IDF: Hezbollah Preparing For War, Economy In Decline - Apple Reports Massive Revenue Decline, Dollar Panic Selling Coming

IDF commander: Hezbollah preparing for war, just like in 2006

An IDF battalion commander stationed on Israel’s border with Lebanon on Wednesday said the Hezbollah terror group’s recent activity was “reminiscent of what they did before the Second Lebanon War.”

In an interview with Channel 2, Lt. Col. Eliav Elbaz described how Hezbollah was “obsessively” monitoring Israeli soldiers from across the border.

“The other side is obsessively gathering [information] about everything happening here, everything our security forces [are doing],” Elbaz said.

“Right now they’re up to their necks in the war in Syria, but we still see them walking around” and scouting the Israeli positions, he said. It’s “reminiscent of what they did before the Second Lebanon War,” he added.

The IDF officer said soldiers were training constantly and on high alert. “We are preparing for war. In the event of a war, they will have a lot more to lose,” he warned.

In the summer of 2006, Israel and Hezbollah fought a war in Lebanon that killed about 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers, and nearly 1,200 Lebanese, including several hundred Hezbollah fighters, according to the Israeli army.

Hezbollah has deployed thousands of fighters to prop up the regime in Syria’s civil war, and some analysts say that has limited its ability to carry out an attack against Israel.

Earlier this month, the IDF’s deputy chief of staff said the Lebanese group’s improving capabilities deeply concerned Israel. Major General Yair Golan said that could result in “full-scale war,” including a harsh response from the Israeli military.

Israel fears IS affiliate on Syrian border holds chemical weapons

Defense officials are concerned that an Islamic State affiliate operating near the Syrian border with Israel has acquired chemicals weapons and may be planning to test them, Channel 10 news reported Tuesday.

The report said officials believed the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade, a terrorist group affiliated with the Islamic State and based on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, may have recently gotten its hands on chemical weapons which once belonged to the Assad regime.

Israel is closely monitoring the organization, and believes it may be planning tests of the weapons’ capabilities.

The Channel 10 report noted that the group was not currently concerned with Israel and was not directing offensive efforts against it, being preoccupied with fighting other groups in the Syrian civil war. Any chemical weaponry in their hands was thus not considered an immediate threat to Israelis. But officials fear this may well change in the future.

The Islamic State’s possession of chemical weapons has been a major point of concern among Western governments.

Israeli official: IS-affiliate's use of chemical weapons a 'red line' 

A senior Israeli official on Wednesday said the IDF would strike an Islamic State-affiliated group operating near its border with Syria if there were any indication the jihadist group was testing or using chemical weapons.

According to a TV report on Tuesday, Israeli defense officials are concerned an IS offshoot based on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights may have recently acquired chemical weapons which once belonged to the Assad regime.

“Israel will not allow a terrorist organization like the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade to equip themselves with this type of capability,” the unnamed official told Channel 10 news Wednesday.

“If we see anything resembling experiments or other signs indicating operational capability of chemical weapons, Israel will not stand by — we will act to thwart such capabilities,” he said.

The report noted while the jihadist group was preoccupied with fighting other factions in the Syrian civil war and was not currently concerned with Israel, officials were closely monitoring the group, fearing it may be planning to test the weapons’ capabilities.

Earlier this month, the group reportedly mounted a deadly gas attack against Syrian troops at a besieged eastern airbase.

On March 9, a suspected IS gas attack on the Iraqi town of Taza, south of Kirkuk, killed three children and wounded some 1,500 people, with injuries ranging from burns to rashes and respiratory problems.

Will Washington Send Erdogan Long-Range Rockets For Use Against Assad?

The Turkish Foreign Ministry announced that the US will provide advanced weaponry to bolster the ‘moderate opposition’ against the Assad regime, despite both countries claiming that their focus is on countering Daesh.

On Tuesday, the Turkish Foreign Ministry announced that the US has agreed to deploy advanced rocket launcher systems in southern Turkey next month, with a focus on eliminating Daesh in northern Syria “in a more efficient way.” The Pentagon has not confirmed Ankara’s claim.

The Turkish ministry statement claimed the US would dispatch the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), a truck mounted rocket launcher used by the US during the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2010, the system was suspended from battlefield use after a defect led to the killing of 12 civilians in Afghanistan.

The announcement lends credence to fears that the rockets will be turned against the Assad government. Turkish officials state that the long-range rockets will allow them to support "moderate opposition" forces, purportedly against Daesh.

