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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
1/24/2018 3:46:34 PM

‘We are in your home’: After losses, ISIS steps up campaign to inspire attacks



A supposed Isis supporter poses in front of NY Met museum, posted on December 30, 2017. The caption that appeared on the social messaging platform Telegram, with the original post said, "We are in your home." (MEMRI)

The man with the Islamic State scarf appears to be playing a kind of jihadist peekaboo.

In the photo, he hides his features behind the terrorist group’s infamous logo but shows just enough background scenery so viewers can recognize his location: New York’s Central Park, in wintertime.

“We are in your home,” reads the photo’s simple caption, posted online a few days after Christmas and circulated widely on a prominent jihadist Internet channel.

Precisely when the photo was taken is not known, but the message is chillingly clear. It has been repeated in similar posts in recent weeks, all purporting to show Islamic State operatives casing landmarks in Western cities and urging followers to carry out attacks wherever they are. “It is time to harvest the heads,” the narrator in one such video states.

Such is the typical fare served up by the Islamic State’s propaganda machine, which remains very much alive three months after the fall of the terrorist organization’s capital in Raqqa, Syria. The self-proclaimed caliphate has been reduced to a handful of villages in the Syrian desert, but the “virtual caliphate” fights on, a diminished but still formidable presence focused on rallying the group’s followers in the face of crushing military defeats, according to U.S. officials and independent analysts.

The content has changed significantly since the loss of Raqqa, formerly home to the group’s official media division and production facilities. Gone are the glossy Islamic State magazines and slick videos extolling the virtues of life under militant Islamist rule. In their place is a steady stream of incitements, nearly all of them aimed at offering encouragement and detailed instructions for carrying out terrorist attacks.

Some are amateurish and appear to originate not from studios or official spokesmen, but from bloggers and other volunteers who often are only loosely affiliated with the Islamic State — the online equivalent of lone-wolf terrorists who act without official guidance or instruction. Terrorism analysts say the Islamic State is growing more dependent on such platforms, which are capable of distributing highly targeted appeals in scores of local languages and can’t be easily silenced by military strikes.

At the same time, there are signs of new life from the group’s official mouthpiece. Last week, the Islamic State’s Amaq News Agency issued its first English-language communiques since mid-September, just before the fall of Raqqa. The first weeks of 2018 have also seen a sharp rise in traffic on pro-Islamic State social media accounts compared with previous months, according to an analysis released Friday by the SITE Intelligence Group, a private firm that monitors jihadist content.

“The Islamic State is now showing the first signs of a regrouping media operation,” said SITE Executive Director Rita Katz. “The group suffered major setbacks by coalition and regime attacks but is now clearly taking major steps to reassemble its propaganda operation, which is among its most dangerous weapons.”

The newest propaganda campaign illustrates the difficulties faced by counterterrorism officials in seeking to stop militants from connecting with would-be terrorists in the United States and throughout the West. Even after the destruction of the Islamic State’s sanctuary and the successful blocking — with help from private companies — of hundreds of the group’s social media accounts, the terrorists and their supporters continue to find ways to get their messages out, analysts say.

“The depletion of ISIS on the battlefield has not yet translated into the degradation of ISIS in the online space,” said Tara Maller, a former CIA military analyst and senior policy adviser for the Counter Extremism Project, a nonpartisan group that promotes policies to block extremist content online. “What we see is a continuing effort to engage online and an increased effort to inspire people to carry out lone-wolf attacks.”0



Information warfare

U.S. officials and analysts have been watching closely to see how the collapse of the caliphate would affect the group’s propaganda machine, the driving force behind the Islamic State’s rise to global prominence. Beginning in Syria in 2013, the group’s leaders spent millions of dollars creating a nimble, technically savvy media operation with a heavy social media presence.

Under Presidents Barack Obama and Trump, the Pentagon and CIA tried different measures to knock the terrorists offline. U.S. fighter jets and drones bombed the Islamic State’s production housesand stalked its spokesmen, while the State Department pressed YouTube and other social media companies to block the militants’ Web channels and chat rooms. In response, the terrorists shifted tactics, migrating iphate, ISIS could turn even more reckless]

An analysis published Jan. 7 by the national security blog Lawfare cites an overall drop in content of about 90 percent from the Islamic State’s high-water mark in 2015.

