Sunday, April 19, 2015

Signs All Around Us: Persecution Increasing








Every day we are immersed in the sighs of this generation - exactly as Jesus informed us:



Starting with the worsening persecution: 

"Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me...because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold..."  
(Matthew 24:9-12)







A new video released by Islamic State shows at least 30 Ethiopian Christians being executed.  While it's not clear how many Christians were killed, Reuters is reporting that at least 30 men in two groups were beheaded or shot.

The 29-minute online video purports to show militants holding two groups of captives. It says one group is held by an IS affiliate in eastern Libya known as Barka Province and the other by an affiliate in the south calling itself the Fazzan Province.
A masked fighter brandishing a pistol delivers a long statement, saying Christians must convert to Islam or pay a special tax prescribed by the Quran.
The video then switches between footage of the captives in the south being shot dead and the captives in the east being beheaded on a beach.
It was not immediately clear who the captives were or when they were captured. It was also not clear how many captives were killed.
The video bore the official logo of the IS media arm Al-Furqan and resembled previous videos released by the extremist group, including one in February in which IS militants in Libya beheaded 21 captured Egyptian Christians on a beach.
The Islamic State group has been able to gain a foothold amid the chaos in Libya, where two governments backed by rival alliances of militias are battling each other as well as extremist groups.

You get the feeling that no matter how the war is going for IS elsewhere that they will continue to kill Christians until someone physically stops them.


The same thing happened at the end of World War II with the Nazis. With American and Russian troops overrunning their country, the Germans in charge of the gas chambers kept them running until allied soldiers showed up at the gates of the camps. For IS, this is a holy mission and no number of setbacks on the battlefield will stop the carnage against Christians. 








A new video released by the Islamic State purportedly shows two mass killings of Christian hostages in Libya.
In the first, the hostages are executed by a firing squad. In the second, jihadists slit the throats of the captives.
The video could not be immediately authenticated.

Islamic State fighters prepare to execute Coptic Christians in Libya, in a video released by the terror group's media arm, on Sunday, April 19 2015. (Screen capture: Dailymotion)
Islamic State fighters prepare to execute Coptic Christians in Libya, in a video released by the terror group's media arm, on Sunday, April 19 2015. (Screen capture: Dailymotion)









Nazi sympathisers, Holocaust deniers and their supporters from across the world have held a sickening secret rally in Britain at which speakers unleashed anti-Semitic rants, referring to Jews as ‘the enemy’ and ‘children of darkness’.
The meeting of the shadowy organisation will fuel fears of a growing resurgence in hatred towards Jews across Europe. The vile event was observed by a Mail on Sunday undercover team.
Held in London’s Victoria, the meeting was, said experts, the most significant gathering of Holocaust deniers Britain has ever seen, with speakers invited from Spain, Canada and the United States.

In a room draped with the Union Flag, as the event called the London Forum unfolded, the audience:
  • Sniggered at the mention of ‘ashes rising from the death camps’ crematoria’;
  • Applauded as they were urged to ‘identify, counter and break … Jewish-Zionist domination’;
  • Laughed at the Charlie Hebdo massacre, and as an African leader at the Paris memorial ceremony was described as ‘some Negro’;
  • Cheered at the mention of a brigade of Spanish Fascists who fought for the Nazis;
  • Heard gay parents branded ‘monster families’ and mixed race children described as ‘blackos’.
Last night, there were calls from Jewish community leaders for police to investigate the group for race hate crimes.
‘The material from this white supremacist group makes ugly reading,’ said barrister Jonathan Arkush, vice-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
‘On the face of it, their proceedings should be investigated to ascertain whether criminal offences have been committed, including incitement to racial hatred.’

Also present was America’s leading peddler of Holocaust denial and ‘revisionist’ theories, Mark Weber, 63, director of the Institute for Historical Review, based in Newport Beach, California. He wrote in 1989: ‘The Holocaust is a religion. Its underpinnings in the realm of historical fact are non-existent – no Hitler order, no plan, no budget, no gas chambers, no autopsies of gassed victims, no bones, no ashes, no skulls, no nothing.’
Our team of reporters and photographers watched as the participants – including a handful of women – gathered under Victoria Station clock, awaiting orders. Gerry Gable, editor and publisher of anti-Fascist Searchlight magazine and leading expert on the extreme Right, who worked with the MoS on our investigation, said last night: ‘This is the biggest and most significant meeting of Holocaust deniers that Britain has ever seen. It is a very worrying development.’





The world is witnessing a resurgence of global anti-Semitism not seen since the 1930s and the “Final Solution.” In the Middle East, Hitler-admiring regimes like Iran, and Hitler-admiring parties like Hezbollah, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, are openly planning to finish the job the Nazis started. Even in America, until now the most hospitable place outside of Israel for Jews, the atmosphere is more hostile than at any time in the last 70 years.

