliance of Seattle in 2016. Seattle is initiating competitive bidding among nonprofit organizations for city dollars going toward homelessness programs. It's also pouring money into "rapid rehousing," a strategy that houses people quickly and then provides rental assistance for up to 18 months. Like San Francisco, Seattle has started opening 24-hour, "low-barrier" shelters that offer beds even if people are abusing drugs, have a pet or want to sleep together as a couple. But the city's first 24-hour shelter has only 75 beds, and turnover is extremely low. A team of specially trained police officers and social workers has also been visiting homeless camps to try to place people in shelter. After repeated visits - and with 72 hours of notice - the city cleans out the camps and hauls away abandoned belongings. These efforts are starting to yield results, although the overall number of homeless people continues to swell. Nearly 740 families moved into some type of shelter between October 2016 and August 2017, and 39 percent of the people contacted by the new police teams wind up sheltered, according a recent city homeless report. That's an improvement from a 5 percent shelter rate 18 months ago, said Sgt. Eric Zerr, who leads that effort. But the approach has its detractors. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit alleging the sweeps violate the constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure. And a debate is raging about whether the sweeps are necessary "tough love" or a cruel policy that criminalizes poverty in a city with a reputation for liberalism. "When a city can't offer housing, they should not be able to sweep that spot unless it's posing some sort of significant health and safety issue," said Sara Rankin, a professor with the Homeless Rights Advocacy Project at the Seattle University School of Law. "If someone doesn't have a place to go, you can't just continue to chase them from place to place." ——— Above all, the West Coast lacks long-term, low-income housing for people like Ashley Dibble and her 3-year-old daughter. Dibble, 29, says she has been homeless off and on for about a year, after her ex-boyfriend squandered money on his car and didn't pay the rent for three months. Evicted, Dibble says she lived in the back of a moving truck and with several different friends around Seattle before winding up on the streets. She sent her toddler to live with the girl's paternal grandparents in Florida. She and her new boyfriend were sleeping under tarps near Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners, when an outreach team referred them to a new shelter. Now, Dibble talks to her daughter daily by phone and is trying to find a way back into housing so she can bring her home. With an eviction on her record and little income, no one will rent to her. "I've had so many doors slammed in my face, it's ridiculous," Dibble said, wiping away tears. Seattle's DESC operates 1,200 so-called "permanent supportive housing units" -housing for the mentally ill or severely addicted who can't stay housed without constant help from case managers, counselors and rehabilitation programs. The nonprofit completes a new building every 18 months and they immediately fill; at any given time, there are only about eight to 10 units free in the whole city - but 1,600 people qualify. Among this population, "almost nobody's going to get housing because there isn't any," DESC's Margaret King said. "It doesn't really matter." There is so little housing, and so much despair. Nonprofit workers with decades of experience are shocked by the surge in homeless people and in the banality of the ways they wound up on the streets. "It's a sea of humanity crashing against services, and services at this point are overwhelmed, literally overwhelmed. It's catastrophic," said Jeremy Lemoine, an outreach case manager with REACH, a Seattle homeless-assistance program. "It's a refugee crisis right here in the States, right here under our noses." "I don't mean to sound hopeless. I generate hope for a living for people - that there is a future for them - but we need to address it now." ——— Associated Press writers Janie Har in San Francisco, Julie Watson in San Diego and Chris Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report. AP photographers Jae Hong in Los Angeles and Ted Warren in Seattle, and AP videographer Manuel Valdes in Seattle also contributed. ——— Follow Gillian Flaccus at https://twitter.com/gflaccus and Mulvihill at https://twitter.com/geoffmulvihill Follow AP's complete coverage of the homeless crisis here: https://apnews.com/tag/HomelessCrisis Part of an ongoing examination of the homeless crisis along the West Coast. (abcNEWS)
	"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? 11/7/2017 5:43:09 PM
	BRIEFLY Stuff that matters ON THE ROCKS Over half of Greenland’s ice sheet is in danger of melting. New researchin the journal Geophysical Research Letters confirms that 139 glaciers are exposed to the melting influence of ocean water, many of those reaching deep below sea level where the water is warmer. Using a combination of satellite radar, aerial imagery, and sonar data, researchers carefully mapped the topography — the intricate landscape of canyons and crevices on the ocean floor — below the ice itself. The results illustrate two major issues behind the accelerated melting of Greenland’s glaciers: warmer-than-normal ocean water and the shape of the bedrock itself. Geophysical Research Letters The contours of the rock that the glaciers sits on top of determine howthat ice melts, by changing the amount of ice exposed to melt-inducing seawater. For example, a glacier embedded on a downward slope melts faster as the grounding line retreats and more and more ice is exposed to warm water. Plus, the new research indicates that the Greenland ice sheet is almost three inches thicker than previous research suggested, which means the ice sheet could raise global sea levels by about 24.3 feet if it melted entirely. Yikes! Zoya Teirstein (GRIST) 20 hours ago
