Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

What's This? is Google Following You? Internet Giant's Latest Mobile Operating System Tracks us
Aug 13th, 2013
Daily NewsDailymail.co.uk
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Google's latest Android phone operating system has revealed a feature that will scan for networks and track user's locations even when Wi-Fi has been turned off. 

The code used to build Android 4.3 claims that 'to improve location accuracy and for other purposes, Google and other apps may scan for nearby networks even when Wi-Fi is off.'

By identifying nearby Wi-Fi networks a device can determine a user's location and it can be used as an alternative to GPS. 

The new feature of Android 4.3 means that even if a user disables Wi-Fi to save battery or conceal their location, for example, it will stay on and run in the background.

It also indicates that any location, or 'other' information obtained during this scan will be shared with Google or other apps installed onto a device. 

Google is yet to comment on what these 'other purposes' could be. 

According to Ron Amadeo from fan site Android Police, who discovered the code: 'Google wants you to leave your Wi-Fi on, or at least partially on, all the time. 

'Now I know you might immediately scream 'MY BATTERY [LIFE!'] but this will probably save battery. 

Google wants you to leave Wi-Fi on so that apps can get your location, but consider that the other option for location is firing up the GPS chip, which is a battery's worst enemy.'

The feature is turned off by default, according to users who have already downloaded the update. 

Plus it can be enabled or disabled by going to Settings, Wi-Fi, Advanced Wi-Fi and checking, or unchecking, the 'Scanning always available' box. 

Google rolled out its Android 4.3 Jelly Bean Over-The-Air (OTA) update for Google editions of the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4 handsets earlier this week. 

The update to the operating system was announced in July during the launch of Google's 2013 Nexus 7 tablet.

It was first ported to older Nexus devices including Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10.

Google has introduced other features to Android 4.3 to increase privacy and security. 

Its added support for encrypted KeyChains that let people store private information that remains hidden even if hackers break into the phone. 

It has also moved the Verify Apps feature that scans any downloaded apps automatically for malware to the Google Play Services menu and added a 'Find My Phone' feature, if the handset is lost or stolen.

Other features include customisable multi-user accounts, restricted profiles, an advanced camera app and a new keyboard. 

Android 4.3 has also added support for Bluetooth smart technology, also known as Bluetooth low energy. This means apps can connect to the low-power sensors used in fitness technology for example.

What's This? a Quadrillion Yen and Counting – the Japanese Debt Bomb Could Set Off Global Panic
Aug 13th, 2013
Daily NewsThe economic collapse
Categories: Today's Headlines;Warning

How much is 1,000,000,000,000,000 yen worth? Well, a quadrillion yen is worth approximately 10.5 trillion dollars. It is an amount of money that is larger than the "the economies of Germany, France and the U.K. combined". It is such an astounding amount of debt that it is hard to even get your mind around it. 

The government debt to GDP ratio in Japan will reach 247 percent this year, and the Japanese currently spend about 50 percent of all central government tax revenue on debt service. Realistically, there are only two ways out of this overwhelming debt trap for the Japanese. Either they default or they try to inflate the debt away. 

At this point, the Japanese have chosen to try to inflate the debt away. They have initiated the greatest quantitative easing experiment that a major industrialized nation has attempted since the days of the Weimar Republic. Over the next two years, the Bank of Japan plans to zap 60 trillion yen into existence out of thin air and use it to buy government bonds. 

By the time this program is over, the monetary base in Japan will have approximately doubled. But authorities in Japan are desperate. They know that the Japanese debt bomb could set off global panic at any time, and they are trying to find a way out that will not cause too much pain.

Unfortunately, the only way that this bizarre quantitative easing program will work is if investors in Japanese bonds act very, very irrationally. You see, the only way that Japan has been able to pile up this much debt in the first place is because they have been able to borrow gigantic piles of money at super low interest rates.

Right now, the yield on 10 year Japanese bonds is sitting at an absurdly low 0.76%. But even with such ridiculously low interest rates, the central government of Japan is still spending about half of all tax revenue on debt service.

If interest rates go up, the game is over.

But now that the Japanese government has announced that it plans to double the monetary base, it would be extremely irrational for investors not to demand higher rates on Japanese government debt. After all, why would you want to loan money to the Japanese government for less than one percent a year when the purchasing power of your money could potentially be halved over the next two years?

Amazingly, this is exactly what the Japanese government is counting on. They are counting on being able to wildly print up money and monetize debt, but also keep yields on Japanese bonds at insanely low levels at the same time.