According to the FBI, three-fifths of all religious hate crimes in America are now committed against Jews, while a recent Pew poll revealed that 54 percent of Jewish students have either been the subject of an anti-Semitic attack or witnessed one. The frequency of these attacks among college-aged students, moreover, is five times that of any other age group. The reason for this is obvious: Across the United States student groups associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, specifically Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Muslim Students Association, are engaged in a vitriolic campaign against Israel and those students who support its right to exist. These organizations promote the propaganda of the terrorist organization Hamas, and call for the destruction of the Jewish state.

Students for Justice in Palestine, the more active of the two groups, claims to support a left-wing agenda of “social justice,” and “universal human rights.” Like the left itself, though, Students for Justice in Palestine doesn’t stand for the rights of Palestinians in the territories controlled by Palestinians, including the rights of Palestinians to disagree with each other without being targeted by their terrorist rulers. Instead, SJP’s sole agenda is the destruction of the Jewish state.








Israeli television reporter Miri Michaeli said she never intended to make public the video showing her preparing for a live shot in Paris last month. 
But after being asked by viewers if the media is exaggerating European anti-Semitism, the Europe correspondent for Israel’s Channel 10 news changed her mind and decided to share what happened to her in March when she was covering the Germanwings crash.
On that particular day, she explained on Facebook Thursday, she had just gotten off the train from London and was about to head to the French Alps to report on the plane crash. Before continuing her journey she had to file a report outside the Gare du Nord train station in Paris.
“What you see here is only the beginning,” Michaeli explained. “The man whose face you don’t see in the video identifies Hebrew on the microphone, passes the information to his friends and starts to harass. What happened afterward was much more stressful [as] they surrounded me, four or five men, and began to curse me, the word ‘Jew’ repeated over again.”
“My hands are shaking three weeks later when I remember the things they said,” Michaeli recalled. “I was standing in the street not bothering anyone, and I got vigorously cursed (along with aggressive hand motions) — and threatened.”
She was particularly disturbed by the fact that none of the numerous bystanders who she said witnessed how she was being abused bothered to step in and help her, writing:
“So it’s true if you walk down the streets of Paris, you may not feel anything. But if you wear a kippah, wear a Star of David necklace or hold a microphone that says ‘News 10′ in Hebrew, there’s a reasonable basis to assume that sooner or later you’ll realize that the situation is worse than the statistics show,” she said. “It’s happening here, every day, and in every place, and it happened to me, too.”

Israeli reporter Zvika Klein in February had a similar experience to Michaeli, though his report was part of an experiment examining anti-Semitism.
Shortly after the terrorist attacks in Paris targeted the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices and a kosher supermarket, Klein walked for hours around Paris dressed as an Orthodox Jew and was met with repeated insults and curses.




Iran on Saturday marked Army Day with a military parade featuring new weapons systems, as well as a truck carrying a massive banner reading “Death to Israel.”

A televised broadcast of the parade was punctuated by repeated cries of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”

“If Israel makes a mistake,” the announcer on Iran television said during the broadcast, as heavy trucks carrying armored personnel carriers rolled past, “those in Tel Aviv and Haifa will not sleep at night, not one person.” 
Broadcast on national television, military brass and political leaders, foremost President Hassan Rouhani, attended the procession south of the capital Tehran, which showcased the country’s military technologies.
Among the weapons systems paraded past dignitaries was a domestically produced version of the Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missile, the Bavar 373.







 Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged the country’s armed forces Sunday to increase their “defensive preparedness,” hitting out at a US warning of possible military action.


He told commanders and troops in a speech that Iran “will never accept such stupid remarks,” a jab at General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, though he did not name him.

Dempsey said Thursday that should ongoing diplomacy with Iran fail, “the military option… to ensure that Iran does not achieve a nuclear weapon is intact.”


“All bodies from the ministry of defense to the army and the Sepah (Revolutionary Guards) should increase their military and defensive preparedness. This should be regarded as an official directive,” Khamenei said.
“On the one hand they bluff, and on the other hand, they say the Islamic Republic of Iran should halt its defensive advancements which is a stupid remark. Iran will never accept such stupid remarks and the nation has proved that if it is attacked, it will defend itself quite powerfully. It will stand united and like a strong fist against illogical aggressors.”








Also see:







Protesters across the EU and US have staged a day of action against an emerging free trade pact between the two continents. They fear it could see corporate interests undermine workers’ rights and consumer protection.
Crowds have gathered in London, Munich, Brussels and other major European cities to march against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and similar secretive international trade deals.
The day of action consisted of over 700 separate events, including rallies, marches and public statements. All were organized by a variety of civil rights movements in the EU and across the Atlantic. Once the attendance has been officially counted and thus confirmed, it could mark what might have been the largest protest against free trade agreements to date.
Meanwhile in Spain's capital Madrid, over 20,000 people came out to have their voice heard. Another 4,000 showed up in Barcelona to protest against the proposed agreement.
The deal would translate into “an enormous setback for the rights acquired by the Europeans, and consolidation of corporate power against states and people,” organizer Juan Antonio Lopez de Uralde told the crowd.

