Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

Will Big Data and Computer Algorithms be Able to Predict Our Future?
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsProphecy New Watch
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

In February, while the world was watching citizens of the Ukraine topple their government from behind barricades of flaming tires, computer scientist Naren Ramakrishnan and his research team were intently watching a similar situation unfold in Venezuela.

The South American nation has been a tinderbox since early February when Leopoldo Lopez, mayor of Chacao and an opposition leader, tweeted a call for #LaSalida on Friday, January 31. We will meet this Sunday, his tweet read, for #TheExit. 

The hashtag was a thinly coded call for the ouster of President Nicolas Maduro, Hugo Chavez’s successor. The protests, which decry high inflation, shortages of staple goods, and the country’s soaring homicide rate, started in Chacao and quickly spread to the capital, Caracas. For a while, demonstrations took place nearly every day. Since the unrest began, at least 32 people have died.

For years, Ramakrishnan, a professor at Virginia Tech, and his team have been sifting through tweets, blog posts, and news articles about Latin America, keeping a close eye on events in ten countries, including Venezuela. 

These past couple of months have been no different. But Ramakrishnan and his colleagues haven’t been bent over newspapers or straining their eyes scanning streams of tweets. Rather, they were monitoring the dashboard of EMBERS, their computer program that draws on tweets, news articles, and more to predict the future.

Lopez’s #LaSalida tweet was probably among those which EMBERS analyzed, and the meaning of its uncoded message was almost certainly clear to the sophisticated system. But by that point, EMBERS had already suggested to its operators that Venezuela was ripe for civil unrest. It had also done the same for Brazil many months earlier, accurately predicting the June 2013 demonstrations against rising transit fares.

EMBERS is the result of years’ worth of work by Ramakrishnan and his team, which includes computer scientists, statisticians, political scientists, social scientists, and an epidemiologist. It is the winning entrant in the Open Source Initiative at the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, a part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. 

IARPA, according to its website, “invests in high-risk, high-payoff research programs that have the potential to provide the United States with an overwhelming intelligence advantage over future adversaries.” The ability to accurately forecast civil unrest, epidemics, and elections around the world could do exactly that.

Soon, EMBERS’s capabilities will expand beyond Latin America to the Middle East. It will draw on some of the same data sources, but also add new feeds. Its language processing routines will be adapted to new languages, and portions of its code will be tailored to that region’s cultures. No one is saying exactly when EMBERS and its offspring will be used to inform decisions by intelligence agents, but given IARPA’s role in funding it, that seems to be the plan.

From Delphi to Digital

Predicting the future is a dream as old as antiquity. People have turned to sources as varied as the oracle at Delphi, the Bible, Nostradamus, and the Farmer’s Almanac. Most prophecies have been just plain false or, less damningly, coincidentally correct. But that hasn’t stopped people from trying to guess what was coming around the bend.

Today, of course, we make forecasts all the time, and there are plenty of times we get it right. Our lives revolve around weather forecasts, which are startlingly accurate as many as ten days out. We try to guess how many people will take the bus during rush hour or how many turkeys will be sold for Thanksgiving. But when it comes to predicting most collective human actions, we haven’t been as successful.

At least, we weren’t. Today, a wealth of data is changing the equation. “In the past, you had traditional media, you had newspapers,” says Dan Braha, a complexity scientist at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. “Information was delayed from one area to another. It was very difficult to get the real-time information about events.”

“For many hundreds of years, the ratio of people who created content to those who consumed it was very small. Today, it has inverted.”

In the 1990s, the internet began to dismantle some of those barriers, reducing the time it took for news to travel from, say, Caracas to New York. Rather than get a subscription to The New York Times, all people had to do was point their browsers to the right address. As information flowed more freely, the amount available to any given person increased.

But even then, the web hadn’t yet changed the dynamics of content creation and consumption. “When the web appeared, it was a total consumption thing,” says Bernardo Huberman, director of the social computing lab at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories.

“Then Web 2.0 appeared, which essentially is the introduction of social media. Namely, people can generate content. Wikipedia is one, Twitter is another, Facebook, blogging, and so on. There was an explosion of generated content from the bottom up. For many hundreds of years, the ratio of people who created content to those who consumed it was very small. Today, it has inverted.”

Computer scientists and statisticians began mining that data for meaningful relationships. City managers started studying road usage to predict traffic jams, retailers combed past purchases to entice customers back into the store, and social media networks scoured profiles to sell more expensive ads. The era of Big Data was born.

But simply crunching through mountains of data isn’t sufficient. Take Google Flu Trends, which purports to predict the severity of flu season by monitoring the number of searches for flu-related terms. Early on, the tool performed well. But starting in August 2011, the model overestimated the flu’s prevalence for 100 out of the next 108 weeks, according to an article recently published in the journal Science.

Mathematical models like Google Flu Trends can help make sense of big data, but they can also be misleading. For researchers in the era of big data, it’s a cautionary tale. “The data is there. The question is, what do you do with the data?” Braha says. “If you use the wrong models, you get the wrong results.” On top of that, even sophisticated models are limited by our ability to process natural language using computers. Plus, as time horizons lengthen, accuracy tends to decline.

That hasn’t slowed things down, though. If anything, the pace has quickened. Predictive science is fueled by data, and the more that’s available, the more it has to run with. “The more data you get, the predictive ability of the model goes up,” Braha says. “The availability of social media and open source data sets—this is one of the main reasons that enabled people to develop models.”

From Movies to Mass Protests

In 2010, Huberman and his colleague Sitram Asur published a paper about predicting box office receipts of newly released movies. Plenty of other papers had been published on the topic, but theirs had a twist—it relied solely on tweets. It was among the first—if not the first—study that used social media to predict some event before it happened. Their model proved impressively prescient, easily besting the previous gold standard. Huberman and Asur had proved the utility of 140-character sentiments.

A year later, in April, IARPA announced the Open Source Indicators program (OSI), which would award substantial grants to three research groups to develop models that ingested publicly available data like tweets, blog posts, and news articles to anticipate “significant societal events,” such as unrest, epidemics, and economic instability. OSI isn’t the organization’s only program—there are dozens—but it is perhaps the most audacious.

On the surface, the goals of the OSI program don’t appear much different from what practitioners of statistics, economics, and other disciplines have been doing for decades—that is, building models that use past data to predict some event. The difference is, OSI wanted researchers to predict an event that hadn’t happened yet. 

Previous “prediction” algorithms had the benefit of hindsight. 

Researchers had a better idea which factors precipitated an event, and that made it easier to tune the algorithms. “It’s always easy to look at things retrospectively,” says Ramakrishnan, the EMBERS researcher. What makes this new breed different is that the outcomes and their causes are unknown. The events haven’t happened yet, and that makes it harder to tweak a model to spit out the right forecast.

To create EMBERS, dozens of scientists across a handful of disciplines developed algorithms to scrutinize Twitter’s firehose of information, unravel various dialects of Spanish, Portuguese, and French, tally reservation cancellations on OpenTable, and count cars in satellite images of hospital parking lots. None of the data sets they use are classified, though some of them cost money to access. The team has spent two years fine tuning the algorithms and checking their forecasts against reports assembled by a third party.

By the end of February 2014, EMBERS had archived over 12 terabytes of data, or about 3 billion messages. It currently processes about 200 to 2,000 messages per second and adds 15 gigabytes of raw data to the archive every day. 

In the past, that would have required some serious hardware to support. But thanks to cloud computing—where computing resources are dynamically allocated and distributed across massive server farms—the system requires just 12 virtual machines, a number that can be easily increased without buying expensive new servers.

After EMBERS ingests the raw data, it gleans a variety of metadata, including where a tweet originated and what locations are mentioned, the geographic focus of news articles, the organizations being discussed, and so on. Enriched, the data moves on to the four prediction models.

In the case of predicting civil unrest using Twitter, algorithms look for key words or phrases that suggest a protest is in the works. When EMBERS finds a tweet that contains a key word or phrase—like #LaSalida—it looks for mentions of times or dates. The system then sifts through the geographic metadata to determine where the protest might take place.