For the moment, it is actually working. Investors in Japanese bonds are behaving very, very irrationally.

But if that changes at some point, we could potentially be looking at the greatest Asian economic crisis of all time.

And there are some very sharp minds out there that believe that is exactly what is going to happen.

For example, the founder of Hayman Capital Management, Kyle Bass, has been sounding the alarm about Japan for a long time. He correctly predicted the subprime mortgage meltdown, and in the process he made hundreds of millions of dollars for his clients. Now he believes that the next major crash is going to be in Japan.

According to Bass, the bond bubble in Japan is so large that once it begins to implode fear is going to start spreading like wildfire...

Remember, Japanese banks in general have 900% of their tangible assets invested in JGBs that are the most negatively convex instrument you can put into a portfolio. Assume for instance that a bank holds a 10 year bond yielding 80 basis points. A 100 basis point move will cost the JGB investor about 10 years of expected interest payments.

Think about the psychology of all the players and financial implications if rates do move 100 basis points. Think about the solvency of a nation which currently spends 50% of its central government tax revenues on debt service, half of which earns the lowest yields of any country in the world.

You can’t look at this as a simple question. You need to think about this as a multivariate equation. You have to think about the incentives and the fears of all the participants. And you need to think about the fiscal sustainability of the government.

If rates even rise by a full percentage point, it could start a stampede toward the exits that nobody in the entire world would be able to control...

I ran a survey of 1,009 Japanese investors where we asked: “If rates were to move up 100 basis points, would that engender more confidence and make you want to buy more JGBs?” or, “Would you take your money elsewhere, even if it were hamstringing your government’s ability to operate?” 8 – 9% of respondents that said that they would buy more bonds and almost 80% said they would run, not walk the other way.

And of course Japan is not the only "debt bomb" that could potentially go off over in Asia. As I mentioned in another article, the major problem over in China is the level of private debt...

In China, the big problem is the absolutely stunning growth of private domestic debt. According to a recent World Bank report, the total amount of credit in China has risen from 9 trillion dollars in 2008 to 23 trillion dollars today.

That increase is roughly equivalent to the entire U.S. commercial banking system.

There is simply way, way too much debt in our world today. Never before has there been so much red ink all over the planet at the same time.

Many in the mainstream media insist that this party can go on indefinitely.

But that is what they said about the housing bubble too.

Sadly, the truth is that every financial bubble eventually bursts, and this global debt bubble will be no exception.

U.S. - Sponsored Israel-palestinian Interim Peace Talks Near Moment of Decision
Aug 13th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

The formal Israeli-Palestinian meeting announced by the US State Department as scheduled for next Wednesday, Aug. 14 is but the outer shell of the secret hard-core negotiations bouncing back and forth for weeks between US Secretary of State John Kerry, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, debkafile reports.

The real talks are approaching a climax on the fundamental issues of borders, Jerusalem, refugees and settlements. Every afternoon in past weeks, Kerry has called the Israeli prime minister and Palestinian leader on secure phone lines and taken the talks a step further. Any incoming calls from the two leaders are switched directly through to the Secretary of State, an unheard of procedure in his department.

As early as June 30, debkafile revealed exclusively that the three-cornered negotiations had secretly got down to the brass tacks of core issues.

Ten days later, our sources reported dramatic progress, to the point that Kerry was asking Netanyahu for specific information on the Jewish settlements he was willing to remove in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), and Abbas was chipping in with additions to the list. Netanyahu countered with questions about the Palestinian concessions on offer for the evacuations.

The process has been reduced to straight haggling, Middle East bazaar style – except that the wares laid out for sale are Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees, security, international security forces and the borders that will separate Israel from a future Palestinian state.

Although Secretary Kerry has stated publicly that his objective is a final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, his expectations are more realistic when he handles the behind-the scenes, real-life horse trading. All three parties appreciate that the most they can achieve are interim accords. Items bound to remain at issue will have to be set aside for a future round of negotiations at a time which none of the parties is inclined to pin down.

For now, the officials assigned with conducting the formal negotiations are not privy to the progress made secretly by their principals. US special envoy Ambassador Martin Indyk, Justice Minister and senior negotiator Tzipi Livni and Palestinian negotiator Saab Erekat are therefore still in the dark.

Progress is substantial enough by now to have prompted Kerry to convene a meeting of Jewish American leaders for a briefing Thursday evening, Aug. 8, at the White House.