Several thousand people also joined a rally against TTIP that took place in Brussels. Parties and organizations like Podemos, Die Linke, Syriza and Greenpeace joined the protest, as well as several unions. Local newspapers in Austria report that over 22,000 protested across the country on Saturday with 15,000 alone rallying in capital Vienna.
Meanwhile, in the US, people also marched across dozens of cities from New York to San Francisco, protesting against outsourcing jobs, environmental, health, and food safety.
A day before the global action day, US President Barack Obama dismissed concerns that TTIP, saying the agreement would ‘absolutely’ benefit US workers, as he hopes to strike the deal with Brussels by the end of this year.

“Now that Congress is considering bipartisan legislation, TTIP negotiations need to make major progress this year,” Obama said Friday.
The agreement is being negotiated behind closed doors, with the next round of talks scheduled for Monday in New York. It will open free trade between the EU and the US, bringing down restrictions on the flow of goods. Its sister agreement, CETA (Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement), is aimed at achieving similar links between the EU and Canada.
TTIP is expected to be finalized by early 2016. It will become the most important and all-encompassing agreement of its kind, covering a market of over 800 million people. Its supporters hail the possible $100 billion yearly boost in trade between the EU and US.







Now it appears to be a potential tool in Russia’s effort to get an economic jump on the West in any future business deals with Iran.
Economic trade has been openly discussed as a possibility depending on a final agreement between Tehran and the West over its nuclear program.

But now Russia apparently is trying to move to the head of the line.

The overture to Tehran is from EEU Chairman Viktor Khristenko, who during a recent meeting with Iranian ambassador to Moscow Mehdi Sanayee called for Iran’s membership in the group.
“We are willing to see Iran’s membership and its active and effective cooperation with the union,” Khristenko said, Fars News reported.
The EEU is composed of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Armenia. Kyrgyzstan recently signed an agreement to join the union as of May after approval of its parliament.





With Greece teetering on the edge of insolvency and forced to raid pension and most other public funds, ahead of another month of heavy IMF repayments which has prompted even the ECB to speculate Greece should introduce a parallel "IOU" currency, a white knight has appeared out of nowhere for Greece, one who may offer $5 billion in urgently needed cash. The white knight is none other than Vladimir Putin. “Just because Greece is debt-ridden, this does not mean it is bound hand
and foot, and has no independent foreign policy,” Putin said previously.

According to Spiegel, citing a senior figure in the ruling Syriza party, Greece is poised to sign a gas deal with Russia as early as Tuesday which could bring up to €5 billion into the depleted Greek coffers.
The move could now "turn the tide" for the debt-stricken country according to a senior Greek official.
As Reuters adds, during a visit to Moscow earlier this month, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras expressed interest in participating in a pipeline that would bring Russian gas to Europe via Turkey and Greece.

However, the Russian leader is not acting out of the kindness of his heart, but merely engaging in another calculated move, one which kills two birds with one stone:

  • Following the death of the South Stream, whereby the EU pressured Bulgaria to refuse passage of the Russian gas pipeline to Europe, Russia needed an alternative route of bypassing Ukraine (and Bulgaria) entirely, something which according to Kremlin's plan should happen over the next 3 years. And with Hungary and Serbia all eager to transit Russian gas to the Austrian central european gas hub, Greece was the missing link for a landline transit. With this agreement, Russia gets the green light to extend the Blue Stream all the way to Austria and preserve its dominance over the European energy market while leaving Ukraine in a completely barganining vacuum.

  • Perhaps just as importantly, suddenly Russia will energy as the generous benefactor riding to Greece's salvation, in turn even further antagonizing the Eurozone and further cementing favorable public opinion. As a reminder, several weeks ago we showed that Russia already has a higher approval rating among the Greek population thatn the Eurozone. In this way, Russia has just won a critical ally for the very low price of just €5 billion, without even having to restructure the entire Greek balance sheet should Greece have exited the euro and been attracted to the Eurasian Economic Union. Which also means that all future attempts to impose further sanctions on Russia by Europe will fail thanks to the Greek veto vote.

Russia is not alone in seeking to divide the spoils of the collapsing Eurozone: Beijing has also sought to invest in Greece's infrastructure and bought up €100m worth of short-term government debt last week the Telegraph reports.
Ironically, it was none other than Germany's finance minister Wolfgang Schauble who said the Greeks are free to pursue deals with Russia and China as they rush to avoid an impending bankruptcy. Turns out the Greeks decided to do precisely as the German suggested, and the outcome will certainly not be to Germany's liking.
The only question following what may well be another masterful stroke by Putin is what will Europe do, now that Putin has in the span of under one year, not only "annexed" Crimea but fully drawn Greece (and the Mediterranean courtesy of Cyprus) into its sphere of influence.








The invasion is a silent and secret one. The soldiers come as refugees funneled through ratlines run by liberal churches and other pseudo-religious organizations. Tens of thousands of Muslim migrants come from conflict zones to small towns and cities across the country just like Spartanburg each year.



















1 comment:

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    http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Putin-warns-Israel-against-selling-arms-to-Ukraine-398496

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