	"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? 11/8/2017 12:05:14 AM
	SAUDI PRINCES ARRESTED IN PURGE ARE 'SLEEPING ON FLOOR' OF THE RITZ CARLTON BY JACK MOORE ON 11/7/17 AT 7:34 AM The Saudi princes, ministers and officials implicated in a sweeping anti-corruption purge by Riyadh are reportedly sleeping on the floor of the five-star Ritz-Carlton Hotel in the Saudi capital. A video published by The New York Times shows figures lying on mattresses laden with floral blankets in the hotel’s Ballroom B. A rifle can be seen and guards preventing the escape of those sitting on the mattresses. Late Saturday, the Saudi government embarked on the arrest of dozens of people it accused of corruption, including not only members of its own royal family but billionaire members of the ruling elite, such as investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. The development means that the hotel has been converted into what is effectively the most luxurious prison in the world, as the accused officials lay under gold chandeliers and amid opulent decor. The British press published an image of the figures lying in the ballroom, including billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the nephew of King Salman and one of the world’s richest men with a net worth of around $18 billion. He boasts investments in 21st Century Fox and Citigroup. The photograph purportedly came from sources inside the Saudi government. "Due to unforeseen circumstances, the hotel's internet and telephone lines are currently disconnected until further notice,” the website read when attempts were made to reserve a suite on Tuesday. Saudi Arabia's billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal speaks to reporters during a press conference in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on July 1, 2015. FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP/GETTY The high-profile purge took in 11 princes, four ministers, and dozens of officials and businessmen. Figures arrested included former Riyadh Governor Prince Turki bin Abdullah and former Finance Minister Ibrahim al-Assaf. But it is not only those officials who were held against their will. The entire royal family, whose members are typically more accustomed to jet-setting around the world with freedom, has been prevented from leaving the country. The arrests came just hours after King Salman ordered the creation of a new anti-corruption committee headed by his son crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, a 32-year-old who has embarked on a modernizing project ahead of his expected rise to the throne in the Gulf Kingdom. The accused do not appear to have been granted their legal rights and are instead being held in the hotel, but they have not received international support, at least not from the United States. President Donald Trump late Monday gave his support for the purge. “I have great confidence in King Salman and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, they know exactly what they are doing,” the U.S. president tweeted. “Some of those they are harshly treating have been ‘milking’ their country for years!” (Newsweek)
	"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? 11/8/2017 12:20:57 AM
	A Totalitarian Europe Now on Our Doorstep NOVEMBER 6, 2017 By Julian Rose Quietly, without most people noticing, the European Commission is moving ahead with a strategy that will arguably make the EU into the first fully operational model of a centralised ‘one state’ supranational authority: ‘A New World Order’; the longstanding neoconservative ambition which lies at the heart of global secret society agendas and US geopolitical hegemony. The key ingredient of this strategy is the establishment of an ‘EU Treasury’ which, according to Donald Tusk, President of the EU Council, will come into effect in June 2018, under the official title: European Monetary Fund. This will result in the single point control of all EU member state finances. The plan will involve a further leveraging of the power of the major banks, to consolidate their controlling influence over EU affairs. By combining an ‘EU Treasury’ and a consolidation of banking power, a major step will be taken in the ‘amalgamation of everything’ heist; to be brought under the single umbrella of a Totalitarian Super State. We are talking about individual country’s monetary policies; the military; police forces and intelligence services all being run from a central control unit in Brussels. These will be followed by more of the same – covering almost all areas of administrative control, that were once the domain of individual countries. The institution at the forefront of this power grab is the Bank for International Settlements, based in Basel, Switzerland, which has global outreach and acts as a funnel for the acquisition and distribution of vast sums of globally fluid international money. The Bank of International Settlements was established by approximately eight thousand hedge fund managers with a common ambition to rule the world. The majority are Luciferians working with what, in another essay, I have called ‘anti-life’ energies. They inform the World Bank and the IMF how much money supply will be available from year to year and what the spending parameters will be. Next in line come the central banks: the European Central Bank, The Federal Bank of the USA, the Bank of England, etc. And below these come the first tiers of involvement of national governments and, by extension, the further banking institutions of each country. Thus government and national treasuries are relegated to being