He told them there was a “strategic imperative” to arrive at a deal soon, and said he understood the difficulties Netanyahu faced in dealing with a coalition that included hard right parties and figures. He was described as appearing “bullish” about the talks, but also “nervous” about the Israeli prime minister’s ability to overcome the resistance in his own Likud party and government coalition to sweeping concessions on settlements.

As well as Ambassador Indyk, Kerrry invited National Security Adviser Susan Rice to join him at the meeting, which lasted 90 minutes, to signal President Barack Obama’s approval.

Kerry criticized the European Union’s policy of excluding Israeli enterprises on the West Bank from grants and prizes as likely to “nudge Netanyahu away” from a deal with the Palestinians, and therefore counter-productive to the peace effort he launched last February.

According to the information reaching debkafile, Kerry’s motive in summoning American Jewish leaders to the White House was his belief that progress in the negotiations has brought the Israeli prime minister close to a crossroads. He will soon face a decision to reshuffle his cabinet and replace ministers who would oppose the terms of the interim accord shaping up with Palestinians. For this step, he would find the support of American Jewry helpful.

Netanyahu will soon need to present the leaders of the pro-settlement Israel Beteinu and Bayit Yehudi parties with the choice of backing him up all the way to the accord with the Palestinians to which the US Secretary is steering at speed, or quitting the government coalition. The same question will be put to Netanyahu’s own Likud party members.

The Rise of the Bear: Signs That Russia is Rapidly Catching Up to the United States
Aug 13th, 2013
Daily Newstheeconomiccollpaseblog
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

The Russian Bear is stronger and more powerful than it has ever been before. Sadly, most Americans don't understand this. They still think of Russia as an "ex-superpower" that was rendered almost irrelevant when the Cold War ended. And yes, when the Cold War ended Russia was in rough shape. 

I got the chance to go over there in the early nineties, and at the time Russia was an economic disaster zone. Russian currency was so worthless that I joked that I could go exchange a 20 dollar bill and buy the Kremlin. But since that time Russia has roared back to life. 

Once Vladimir Putin became president, the Russian economy started to grow very rapidly. Today, Russia is an economic powerhouse that is blessed with an abundance of natural resources. Their debt to GDP ratio is extremely small, they actually run a trade surplus every year, and they have the second most powerful military on the entire planet. 

Anyone that underestimates Russia at this point is making a huge mistake. The Russian Bear is back, and today it is a more formidable adversary than it ever was at any point during the Cold War.

Just check out the following statistics. The following are 18 signs that Russia is rapidly catching up to the United States...

#1 Russia produces more oil than anyone else on the planet. The United States is in third place.

#2 Russia is the number two oil exporter in the world. The United States is forced to import more oil than anyone else in the world.

#3 Russia produces more natural gas than anyone else on the planet. The United States is in second place.

#4 Today, Russia supplies 34 percent of Europe's natural gas needs.

#5 The United States has a debt to GDP ratio of 101 percent. Russia has a debt to GDP ratio of about 8 percent.

#6 The United States had a trade deficit of more than half a trillion dollars last year. Russia consistently runs a large trade surplus.

#7 The United States has an unemployment rate of 7.4 percent. Russia has an unemployment rate of 5.4 percent.

#8 Since Vladimir Putin first became president of Russia, the Russian economy has grown at a very rapid pace. The following is from Wikipedia...

Under the presidency of Vladimir Putin Russia's economy saw the nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) double, climbing from 22nd to 11th largest in the world. The economy made real gains of an average 7% per year (1999: 6.5%, 2000: 10%, 2001: 5.7%, 2002: 4.9%, 2003: 7.3%, 2004: 7.2%, 2005: 6.4%, 2006: 8.2%, 2007: 8.5%, 2008: 5.2%), making it the 6th largest economy in the world in GDP(PPP). In 2007, Russia's GDP exceeded that of 1990, meaning it has overcome the devastating consequences of the recession in the 1990s.

During Putin's eight years in office, the industry grew by 75%, investments increased by 125%, and agricultural production and construction increased as well. Real incomes more than doubled and the average salary increased eightfold from $80 to $640. The volume of consumer credit between 2000–2006 increased 45 times, and during that same time period, the middle class grew from 8 million to 55 million, an increase of 7 times. The number of people living below the poverty line also decreased from 30% in 2000 to 14% in 2008.

#9 According to Bloomberg, Russia has added 570 metric tons of gold to their reserves over the past decade. In the United States, nobody seems to be quite sure how much gold the Federal Reserve actually has left.

#10 Moscow is the second most expensive city in the world. Meanwhile, the United States actually has the unfriendliest city in the world (Newark, New Jersey).