Since it was first booted up in November 2012, EMBERS has raised over 13,000 alerts.

That’s just one stage. EMBERS also scours tweets for three or more of over 800 specific words or phrases that serve as indicators of unrest. “We look at words and the sentiment with which the word is being used,” says David Mares, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego and a principal investigator on EMBERS. 

A tweet’s sentiment gives important context that can change how it is interpreted, like the difference between a Venezuelan calling for “The Exit” and someone expressing frustration over how they can’t find the exit. The system also uses an algorithm that looks for other meaningful words that might have been overlooked and adds them to the list. “We’re always picking up new words,” Mares says.

While this all this is happening, EMBERS is tracking how tweets flow through the network—how many people are tweeting about protests, who is retweeting them, and how many people they reach. When certain thresholds are crossed, the system fires off an alert. The entire system—which monitors far more than just tweets—generates about 40 alerts per day. Since it was first booted up in November 2012, EMBERS has raised over 13,000 alerts.

Those warnings appear on the system’s dashboard, a screen in a desktop application that looks like a mashup of a Twitter feed, Google Maps, a basketball tournament bracket, and a cardiac monitor. Alerts appear automatically, without any input from a human. “It sort of gives you a global picture of what’s happening,” Ramakrishnan says. “You can see the alerts popping up on the screen. That at least tells you, ‘These are the most major regions that seem to be cause for concern.’ ”

For now, according to the researchers working on it, EMBERS isn’t involved in day-to-day intelligence activities. But it seems likely that analysts will be using it or something like it in the near future. Ramakrishnan says IARPA is interested in a “tunable system,” one that analysts can tweak to receive more or fewer alerts. Much of the work done by EMBERS is manual labor for today’s analysts, he says. “It provides an opportunity for analysts to use this as a filter to cut across all the chatter.”

EMBERS also makes sense of data that can help predict the outcome of elections as well as anticipate disease outbreaks. For the latter, EMBERS draws on standard epidemiological modeling along with a number of unusual data sources, including restaurant reservations on OpenTable and parking lot vacancies at hospitals. 

By monitoring reservations and cancellations, the system can spot when people are staying at home rather than eating out, a potential sign of illness. And by counting cars in satellite images of hospital parking lots, EMBERS knows the approximate number of visits well before official statistics trickle out.

A Theory of Conflict

EMBERS represents just one way scientists are trying to solve to the problem of predicting the future. Others are experimenting with different approaches. Take the work done a team led by Neil Johnson, a physicist at the University of Miami, for example.

Johnson and his team were also among the three groups chosen to compete in the OSI program. They sought develop a theory of human conflict and apply it to various confrontations. Drawing on various data sets, including those on infant-parent relationships, protestors and their governments, computer hackers, high-frequency traders, and terrorists, Johnson and his colleagues distilled a single equation that they say describes how any two-sided asymmetric conflicts—the sort where one side has more power than another—will escalate.

Using their equation, Johnson and his colleagues can predict how a conflict will develop based on the frequency of clashes early on. If confrontations are infrequent at first, any subsequent escalation will be rapid. 

But when two parties meet each other frequently, the escalation will be more gradual. It’s a pattern that’s shows up throughout their varied data sources, from infants fussing for their mothers’ attention all the way up to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. “The common feature of all these systems we looked at is they’re all, like most systems are, asymmetric,” Johnson says. “One side is trying to pick away at the other.”

While asymmetry defines most conflicts, it doesn’t define them all. In World War II, for example, both sides were fairly evenly matched. The same was true in the Cold War. Adding civilians to the mix also changes the dynamic substantially, Johnson says. “That’s something we’re actually looking at now.”

Inevitable Questions

We’re still in the early days of predictive science, but already the field is raising as many questions as it has answered. Could these algorithms further tip the asymmetry of power toward the already powerful? What if systems like EMBERS are developed by oppressive regimes? And what are the consequences of predicting the actions of your own populace?

The answers, of course, depend. Predictive tools can be powerful enablers of either democracy or oppression. If a democratic country is wielding them, its government could prevent protests through preemptive policy changes, says Braha, the complexity scientist. But, he adds, “If a protest is predicted in Iran or China, they can use it in a negative fashion, definitely. They can arrest people before it happens.”

It’s also possible that governments could use this data to track their citizens. EMBERS and other OSI participants are restricted from tracking U.S. citizens as well as most foreign individuals, says Mares, the political scientist; the only exception is public foreign personalities, like politicians. “If a political candidate has a blog and he’s using it during his campaign, we can certainly track that. But by law we are not permitted to track individuals,” he says. Still, the technology is there. “We’re not finding Juanito in La Paz. But what I’m learning is that if we wanted to find Juanito in La Paz, we could.”

EMBERS and its kind are possible, of course, because of the sheer amount of personally identifiable information that’s available online. Much of it is voluntarily posted to Twitter and Facebook, but plenty is unwittingly provided to marketing companies and advertisers. Many of those data sources are unregulated, and many are available for the right price.

In theory, anyone with sufficient resources and brainpower could build their own predictive software similar to EMBERS. “Pick your favorite baddie—to what degree are they invested in the same kinds of things?” Mares asks rhetorically.

For millennia, predicting the future seemed far fetched. Today, it seems inevitable. Predictive science is in its infancy, but as we grow more connected—and more of our worlds become exposed—systems that anticipate our actions, both individually and in aggregate, will only grow more sophisticated and more accurate. Mares puts it best: “We’re just scratching the surface here.”

Users Slam Creepy New Feature That Allows Facebook to Listen in
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsProphecy New Watch
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Facebook has been forced to defend a “creepy” new feature that allows it to activate your smartphone’s microphone and listen in. 

The announcement of the feature has sparked an online backlash, with users mobilising in an effort to get the social media giant to kill off the development.

In what objectors have described as a “Big Brother move”, the feature turns on the phone’s mic and picks up on what is happening, such as music or a TV playing in the background.

Facebook will then automatically add at the end of their status update something like “Watching Game of Thrones” or “Listening to Coldplay”.

The feature, which works in much the same way as song-identification app Shazam, freaked out a number of Facebook users and an online petition is gathering steam.

It had received 542,544 signatures as of this morning.

“Facebook just announced a new feature to its app, which will let it listen to our conversations and surroundings through our own phones’ microphone. Talk about a Big Brother move,” the petition reads.

“Facebook says the feature will be used for harmless things, like identifying the song or TV show playing in the background, but by using the phone’s microphone every time you write a status update, it has the ability to listen to everything.

“Not only is this move just downright creepy, it’s also a massive threat to our privacy. The feature is opt-in, but many won’t even read the warnings. If we act now, we can stop Facebook in its tracks before it has a chance to release the feature.”

Facebook responded to the backlash late last week, posting a myth-busting statement in an effort to lessen users’ fears.

The post stressed that the feature was optional and the listening-in only occurred when a user was writing a status update.

Facebook also maintained that it was not interested in listening to your private conversations.

“No matter how interesting your conversation, this feature does not store sound or recordings. Facebook isn’t listening to or storing your conversations,” the statement read.

“Here’s how it works: if you choose to turn the feature on, when you write a status update, the app converts any sound into an audio fingerprint on your phone. This fingerprint is sent to our servers to try and match it against our database of audio and TV fingerprints. By design, we do not store fingerprints from your device for any amount of time. And in any event, the fingerprints can’t be reversed into the original audio because they don’t contain enough information.”

And in case Facebook picks up that you’re rocking the latest One Direction jam and you’d prefer not to share that information with your friends, you can opt out of including the information in your status update. The information will be stored by Facebook, but it will be anonymous and not linked to your account.

“If you don’t choose to post and the feature detects a match, we don’t store match information except in an anonymised form that is not associated with you,” Facebook spokeswoman Momo Zhou told Forbes .

The data gathered is likely to be lucrative in attracting advertisers, and also establishing Facebook as the leading forum to discuss what’s hot in TV and music.