“This is not just a media decline — it is a full-fledged collapse,” the report’s authors, counterterrorism researchers Charlie Winter and Jade Parker, write in the blog.

But volunteers have stepped up to fill the gap, analysts say. The broader web of militant commentators and videographers — a network that was encouraged and facilitated by the Islamic State in its heyday — was designed to continue functioning even if the mother branch was completely shut down.

While many of the individual cyberwarriors have been around for years, the Islamic State has become more reliant on them in issuing appeals for what Winter and Parker call “retributive terrorism” — acts of violence intended to avenge the group’s losses while convincing followers and foes that it remains relevant.

“Before its territorial decline, a successful terrorist operation was a tactical bonus. Now, it is a strategic necessity,” the writers state. “The online sphere has been tailored to facilitate these attacks more efficiently than ever before.

Lone wolves

The posting of the “peekaboo” jihadist’s selfie in New York was part of a remarkable incitement campaign that began in the weeks before Christmas and continued through early January. Several videos and photographs that appeared online during the period sought to convey the impression that Islamic State warriors were lurking everywhere. The images depict well-known landmarks such as Paris’s Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Harbor Bridge in Australia and the Los Angeles skyline.

The New York photo appears to have been taken outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on the edge of Central Park on the city’s Upper East Side. It is unclear whether the photo is genuine or altered, but it depicts weather similar to that experienced by New Yorkers late last month, with pedestrians in heavy coats and hats trudging along sidewalks lightly covered with snow.

A commentary accompanying one of the videos warns of coming terrorist attacks while offering tips to supporters on how to unleash mayhem during the Christmas holiday season, when urban streets would be packed with shoppers and revelers.

“Make [explosive] devices and plant them in their celebrations,” it says, “or set their homes and forests on fire, or run over the largest number of unbelievers with your vehicle, or stab them repeatedly with a knife.”

Other postings in recent weeks offered detailed technical advice. On the messaging application Telegram, Islamic State supporters published a “Knights of the Lone Jihad” series with how-to manuals on everything from bombmaking to the poisoning of food supplies.

Experts who closely monitor jihadist channels say the overall impression is that of a vibrantpropaganda machine that hasn’t slowed appreciably or moderated its content. To ensure the broadest audience, the messages are typically translated into multiple languages, including English, Russian, Urdu and even Chinese.

“When you look at the unofficial ISIS material out there — the stuff posted by ISIS supporters — that has not diminished,” said Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington nonprofit. “There is so much content — so many accounts, so many new chats — and more popping up every day.”

For whatever reason, the holiday season appeals did not bear fruit, although there was at least one close call. In mid-December, federal officials arrested a 26-year-old California man for allegedly plotting a Christmas-week attack on San Francisco’s famed Pier 39 commercial area. U.S. officials said the suspect, a former Marine, had expressed support for the Islamic State on social media.

Both suspects in the two attacks in New York last year — Sayfullo Saipov, the Uzbek immigrant who ran over pedestrians with a truck in Lower Manhattan on Oct. 31, and Akayed Ullah, a Bangladeshi immigrant who exploded a crude bomb in a Times Square subway tunnel on Dec. 11 — also told authorities they were inspired by Islamic State videos.

Each terrorism attempt — successful or not — serves as a reinforcer, generating waves of excitement among online jihadists while encouraging further use of the same tactics, said Stalinsky, who also is the author of “American Traitor,” a biography of the al-Qaeda propagandist Adam Gadahn.

“Even if it’s a small attack, it pumps blood into the cyber-body of ISIS,” he said. “All it takes is one attack to produce a lot of energy for the online movement.”


Souad Mekhennet in Frankfurt, Germany, contributed to this report.


(The Washington Post)

"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?
1/24/2018 4:14:37 PM

Your Cell Phone Is a Psychotronic Weapon of Mass Mind Control

"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?
1/24/2018 5:07:10 PM

Sea Turtles Stunned by Cold Weather Rescued in Florida

Image 7_0

Credit: USGS (public domain)

By Wes Annac, Editor, Openhearted Rebel

You might have heard that this winter, temperatures in Florida have been so low that iguanas have fallen out of trees, seemingly frozen. But did you know the cold weather has affected other animals in the state?