#11 More billionaires live in Moscow than in any other city on the globe.

#12 The Moscow metro system completely outclasses the subway systems in Washington D.C. and New York City.

#13 The United States has the most powerful military on the planet, but Russia is in second place.

#14 Russia has introduced a new "near silent" nuclear submarine which is far more quiet than anything the U.S. has...

The Borey Class submarine, dubbed Vladimir Monomakh, has a next generation nuclear reactor, can dive deeper than 1,200 feet, and carries up to 20 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM).

Each of these "Bulava" ICBM's can carry ten detachable MIRV warheads, what they call "re-entry vehicles," capable of delivering 150 kiloton yields per warhead

#15 While Barack Obama is neutering the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal, Vladimir Putin is working hard to modernize Russian nuclear forces.

#16 Russian missile forces will hold more than 200 drills during the second half of 2013.

#17 Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made headlines all over the world when he climbed into the cockpit of Russia’s new "fifth generation" fighter jet and announced that it was far superior to the F-22 Raptor.

#18 It is estimated that Russia has more spies inside the United States today than it did at any point during the Cold War.

Unfortunately, whenever I write an article about Russia I find that most people simply do not get it. They will make statements such as "the Cold War is over" or "Russia is our friend" which show a complete and total lack of understanding of the current geopolitical situation.

Russia has been steadily building a stronger relationship with China, and collectively they represent the number one strategic threat to the United States.

Someday this will become abundantly clear to the American people. Hopefully it will not be too late by the time they realize it.

Pre - Crime and Mind Control Technologies are Already Here
Aug 13th, 2013
Daily Newsthetruthwins.com
Categories: Today's Headlines;Warning

Should the government be trying to figure out if we are going to commit a crime in advance? That sounds like something out of a Tom Cruise movie, but the truth is that “pre-crime” technologies such as were portrayed in Minority Report are being aggressively developed, and some have actually already been deployed. 

We live at a time when technology is advancing at an exponential rate, and it can be really hard to keep up with how rapidly our world is changing. In the future, authorities may not only be able to use pre-crime technology to read our minds, they might also be able to use technology to directly control our minds as well. 

Yes, I know that sounds science fiction, but after I tell you about some cutting edge research that has been taking place at Harvard Medical School you might not think that such a notion seems so bizarre.

But first I want to discuss some of the very disturbing pre-crime technologies that the government is working on. One of the most prominent programs is known as FAST (Future Attribute Screening Technology). According to Wikipedia, this pre-crime system is already so advanced that developers claim that it has about an 80% success rate…

Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) is a program created by the Department of Homeland Security. It was originally titled Project Hostile Intent. The purpose is to detect “Mal Intent” by screening people for “psychological and physiological indicators” in a “Mobile Screening Laboratory”.

The program was under the Homeland Security Advanced Research Agency and the Science & Technology Human Factors Behavior Science Division of DHS. In a meeting held on July 24, 2008 the DHS Under Secretary Jay Cohen stated, the goal is to create a new technology that would be working in real time as opposed to after a crime is already committed.

The DHS science spokesman John Verrico stated in September 2008 that preliminary testing had demonstrated 78% accuracy on mal-intent detection and 80% on deception.

The technology behind FAST is extremely complex, but it can be fooled. So once FAST is operational you better not get too nervous or have a particularly bad day, because according to Professor Margaret Hu the consequences of being “convicted” of a pre-crime by FAST could potentially include “deportation, prison, or death”…

FAST is currently under testing by DHS and has been described in press reports as a “precrime” program. If implemented, FAST will purportedly rely upon complex statistical algorithms that can aggregate data from multiple databases in an attempt to “predict” future criminal or terrorist acts, most likely through stealth cybersurveillance and covert data monitoring of ordinary citizens. 

The FAST program purports to assess whether an individual might pose a “precrime” threat through the capture of a range of data, including biometric data. In other words, FAST attempts to infer the security threat risk of future criminals and terrorists through data analysis.

Under FAST, biometric-based physiological and behavioral cues are captured through the following types of biometric data: body and eye movements, eye blink rate and pupil variation, body heat changes, and breathing patterns. Biometric- based linguistic cues include the capture of the following types of biometric data: voice pitch changes, alterations in rhythm, and changes in intonations of speech. 

Documents released by DHS indicate that individuals could be arrested and face other serious consequences based upon statistical algorithms and predictive analytical assessments. Specifically, projected consequences of FAST ‘can range from none to being temporarily detained to deportation, prison, or death.’