fourth down from the top of the power pyramid which controls most of our lives from day to day. Government, in too many cases, is just a vector for the advancement of corporate ambition. The establishment of a European Union Treasury will mean that a pan European tax gathering institution is given control over all member states – superseding the already diluted role played by national treasuries to administer the economies of sovereign nation states. Based in Brussels, it will have the power to gather a whole extra strata of tax receipts from member state citizens, one of the objectives of which will be the funding of a programme of complete military unification – a ‘One EU Army’. A highly significant part of this process will involve the establishment of an ‘Eastern European Army’, to be known as ‘Eastern European Forces’. This army will cooperate with NATO in shifting the bloc’s geopolitical centre of military power and strategy into the most easterly geographical borders of the EU. This key role is to be taken by Poland, which has just raised its military defence budget to 2.5% of GDP and stepped up the number of its military personnel accordingly. NATO has rubber stamped the easterly move by setting-up a ‘Centre of Excellence’ in Krakow; the opening ceremony of which involved inviting Poland’s leading defence chiefs to sign-up to a ‘New Memorandum of Understanding’ which will involve Poland acting as the military counter intelligence agency for all matters relating to activities in Russia – and by extension – China. Romania has also been invited to play a role in this international spying exercise. We need to pause here in order to fully grasp the implications of these maneuverings. What is being pushed through, with very few being aware, is a major redistribution of military and geopolitical power within Europe – and beyond. In effect, the US, Britain, France and Germany (NATO) will pull back from doing the ongoing dirty work of ‘poking the Russian bear’ – in an attempt to provoke it (Russia) into an act of serious aggression – passing this job on to Poland, whose citizens have been fully primed for this task by an endless stream of government anti-Russian propaganda. This is strategic. The longstanding objective has been to implicate Russia in a serious act of aggression which would, in turn, provide the alibi for Western command forces to be put on what would be seen as a ‘legitimate’ permanent war-footing’ with the Russian Federation. The objective being to break-up and destroy the Russian Federation’s unity and coherence and to expand Western hegemonic power and control ever further east: a key step in the further imposition of A New World Order. Polish citizens have, both wittingly and unwittingly, allowed themselves to become pawns in this new ‘cold war’, by singularly failing to critique the US/NATO-inspired propaganda exercise obsessively pursued by a bought-out Polish government. An exercise which vilifies Russia as being ‘a major threat to world stability’, when in reality there is a singular lack of credible evidence to lend any weight to this argument. Whereas US led invasions – and decimation – of more than 30 countries since the Second World War clearly establishes it – and its allies – as the number one threat to world stability. We are witnessing a high stakes smokescreen. In plain words, Russia has acted as a major brake on Western ambitions to establish a despotic centralised regime, beyond the current borders of the EU. A regime supported by the vast neoliberal banking conglomerates and the military industrial project which carries-out their dirty work on the ground and in the air. Poland now faces a further crisis of post World War Two occupation. Once again by the West. The first Western incursion was set in motion by the selling-off of key industries to outside corporate interests – and what I call the Coca Colarisation’ of the country by US interests. However, that slides into the background when compared to the current crisis facing the country. Poles stand on the very brink of being forced to give up their sovereignty. In doing so they will become pawns to the forces of a global New World Order. A regime whose new HQ will be located in Europe, and make strategic use of Poland – and Romania – as its ‘war theatre’. While the US, UK, Germany and France pull back to avoid being caught up in the front lines of this, their very own belligerent, geopolitically motivated incitement to war. There is a critical need to raise our voices against this desperate act of international terrorism. One which, if it should go ahead, will greatly raise the stakes of provoking a major military confrontation. It is vital to realise that all this is happening without any consultation or communication with citizens – who are being coldly manipulated to act as cannon fodder to the warmongering ambitions of a small minority of tyrannical power brokers. Note: I am grateful to UK Column (www.uk column.org) for the background material which informs the main body of this article. Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, a writer, international activist and social entrepreneur. He is President of The International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside. Julian is the author of two acclaimed titles: In Defence of Life and Changing Course for Life. You can find out more on his website www.julianrose.info (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? 11/8/2017 10:15:31 AM