Economy In Decline: Apple Reports Massive Revenue Decline As iPhone Sales Plummet Dramatically

Corporate revenues in the United States have been falling for quite some time, but now some of the biggest companies in the entire nation are reporting extremely disappointing results.  On Tuesday, Apple shocked the financial world by reporting that revenue for the first quarter had fallen 7.4 billion dollars compared to the same quarter last year.  That is an astounding plunge, and it represents the very first year-over-year quarterly sales decline that Apple has experienced since 2003.  Analysts were anticipating some sort of drop, but nothing like this.  And of course last week we learned that Google and Microsoft also missed revenue and earnings projections for the first quarter of 2016.  The economic crisis that began during the second half of 2015 is really starting to take hold, and even our largest tech companies are now feeling the pain.

This wasn’t supposed to happen to Apple.  No matter what else has been going on with the U.S. economy, Apple has always been unshakeable.  Even during the last recession we never saw a year-over-year decline like this…

Apple today announced financial results for the second fiscal quarter (first calendar quarter) of 2016. For the quarter, Apple posted revenue of $50.6 billion and net quarterly profit of $10.5 billion, or $1.90 per diluted share, compared to revenue of $58 billion and net quarterly profit of $13.6 billion, or $2.33 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. As expected, the year-over-year decline in quarterly revenue was the first for Apple since 2003.

I think that this announcement by Apple is waking a lot of people up.  The global economic slowdown is real, and we can see this in iPhone sales.  During the first quarter, Apple sold 16 percent fewer iPhones than it did during the same quarter in 2015.  This is the very first year-over-year quarterly sales decline for the iPhone ever.  Here are some of the specific sales figures from the Apple announcement…

Once these numbers hit the wires, shares of Apple immediately began to plummet during after-hours trading.  In fact, USA Today is reporting that Apple has already lost 43 billion dollars in market value since the annoucement…

Shares of Apple are getting hit roughly 8% in after-hours trading, tumbling to $96.67. They closed in regular trading at $104.35, or down 0.7%, putting them down 0.9% for the year. The downward move in after-hours trading means the company shed $43 billion in market value based on after-hours trading.

Wow.

Meanwhile, shares of Twitter are crashing in after-hours trading after the social media giant also announced very disappointing results.  The stock has now dripped below 16 dollars a share, and the company continues to lose tremendous amounts of money…

For all its other travails, Twitter is unprofitable. It narrowed its loss but still recorded a loss of $79.7 million, or 12 cents a share, compared with a loss of $162.4 million, or 25 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter.

When is it finally going to sink in for most people?  The global economy is slowing down significantly, and the next global economic crisis is already here.

Of course the oil companies are feeling more pain than anyone else.  According to CNN, the crash in the price of oil has cost the 40 largest publicly-traded U.S. oil producers 67 billion dollars…

American oil companies are drowning in a sea of red ink.

The crash in crude oil prices caused a stunning $67 billion in combined losses by 40 publicly-traded U.S. oil producers last year, according Energy Information Administration research. And the bleeding is expected to continue at least early this year for many.

The greatest debt bubble in the history of the planet is starting to implode, and this time the central bankers and the politicians are not going to be able to put the pieces back together again.

But just like in 2008, the vast majority of the population will not recognize the warning signs until it is way too late.

Dollar Selling Panic Coming-John Williams

Economist John Williams has long predicted the $16 trillion in U.S. dollar assets held outside of America will be sold in a panic. 

We have the waffling of the Fed and the beginnings of the perception that the economy is in serious trouble, which generally would be negative for the dollar.  We have started to see selling pressure on the dollar.  It has been inching lower.  It’s down year to year now. . . . The selling is going to intensify, not only with large central banks, but with corporations that will be beginning to dump their Treasury holdings. . . . Nobody wants to be the last one out the door when you have a panic like this.  It’s not a panic yet, but the potential certainly is there.”

Williams also says, “The dollar will blow up, and when I say blow up, it will collapse. There will be panic selling of the dollar, and that will intensify the inflation.  The problem is they don’t have a way of avoiding it.  If they could somehow get the economy back on track, they would have some room to work, I think, but the economy has never recovered.  That’s being seen now in these revisions.  