Perhaps you are reading this and you assume that the widespread implementation of such a system is still a long way off.

Well, if that is what you are thinking, you would be wrong.

In fact, pre-crime cameras are already being installed at important transit locations in San Francisco…

Hundreds of pre-crime surveillance cameras are to be installed in San Francisco’s subway system that will analyze “suspicious behavior” and alert guards to potential criminal or terrorist activity – before any crime has been committed.

“Manufacturers BRS Labs said it has installed the cameras at tourist attractions, government buildings and military bases in the U.S. In its latest project BRS Labs is to install its devices on the transport system in San Francisco, which includes buses, trams and subways,” reports the Daily Mail.

The cameras are programmed with a list of behaviors considered “normal”. Anything that deviates from usual activity is classified as suspicious and guards are immediately alerted via text message or a phone call.

Equipped with the ability to track up to 150 suspects at a time, the cameras build up a “memory” of suspicious behavior to determine what constitutes potential criminal activity.

A total of 288 cameras will be installed across 12 transport hubs.

And without a doubt more major cities will soon be adopting such technology.

So try not to act suspiciously – someone may be watching.

Another very disturbing technological development was recently reported on by Businessweek. Researchers at Harvard Medical School have apparently found a way for a human to control the mind of a rat…

The rat is pinned down. It’s laying prostrate on what looks like a hospital bed with its head in some sort of vice. The rat is white and huge and has a black ribbon tied around the middle of its tail. Now and again, the tail flicks. Unremarkable, right?

Well, yes, except that the rat is having its mind controlled by human thought—and there’s evidence all around that our minds might soon come under control, too.

In April, when researchers from Harvard Medical School published the rat video on YouTube, they were demonstrating the creation of a brain-to-brain interface formed between human and vermin. Basically, the human could concentrate on a specific idea and—via something called transcranial focused ultrasound, or FUS—an impulse would be sent to excite the part of the rat’s brain that controls tail movement. The experiment worked 94 percent of the time, with a thought taking about 1.5 seconds to travel from human to rat.

So precisely how does this work? A recent ExtremeTech article explained how the researchers are doing this…

Which brings us neatly onto Harvard’s human-mouse brain-to-brain interface. The human wears a run-of-the-mill EEG-based BCI, while the mouse is equipped with a focused ultrasound (FUS) computer-brain interface (CBI). FUS is a relatively new technology that allows the researchers to excite a very specific region of neurons in the rat’s brain using an ultrasound signal. The main advantage of FUS is that, unlike most brain-stimulation techniques, such as DBS, it isn’t invasive. For now it looks like the FUS equipment is fairly bulky, but future versions might be small enough for use in everyday human CBIs. 

With the EEG equipped, the BCI detects whenever the human looks at a specific pattern on a computer screen. The BCI then fires off a command to rat’s CBI, which causes ultrasound to be beamed into the region of the rat’s motor cortex that deals with tail movement. 

So could this kind of technology eventually be used to control human minds?

Probably.

And already there have been quite a few other researchers that have achieved some stunning breakthroughs in the field of mind control technology…

Back in 2008, Japanese researchers discovered a way to monitor someone’s neural activity and figure out what object or word they are thinking of from a constrained set of choices. This year, scientists at Japan’s National Institute of Genetics recorded a video of a fish brain forming a thought by figuring out which neurons light up when the animal contemplated food. 

The chip maker Intel (INTC) and researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have done some very promising work around mind-reading with humans. They can ask a person to think about a specific object and can then determine—90 percent of the time—what that object is by watching brain activity on an fMRI machine. 

So far, the vocabulary for the tests is limited to about 1,000 words, and the subjects are merely picking between a couple of words at a time, but their success rate is good enough to conceive of people being able to turn a smartphone or a TV on and off via thoughts alone.

Does all of this sound very strange to you?

It sounds very strange to me too.

But we need to be aware of these things. Just imagine what a tyrannical government could do with such technologies. It would potentially be able to gain a level of control that tyrants of the past never even dreamed possible.

Pre-crime and mind control technologies are already here and they will undoubtedly become far more advanced in the future.

So how will governments around the world choose to use these technologies?

That is a frightening thing to think about.

Let the Headlines Speak
Aug 13th, 2013
Daily NewsFrom the Internet
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

0 Surface-to-Air Missiles Were Stolen from Libya and Are Now ‘in the Hands of Some Very Ugly People’, Says Whistleblowers’ Attorney
A former U.S. attorney representing Benghazi whistleblowers is claiming that 400 surface-to-air missiles were “stolen” and “taken from Libya” and are now “in the hands of some very ugly people.” He also said the Obama administration is “deeply concerned” that the weapons may be used to shoot down airliners.  