	Radical Islam is an invention of European intelligence agencies Tony Cartalucci New Eastern Outlook Sat, 04 Nov 2017 15:37 UTC There are approximately 1.8 billion Muslims on Earth. That is approximately 24% of the world population. They live in regions spanning North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and reaching as far as Southeast Asia. There are Muslim communities in virtually every nation - and in many - they have played a pivotal, constructive, and welcomed role in national development. If even 1% of the world's Muslims were violent terrorists bent on conquering the world, that would constitute an army 18 million strong - or in other words - larger than the next 20 largest armies on Earth combined. Most critics of Islam infer that the number is actually much higher than 1% - many suggesting that the majority of Muslims either are engaged in or support terrorism. It is logical to conclude that if even 1% were dedicated to terrorism and the "conquest of infidels," the war would have ended in their favor long ago. It is clear that there is not even 1% across Islam engaged in or supporting terrorism. Across the Arab World, the vast majority of Muslims, Christians, other sects, and the secular, stand united against terrorism. It is clear that a mountain of lies stands between many and the truth - a mountain built so tall that it leaves entire segments of targeted populations in the perpetual darkness of ignorance. From Whence Terror Flows The source of terrorism is not the Qu'ran - a book that few critics of Islam have even picked up let alone genuinely read - but rather a very easily traced money trail that leads to Washington and London. It is indeed the Western World that has created, branded, and marketed "radical Islam," which is for all intents and purposes a strictly political tool designed to provoke direct Western military interventions where possible, and fight conflicts by proxy whenever direct military intervention is not possible. In Syria and Iraq, the US has used its terrorist proxies to do both - first to fight the government of Damascus and its allies by proxy, and when that failed, to set a pretext for direct US military intervention. It has also been used domestically, as one former analyst once put it, "to enlist our obedience for the construction of the prison planet." Indeed, under the pretext of "fighting terrorism," the United States and much of Europe has been transformed into an invasive police state and despite stripping away the freedom and liberty of the Western World for the promise of security - the peoples of the West find themselves with neither. For those that have been sucked up into "radical Islam," it seems very real. Just as the US uses patriotism to convince young men and women to devote their lives to foreign invasions, wars, and occupations against scores of sovereign nations around the world - predicated on "freedom, democracy, and self-determination" even as US militarism strips all of the above away from the planet - that fraction of a fraction of 1% engaged in "radical Islam" truly believe in their cause - no matter how nonexistent and contradictory it is in reality. And "radical Islam" does not exist in a vacuum. It requires a medium to interact with. That includes a equally extreme, but opposite "radical ignorance" and fear sown across the Western population. Together, the two feed each other creating a perpetual pretext for foreign war, a perpetual sense of injustice against Muslims to which US-armed and funded terrorists can rally around, and perpetual fear and hatred spread across the Western World. It is the age-old political tool of empires - divide and conquer - honed to perfection and supercharged through information technology - particularly social media. Wahhabism - The Key to Arab Conquest Part of "radical ignorance" includes a deep and profound ignorance of history. Understanding the actual inception of "radical Islam," more accurately known as Wahhabism, dispels many of the most virulent lies spread about Islam - that is has always been a barbaric, warlike ideology. Militant Islam is a relatively new phenomenon, invented by the House of Saud, then cultivated and exploited to its full potential by the British Empire and its American heirs. The Ottoman Empire and mastery over the Arab World was coveted and contested by the British Empire. The promise of Arab independence was dangled over the heads of the founders of many of the dynasties now ruling Arabia - dynasties that were carved out through cults of personality and a violent misinterpretation of Islam known as Wahhabism. The British, after betraying the Arabs, would harness this political tool to do what all empires do best - divide and conquer - and specifically so regarding the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). As the British Empire unraveled, the Americans picked up where London left off. The Saudis and their neighboring Persian Gulf kingdoms have been propped up by the West since the end of World War 1. Since World War 2, many of the same dynasties have sat in power, armed, funded, protected, and invited into some of the most lucrative business deals and economic activity in human history. It was with members of the Muslim Brotherhood that the US attempted to overthrow current Syrian President Bashar Al Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad with. It was the US with the Saudis and factions within Pakistan's military and government who oversaw the very creation of militant groups like Al Qaeda to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. And it is to this very day still very much a US-European enterprise perpetuating the Saudi regime in Riyadh, arming it to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in weapons and military support, and using Riyadh admittedly as an intermediary through which Washington, London, and Brussels arm and fund the worst, most virulent terrorist organizations on Earth. Even current US President Donald Trump - who regularly cites "radical Islam" as an enduring threat to America's national security, has signed off on immense weapon deals to the very nations the US uses to cultivate