At the end of this week, we are going to see bench mark revisions to retail sales. . . . So, you are going to see some downside revisions to the retail sales.  You already have it with industrial production, and now you are going to have it with retail sales.  We are very close to turning negative with the first quarter GDP . . . We are in a recession now, and they would be inclined to call it that once they get a contracting GDP, and everything else is beginning to show that. . . . You are going to see a formal recession declaration not too far down the road.  It hasn’t happened yet, but it will.”

The economy is turning down rapidly.  We have a new recession.”

Williams says it is not a matter of if, but when, there is panic dollar selling. Williams says the Fed would try to slow it down.  Williams explains, “The Federal Reserve would step in and slow the pace to make it not appear like a panic.  If you start to see a panic selloff (in the dollar), that’s a real bad sign.  It means they are losing control of the system, and I think that is coming.  The initial effect on the system for people living in the United States, as the dollar crashes, you will see inflation beginning to surge, particularly from oil and gasoline prices.  Those effects will begin to spread in the system.  It will change the way people look at things and will start the process that will eventually be a hyperinflation.  

The Fed does not have a way out of this circumstance.  They have backed themselves into a corner.  They have been keeping things reasonably stable, but they can’t get things going in the economy. . . . The economy is in terrible shape.”

War of Words: Press Freedom Drops Worldwide to Lowest Point in 12 Years

Why are American police departments stocking up on riot control gear?

 

Will The EU Form An Army?

7 signs the elite are creating an EU army and a United States of Europe

The Former head of British troops in Afghanistan says the eurozone’s elites “ultimate plan” is to form an EU army out of the bloc’s 28 member states.

Retired British Army Colonel Richard Kemp — who formerly worked for the UK Joint Intelligence Committee — said this move would greatly undermine the supremacy of NATO and significantly weaken UK defenses.

“If we left the EU, we would undermine the EU’s ultimate plan of forming an EU army, and that is exactly what they are going to be doing,” Kemp told the Daily Express.

“Too many of these generals, too many of the people like Jens Stoltenberg [NATO Secretary General] are looking at fighting of the last war, which is what generals very often do. We need to look ahead, we need to look forward to what the plans are. What the EU army does is to undermine NATO because it takes resources away from NATO,” Kemp said.

The prospect of an EU army was first forewarned in 2014 by Nigel Farage, the United Kingdom’s Independence Party (UKIP) leader. During a pre-European Parliamentary Elections debate with then Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, Farage warned that Brussels had plans to create an EU Army. Clegg, who many say notably lost both the televised debates, said Farage’s warnings were a “dangerous fantasy” and that “the idea there’s going to be a European air force, a European army,” were “simply not true.”

Farage’s warnings of a covert conspiracy from Brussels to form an EU Army began to be proven correct in June 2015, when a strategic note was unveiled, showing Michel Barnier, the Vice President of the European People’s Party (EPP) — the European Parliament’s largest party — arguing that the “EU’s soft power must be matched by collective hard power and a more efficient use of our €210 billion yearly defense spending.” Barnier was previously tasked by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to draft a vision for a much more far-ranging Common Security and Defense Policy (CDSP).

1) In July 2015 German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said during a speech: “The European Army is our long-term goal, but first we have to strengthen the European Defense Union. To achieve this, some nations with concrete military cooperation must come to the fore – and the Germans and the Dutch are doing this.”

Von der Leyen was referencing the now public decision by the Netherlands to combine their land forces and naval assets with the German military. In 2015 the Dutch 11th Airmobile Brigade and the Karel Doorman, the Netherland’s largest warship,  were placed under German command. In March 2016 the Dutch 43rd Mechanized Brigade followed suit, with plans in place for the remainder of their navy, the 13th Mechanized Brigade, their special forces units, and remaining military infrastructure to complete the merger by 2018.

2) Also in July 2015, Dr. Norbert Röttgen, the head of Germany’s Committee on Foreign Affairs — which handles highly sensitive security matters — described an EU Army as “a vision whose time has come,” during an interview with Welt. “The European countries spend enormous sums on the military, many times more in total when compared to Russia. Yet our military capabilities remain unsatisfactory from a security standpoint. And they will for as long as we’re talking about national mini-armies, which are often doing and purchasing the same things in their minor formats,” Röttgen said.

3) In August 2015 European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker called for the EU to establish an “international force”. This was followed in September 2015 by a 10 point plan sourced from German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party; which said Merkel wanted “a permanent structured and coordinated cooperation of national armed forces in the medium term,” and in the long term, “a European Army subject to Parliamentarian control.”