The feature is currently only available in the US, but if it is judged a success, it is likely to come to Australia.

U.S. and Iran Hold Talks, France to Follow Suit
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsReuters
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Laurent Fabius

The United States on Monday held direct talks with Iran on its nuclear program, and France will follow suit, according to AFP.

"Bilateral discussions between France and Iran will take place on Wednesday," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said at a news conference in Algiers after Iranian and U.S. delegations began two days of direct negotiations in Geneva.

"After these discussions, there will also be discussions between the Iranians and the Russians. There may be others. Anyway, the three (countries) that I know about are the Americans, the Russians and the French," he added, according to AFP.

"The Americans gave us notice about these talks and we also said we would have talks with the Iranians,” said Fabius.

"It was agreed that after these talks we would consult with the six before seeing the Iranians again from June 16," he added, referring to the P5+1 of Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany.

Senior Iranian and U.S. officials held what Tehran's top negotiator dubbed "constructive" talks on Monday, as Washington warned tough choices were needed for a lasting accord on Tehran's controversial nuclear program by a July 20 deadline.

The closed-door meeting in Geneva marks a new effort to find common ground between Tehran and Washington, amid concerns that tensions between the two could damage efforts to strike a deal between the Islamic Republic and world powers.

Iran and the six world powers reached an interim agreement in November, under which Iran committed to limit its uranium enrichment to five percent, halting production of 20 percent-enriched uranium.

In return, Iran is gradually winning access to $4.2 billion of its oil revenues frozen abroad and some other sanctions relief.

The sides want to turn the November deal into a lasting accord by July. A fourth round of nuclear talks ended last month with both sides complaining that major gaps remained ahead of the July 20 deadline.

Iran has urged the West to resist “any pressure from third parties” not directly involved in negotiations over its nuclear activities, a likely reference to Israel, which has warned against the interim nuclear deal signed with the Islamic Republic.

Putin Brings China Into Middle East Strategy
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsAl-Monitor
Categories: Today's Headlines;Commentary

President Vladimir Putin’s visit to China on May 20-21 culminated in the signing of roughly 50 agreements ushering in a period of unprecedented convergence between the two countries. Does this affect the situation in the Middle East and, if so, in what way?

Everything seems to indicate that the answer to the first part of this question is yes. Seemingly, the Middle East was not the focus of the talks between the two leaders. For all the obvious asymmetry in interests, however, the consensus between Russia and China seems to allow the two parties to seek further coordination in their actions, thus taking each other's concerns into greater account. Such consensus includes Syria, despite Beijing’s lesser involvement on this issue, relative to Moscow; Iran, within the P5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program; the fight against terrorism and extremism; the creation of a weapons of mass destruction-free Middle East; the condemnation of external intervention and the strategy of "regime change" as well as the push for "color revolutions;" the policy to reach a settlement in the Middle East; and relations with the new Egyptian regime and with respect to the Sudanese issues.

Last year, one of China’s main strategic regional projects was the economic region (or belt) of the 21st century Great Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road, which intends to create a wide area of Chinese economic presence from China’s western borders to Europe. Although it does not aim to harm Russia’s integration projects or the development prospects of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in any way, the plan can still be construed as a specific challenge to Moscow. It is noteworthy that the project’s "region," despite its vaguely defined boundaries, also clearly comprises the countries of Western Asia (i.e., the Middle East).

Symbolically, soon after the talks with Putin, the Chinese leader opened the Sixth Ministerial Meeting of the China-Arab Cooperation Forum on June 5 in Beijing. The economy was the focus of President Xi Jinping’s speech in which he explained the meaning of the new formula "1+2+3" in Sino-Arab cooperation, namely: energy cooperation; infrastructure construction and creation of favorable conditions for trade and investment; and high-tech domains of nuclear energy, the space rocket sector and new energy sources. It was suggested that the creation of a free trade zone between China and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) be accelerated. But there was a place for politics, too. In particular, Xi stated that China supports the peace process and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within the borders of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital, "enjoying full sovereignty."

Within the Russian and Chinese expert community today the view prevails that, unfortunately, the unilateral efforts by US Secretary of State John Kerry to promote the Israeli-Palestinian peace process are not bearing fruit, and appear doomed to fail. The only way out of the impasse, therefore, is a return to collective mechanisms. So, as one of my well-informed Chinese interlocutors with whom I recently met in Beijing told me, why shouldn’t Russia and China in the current situation — given the proximity of their interests and positions — undertake joint initiatives to unblock the peace process, while initiating steps to "introduce this activity within an institutional framework?" In this context, for example, it would be worthwhile for Moscow to take the initiative to expand the international Quartet of mediators by including China. Some Russian analysts also share this point of view. It should be remembered that in the past the instrument of international mediation was already expanded, as in 2002 the Soviet/Russian-US duet was turned into a quartet by bringing in the European Union and the United Nations.

On the one hand, Russia is interested in using this unprecedented convergence with China in its operations on the Middle East arena, where Moscow has in many ways already been acting in unison with Beijing — as vividly emphasized in Xi’s positions put forward at the Sino-Arab forum.

On the other hand, given the current circumstances where the field of foreign policy cooperation between Russia and the West has significantly shrunk, the Middle East Quartet is one of few international platforms where Russia can constructively engage with the United States and the EU. With this in mind, introducing new players into this format of interaction — if such plan were actually to be considered, it would of course not be limited to including China alone — would somewhat dilute the significance of the trilateral Russian-US-European cooperation in the Middle East peace process.

As far as I can tell, not only is China's growing economic cooperation with Arab countries not a cause for concern in Moscow, but it is also viewed in a very favorable light. Thus, some analysts wonder whether China — if it takes the place of the United States, which is "pivoting to Asia," as the main importer of Arab energy resources — will not one day replace the United States as the security guarantor for the transportation routes of these resources.

Moscow’s and Beijing’s interests converge in the joint countering of terrorism, extremism and separatism. Among the militants from radical groups fighting against government troops in Syria, there are people hailing not only from Russia and Central Asia (fewer in numbers to those coming from Arab and Islamic as well as Western countries), but also from the Uighur minority in China. It is no accident that in the course of the talks between the Secretary of the Security Council of Russia, Nicolai Patrushev, and his Chinese counterpart in Beijing on June 6, the parties qualified the fight against terrorism as one of the key areas in which the consensus reached by the two heads of state during Putin’s latest visit to Beijing will be implemented.

The Chinese authorities’ active fight against the aforementioned threats, which are referred to as the "three evils," can carry some costs. For instance, recently, Beijing came under harsh criticism from Ankara for its actions in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region against the Uighur population, which the Turks believe to be their next of kin. In July 2009, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan even described the measures taken by the Xinjiang authorities in Urumqi as "genocide against the Uighurs." Still, Ankara is keenly interested in long-term cooperation with Beijing, which is a powerful additional incentive for these two rapidly developing world economies. In April 2012, Erdogan began his official visit to China with a stopover at Urumqi. Disappointed by the failure of EU accession, the Turkish leadership has even started talking about the desire to join the SCO as an observer. Ankara expresses its willingness to cooperate with China in the fight against terrorists and condemns the separatism coming from some groups in Xinjiang.

There is no doubt that a comprehensive strategic partnership, in which Russia and China would act in concert along the political consensus reached by their two leaders, would in the short term — in one way or another — reflect on their Middle East policy, and have an impact on intraregional dynamics. It is still difficult to say, however, what the real effects and consequences of this process would be.

It is well-known that culinary themes are often very successfully used in politics. Chinese citizens reacted with approval to the fact that one of the first measures of Xi’s unfolding campaign against corruption was a ban on the Chinese military from holding banquets with alcohol. Russians liked the way Putin responded to journalists’ questions about how he relates to the fact that the G-7 leaders recently met without Russia: He simply wished them "bon appetit." The remark by the famous American journalist, however, about the Russo-Chinese convergence that "China will eat Russia alive," caused only a smile in China and Russia. According to both, this convergence is neither a union nor a tournament of predators, but a very pragmatic integrationist instrument of protection and projection of interests by the two powers, including in the Middle East.