and perpetuate global terrorism. The US and Europe Drive Terrorism, Not Islam Each and every terrorist attack that unfolds across North America or Europe is followed by a tidal wave of propaganda aimed at further bolstering a "clash of civilizations." The fearful public either cowers or lashes out against Muslims - led by establishment voices including the newly christened "alt-right." Muslims and Islam are blamed and the same collection of elementary talking points are rolled out to fan the flames of hatred and hysteria. Points of logic including the number of Muslims on Earth versus the actual number of terrorists are never discussed. Also never discussed is the fact that terrorists - particularly those either members of the self-titled "Islamic State" (ISIS) and Al Qaeda, or those inspired by such groups - are indoctrinated, radicalized, armed, funded, and supported by Washington, London, Brussels, and a collection of the West's closest allies in the Middle East - namely Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan, and Israel. It was in a leaked 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) memo that revealed the US and its allies' intent to create what it called a "Salafist principality" in eastern Syria. The memo would explicitly state that (emphasis added): If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran). On clarifying who these supporting powers were, the DIA memo would state: The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime. The "Salafist" (Islamic) "principality" (State) would indeed be created precisely in eastern Syria as US policymakers and their allies had set out to do. It would be branded as the "Islamic State" and be used first to wage a more muscular proxy war against Damascus, and when that failed, to invite US military forces to intervene in the conflict directly. In 2014, in an e-mail between US Counselor to the President John Podesta and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, it would be admitted that two of America's closest regional allies - Saudi Arabia and Qatar - were providing financial and logistical support to ISIS. The e-mail, leaked to the public through Wikileaks, stated: ...we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to [ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the region. Despite admissions from the United States military and high-level politicians that ISIS was literally a creation of its own intentional foreign policy and perpetuated through state-sponsorship by America's closest regional allies, both the administrations of President Barack Obama and President Trump would continue signing weapon deals, maintaining diplomatic ties, and strengthening military and economic cooperation with these state-sponsors of terror. Simultaneously, the US and Europe also continue encouraging and protecting Saudi Arabia's global network of faux-madrases - centers of indoctrination often under the watch and even co-management of Western intelligence agencies ensuring a constant, fresh supply of potential patsies for local terrorist attacks and recruits for the West's proxy armies fighting abroad. In other words, the problem of "radical Islam" is manufactured and perpetuated by the West. Without the money, weapons, and support provided by the US and Europe to nations like Saudi Arabia, their toxic political tools would quickly dull and be swept into the dustbin of human history. As seen in Syria itself, where hundreds of trucks per day from NATO territory are no longer able to supply ISIS positions within the country, ISIS is unable to sustain itself. It lacks genuine popular support in a region where the vast majority of Muslims, Christians, and the secular remain united against it and has no means of sustaining itself without immense and constant state sponsorship. "Radical Islam," or Wahhabism is no different. Both continue to exist through the intentional and malicious foreign and domestic policy of Western governments and the special interests that influence them. Know Yourself and Know Your (Real) Enemy For those that believe that "radical Islam" is real and an enduring threat to "Western civilization," they would be wise to heed the words of ancient warlord Sun Tzu who said, "know yourself, and know your enemy and you will never be defeated." This means identifying the true source of "radical Islam's" power by tracing weapons, money, and leadership to their sources. For those that believe "Islam" is the fundamental problem, indulging in cherry picked Qu'ran verses is monumentally irresponsible. A true enemy must be honestly studied which means cherry-picked versus must be put into context, the Qu'ran as a whole, must be read, and deep and objective study must be undertaken to truly "know one's enemy." Meeting and talking with Muslims, observing their communities, and learning their ways - if one truly believes Islam is a threat - is also fundamental in order to "know one's enemy." Yet it is likely that many who blindly hate Islam do so as a spectator sport. They are disinterested in the truth because picking a side and rooting is the extent of their intellectual, physical, and moral depth. For others, it is a means of profiting. Finding a niche in the West's massive propaganda machine and picking up crumbs for one's bank account and ego has become a viable business model for many. But for those with the moral integrity to do so, a genuine look into "radical Islam" will reveal a much more troubling and real enemy. One that does not menace us with a foreign culture, religion, or ideology from abroad, but one that lies right in our midst, cloaked in patriotism, humanitarianism, and all that passes for "Western civilization" today. (sott.net)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

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