A source close to Merkel told the Telegraph at the time that this 10 point plan would require British compliance and participation if the UK wanted to renegotiate their terms in the EU.

4) In October 2015, Joseph Daul, the president of the EPP said “we [the European Union] are going to move towards an EU army much faster than people believe,” citing concerns over “Russian aggression” and containment of the migrant crisis as justifications for the move.

Fast forward to April 22 2016, Britain’s Defense Secretary Michael Fallon described the newly formed Combined Joint Expeditionary Force (CJEF), which is a 5,000-strong rapid deployment joint English-French combat brigade; designed specifically to respond to both humanitarian crises and conventional conflicts. Fallon said a “new chapter” had opened that would take cooperation between the two nations “to greater heights”, adding: “This is no paper tiger, this is a force that from now on has the teeth, the means, the speed and the agility to act.” Fallon said that it was now unlikely that Britain would “ever go into conflict on its own again”.

Speaking with Fallon at the speech in Salisbury Plain, UK, French Defense Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said Exercise Griffin Strike — the largest joint exercise between Britain and France in more than 50 years — was just the “start” of military cooperation across the continent. Le Drian had previously met with German Defense Minister Von der Leyen in 2015 to discuss ways to increase military collaboration inside the EU.

'Storm Clouds' Gather Over S China Seas, Rumors Of War In Abundance

Storm clouds gather over South China Sea ahead of key U.N. ruling

Signs that China may be contemplating another bout of island-building in the South China Sea ahead of an important U.N. ruling on the issue have provoked the United States to step up its vigilance in the region in recent days.

Twice last week, and again Tuesday, the U.S. Pacific Command said it sent warplanes close to Scarborough Shoal, a triangular chain of coral reefs, sand and rocks close to the Philippines coast. In Beijing, the response was sharp.

The shoal is the latest point of friction between China and the United States and nations that ring the South China Sea over Beijing’s moves to build maritime outposts and other installations that could have a potential military use.

“Thunderclouds are gathering over the South China Sea, and China is the lightning rod,” said Carlyle Thayer, emeritus professor of politics at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

A key ruling on the Chinese action by a panel of jurists at a U.N.-appointed tribunal in The Hague, expected in coming weeks, is driving the unease in Beijing, experts suggest.

China seized Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines in 2012 and appears to be considering whether to build an artificial island there, experts say. It has already constructed or reclaimed seven islands in the nearby Spratly chain.

On Monday, the South China Morning Post quoted an unnamed source “close to” the Chinese navy as saying Beijing would carry out “land reclamation” on the shoal this year.

Mira Rapp-Hooper, of the Center for a New American Security, said intense efforts were underway to dissuade Beijing from taking a step that Washington could see as “very escalatory.”

It would also constitute a significant violation of a 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, experts said, although that agreement between China and rival Asian claimants has often been ignored.

If China moves to build a military base on Scarborough Shoal, the site would form a strategic triangle with Chinese-controlled islands in the Spratly and Paracel chains. It would also help China monitor U.S. military activity in the Philippines’ Subic Bay, just 150 nautical miles to the east.

“It would bring U.S. and Chinese forces into close proximity, with all the attendant risks that that entails,” Storey said.

Russia restarts bombings targeting Syrian opposition, US officer says

Russia has resumed bombing moderate opposition fighters in Syria, a U.S. military officer from Baghdad told reporters at the Pentagon Tuesday.

"We have seen them begin operations again in that region," Air Force Maj. Gen. Peter Gersten, the U.S.-led coalition's deputy commander for operations and intelligence, told Fox News.

President Obama called Russian President Vladimir Putin last week asking him to help "press" Syria to end its airstrikes, according to a White House statement. The strikes appeared to violate the ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russia in February.

Russia claims it is striking Jabhat al-Nusra, otherwise known as the al-Nusra Front, Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate. The group is not bound to the ceasefire agreement.

The "cessation of hostilities" has shown signs of fraying as the Syrian regime resumed bombing operations in northwest Aleppo and in the coastal province of Latakia where a Russian airbase is located. Russia claims al-Nusra is trying to take over Aleppo and parts of Latakia province.

Sweden On High Alert After Reports ISIS Militants Enter Country To "Target Civilians"

In the last week of March, immediately in the aftermath of the tragic Brussels bombing which ISIS took responsibility for and which was subsequently revealed as organized by a semi-autonomous Brussels cell operating closely with the French cell responsible for the November 2015 terrorist attack, we reported that the Islamic State group has trained at least 400 attackers and sent them into Europe for terror attacks. As AP said, citing security officials, "the network of interlocking, agile and semi-autonomous cells shows the reach of the extremist group in Europe even as it loses ground in Syria."

