July 4 terrorist attack on U.S. soil a legitimate threat, officials warn - Washington Times
U.S. intelligence officials and lawmakers are worried that chatter about a terrorist attack on U.S. soil this Fourth of July may be more than just talk.
The FBI has arrested at least 10 U.S. citizens in three weeks who were plotting various attacks on the homeland on behalf of the Islamic State group, and the Department of Homeland Security issued a joint bulletin with the FBI last week putting local law enforcement agencies across the country on heightened alert.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re sitting here a week from today talking about an attack over the weekend in the United States,” former CIADeputy Director Michael J. Morell said Monday on “CBS This Morning.” “That’s how serious this is.”
Mr. Morell said he was more concerned than usual about the alert partly because of the growing number of people in the U.S. who align themselves spontaneously and via the Internet with the Islamic State group, also known by the acronyms ISIS and ISIL.
“I’m worried about this one,” he said.
Most U.S. recruits who have heeded the siren calls of the radical extremist organization planned to kill soldiers at military facilities and attempted to assail law enforcement officers. These calls often are proliferated through social media messages, an online magazine and other Internet-based propaganda.
Mr. McCaul said there has been an uptick in “chatter” about possible attacks over the July Fourth holiday weekend. Although Americans ought to enjoy parades and other events, he said, they should “remain vigilant during these celebrations.”
Well before Greece took centre stage, there were other financial crises that grabbed the global spotlight. And the plot lines were disturbingly similar.
For many Greeks, the real possibility of the country defaulting on its debt payments, or at least going into arrears — and, subsequently, exiting the European Union — may be unthinkable.
But that hasn’t prevented the governing party from balking at a US$8.1-billion reform-dependent bailout and pushing ahead with a July 5 referendum that could end up being just that: unthinkable.
For instance, there have been concerns that a break-away by Greece could, in a worst-case scenario, also fan fears of a contagion of defaults and EU exits. Still, that’s unlikely to happen any time soon.
“The other peripheral economies are generally in much stronger shape than even two years ago,” said Douglas Porter, chief economist at BMO Capital Markets.
The more likely scenario is that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his radical left Syriza party will lose the vote. They would then find themselves going hat-in-hand back to the negotiating table and asking for more favourable lending terms from the EU and International Monetary Fund.
Or Tsipras could simply call another national election and roll the dice in the hope of getting a stronger exit mandate.
“The reality is nobody can make an assertion about how things will unfold in the coming days. The situation is highly unpredictable,” said Benjamin Tal, deputy chief economist at CIBC World Markets.
“Until a few days ago, the consensus was that Tsipras was playing a game here and that, given his reputation, he would wait until the last minute to sign something. Now, the market is not so sure.”
As we enter the second half of 2015, financial panic has gripped most of the globe. Stock prices are crashing in China, in Europe and in the United States. Greece is on the verge of a historic default, and now Puerto Rico and Ukraine are both threatening to default on their debts if they do not receive concessions from their creditors. Not since the financial crisis of 2008 has so much financial chaos been unleashed all at once. Could it be possible that the great financial crisis of 2015 has begun? The following are 16 facts about the tremendous financial devastation that is happening all over the world right now…
1. On Monday, the Dow fell by 350 points. That was the biggest one day decline that we have seen in two years.
2. In Europe, stocks got absolutely smashed. Germany’s DAX index dropped 3.6 percent, and France’s CAC 40 was down 3.7 percent.
3. After Greece, Italy is considered to be the most financially troubled nation in the eurozone, and on Monday Italian stocks were down more than 5 percent.
4. Greek stocks were down an astounding 18 percent on Monday.
5. As the week began, we witnessed the largest one day increase in European bond spreads that we have seen in seven years.
6. Chinese stocks have already met the official definition of being in a “bear market” – the Shanghai Composite is already down more than 20 percent from the high earlier this year.
7. Overall, this Chinese stock market crash is the worst that we have witnessed in 19 years.
8. On Monday, Standard & Poor’s slashed Greece’s credit rating once again and publicly stated that it believes that Greece now has a 50 percent chance of leaving the euro.