PA Threatens Diplomatic Offensive Against Israel
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsArutz Sheva
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Senior Hamas, Fatah officials celebrate unity deal in Gaza

Reuters

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is preparing a diplomatic offensive against Israel with the help of Arab countries, in order to thwart Israel's attempts to impose sanctions on the new Fatah-Hamas unity government and to take unilateral steps in Judea and Samaria.

Azzam Al-Ahmed, a senior Fatah official in charge of negotiating with Hamas, said in an interview with the Al-Sharaq Al-Awsat newspaper Tuesday that the Arab delegation will be leaving soon to New York and Washington, in an effort to maintain contact with US Secretary of State John Kerry about Israeli policy, and to mobilize international support for the PA position.

In another context, Ahmed said that the PA demanded that Hamas not interfere in the internal affairs of Egypt, to shake off its association with the Muslim Brotherhood and accept the "National Program" of the PA. This includes the so-called "four Palestinian principles":  recognizing Israel, recognizing the terms of international agreements, and the explicit rejection of violence and terrorism.

An Egyptian official recently said that if those steps of cutting ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and not interfering in Egyptian matters were taken, the Nile state would be willing to hand the Rafah Crossing between Sinai and Gaza over to the unity government's supervision.

Ahmed also said that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will visit Gaza only after the government will receive the security mechanisms and strengthen them, and they become part of the security protocols for a unified Palestinian state.

The US and EU stated that they are willing to "work with" the Hamas-Fatah unity government earlier this month, as officials protested repeatedly that the new government - while backed by Hamas - does not support terror, claiming it lacks the official presence of Hamas officials. It is worth noting that three Hamas-backed ministers were sworn in from Gaza by live feed to the new government.

The PA's campaign, if true, may be a response to the Ministry of Housing and Construction's announcement last week that it would build 3,300 more homes in Judea and Samaria, which were approved as part of Israel's official response to the swearing-in of the "unity" government. 

The PA issued a sharp condemnation of the announcement,calling on the US to take "serious steps" against Israel over the move. 

"It is time for the American administration to take serious steps against what the government of Israel is doing," Nimr Hammad, an adviser to Abbas, told AFP. "We strongly condemn this decision which affirms that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is a liar and is not interested in the two-state solution." 

PA Minister Nabil Abu-Rudeineh has also warned that the PA will take unspecified steps in revenge of the building announcement.

NATO Launches Full - Scale War Exercise in Baltic Region Near Russia
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsDebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Mofaz: Israel Can't Handle Iran Alone
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsArutz Sheva
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Shaul Mofaz

Speaking at the Herzliya Conference Monday, former Defense Minister and Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz discussed Iran's nuclear program. While many Israelis want the country's leaders to face the Iranian threat head-on, Mofaz said that Israel “cannot stick to the doctrine of we are all alone. We have to do what is best for us. We need to have good relations with the West and United States.”

Mofaz was giving the concluding address of the session on “Facing Turbulent Global and Regional Arenas: reformulating Israel’s National Security Doctrine” at the 14th annual Herzliya Conference.

He said that the United States had negotiated with Iran for over a year, behind closed doors, on their nuclear situation, but Israel, to whom this is “perhaps one of the most important issues to do with existential threats” was not privy to these meetings.

He said that because of Israel’s attitude of wanting to “attack Iran tomorrow” and standing alone, “we missed the opportunity to be in that closed room” and to be a part of the solution to this issue.

“We need a joint political agenda with the United States," he added. 

Regarding Israel’s national security doctrine, Mofaz felt that it was something that needed updating every decade.

“We need a refreshment of the mind not every year or every month but every decade," he said. Referring to the address of Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, Chief of the IDF General Staff, who spoke at the conference earlier in the day, Mofaz said he felt the idea of a national multi-plan was “too big a challenge for the State of Israel, at this time … our security doctrine needs to be based on a long-term view and budgeting.”

He stressed, “When the army has a horizon of one year [thinks only a year ahead], it wastes money because it doesn’t know what is to be.” He said that it was a mistake for the army to talk of the uncertainties in order to increase its budget. “We need money to be earmarked for our capabilities … a protected flower that exists every year and every year it needs to be budgeted for.”

Mofaz also mentioned that Israel’s defense community needed to work on its deterrence capabilities. “When did Khaled Mashal ever dream of reaching the Gaza strip? … If our deterrence were so good, how did we enable him to reach the Gaza strip with such trumpets?”

Let the Headlines Speak
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsFrom the internet
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Expert Says European Intifada is Coming
Director of Institute for Counter-Terrorism says Europe is about to feel what Israel did in the late 1980s.  

Reuven Rivlin is Israel's Tenth President
Former Knesset speaker wins second round of votes, making him Israel's new president.  

WAITING FOR AN X-FLARE
Sunspot AR2080 s now squarely-facing Earth, an arrengement which could lead to a geoeffective X-flare. The sunspot has a 'beta-gamma-delta' magnetic field that harbors energy for strong eruptions, and it has been growing rapidly alongside several companion spots.  

Rampant Islamic Jew-Hatred in Europe and the Brussels Jewish Museum Carnage
[A] Jew [is] of that most contemptible of religions, the most vile of faiths…They, both the ancient and modern [Jews], are altogether the worst liars…They are the filthiest and vilest of peoples, their unbelief horrid, their ignorance abominable.  

New Medical Law Mandates “Private” Conversation With Child Before Every Doctor Visit
When Michigan mother Christine Duffy brought her 17-year-old daughter into her physician’s office for a minor foot injury, she was told that a new medical access law required a nurse to have a “private” conversation with her child, another example of how parental authority is being eviscerated by the state.  

Delhi temperature touches 47.8 C, (118F) highest in 62 years
Temperature in the Capital touched 45.1 degree Celsius on Sunday while it was 47.8 degree C in and around Palam airport making it the hottest day in 62 years giving no respite to people reeling under a blistering heat wave.  

Death toll from Ebola in Sierra Leone more than doubles to 12
The death toll from Ebola in Sierra Leone has doubled to at least 12 in a week, local health authorities said on Monday, deepening the spread of a disease that has killed over 200 people in Guinea and Liberia. The mounting deaths in Sierra Leone, which had been spared cases for months after Ebola was confirmed in the region in March, underscore the challenges weak health systems face tackling one of the deadliest diseases on the planet.  

Economist: U.S. Banks Preparing to Charge Customers For Deposits
In the week that the European Central Bank cut its deposit rate for banks from zero to -0.1%, economist Martin Armstrong warns that negative interest rates are coming to the United States, meaning that Americans will be forced to pay just to keep their money in the bank.  

Magnitude 4.5 quake jolts Surigao del Norte
A magnitude 4.5 earthquake jolted Surigao del Norte on Tuesday afternoon, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) said. Phivolcs said in a bulletin that the quake struck 14 kilometers north of Claver town at 5:16 p.m. It had a depth of 13 kilometers.  

Exclusive: Google Will Soon Introduce 'Nearby' To Let Other 'People, Places, And Things' Know When You're Around
...When Nearby is turned on for your account, Google can periodically turn on the mic, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and similar features on all your current and future devices. Google+ and other Google services need this access to help you connect, share, and more. When you turn on Nearby, you're also turning on Location History for your account and Location Reporting for this device.  

Transgendered priest to give sermon at Washington National Cathedral
...The Rev. Cameron Partridge is set to give the June 22 sermon at the Washington National Cathedral in Northwest. Dean of the cathedral, the Rev. Gary Hall, said...“We...are striving to send a message of love and affirmation...“We want to proclaim to them as proudly and unequivocally as we can: Your gender identity is good and your sexual orientation is good because that’s the way that God made you.”  