The last sentence was most troubling: "The officials say the fighters have been given orders to find the right time, place and method to carry out their mission."

Obama Requests Military Support for Possible War Against Russia

According to an April 23rd article carried by Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (German Economic News), U.S. President Barack Obama is “demanding the active deployment of the Bundeswehr [Germany’s armed forces, including their Army, Navy, and Air Force] to NATO’s eastern borders” at Poland and the Baltic republics, to join the quadrupling of America’s forces there, on and near the borders of Russia. This is an extreme violation of what Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to when he ended the Soviet Union and its NATO-mirror organization the Warsaw Pact, but it’s actually culminating a process that began shortly after he agreed to America’s terms, which included that NATO “not move one inch to the east.”

Furthermore, DWN reports that on April 25th, the U.S. President will hold a summit meeting in Hannover, Germany with the leaders of Germany (Angela Merkel), Italy (Matteo Renzi), France (Francois Hollande), and Britain (David Cameron). The presumed objective of this meeting is to agree to establish in the NATO countries bordering on Russia a military force of these five countries, a force threatening Russia with an invasion, if or when NATO subsequently decides that the ‘threat from Russia’ be ‘responded to’ militarily.

Obama is thus now adding to the economic sanctions against Russia that he had imposed because of Russia’s alleged ‘seizure’ of Crimea from Ukraine after the US and EU engineered coup overthrew Russia’s ally Viktor Yanukovych who had led Ukraine until the coup in February 2014.

Even though Western-sponsored polls in Crimea, both before and after the coup, had shown higher than 90% support by Crimeans for rejoining with Russia, right after Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia, Obama slapped sanctions against Russia. Nuclear weapons were prepared, both on the U.S.-EU side and on the Russian side, for a possible nuclear war.

This is no mere restoration of the Cold War (which was supposedly based on the capitalist-communist ideological disagreement); it’s getting forces into position for a possible invasion of Russia, pure-and-simple — raw conquest — though no major news-media in the West are reporting it as being such.

The current preparation doesn’t necessarily mean a nuclear war will result from them. Russia might accept whatever the demands ‘the West’ makes of it and thus lose its  sovereignty.  Alternatively, if Russia stands-its-ground and refuses to yield up its national sovereignty,‘the West’ (the U.S.leadership, and the leaderships in its allied countries) could cease with its evermore-ominous threats and simply withdraw from Russia’s borders.

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EMP Alert: 2 N. Korean Satellites Now Orbit Over U.S., Police State USA, Kuwait To 'DNA Tag' Everyone Including Tourists

EMP alert: 2 N. Korean satellites now orbit over U.S.

North Korea now has two satellites orbiting over the United States capable of performing a surprise electromagnetic pulse attack at an altitude and trajectory that evade U.S. National Missile Defenses...

Peter Vincent Pry told G2 Bulletin that the satellites can be commanded either to deorbit and hit a target on the ground or explode at a high altitude to create an EMP effect that would knock out the unprotected U.S. national electrical grid system and all life-sustaining critical infrastructures that depend on it.

“The threat,” Pry said, “continues to race, hare-like, at an alarming rate, compared to the tortoise pace of our preparations.”

The satellites – KMS 3-2 and KMS 4 – are orbiting at an altitude of 300 miles, with trajectories that put them daily over the U.S. KMS 3-2 was launched in December 2012 and KMS 4 was launched Feb. 7.

At such an altitude, an EMP could impact much of the continental United States, according to EMP experts.

The development comes at the same time North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered his rocket forces to prepare for a nuclear attack on the U.S. The communist regime has released videos depicting nuclear attacks on Washington and New York City.

Pry spoke to G2 Bulletin after his recent testimony to Canada’s Security and Defence Committee on the “biggest existential threat that our civilization faces right now,” an EMP attack.

China and Russia, along with North Korea, already possess the ability to launch an EMP attack that could shut down indefinitely such life-sustaining critical infrastructures as communications, transportation, finance, the delivery of water and food, sanitation, medical equipment, emergency services, and oil and natural gas pipelines.