INCREASING CHANCE OF FLARES
Two new sunspots are growing rapidly in the sun's southern hemisphere. One of them, AR1817, is directly facing Earth and poses a threat for X-class solar flares.  

How The Corrupt Establishment Is Selling Moral Bankruptcy To America
They must first sell the public on the idea that they hold the exact same values of natural law as everyone else. The public must at first believe that the criminal leaders are pure in their motives and have the best interests of the nation at heart, even if they secretly do not.  

‘Sinister’: Turkey Installing Tip Boxes Encouraging Neighbors to Spy on Each Other
The Turkish government is launching a new campaign encouraging neighbors to tattle on each other by placing anonymous notes in boxes to be installed nationwide. The plan has elicited criticism from journalists who are using terms such as “sinister” and “troubling” and comparing the plan to Nazism, Stalinism and the Stasi, saying it will peel away the trust between citizens and will inevitably lead to abuse.  

Netanyahu: EU directives undermine efforts to achieve peace
In a meeting with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu attacked the new EU directives restricting interaction with Israeli entities beyond the pre-1967 lines, saying they "undermine efforts to achieve peace."  

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory signs voter ID law
North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory has signed into law a controversial bill requiring voters to show photo IDs when they go to the polls. His state becomes the first in the US to impose restrictions on voters since the Supreme Court struck down part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in June.  

For the first time, Iron Dome intercepts missile fired at Eilat
Terrorists fired a missile at Eilat shortly before 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning, triggering an air raid siren and activating the Iron Dome anti-rocket battery, which is stationed at the Red Sea city. The Iron Dome system intercepted at least one missile, according to initial IDF assessments. The incident marked the first time that Iron Dome has ever intercepted a rocket fired at Eilat.  

Earthquake damages houses, roads in Tibet
A strong 6.1-magnitude earthquake followed by several aftershocks on Monday hit parts of China's Tibet province, destroying at least 21 homes and damaging 17 others in the remote Himalayan region. However, no casualties have been reported so far.  

Poll: Palestinian support for peace down
While a majority of Palestinians support the resumption of peace talks with Israel, their number has decreased since April, a Palestinian poll indicates. A poll conducted by Arab World for Research and Development, based in Ramallah, indicated 67 percent of Palestinians support renewed talks if Israel agrees to a settlement freeze, a 9 percent drop from April.  

When It Comes To Internet Porn, The US Is Firmly Ahead Of Everyone
the Top Ten nations and Top Twenty states that serve up the most illicit content... and the winner is U-S-A! 66% of the porn hosted in the US comes from California and interestingly only 0.62% of all porn sites use the ".xxx" domain name. Of course, hard numbers are tough to come by, but as ExtremeTech illustrates, Xvideos - the largest porn site on the web - gets a stunning 4.4 billion page-views per month...  

Video shows child praying to Barack Obama
A controversial YouTube video posted Sunday by Fox News’ Todd Starnes shows a child praying to Barack Obama. “Barack Obama, thank you for doing everything and all the kind stuff,” the young boy starts. “Thank you for all the stuff that you helped us with. Thank you for taking the courage and all the responsibility for everything you have done for us and God has gave you special powers.”  

Russia says Syria peace talks unlikely before October
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said more talks were expected at the end of August on preparing the so-called Geneva-2 conference, aimed at bringing Syrian rebels and President Bashar al-Assad's government together. "It (the peace conference) is unlikely to happen in September because there are different events, including the 'ministerial week' at the U.N. General Assembly," Gatilov told Interfax news agency.  

The Rise Of The Bear: 18 Signs That Russia Is Rapidly Catching Up To The United States
The Russian Bear is stronger and more powerful than it has ever been before. Sadly, most Americans don't understand this. They still think of Russia as an "ex-superpower" that was rendered almost irrelevant when the Cold War ended. And yes, when the Cold War ended Russia was in rough shape.  

Earthquake in NE Bulgaria causes material damages
Cracks on buildings’ walls have been registered in the region of the town of Devnya, Northeast Bulgaria, after the earthquake that stirred up the region at around 9 a.m. this morning. Mayor of Devnya, Atanas Kuzev, announced the news  

Israeli Armed Forces Shifting Emphasis from Mechanised Warfare Toward Air and Cyber Power
Aug 13th, 2013
Daily Newseconomist.com
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Some 30,000 soldiers are slowly vacating their bases in Israel’s main city, Tel Aviv, and moving to the Negev desert. By the end of the decade, much of the country’s army will have migrated to four huge bases alongside Bedouin shanties. 