Tony Abbott seeks alliance to thwart President Obama on climate change policy
Tony Abbott is seeking a conservative alliance among "like-minded" countries, aiming to dismantle global moves to introduce carbon pricing, and undermine a push by US President Barack Obama... Visiting Ottawa for a full day of talks with the conservative Canadian Prime Minister and close friend Stephen Harper, Mr Abbott flagged intentions to build a new centre-right alliance led by Canada, Britain and Australia along with India and New Zealand.  

Iraq militants 'control second city of Mosul'
Islamist militants have seized key buildings of Mosul, effectively taking control of Iraq's second largest city. Overnight, hundreds of men armed with rocket-propelled grenades, sniper rifles and machine-guns seized the provincial government's offices. They also destroyed several police stations before overrunning the airport and army's operations headquarters.  

Germany storms: Six dead in North Rhine-Westphalia
Six people have been killed in violent storms which battered cities in western Germany overnight. ...Winds of up to 150km/h (93mph) were recorded at Duesseldorf airport on Tuesday night and the storm was continuing to move north-east, towards areas north and west of Berlin, forecasters said.  

Ukraine to create humanitarian corridors
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has ordered the creation of humanitarian corridors for civilians to flee areas of the east hit by conflict. In a statement, the presidency said ministers had been ordered to set up "all necessary conditions for civilians who want to leave". Violence between pro-Russia militants and Ukrainian forces has left more than 200 people dead, officials say.  

Fresh militant attack near Karachi airport
Security forces at Pakistan's busiest airport in the city of Karachi have come under attack, a day after militants stormed one of its terminals. Officials say gunmen on motorbikes shot at a security training camp just outside the airport and fled. Subsequent firing which lasted for up to an hour was shots fired by the army and police at the scene, officials say.  

Kenya cleric Sheikh Mohammed Idris shot dead in Mombasa
A moderate Muslim cleric has been shot dead in Mombasa, the latest killing of a preacher in the Kenyan city. Sheikh Mohammed Idris, chairman of the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya, was killed close to a mosque near his home by a group of gunmen. Reports say he had previously been threatened by radical Muslim youths and had said he feared for his life.  

Bulgaria freezes work on South Stream pipeline
Bulgaria has frozen construction on Russia’s strategic South Stream gas pipeline due to EU and US pressure. Bulgarian PM Plamen Oresharski...“We discussed South Stream and the EC’s [European Commission] request regarding EU legal procedures. I pointed out the project will go forward only after we resolve all the issues which Brussels has”, he said.  

Rouhani: Iran will make tackling extremism, terrorism a chief objective
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, whose country's relations with Turkey have been strained by the Syrian civil war, said in Ankara on Monday Iran would make tackling extremism, sectarian conflicts and terrorism its chief objective. Pragmatist Rouhani... arrived in Turkey on Monday for a two-day visit, a first by an Iranian president since 2008.  

Meeting privately with US, Iran suggests more time for nuclear talks
Senior American and Iranian officials spent over five hours together in private meetings in Geneva on Monday, jointly seeking a path forward in negotiations over Iran's nuclear program only six weeks before a self-imposed deadline... At the bilateral meeting...Islamic Republic officials suggested world powers may have "no choice" but to extend the negotiations past the July 20 deadline.

Less Than a Third of Americans Say Bible is the Actual Word of God That Should be Taken Literally
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsProphecy New Watch
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

According to the findings of a Gallup poll released on Wednesday, 28 percent of Americans believe that the Bible was "the actual word of God" and that it should be "taken literally, word for word." Forty percent of Americans agreed with that statement in 1979 — a record high — though the number has since declined every year with the exception of 2012.

Nearly 50 percent of Americans agree that the Bible is the "inspired word of God" and that not all of its content should be taken literally. The 47 percent of respondents who believe this perspective is 2 percent higher than when Gallup began asking the question in 1976, and five points short of the 52 percent who agreed with it in 2003.

Those who claimed that the Bible is an "ancient book of fables, legends, history and moral precepts recorded by man" reached its record high this year with 21 percent. In 1976, only 13 percent of Americans agreed with the statement.

Gallup's study also sought to clarify what it identified as "two ongoing debates in Christian theology."

"One is about whether the words of the Bible came directly from God — essentially using the writers as scribes — or if they are the words of men, but guided by divine inspiration," its report stated. "The other debate involves the meaning of the words: whether they should be taken literally, or be viewed partly — or merely — as metaphors and allegories that allow for interpretation."

Consequently, Gallup offered half of respondents the opportunity to select multiple interpretations of what the Bible being the "actual word of God" meant to them. According to these results, just over 20 percent of Americans asserted that the Bible had to be taken literally; 28 percent affirmed that it was the word of God but with "multiple interpretations possible."

Nearly 20 percent of those who identified the Bible as the "inspired word of God" agreed that it was "an ancient book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts written by man." Twenty-eight percent called it "inspired" but did not believe its words should be taken literally.

Gallup also noted that "by 58 percent to 34 percent, Christians are significantly more likely to indicate they believe the Bible is the actual word of God when given the additional option of saying 'the Bible is the actual word of God, but multiple interpretations are possible' than when only having the option of saying 'the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word," suggesting that this could be one helpful indicator in measuring how seriously American Christians took the Bible.

Left, Right Hash Out Arab Peace Initiative
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsArutz Sheva
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Discussing the Arab peace initiative at the Herzliya Conference

A diverse group of political figures representing the right and left, including Yuval Rabin, co-author of the Israeli Peace Initiative, and Dani Dayan, former head of the Yesha Council, debated the merits of the Arab Peace Initiative at a round-table discussion at the Herzliya Conference on Monday.

The Arab Peace Initiative was originally proposed in 2002 by the Saudi government. The intiative demanded that Israel surrender all land liberated in the 1967 Six Day War, and a return to the 1948 armistice lines.

The deal was the best Israel was going to get, said Ashraf al Ajrami, former PA Minister for Prisoner Affairs, who participated in the panel. "The Arab Peace Initiative can give Israel what it needs all along - peace with the Arab world, the regional envelope, and international support. It's the only plan that can give Israel the ability to be integrated in the region,” he said. However, he added, Israeli leaders have repeatedly rejected the plan as unrealistic or irresponsible.

Rabin said he launched his own plan, essentially the same as the Arab initiative, because he felt that Israel lost the initiative by failing to respond properly to the Arab peace plan. He added that the issues of peace with the Arab world will have to be addressed sooner or later. "There is no stable state," he said. "It's an illusion to rely on the relative calm to disregard the burning issues we need to deal with."

Dayan said he believed a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians was no longer possible. "The expectation that Israel will accept in a governmental decision returning to the 1967 lines and the "right of return"…no responsible Israeli leader will accept that," he said. "[A two-state solution] is the prelude another regional conflict."

Shalom Turgeman, who served as an advisor to Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert disputed that the demands of the Arab plan were unrealistic. The problem with the plan, he said, was not its content but its timing.

"The Arab Peace Initiative is about two issues – borders, which are negotiable, and refugees, which are negotiable," he said. "Israel wasn't ready in 2002, but was ready in 2007, and the Arabs hesitated. Now, the Arabs are ready, and Israel is not."

Omer Bar-Lev, and MK with the Labor party, said he was not deterred by the fact that the plan may be unrealistic. "The whole Zionist movement was illogical and irrelevant," he said. "It was based on leadership, will, spirit, and courage."

Those qualities, he said, were echoed in comments from Yair Lapid and Tzipi Livni at a Herzliya Conference session the previous evening.

Danny Rothschild, former chairman of the Herzliya Conference, said the next development he'd like to see in the plan is to bring Arab leaders into the process, rather than just offering normal relations at the very end.

"It's hard to explain to the man in the street what he's getting," Rothschild said. "That way, we can show that there is something in it for him."

Karachi Airport is Under Repeat Attack By Gunmen
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsDebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Israels Parliament to Elect a New President
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsDebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Israeli Ministers Propose Annexing, Abandoning West Bank
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsIsrael Today
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

With the collapse of the latest round of US-brokered Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Israeli ministers seem to be of one accord that the Jewish state needs to take the initiative and formulate its own outline for the future, though they disagree sharply on how to seize this opportunity.