The low temperatures have particularly hurt sea turtles, “freezing” them to the point that they can’t swim or move. Fortunately, rescuers have saved, treated, and released roughly 1,000 affected turtles, helping them in a time when the cold would’ve killed them.

“Second-Largest Mass Cold-Stunning Event”

The United States Geological Survey reports that “volunteers and wildlife experts” in St. Joseph Bay, Florida have saved around 1,000 sea turtles stunned by the state’s recent cold weather. Margaret Lamont, a Geological Survey research biologist, has called this the “second-largest mass cold-stunning event of the 21st century”. (1)

The largest, which we’ll learn about later, was in 2010.

The USGS reports that Lamont, along with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, is “coordinating” the effort. Around 50 people are helping, including Florida Coastal Conservancy volunteers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees, people from Eglin Air Force Base, Florida FWCC employees, employees of Gulf World Marine Park, and two other scientists with the USGS. (1)

They managed to save around 700 turtles from January 2-7 and around 300 from January 17-19. (1)

Photos from the Rescue

Here are some photos from the rescue that the USGS shared:

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Credit: USGS (public domain)
5_2
Margaret Lamont measures a rescued turtle. Credit: USGS (public domain)
4_3
Margaret Lamont carries a stunned turtle across mud flats. Credit: USGS (public domain)
image207_0
USGS Scientist David Seay holds a recovering turtle. Credit: USGS (public domain)

The cold weather threatened the following turtle species:

  • Green turtles (also known as Chelonia mydas)
  • Kemp’s ridleys (also known as Lepidochelys kempii)
  • Loggerheads (also known as Caretta caretta)
  • One “endangered hawksbill” (also known as Eretmochelys imbricata) (1)

As you can imagine, space for all these turtles was limited. Lamont tells us that rescuers usually take them to Gulf World where they can “rest and recover”, but the center filled up and could only take animals that were injured. Lamont resorted to treating turtles in a house she’d rented for research, which was “full of turtles, inside and outside, on Friday, Jan. 19.” (1)

News Outlets Predicted Cold-Stunning

The weather was predicted to stun sea turtles, with this January 3rd article from Jim Waymer at Florida Today explaining how it could happen. Jim warned that “colder water temperatures expected toward the end of this week could ‘stun’ sea turtles and stress manatees — some fatally — in the Indian River Lagoon and other coastal waters, wildlife advocates worry”. (2)

The problem for sea turtles, Jim writes, is that their body temperature relies on “external sources of heat”. When the shallow water gets too cold, they can die if they’re unable to swim to a deeper, warmer spot. Although the turtles swim to southern waters toward the end of October, some depart too late. The ones that remain in shallow water have the most to worry about, as the temperature drops faster there. (2)

Lamont “Very Proud” of Volunteers

According to the USGS, Lamont is glad she and her fellow volunteers were able to save so many turtles. She’s “very proud” of the people who’ve united to help them, and she says she’s “especially proud of the volunteers who are out here in the cold and mud, doing exhausting work for no reward and often no recognition”. (1)

She’s been inspired to see everyone work so hard, stating:

“…People are out there in the cold and mud, with harnesses around their chests, pulling the kayaks across the mud flats… It’s exhausting. It’s really tough. And it’s really inspiring to see that people are willing to do it to save these animals.” (1)

The temperature dropping below 50 degrees is hazardous to cold-blooded sea turtles, the USGS reports. Their metabolism slows to the point that they can’t swim or go to the surface for air. This can cause them to drown. Although they usually retreat into deeper water when it gets cold, if the weather is bad enough, even deep water will drop below 50. (1)

The Record-Setting 2010 Cold Snap

Volunteers usually have to rescue around 30 to 40 sea turtles a year that are stunned by the cold, the USGS reports, and the biggest rescue in the past hundred years took place in 2010. During this time, the cold stunned around 1,700 turtles. According to Lamont, low temperatures at night combined with high tides that bring turtles back to shallow water were partly responsible. (1)

As you can see, cold weather in Florida is problematic for sea turtles. Fortunately, as we’ve learned, people are stepping up to help.