11. Yields on 10 year Greek government bonds have shot past 15 percent.
12. U.S. investors are far more exposed to Greece than most people realize. The New York Times explains…
13. The Governor of Puerto Rico has announced that the debts that the small island has accumulated are “not payable“.
14. Overall, the government of Puerto Rico owes approximately 72 billion dollars to the rest of the world. Without debt restructuring, it is inevitable that Puerto Rico will default. In fact, CNN says that it could happen by the end of this summer.
15. Ukraine has just announced that it may “suspend debt payments” if their creditors do not agree to take a 40 percent “haircut”.
16. This week the Bank for International Settlements has just come out with a new report that says that central banks around the world are “defenseless” to stop the next major global financial crisis.
Without a doubt, we are overdue for another major financial crisis. All over the planet, stocks are massively overvalued, and financial markets have become completely disconnected from economic reality. And when the next crash happens, many believe that it will be even worse than what we experienced back in 2008. For example, just consider the words of Jim Rogers…
“In the United States, we have had economic slowdowns every four to seven years since the beginning of the Republic. It’s now been six or seven years since our last stock market problem. We’re overdue for another problem.”
In Rogers’ view, low interest rates caused stock prices to increase significantly. He believes many assets are priced beyond their fundamentals thanks to the ultra-easy monetary policies by the Federal Reserve. Fed supporters argue such measures are good for investors, but Rogers takes a different view.
“The Fed might tell us we don’t have to worry and that a correction or crash will never happen again. That’s balderdash! When this artificial sea of liquidity ends, we’re going to pay a terrible price. When the next economic problem occurs, it will be much worse because the debt is so much higher.”
Of course Rogers is far from alone. A recent article by Paul B. Farrell expressed similar sentiments…
Why is America so vulnerable when the next recession hits? Simple: The Fed’s cheap-money giveaway is killing America. When the downturn, correction, crash hits, it will compare to the 2008 crash. The Economist warns: “the world will be in a rotten position to do much about it. Rarely have so many large economies been so ill-equipped to manage a recession,” whatever the trigger.
Things have been relatively quiet in the financial world for so long that many have been sucked into a false sense of security.
But the underlying imbalances were always there, and they have been getting worse over time.
Hopefully things will calm down a bit as the rest of this week unfolds, but I wouldn’t count on it.
We have entered uncharted territory, and what comes next is going to shock the world.
How do you change the way people think? You start by changing the words they use.
In totalitarian regimes—a.k.a. police states—where conformity and compliance are enforced at the end of a loaded gun, the government dictates what words can and cannot be used. In countries where the police state hides behind a benevolent mask and disguises itself as tolerance, the citizens censor themselves, policing their words and thoughts to conform to the dictates of the mass mind.
Even when the motives behind this rigidly calibrated reorientation of societal language appear well-intentioned—discouraging racism, condemning violence, denouncing discrimination and hatred—inevitably, the end result is the same: intolerance, indoctrination and infantilism.
It’s political correctness disguised as tolerance, civility and love, but what it really amounts to is the chilling of free speech and the demonizing of viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite.
As a society, we’ve become fearfully polite, careful to avoid offense, and largely unwilling to be labeled intolerant, hateful, closed-minded or any of the other toxic labels that carry a badge of shame today. The result is a nation where no one says what they really think anymore, at least if it runs counter to the prevailing views. Intolerance is the new scarlet letter of our day, a badge to be worn in shame and humiliation, deserving of society’s fear, loathing and utter banishment from society.
For those “haters” who dare to voice a different opinion, retribution is swift: they will be shamed, shouted down, silenced, censored, fired, cast out and generally relegated to the dust heap of ignorant, mean-spirited bullies who are guilty of various “word crimes.”
We have entered a new age where, as commentator Mark Steyn notes, “we have to tiptoe around on ever thinner eggshells” and “the forces of ‘tolerance’ are intolerant of anything less than full-blown celebratory approval.”
In such a climate of intolerance, there can be no freedom speech, expression or thought.
These tactics are nothing new. This nation, birthed from puritanical roots, has always struggled to balance its love of liberty with its moralistic need to censor books, music, art, language, symbols etc. As author Ray Bradbury notes, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”
Indeed, thanks to the rise of political correctness, the population of book burners, censors, and judges has greatly expanded over the years so that they run the gamut from left-leaning to right-leaning and everything in between. By eliminating words, phrases and symbols from public discourse, the powers-that-be are sowing hate, distrust and paranoia. In this way, by bottling up dissent, they are creating a pressure cooker of stifled misery that will eventually blow.