The first to enter the fray was Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, leader of the nationalist Jewish Home faction.

Bennett proposed that Israel fully annex the portion of the so-called “West Bank” labeled as “Area C,” which is already today under full Israeli security control, and is where the bulk of the Israeli settlers live.

Under Bennett’s plan, the 70,000 Arabs who live in Area C would be granted Israeli citizenship. Areas A and B would be granted enhanced autonomy and the Palestinians living there would have their own state in all but name.

“We must recognize the truth - the Oslo era is over. After 21 years of trying one way which included unilateral withdrawals, concessions, releasing terrorists, disengagement and a unilateral separation - it’s time to admit that it does not work,” Bennett told an annual security confab in Herzliya.

“It’s time to think creatively how to build a better reality here for the citizens of Israel and for the Arabs residing in Judea and Samaria,” he added. “This plan gives the Palestinians an independent government and economic prosperity while giving us, the State of Israel, sovereignty, stability, security and a maintaining of our homeland.”

Bennett’s proposal was immediately attacked by Finance Minister Yair Lapid, who insisted that if Israel annexed one inch of the West Bank, his centrist Yesh Atid faction would not hesitate to topple the government.

While Bennett and Lapid have allied on many issues, the finance minister was adamant that the way forward is not laying further claim to Judea and Samaria, but rather further abandoning those biblical territories.

Speaking at the same conference in Herzliya, Lapid advocated a return to negotiations despite the recent entry into the Palestinian government of the Hamas terrorist organization, which still calls for Israel’s destruction.

In preparation for those talks, Lapid said Israel should draw the final borders that it would like to see between the Jewish state and a future Palestinian state. Israel would then unilaterally withdraw from those areas where no Jews are today living. As a confidence-building step, Israel would later evacuate isolated Jewish settlements, and in the plan’s final stage, Israel would conduct a land swap with the Palestinian state for areas where large Jewish settlement blocs are located.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office called Lapid’s proposal a non-starter that had already been proved a failure in Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

“We saw in Gaza the results of unilateral withdrawal,” said officials in the Prime Minister’s Office. “Anyone with political experience knows that you don’t make concessions without [getting] anything in return, especially with a government partnered with a terror organization that wants to destroy Israel.”

Netanyahu’s aides also pointed out that were Israel to draw an official map of future proposed borders, that map would then forever be the starting point for future negotiations, even if Israel later determined the boundaries were unfavorable.

Israel Calls for Return of Palestinian Authority Forces in Gaza
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsJNS
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

The skyline of Gaza City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – The Israeli government is seeking for a return of Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces under the command of PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Gaza and a dismantling of Hamas forces there, according to a memo.

In the memo, sent by the Israeli Foreign Ministry on June 5, the ministry instructs Israeli ambassadors abroad to demand to foreign governments that Abbas live up to his pledge to follow the so-called Quartet principles of recognizing Israel, recognizing past agreements and renouncing violence.

“Abbas must prove that the Palestinian government’s disavowal of terror—part of its acceptance of the Quartet’s conditions—is being implemented throughout the area over which the government purports to apply its sovereignty, including the Gaza Strip,” the memo said, Haaretz reported.

Iraqi Islamists Overrun Parts of Mosul
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsDebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

On the fourth day of fighting, hundreds of Islamist terrorists armed with rocket-propelled grenades, sniper rifles and heavy machine guns mounted on vehicles, stormed the provincial government headquarters of Iraq’s northern city of Mosul Monday. They are said to be in control of the western districts of the city and advancing on the military airport and top security prison.

Iran: 5,000km - Range Missile Can Hit U.S. Indian Ocean Base
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsAlgemeiner
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

An Iranian missile in front of portrait of the Islamic Republic's Supreme Leader. Photo: Iranian Government.

Tehran has ballistic missiles able to pound targets over twice as distant as previously thought, and can reach the American mid-ocean strategic base at Diego Garcia, a senior Iranian official has explicitly warned.

“In the event of a mistake on the part of the United States, their bases in Bahrain and (Diego) Garcia will not be safe from Iranian missiles,” said an Iranian Revolutionary Guard adviser to Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Majatba Dhualnuri.

Dhualnuri made the statements in the context of talks with the United States and western powers to curb its believed goal of creating nuclear weapons, Israel’s Channel Two reported Monday.

Iranian political and military leaders have, until now, only publicly admitted to possessing ballistic weapons with about a 2,000 km range. Diego Garcia, situated on a lone lagoon in the Indian Ocean, houses major Air Force, naval and submarine, space and communications, and logistics facilities.

The revelation suggests the validity of statements by Israeli leaders in recent years cautioning that the goal of Iran’s missile program and “ballistic umbrella” was to threaten a far wider circle of countries than Israel alone.

The Sejil-2, an Iranian-made surface-to-surface missile, can reach about 2,200 km (1,375 mi) loaded with a 750-kg warhead, according to U.S. Defense Department and arms-control sources.

The Iranian boast comes as Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff, Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz, on Monday warned of Tehran’s nuclear weaponization ambitions, and increasing regional military and strategic clout.

While “the conventional threat to Israel has slightly diminished,” Gantz said, “Iran has not given up on its nuclear vision and will cling to it by every means. It is most important to prevent [Iran’s acquisition] of this capability and this can be done, whether by force or without it.”

At a similar address in 2012, Gantz said that “Iran is a problem of the whole world, of this region and of Israel.” He charged that “It [Iran] wants to establish itself as a strong regime and it will try to use it in order to fortify its position.”

“Iran’s ballistic missile program is a major threat to the Middle East and beyond,” according to a just released report by the Tel Aviv University-based Institute for National Security Studies (INSS).

“Iran already has operational missiles with ranges of 1,500 to 2,500 km that can reach targets in the Middle East, Turkey, and southeast Europe,” the report charged.

“In addition, it has been working on an extended range version of the Shahab-3 and a 2000 km medium range ballistic missile, the Sejil-2, and may soon be able to produce missiles with a range of 3000 km,” the report said.

“Iran continues to develop long range ballistic missiles that reach beyond its regional adversaries, and may be technically capable of flight testing an ICBM by 2015,” according to a 2012 US Department of Defense report.

“US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February 2014 that Iran was expected to test ‘a missile system that could potentially have ICBM-class range.’

“Tehran has also enhanced the lethality and the effectiveness of its existing missile systems with improvements of accuracy and new sub-munition payloads,” the INSS report said.

Iran Says Nuclear Talks Could be Extended
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsReuters
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Nuclear talks in Geneva

Iran's talks with six world powers on a long-term deal to curb its nuclear program in exchange for an end to sanctions could be extended for another six months if no deal is reached by a July 20 deadline, a senior Iranian official said on Monday, according to Reuters.

A fourth round of nuclear talks between the sides ended last month without progress and with both sides complaining that major gaps remained ahead of the deadline.

The ongoing talks seek to turn an interim deal reached in November into a permanent agreement. Under the interim deal, Iran committed to limit its uranium enrichment to five percent and is gradually winning access to $4.2 billion of its oil revenues frozen abroad and some other sanctions relief.

Western officials say Iran wants to maintain a uranium enrichment capability far beyond what is suitable for a civilian nuclear energy program. Iran says it wants to avoid reliance on foreign suppliers of fuel for its nuclear reactors and rejects Western allegations it seeks the capability to make nuclear weapons under the guise of a peaceful energy program.

The country’s deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi spoke of a possible extension to the talks in remarks in Geneva to Iranian media on the sidelines of meetings with senior U.S. officials and the European Union's deputy chief negotiator.

"We hope to reach a final agreement (by July 20) but, if this doesn't happen, then we have no choice but to extend the Geneva deal for six more months while we continue negotiations," Araqchi was quoted as saying by Iran's state news agency IRNA.

"It's still too early to judge whether an extension will be needed. This hope still exists that we will be able to reach a final agreement by the end of the six months on July 20," he added.