Jim at Florida Today writes that the Brevard Zoo teamed up with the Sea Turtle Preservation Society to open a “Sea Turtle Healing Center” at the cost of $150,000. They opened the center to solve the problem posed by the long distances between different rehabilitation facilities, as one was over 100 miles away from where “hundreds of cold-stunned turtles” were stuck. (2)

Other Creatures Impacted by the Cold

As you can probably imagine, the cold weather in 2010 impacted far more creatures than the sea turtle. Other creatures affected, Jim writes, include:

  • Manatees
  • Various species of fish
  • Pelicans
  • Gulls
  • Terns
  • Infant raccoons
  • And more(2)

Many animals were treated at the Florida Wildlife Hospital and Sanctuary in Palm Shores. (2)

Turtles Scooped to Safety

As far as the sea turtles go, in many cases, they were scooped to safety.

The USGS reports that their scientists, as well as scientists from the USFWS and Florida FWCC, would go out to the affected areas on boats and “scoop cold-stunned turtles out of the bay”. They would also go on foot, with some wildlife workers, scientists, and volunteers walking beaches and marshes to find turtles on the shore and place them in kayaks. The kayaks can weigh “400 pounds or more” when filled with stunned turtles, and access points are two to three miles away. (1)

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Volunteers pull stunned turtles to safety in a kayak. Credit: USGS (public domain)

According to Lamont, rescuers weigh the turtles, measure them, mark them, and examine them to see if they need medical attention. If not, they give the turtles some time in sunlight or “another warm space” before eventually releasing them. They expected the rescues to end on the night of Friday, January 19 due to the return of warm weather, and they planned to release most turtles from the Gulf World Marine Park the following Saturday. (1)

Manatees’ Fate Still Unknown

While the sea turtles had a happy ending, we might not be able to say the same for the manatees.

Referring back to the low temperatures in 2010, Jim at Florida Today writes that on Jan. 20, after temperatures in the state had gone down to 15-20 degrees, 17 manatees died from stress caused by the cold. Rescuers managed to save 58 of them in the following months, but sadly, that year they discovered a record of 503 that had died. (2)

Regarding the cold weather this year, Jim writes that officials from the FWC stated it could be “weeks” before manatees show signs of being hurt. Michelle Kerr, a spokeswoman for the FWC, said: “it does take more prolonged exposure for manatees”. (2)

Basically, we’ll know in the next few weeks if the low temperatures affected any manatees to the point that they’ll require help. If the rescue effort for them is anything like it was for the turtles, then they should be in good hands.

People Care

We should commend the volunteers who gave their time and energy to rescuing these turtles from a tragic death. It’s sad when any environmental factor creates the need to rescue hundreds or thousands of animals, but the response shows that not all humans ignore other creatures’ suffering. There are people who care, and unlike the majority, they choose to do something positive.

Thanks to the volunteers, 1,000 sea turtles will return to warm waters. The world would be a far better place if we were all this empathetic and willing to help when someone or something is in need.

Sources:

(1) “Scientists [and] volunteers rescue about 1,000 cold-stunned sea turtles”, United States Geological Survey, January 19, 2018 – https://www.usgs.gov/news/scientists-volunteers-rescue-about-1000-cold-stunned-sea-turtles

(2) Jim Waymer, “Cold could kill sea turtles, manatees and other marine life”, Florida Today, January 3, 2018 –https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/local/environment/lagoon/2018/01/03/cold-could-inflict-deadly-chilling-effect-sea-turtles-other-marine-life/999199001/


(wesannac.wordpress.com
)


"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?
1/24/2018 11:56:50 PM

BRIEFLY

Stuff that matters


RISKY BUSINESS

Climate change hits businesses where it hurts: their wallets.

Climate change and extreme weather topped the World Economic Forum’s annual list of risks facing businesses.

Out of 10 major threats to business in 2018, climate-related risks took slots 1 (extreme weather events), 2 (natural disasters), 5 (failure of climate change mitigation), and 7 (human-made environmental disasters) — outranking issues like terrorism, number 8. The forum ordered the risks by asking experts and companies to assess the likelihood of each risk.

In one vast, terrifying web, the report shows that environmental changes are linked to societal risks. Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, for example, are linked to the spread of infectious diseases and food crises.

That’s the part of the report the authors seem to be most concerned about: the interconnectedness of all of these issues. “When risk cascades through a complex system, the danger is not of incremental damage but of ‘runaway collapse,'” the report says. Scared yet?



"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?
1/25/2018 12:02:53 AM

True Lies: The Financial Press Just Admitted The Markets Are A Sham

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

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