Censored, Surveilled, Watch-Listed, & Jailed: The Absurd Citizenry Of The American Police State

In past ages, those who dared to speak out against tyranny - viewed as an act of treason - were blinded, castrated, disfigured, mutilated, rendered mute by having their tongues cut out of their heads, and ultimately crucified.

In the American police state, the price to be paid for speaking truth to power (also increasingly viewed as an act of treason) is surveillance, censorship, jail and ultimately death.

It’s a diabolically ingenious tactic for muzzling, disarming and ultimately eliminating one’s critics or potential adversaries.

However, where many Americans go wrong is in assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or challenging the government’s authority in order to be flagged as a suspicious character, labeled an enemy of the state and locked up like a dangerous criminal.

In fact, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, all you really need to do is use certain trigger words, surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, drive a car, stay at a hotel, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, question government authority, or generally live in the United States.

With the help of automated eyes and ears, a growing arsenal of high-tech software, hardware and techniques, government propaganda urging Americans to turn into spies and snitches, as well as social media and behavior sensing software, government agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports aimed at snaring potential enemies of the state.

It’s the American police state’s take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick all rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package.

What’s more, the technocrats who run the surveillance state don’t even have to break a sweat while monitoring what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, how much you spend, whom you support, and with whom you communicate. Computers now do the tedious work of trolling social media, the internet, text messages and phone calls for potentially anti-government remarks—all of which is carefully recorded, documented, and stored to be used against you someday at a time and place of the government’s choosing.

While this may sound like a riff on a bad joke, it’s a bad joke with “we the people” as the punchline. Yet it is no laughing matter that Americans are being jailed for growing orchids, feeding whales, collecting rainwater, and praying in their backyards. There is nothing humorous about Americans having their families terrorized by SWAT teams, their pets killed, their children shot, their homes trashed and their privacy shredded. And there’s really not much comic relief to be found when the citizenry is forced to pay their own government to jail, spy on, censor, terrorize and kill them.

The following activities are guaranteed to get you censored, surveilled, eventually placed on a government watch list, possibly detained and potentially killed.

In First Law of Its Kind, Kuwait to "DNA Tag" Everyone Like Cattle, Including All Tourists

In the first law of its kind anywhere in the world, Kuwait has decided it will not only “DNA tag” everyone presently in the country as part of a new “integrated security database,” but all tourists will be required to submit a DNA test before they can even enter the country.

Facilities for blood and saliva collection will be set up at the Kuwait International Airport, and there will be “consequences of rejecting” these procedures which the Kuwaiti government says it is putting in place in order to track everyone just in case someone commits a crime.

While it sounds like an Orwellian nightmare, the reality is this is slowly creeping up on us everywhere. Central banks are going to start requiring biometrics for identification, for your security they say. Japan has already announced that all tourists will be required to use their fingerprints as currency while in the country. India has forced biometric IDs on its entire population. In fact, the United Nations is pushing for universal biometric ID cards for every single man, woman, and child on the planet by 2030.

Can you imagine the TSA DNA tagging you before you get on a plane in America? Can’t you see it being justified “for your safety”?

How Islam Erased Christianity from History

While Christianity continues to be physically erased from the Middle East, lesser known is that its historical role and presence is also being expunged from memory.

Last month a video emerged showing Islamic State members tossing hundreds of Christian textbooks, many of them emblazoned with crosses, into a large bonfire.   As one report put it, ISIS was “burning Christian textbooks in an attempt to erase all traces of” Christianity from the ancient region of Mosul, where Christianity once thrived for centuries before the rise of Islam.

As usual, ISIS is ultimately an extreme example of Islam’s normative approach.  This was confirmed during a recent conference in Amman, Jordan hosted by the Jerusalem Center for Political Studies. While presenting, Dr. Hena al-Kaldani, a Christian, said that “there is a complete cancelation of Arab Christian history in the pre-Islamic era,” “many historical mistakes,” and “unjustifiable historic leaps in our Jordanian curriculum.”  “Tenth grade textbooks omit any mention of any Christian or church history in the region.”  Wherever Christianity is mentioned, omissions and mischaracterizations proliferate, including the portrayal of Christianity as a Western (that is, “foreign”) source of colonization, said al-Kaldani.

Of course, Christian minorities throughout the Middle East—not just in Jordan—have long maintained that the history taught in public classrooms habitually suppresses the region’s Christian heritage while magnifying (including by lying about) Islam.