Clearly, the country is undergoing a nervous breakdown, and the news media is helping to push us to the brink of insanity by bombarding us with wall-to-wall news coverage and news cycles that change every few days.
In this way, it’s difficult to think or debate, let alone stay focused on one thing—namely, holding the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law—and the powers-that-be understand this.
As I document in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, regularly scheduled trivia and/or distractions keep the citizenry tuned into the various breaking news headlines and entertainment spectacles and tuned out to the government’s steady encroachments on our freedoms. These sleight-of-hand distractions and diversions are how you control a population, either inadvertently or intentionally, advancing a political agenda agenda without much opposition from the citizenry.
Professor Jacques Ellul studied this phenomenon of overwhelming news, short memories and the use of propaganda to advance hidden agendas. “One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones,” wrote Ellul.
Under these conditions there can be no thought. And, in fact, modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but he does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them. He is even less capable of spotting any inconsistency between successive facts; man’s capacity to forget is unlimited. This is one of the most important and useful points for the propagandists, who can always be sure that a particular propaganda theme, statement, or event will be forgotten within a few weeks.
In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, reading is banned and books are burned in order to suppress dissenting ideas, while televised entertainment is used to anesthetize the populace and render them easily pacified, distracted and controlled.
In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, serious literature, scientific thinking and experimentation are banned as subversive, while critical thinking is discouraged through the use of conditioning, social taboos and inferior education. Likewise, expressions of individuality, independence and morality are viewed as vulgar and abnormal.
And in George Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother does away with all undesirable and unnecessary words and meanings, even going so far as to routinely rewrite history and punish “thoughtcrimes.” In this dystopian vision of the future, the Thought Police serve as the eyes and ears of Big Brother, while the Ministry of Peace deals with war and defense, the Ministry of Plenty deals with economic affairs (rationing and starvation), the Ministry of Love deals with law and order (torture and brainwashing), and the Ministry of Truth deals with news, entertainment, education and art (propaganda). The mottos of Oceania: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
All three—Bradbury, Huxley and Orwell—had an uncanny knack for realizing the future, yet it is Orwell who best understood the power of language to manipulate the masses. Orwell’s Big Brother relied on Newspeak to eliminate undesirable words, strip such words as remained of unorthodox meanings and make independent, non-government-approved thought altogether unnecessary. To give a single example, as psychologist Erich Fromm illustrates in his afterword to 1984:
The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as "This dog is free from lice" or "This field is free from weeds." It could not be used in its old sense of "politically free" or "intellectually free," since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed as concepts....
Where we stand now is at the juncture of OldSpeak (where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous) and Newspeak (where only that which is “safe” and “accepted” by the majority is permitted).The power elite has made their intentions clear: they will pursue and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authority.
This is the final link in the police state chain.
Having been reduced to a cowering citizenry—mute in the face of elected officials who refuse to represent us, helpless in the face of police brutality, powerless in the face of militarized tactics and technology that treat us like enemy combatants on a battlefield, and naked in the face of government surveillance that sees and hears all—we have nowhere left to go. Our backs are to the walls. From this point on, we have only two options: go down fighting, or capitulate and betray our loved ones, our friends and our selves by insisting that, as a brainwashed Winston Smith does at the end of Orwell’s 1984, yes, 2+2 does equal 5.
The two brightest planets Venus and Jupiter are to appear so close in the sky in the upcoming nights that they will be seen like a single super bright star, which some astronomy-lovers say resembles the biblical 'Star of Bethlehem'.
“Throughout the month of June 2015, the two brightest planets in the night sky, Venus and Jupiter, are going to converge for a close jaw-dropping encounter,” said NASA in a news release.
During the whole month the planets were drawing closer to each other and on June 30 they will reach their tightest grouping. In fact every night in June, the separation between the celestial bodies was visibly shrinking.
“On that night [June 30] Venus and Jupiter will be a … 1/3rd of a degree apart. That's less than the diameter of a full moon. You'll be able to hide the pair not just behind the palm of your outstretched hand, but behind your little pinky finger,” added NASA.