Tel Aviv’s developers, relishing the prospect of building on vast tracts of the country’s most valuable land, talk of turning swords into timeshares. They plan an 80-storey tower for the Kirya, the old British base in the city centre, which for the past six decades has been the headquarters of the general staff. Large parts of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) expect to withdraw from coastal population centres. Overall, the men in uniform, who long dominated the state, are becoming more peripheral.

Israeli defence spending remains the world’s fifth highest per person and young Jews continue to do up to three years of military service. In the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, the army’s hold on the body politic can still be felt, but it is no longer as strong as it once was. 

As Israel’s economy has boomed, military spending has fallen from 17.7% of GDP in 1991 to around 6% today. The Knesset sliced $1 billion off the most recent defence budget, the steepest cut in two decades. Led by a maverick hawk, Moshe Feiglin, politicians of all stripes are campaigning to professionalise what has long been a people’s army. 

“The compulsory draft produces adverse results,” says Mr Feiglin. “The IDF relies on cheap manual labour instead of specialisation and technology and this harms the country’s defences.”

Although stopping short of ending the draft, the Knesset this month approved a military restructuring plan that prods the army towards professionalisation. It urges a shift away from manpower-intensive armoured divisions in favour of the air force, intelligence collection and cyber-warfare. Conscripts are encouraged to extend their three-year terms.

Plodding ground forces increasingly feel like a burden, lawmakers say. Out will go some 4,500 officers, an artillery brigade wielding howitzers and hundreds of ageing Merkava and M60 tanks, some as old as the Vietnam war. In will come the new training ground in the Negev desert. 

It resembles a high-tech park, fit for an age when a technician in Tel Aviv can attack a target in Teheran. “The current and future battlefields are totally different from what we knew in the past,” writes Moshe Yaalon, the defence minister, fittingly, on his Facebook page.

One of the reasons behind Israel’s new order of battle is the Arab spring. The armies in the largest neighbouring countries no longer represent the conventional threat they once did. Egypt’s is too busy with domestic politics and Syria’s has ceased to exist as a coherent force. “We’re surrounded by failed states,” declares a minister. Syria and Iraq are “to a great extent” out of commission, an officer echoes. The gap in technical capabilities widens every year. Arab armies cannot keep up.

To be sure, Israel still has lots of mortal enemies. Hizbullah, the Lebanese party-cum-militia, controls tens of thousands of missiles. Extremist groups in Sinai, Gaza and Syria loathe the country and so does Iran, which sponsors some of them.

Yet, these outfits do not present traditional threats. Tanks are useless against Iran’s nuclear programme or a band of jihadists. Air force commanders praise rapid-reaction units that make use of fighter jets, drones, intelligence and cyber-warfare. 

They stress that operations using such forces cause fewer casualties and thus reduce the risk that a conflict will escalate. A series of Israeli strikes in Syria and Sudan on missiles apparently bound for Hizbullah and Hamas have resulted in no tangible fallout so far. They have also spared Israel the international condemnation that ground invasions tend to ignite.

The IDF has already changed enormously in recent years. Its largest unit, 8200, is focused on cyber-warfare. The air force has taken over some tasks from ground forces. “In 2000 only 1% of Gaza’s terrorists were killed from the air. Today it’s 98%,” according to a senior air force commander. Last November’s offensive against Gaza militants was conducted almost entirely from the air, without the deployment of ground troops.

Israel still needs some boots on the ground, however. In a fight with Hizbullah, infantry would search southern Lebanon for hidden missiles aimed at Jewish population centres. Retired generals, having won their medals in epic ground battles, complain that the reduction in armoured brigades and a declining number of soldiers with combat experience has left Israel exposed. “It’s very risky,” says one. “Wars have a habit of popping up when you least expect them.”

But even they admit that Israel’s relations with its armed forces are changing. Military street parades belong to a bygone era. The chief of staff, Benny Gantz, consciously acts like a bureaucrat. “We no longer have charismatic military figures,” says Shlomo Swirsky, who runs Adva, an Israeli think-tank. “It’s not the vehicle for upward mobility it once was.” Today’s party leaders are more likely to be journalists than generals. A recent law bars retiring security officials from politics for three years.