“It sounds absurd, but Muslims more or less know nothing about Christians, even though they make up a large part of the population and are in fact the original Egyptians,” said Kamal Mougheeth, a retired teacher in Egypt: “Egypt was Christian for six or seven centuries [before the Muslim invasion around 640].  The sad thing is that for many years the history books skipped from Cleopatra to the Muslim conquest of Egypt.  The Christian era was gone.  Disappeared.  An enormous black whole.

Eurasia's largest volcano Klyuchevskaya Sopka, Russia, spews hot ash "miles" into the sky on Sunday

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UN Security Council: Israeli Hold On Golan 'Null And Void'

Israeli hold on Golan 'null and void,' UN Security Council says 

The UN Security Council on Tuesday rejected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion that the annexed Golan Heights would “forever” remain under Israeli control and expressed concern over his statements.

The 15-member council agreed that the status of the Golan, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967, “remains unchanged,” said Chinese Ambassador Liu Jieyi, who holds this month’s council presidency.

Liu recalled a 1981 resolution which states that Israel’s “decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights was null and void and without any international legal effect.”

The council statement followed remarks made by Netanyahu earlier this month when his cabinet held a meeting in the territory, a first for an Israeli government.

“The Golan Heights will remain in the hands of Israel forever,” Netanyahu said at the start of the meeting, held amid fears that Israel could come under pressure to return the Golan as part of a future peace deal for Syria.

“Israel will never withdraw from the Golan Heights,” he said.

Council members “expressed deep concern” over the Israeli statements and “stressed that the status of the Golan remains unchanged,” said Liu.

Danny Danon, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, denounced the Security Council for discussing an issue that “completely ignores the reality in the Middle East.”

“While thousands of people are being massacred in Syria, and millions of citizens have become refugees, the Security Council has chosen to focus on Israel – the only true democracy in the Middle East,” Danon said in a statement Tuesday evening

According to a report on Israel’s Channel 2 earlier this month, the first clause of a draft agreement aimed at settling the brutal civil war in Syria, being worked on with the support of the US, Russia and other major world powers, specifies that the Golan Heights is Syrian territory and must be returned to Syria.

In November, Netanyahu reportedly asked US President Barack Obama to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the area, given the civil war. Obama refused to even reply, according to Israeli media accounts.

Netanyahu’s statement on holding the Golan drew alarm and condemnation internationally, including from Israel’s allies and from Syria.

Israel will never leave Golan, Netanyahu tells Putin

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday informed Russian President Vladimir Putin of his “red lines” regarding the security of Israel’s northern borders, and stressed that the Jewish state was determined to maintain its control of the Golan Heights.

“I have come to Russia to step up coordination on security matters, to prevent mistakes, misunderstandings,” Netanyahu said during the two leaders’ meeting in Moscow. “We are not going back to the days when rockets were fired at our communities and our children from the top of the Golan… and so, with an agreement or without, the Golan Heights will remain part of [Israel’s] sovereign territory.”

The prime minister also stressed that Israel would do “everything” in its power to block Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah from obtaining advanced weapons, and was working to assure that no new “terror front” appeared on the Golan Heights.

Israeli airstrikes in Syria have also been the topic of previous high-level meetings between Moscow and Jerusalem. A number of airstrikes in Syria have been attributed to Israeli efforts to prevent advanced weapons from reaching Hezbollah.

Netanyahu was also expected to address Russian-backed peace efforts in Syria, which have reportedly become entangled with the status of the Golan Heights, an area effectively annexed by Israel in 1981 in a move not recognized by the rest of the world.

The prime minister has previously gone on the record saying that Syrian peace talks needed to take Israel’s position into account.

The prime minister has drawn fire internationally in the past few days, after holding a cabinet meeting on the Golan, in which he declared the plateau would remain in Israel’s hands forever. Netanyahu has also previously gone on the record saying that Syrian peace talks, brokered between Moscow and Washington, needed to take Israel’s position into account.

During the meeting, Netanyahu was also likely to lobby for Russia to cancel the sale of the advanced S-300 air defense system to Iran, which has already begun to be implemented. Netanyahu has asked Putin to nix the sale on several previous occasions, to no avail.

On Tuesday the head of Russia’s state-owned defense conglomerate said Moscow would complete its delivery of the S-300 system to Iran by the end of the year, after months of speculation over whether it would be transferred to Tehran at all.

The Russian-made missile defense system is one of the most advanced of its kind in the world, offering long-range protection against both airplanes and missiles.