It is reported that local Islamist terrorist groups are more than capable of provoking a new war in Lebanon, but so far they’ve been refraining from doing so. First, they are being restricted in their activities by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the West that understand that the opening of a new “front” in the Middle East can lead to dangerous consequences. Hezbollah and its allies are more than capable of striking a heavy blow against the local fifth column forces. This could be prevented by a direct military intervention of Israel that could drastically change the balance of powers, but the Israelis display no desire share a common border with Islamist radicals. On top of all a number of Lebanese areas used by militants for rest and medical treatment after fighting in Syria.
However, the situation is deteriorating rapidly, especially in the areas close to the Syrian-Lebanese border and near Tripoli. The number of militants, including coming from is growing steadily, and many of those do not obey any commands, which leads to ongoing clashes between such “rebels” and the local security forces. Lebanese authorities are forced to use regular army units to suppress such clashes.
Islamists from ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra that are arriving to Lebanon fro all across the Arab world are carrying their regular terrorist activities here in an attempt to split the Lebanese society along confessional lines.
Another source of constant troubles is yet another Sunni terrorist group – the Abdullah Azzam Brigades. This group is closely aligned with Al-Qaeda while it commanders have pledged their allegiance to the leader of this global militant Islamist organization – Ayman al-Zawahiri. The primary targets of Azzam’s terrorists are Iranian diplomatic missions and cultural centers, along with Lebanese army checkpoints.
In these circumstances, Hezbollah is forced to maintain a considerable amount of combat capable units in Lebanon, unable to send them to fight in Syria. What is making this situation even more explosive is the high probability of armed clashes between Hezbollah and Israel. In these circumstances, Lebanese army and police units remain the only force capable of countering the spread of terrorism and extremism in Lebanon, while their combat capabilities remain extremely limited. They need both the fresh blood and modern weapons to remain effective.
On thing is crystal clear today – Lebanon is a hostage of the situation in Syria. Should the government of Bashar al-Assad fall in the neighboring country, disastrous consequences would follow in Lebanon, which has not fully recovered from the last civil war, which lasted for nearly 20 years.
This was also a symbolic gesture in the eyes of the left because they view this as the replacement of the old culture with a new one. It was no coincidence, in my opinion, that this redefining marriage decision happened at the same time there was all out war declared on the confederate flag. We are, after all, dealing with communists, whose entire agenda revolves around breaking down the moral standards by which many of us live our lives.
Make no mistake America, this ruling pushes the United States one step further away from liberty, and one step closer to all out communism. Many people have a difficult time understanding this concept; after all, granting protection to homosexuals to "marry" allegedly embodies the ideals of liberty and justice for all. This is a misguided worldview, what it actually does is open the floodgates to the depravation of humanity, as I will explain in this article. From the 45 communist goals, which were entered in to the congressional record in 1963:
25) Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography,
and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV.
26) Present homosexuality, degeneracy, and promiscuity as "normal,
natural, and healthy."
One of the main goals of communism has always been the destruction of the Judeo-Christian worldview.
Man will not allow himself to become subservient to an all-powerful state as long as he believes in, and follows the Laws of God.
It would seem that any organization truly dedicated to special rights for those who engage in sodomy would acknowledge these atrocities while pointing out the safety most homosexuals enjoy in the United States. The goal, as mentioned previously, is not to give sodomites equal rights, but to demoralize society in order to make us susceptible to an all-out communist takeover. In order to do this, religion must be destroyed.
This was admitted by one of the leaders of the homosexual rights movement. Homosexual activist and journalist Masha Gessen admitted in a radio interview that the goal is to destroy the institution of marriage, nor become a part of it. She admits that the whole argument being made to push their agenda for equality is a lie, and what they truly seek to do is destroy traditional societal values.
To understand this further we need to once again, refer to the Soviet Manual on Pyschopolitics. The whole communist agenda can be best summed up saying that they are attempting to label America as a sick society in need of mental healing. For centuries, men looked to the clergy in order to solve problems of the mind and spirit. Communists despise this because they want to rule over man, and as mentioned previously, men who follow Gods laws cannot be ruled by men. Consider this quote from page 60 of the Soviet manual.
"You must work until religion is synonymous with insanity. You must work until the officials of the city, county and state governments will not think twice before they pounce upon religious groups as public enemies."
Also see:
scenario or a scene from some other post-apocalyptic movie.
and the supplies needed for complete self-reliance
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