Political priorities are changing. A new generation of politicians scrutinises the military budget more closely, forcing the army into ever new sleights of hand to keep generous pensions and vacation allowances. Voters too seem to want a more normal, less militarised state. 

The number of days spent by ex-conscripts on reserve duty—once a mandatory month a year for all men under 40—has fallen from 10m days annually to 2.5m in a generation, despite a sharp population increase. Were it not for the labour-intensive occupation of the West Bank, the number would fall lower still. Should the negotiations with the Palestinians bear fruit, it might yet.

Greatest Threat to U.S.: These 6,000 Jihadists
Aug 13th, 2013
Daily NewsWND
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

At least 6,000 jihadist rebels in Syria, many affiliated with al-Qaida, now pose a major security risk to the United States and Europe, according to Obama administration officials and Mideast experts.

Most of the news coverage of the emerging threat fails to mention U.S. and Western support, including weapons transfers, to the Syrian rebels. Al-Qaida-linked groups reportedly are prominent among the rebel ranks.

On Tuesday, Michael Morell, the Central Intelligence Agency’s second-in-command, warned in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that al-Qaida groups in Syria, along with the civil war itself, pose the greatest threat to U.S. national security.

The Wall Street Journal reported Morell said there are now more foreigners flowing into Syria each month to fight with al-Qaida-affiliated groups than there were going to Iraq to fight with al-Qaida at the height of the war there.

Meanwhile, according to UPI, Matthew G. Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, stated Syria “has become really the predominant jihadist battlefield in the world.”

“The concern going forward from a threat perspective is there are individuals traveling to Syria, becoming further radicalized, becoming trained and then returning as part of really a global jihadist movement to Western Europe and, potentially, to the United States,” said Olsen at a security conference in Aspen, Colo., this month.

Gilles de Kerchove, the European Union’s counterterrorism coordinator, told the same conference, “The scale of this is completely different from what we’ve experienced in the past.”

De Kerchove spoke of jihadists flocking to Syria from Europe. He described the European jihadist travelers as self-radicalized and traveling on their own initiative.

He said the militants now pose a threat to their home countries if they attempt to return home, and he warned that European governments lack the capabilities to monitor all of them.

USA Today further reported on at least 6,000 foreign jihadists from 50 nations, including fighters from Australia, France, Britain and the U.S.

“Australians now make up the largest contingent from any developed nation in the Syrian rebel forces,” the newspaper reported. “There are around 120 French fighters in Syria, about 100 Britons and a handful of Americans.”

There is a history of foreign fighters returning home to carry out terrorist attacks, such as the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, in which 19 U.S. servicemen were killed.

Unmentioned by CIA official Morell or the major news media reporting on the Syrian rebel threat is that the U.S. and Western countries have supplied vast sums of weapons to the Syrian rebels and earlier to the rebels in Libya who toppled Moammar Gadhafi’s regime.

WND reported earlier this week that U.S. and other Western arms shipments to jihadist-saturated Libyan and Syrian rebel groups may have contributed to al-Qaida’s growing worldwide threat.

Al-Qaida’s resurgence may now be culminating in the terrorist group’s reported plot to target U.S. and Western interests, prompting a weeklong shutdown of U.S. embassies across the Middle East and North Africa, WND further reported.

Indeed, informed Middle Eastern security sources told WND the current al-Qaida terrorist plot against U.S. and Western targets is a direct result of U.S.-supported efforts currently under way to purge al-Qaida affiliates from the ranks of the Syrian rebels. The sources have specific knowledge of the terrorist threat.

The sources said the U.S. has been working with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states to support a U.S.-armed Free Syria Army effort to cleanse al-Qaida affiliates from among the rebel ranks, including al-Nusra and other groups.

For months, the U.S. reportedly has been providing lethal support to the Syrian rebels amid widespread fears the Western weapons could fall into the hands of al-Qaida organizations known to work alongside the Free Syria Army.

Now with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad closing in on the insurgency targeting his regime, U.S. allies in the Gulf and throughout the Middle East are deeply concerned the freshly armed al-Qaida groups could turn their efforts from Assad to destabilizing the moderate Arab regimes.

To that affect, according to the Middle Eastern security sources, the U.S. has been heavily aiding the Free Syrian Army in its efforts to disarm or eliminate the al-Qaida groups fighting as Syrian rebels.

The Middle Eastern security sources said the current al-Qaida plot is an attempt to dissuade the U.S. from further supporting the disarming efforts.
Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2013/August12/122.html#9ikEDfduvp3gjbbj.99