The comments came hours after the United States held direct talks with Iran on its nuclear program, and France announced it would follow suit.

Iran has urged the West to resist “any pressure from third parties” not directly involved in negotiations over its nuclear activities, a likely reference to Israel, which has warned against the interim nuclear deal signed with the Islamic Republic.

IDF Official: 170,000 Missiles Aimed At Israel
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsArutz Sheva
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Illustration: Gaza terrorists manufacturing rockets

Terror groups have managed to replenish their supply of missiles, a year and a half after Israel delivered a crushing blow to Hamas in Operation Pillar of Defense, said Itai Brun, director of research in the IDF Intelligence branch. Speaking at the annual Herzliya Conference, Brun said said that there were hundreds of long-range missiles in Gaza – and that between Hezbollah, Hamas, and the other Gaza terror groups, there were now 170,000 missiles aimed at Israel.

Replenishing their missile supply was a chief aim of both Hezbollah and Hamas after the 2006 Lebanon War, in which Hezbollah attacked Israel with thousands of rockets, and Pillar of Defense in 2012, when Hamas slammed Israel with over 10,000 rockets. The campaign has been very successful, Brun said, citing the 170,000 figure. With that, he said, most of those rockets were of the Kassam variety – homemade, very short range.

However, things are changing for the worse, he told hundreds of listeners at the Conference Monday. “Until now the terror groups had no guidance systems and could only approximate targets, but they are improving their aim, thanks to technology. Iran has been very helpful to them in this regard,” he said.

Regarding Iran, Brun said that the negotiations the country was holding with the West on its nuclear program was very entwined with the visions various groups in the country had for Iranian society. So far, he said, the Iranians were keeping to the agreements they had made, but make no mistake – they were doggedly preparing for the “great war” against Israel and the Jews, he said.

Iran was also working hard to make its mark on Syria, where, Brun said, 80% of the forces fighting Bashar al-Assad had an Islamist agenda. Many of the victories in the revolution, however, have been achieved by secular groups, which are currently in control of areas of Syria bordering Israel. Assad, added Brun, was indeed dismantling his chemical weapon stash, as promised, but his soldiers were getting weary of defending their boss, he added.

British Inspector Warns of 'Islamist Plot' in Some Schools
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsArutz Sheva
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

British Islamists demonstrate in London

Reuters

The top school inspector in Britain said on Monday that a culture of "fear and intimidation" exists in some British schools due to an alleged Muslim extremist plot.

According to Reuters, a government investigation, launched after an anonymous letter reported a campaign dubbed "Operation Trojan Horse", found evidence of a drive to impose Muslim cultural norms in some schools in the central city of Birmingham.

Michael Wilshaw, head of the Ofsted schools inspectorate, was quoted as having said that the investigation heard from some head teachers that the campaign, whose organizers were not named, aimed to alter the "character and ethos" of their schools by appointing members to school boards and staff who wanted to favor Muslim values.

"Some of our findings are deeply worrying, and in some ways quite shocking," Wilshaw was quoted as having said.

"In the most serious cases, a culture of fear and intimidation has taken grip," he added, according to Reuters.

The Muslim Council of Britain questioned the criteria used to inspect the schools and said, "There is a strong fear that these reports will be considered the results of a witch-hunt."

In his nine-page report sent to Education Secretary Michael Gove, Wilshaw said some schools had shirked their responsibility to protect children against religious extremism.

He cited a school that invited a guest speaker with known extremist views to address pupils. In another case, a school subsidized a trip to Saudi Arabia exclusively for Muslims.

Summarizing reports on 21 schools, Wilshaw highlighted concerns that boys and girls were not treated equally.

"In one school, some members of staff actively discourage girls from speaking to boys and from taking part in extra-curricular visits and activities," his report said, according to Reuters.

"In this school, boys and girls are also taught separately in religious education and personal development lessons."

The report comes nearly three months after England's Department of Education said it would take "special measures," after reports unearthed a systemic campaign of an organized takeover of public school by Islamists in Birmingham.

At the time it was reported that one  teacher at assemblies praised Al-Qaeda senior terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki, who was involved in recruiting Westerners, and copied Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden DVDs using school facilities.

In recent years, Muslims have become dominant in several neighborhoods in London, to the chagrin of the native locals, and there have been reports that fundamentalists have been trying to enforce Sharia law in the neighborhoods.

Hate preacher Anjem Choudary is reportedly behind the “Sharia neighborhoods”, and has said he plans to flood specific Muslim and non-Muslim communities around the UK and “put the seeds down for an Islamic Emirate in the long term.”

Choudary is the founder of two Muslim groups in Britain that were banned by the British government after being declared terrorist organizations. He has threatened British Jews who support Israel, stating that it is an “Islamic obligation upon Muslims everywhere to support the Jihad against those who fight Muslims anywhere in the world or who occupy Muslim land.”

Police in London recently began investigating a sign telling pet owners to stay out of an east London park because "Muslims do not like dogs."

The sign was branded "unacceptable" and "provocative" by Labour MP Jim Fitzpatrick who called in police after being alerted to the sign by a concerned dog walker.

Britains Missing Babies: How Thousands of Children Have Disappeared from Council Care
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsMailon
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Almost 5,000 children  - including babies - have disappeared from council care in the past two years, new figures have revealed.

Nineteen babies have vanished for months at a time, and one infant - just a few months old - has still not been found two years later.

The figures have been unveiled under a freedom of information request.

Almost 5,000 children - including babies - have disappeared from council care in the past two years, new figures have revealed (stock picture)

They show that 4,852 looked-after children were reported missing between January 2012 and December 2013, the Sunday Times reports. 

There were 24,320 cases logged - as many disappeared more than once. The large majority were teenagers but dozens of those who disappeared were between four and nine years old. 

The number includes a one-year-old girl missing since July 2013.

Kent County Council reported the most children missing - with 458 children disappearing on 2,623 occasions.

Peter Oakford, Kent County Council cabinet member for specialist children's services, said: 'It is always a huge concern when children and young people go missing, even if just for a few hours.

'In Kent, we face particular issues due to being a port authority and receive the highest number of unaccompanied minors in the UK. 

'When unaccompanied asylum seeker children arrive from abroad, we don't know what sort of ordeals they have gone through on their journey. They are scared and many have been told by traffickers to run away and meet contacts when they arrive in England.'

Kent County Council reported the most children missing - with 458 children disappearing on 2,623 occasions

'Children in care are vulnerable and KCC offers them all the support and care they need but they are not locked up.  When a child goes missing, we work closely with the police to find the child but we also need the government and other authorities to help us to address these wider issues including breaking down international trafficking networks which can lead to vulnerable children going missing.

The second highest number was in Nottinghamshire where 215 children disappeared.

In Hertfordshire there were 209 missing children.

Tom Rahilly, head of strategy for looked-after children at the NSPCC, told the paper: 'When children and young people in care go missing it should be no different to when any other child disappears from home. This is very alarming.'

He said children may disappear because the parent decides to remove them without going through the proper channels, and often teenage mothers in care decide to leave with their child.

The Department for Education said it had improved guidance to councils regarding children missing from care.

Assad Announces Amnesty for 'Terrorist' Prisoners
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsArutz Sheva
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

AFP photo

Syria's President Bashar Al-Assad announced an unprecedented prisoner amnesty on Monday, less than a week after his re-election, AFP reported.

Announced five days after Assad was re-elected with nearly 90 percent in a ballot decried as a "farce" by the opposition and the West, the amnesty is the first extended to those accused under a controversial anti-terrorism law.

The July 2012 law has been used to jail tens of thousands of regime opponents, armed and unarmed.

Syrian state television said Monday's amnesty would cover all crimes committed before June 9, and would for the first time extend to those accused under the country's controversial terrorism law.

The government has accused all those opposed to Assad's rule of "terrorism".

State media cited Justice Minister Najem al-Ahmad as saying the decree was issued in the context of "social forgiveness, national cohesion calls for coexistence, as the army secures several military victories".

The amnesty is not the first time the government has offered clemency, but it is the first that pledges reduced sentences, and in some cases freedom, to regime opponents, noted AFP.

There are an estimated 100,000 people in custody for activities related to the uprising which began in March 2011.

Some 18,000 of those detained have "disappeared", according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The conflict began with peaceful anti-government demonstrations that were met with live fire by government forces, eventually prompting some in the opposition to take up arms.

In the more than three years since, upwards of 162,000 people have been killed.

Across America, Police Departments are Quietly Preparing for War
Jun 10th, 2014
Daily NewsInfowars
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

At first blush, the title of this post could be perceived as somewhat hyperbolic by those who still have an impression of America’s police departments as bastions of safety, designed “to protect and to serve” the population of the “land of the free.” However, said impression would be promptly washed away upon reading an article in today’s NYT which citing Pentagon data, reveals that under the Obama administration, “police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.”

Which begs the question: just who is America’s police force, and by extension the Obama administration, which is behind this quiet militarization of local police forces with weapons that would normally be seen in a warzone, preparing for war against?

And while we already documented America’s conversation to a turnkey totalitarian banana republic (confirmed over a year later by Edward Snowden), behold America’s conversion to a police state:

In the past we have occasionally covered the slow (but sure) conversion of America’s Police force into an army, fully loaded with the latest weapons and equipments, not even we had an idea of the full extent of what was going on behind the scenes. As the NYT describes, all of the above-mentioned equipment “has been added to the armories of police departments that already look and act like military units. Police SWAT teams are now deployed tens of thousands of times each year, increasingly for routine jobs. Masked, heavily armed police officers in Louisiana raided a nightclub in 2006 as part of a liquor inspection. In Florida in 2010, officers in SWAT gear and with guns drawn carried out raids on barbershops that mostly led only to charges of “barbering without a license.”

Surely in an age when the NSA managed to eradicated all terrorism (oh oops, Boston bombing, we forgot, just ignore that), the mantra that a “weapon unused is a useless weapon” has never rang more true, but dispatching crack police team to handle rogue “barbers”? Sadly, that may be just a harbinger of the crackdowns the US police state will unleash shortly on anyone even the least bit guilty of violating some law or regulation. Or maybe completely innocent, just guilty of sparking the USPD’s curiosity.

Meet the new normal SWAT: new, improved and, well, everywhere:

The number of SWAT teams has skyrocketed since the 1980s, according to studies by Peter B. Kraska, an Eastern Kentucky University professor who has been researching the issue for decades…. The ubiquity of SWAT teams has changed not only the way officers look, but also the way departments view themselves. Recruiting videos feature clips of officers storming into homes with smoke grenades and firing automatic weapons. In Springdale, Ark., a police recruiting video is dominated by SWAT clips, including officers throwing a flash grenade into a house and creeping through a field in camouflage.

The rationale for the weaponization of the US police force is simple: it’s yours if you want it. Also, it’s free.

The Pentagon program does not push equipment onto local departments. The pace of transfers depends on how much unneeded equipment the military has, and how much the police request. Equipment that goes unclaimed typically is destroyed. So police chiefs say their choice is often easy: Ask for free equipment that would otherwise be scrapped, or look for money in their budgets to prepare for an unlikely scenario. Most people understand, police officers say.

In the meantime, this is where the build up has come from…

Congress created the military-transfer program in the early 1990s, when violent crime plagued America’s cities and the police felt outgunned by drug gangs. Today, crime has fallen to its lowest levels in a generation, the wars have wound down, and despite current fears, the number of domestic terrorist attacks has declined sharply from the 1960s and 1970s.

Police departments, though, are adding more firepower and military gear than ever. Some, especially in larger cities, have used federal grant money to buy armored cars and other tactical gear. And the free surplus program remains a favorite of many police chiefs who say they could otherwise not afford such equipment. Chief Wilkinson said he expects the police to use the new truck rarely, when the department’s SWAT team faces an armed standoff or serves a warrant on someone believed to be dangerous.

Today, Chief Wilkinson said, the police are trained to move in and save lives during a shooting or standoff, in contrast to a generation ago — before the Columbine High School massacre and others that followed it — when they responded by setting up a perimeter and either negotiating with, or waiting out, the suspect.

… and where it is going.

In South Carolina, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department’s website features its SWAT team, dressed in black with guns drawn, flanking an armored vehicle that looks like a tank and has a mounted .50-caliber gun. Capt. Chris Cowan, a department spokesman, said the vehicle “allows the department to stay in step with the criminals who are arming themselves more heavily every day.” He said police officers had taken it to schools and community events, where it was a conversation starter.

Not everyone agrees that there is a need for such vehicles. Ronald E. Teachman, the police chief in South Bend, Ind., said he decided not to request a mine-resistant vehicle for his city. “I go to schools,” he said. “But I bring ‘Green Eggs and Ham.’ ”

The people are said to believe the explanation:

“When you explain that you’re preparing for something that may never happen, they get it,” said Capt. Tiger Parsons of the Buchanan County Sheriff’s Office in northwest Missouri, which recently received a mine-resistant truck.

You mean like the Fed stepping back from propping the global capital markets? Or like Caesar taking over Rome and only then handing over the power to the people?

But however you explain it and whatever you call it, don’t call it overkill, no pun intended. Actually call it overkill.

Pentagon data suggest how the police are arming themselves for such worst-case scenarios. Since 2006, the police in six states have received magazines that carry 100 rounds of M-16 ammunition, allowing officers to fire continuously for three times longer than normal. Twenty-two states obtained equipment to detect buried land mines.

In the Indianapolis suburbs, officers said they needed a mine-resistant vehicle to protect against a possible attack by veterans returning from war.

“You have a lot of people who are coming out of the military that have the ability and knowledge to build I.E.D.’s and to defeat law enforcement techniques,” Sgt. Dan Downing of the Morgan County Sheriff’s Department told the local Fox affiliate, referring to improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs. Sergeant Downing did not return a message seeking comment.

The police in 38 states have received silencers, which soldiers use to muffle gunfire during raids and sniper attacks. Lauren Wild, the sheriff in rural Walsh County, N.D., said he saw no need for silencers. When told he had 40 of them for his county of 11,000 people, Sheriff Wild confirmed it with a colleague and said he would look into it. “I don’t recall approving them,” he said.

Funny how that happens. Because that’s the whole point: if the police department is there to protect the people, shouldn’t the people decide how the police is armed? Apparently not. Then again, the light bulb did go over some heads.

At the Neenah City Council, Mr. Pollnow is pushing for a requirement that the council vote on all equipment transfers. When he asks about the need for military equipment, he said the answer is always the same: It protects police officers.

“Who’s going to be against that? You’re against the police coming home safe at night?” he said. “But you can always present a worst-case scenario. You can use that as a framework to get anything.”

Chief Wilkinson said he was not interested in militarizing Neenah. But officers are shot, even in small towns. If there were an affordable way to protect his people without the new truck, he would do it.

“I hate having our community divided over a law enforcement issue like this. But we are,” he said. “It drives me to my knees in prayer for the safety of this community every day. And it convinced me that this was the right thing for our community.”

Great, absolutely. Now just open it up for a vote and le the community itself decide!

Which brings us back to the original question: as the NYT succinctly summarizes the situation, “as President Obama ushers in the end of what he called America’s “long season of war,” the former tools of combat — M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers and more — are ending up in local police departments, often with little public notice.”

 Perhaps that sentence needs some qualification: as Obama, humiliated on the international arena by everyone, from Assad to Putin and back, and desperately seeking to avoid future embarrassment, redeploys weapons of mass murder, why is he seeking to put said weapons – many of which are of the offensive kind – not out to pasture but in America’s very own back yard? Just who does Obama plan to wage his next, and hopefully last, war against? The good news is that everyone will get sufficient advance notice before said war begins by the squadrons of weaponized drones sent out to test the ground, and inflict the “accidental” collateral damage casualty, or million.