Prophecies of Jesus Fulfilled Josh McDowell

Nikkei Drops 1000 Points In 3 Days

Something is rotten in the state of Abenomics. The last three days have seen the biggest surge in JPY in over six weeks (now well under 98 and at its strongest again the USD in over a month) and thebiggest drop in the Nikkei 225 in almost two months. 

It seems with Fed Taper talk off the table (in investors' minds), hotter than expected inflation in Japan (what they wanted but brings the 'endgame' closer for expectations of moar QQE), and a miss for retail sales in Japan tonight (no matter what they do, consumption disappoints - unsurprising given the demographic hurdle, even with free money oozing out of every crack) that global investors (who have once again piled lemming-like back into the long-Nikkei-short-JPY trades) have found better places (for now) to put their 'easily-earned' money. Or is thisthe Japanese markets' cry for help ahead of Kuroda's speech this evening?

SWAT teams new face of police agencies

A key distinction between the U.S. and other nations, even relatively free nations, long has been American restrictions on domestic use of the military, for police actions, law enforcement and keeping things under control.

However, when the local police officer or sheriff’s deputy is equipped with night vision goggles, laser-scope rifles, electronic eavesdropping equipment and body armor and comes up a citizen’s driveway in a military-type personnel carrier with shielded windows and oversize wheels, the prohibitions seem to lose some of their teeth.

It’s an issue on which WND has reported for more than a decade, and others now are taking note.

Since 1878, with the passage of the Posse Comitatus Act, it has long been an established legal principle that the federal government is not allowed to use the military to enforce federal or state laws.

In recent years, the law has been modified to allow the president to deploy federal troops to enforce the law. Two of the most notable cases are President Dwight Eisenhower’s decision to send federal troops into Little Rock, Ark., to enforce desegregation and the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

However, while American armed forces may be limited in their ability to enforce the law, the act is essentially being circumvented by militarizing local enforcement, equipping it with some of the same equipment, training and tactics used in war zones.

Radley Balko raised the issue recently a Wall Street Journal article, “Rise of the Warrior Cop.” He says the trend is to erase the line between military and law enforcement.

“Since the 1960s, in response to a range of perceived threats, law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier,” Balko wrote. “Driven by martial rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment – from bayonets and M-16 rifles to armored personnel carriers – American police forces have often adopted a mindset previously reserved for the battlefield.”

Balko said the “war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop – armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.”

The number of local jurisdictions with SWAT teams has increased dramatically in recent years, employed now by the majority of police departments in small and medium-sized cities.

Balko cites surveys by criminologist Peter Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University, who noted that in 1983 just 13 percent of towns between 25,000 and 50,000 people had a SWAT team. However, by 2005 the figure was up to 80 percent.

With the increase in the number of SWAT teams, local police have increasingly used the new technology and training even in cases in which their use is questionable.

The article noted that along with the increase in the number of SWAT teams has come a corresponding increase in raids by the military-style trained officers. In the 1970s there were just a few hundred raids per year, however, in the 1980s the number of raids jumped to 3,000 per year. In 2005, the number is a stratospheric 50,000.

Balko highlighted the case of Matthew Stewart, a U.S. military veteran. Police got a tip he was growing marijuana in his basement. Stewart was awakened when the battering ram knocked down the door and. Thinking he was being attacked by criminals, he picked up a firearm and began shooting before being killed by officers.

After the shooting, police found 16 marijuana plants, and although the plants were illegal, there was no evidence he was selling the drug. Stewart’s father said his son suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and may possibly have used the marijuana to self-medicate.

While many Americans are concerned about the increased firepower possessed by local law enforcement, Balko said the problem is more pervasive than just local police departments, noting that many federal departments now have their own personal SWAT department.

Among the government agencies with their own SWAT teams are the Department of the Interior, NASA and the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Even the Department of Education has its own “special forces” team.

Balko noted the federal department has sent SWAT team members to raid the home of a woman who authorities said was suspected of defrauding the federal student loan program. The raid raised eyebrows because it was it was the first time the public was aware the Education Department possessed such a unit.

Whenever the issue is brought up, officials claim the increased armament and hardware is needed because of threats faced by law enforcement that were not present decades ago. In the 1980s the rationale was the war on drugs, while in recent years it has been preventing domestic terrorist attacks.

However, the data does not back up such claims. The Colorado-based Independence Institute noted in a 1991 study that less than one-eighth of 1 percent of U.S. homicides were committed with military-style weapons. In the years since the 1991 report, additional studies have all reached similar conclusions including one by the Clinton Justice Department in 1995 and the National Institute for Justice in 2004.

While police departments have engaged in military tactics and training for their SWAT teams, they have been frequently limited by law and by finances. However, after the Muslim terrorist attacks on 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security began to offer federal grants to allow local police departments to upgrade their arsenal.

The Center for Investigative Reporting has said that since its inception in 2002, DHS has doled out $35 billion in grants to help militarize police forces with items such as grenade launchers and even armored personnel carriers.

In 1999, WND reported a proposed change in a federal regulation would be going into effect that would allow federal agencies to donate “surplus” firearms to state and local law enforcement entities.

The previous regulation permitted federal agencies to donate or sell trucks, boats, aircraft and even space vehicles to state and local agencies and to individuals. But the federal property management regulations drew a line in the sand when it came to agencies like the Forest Service or FBI transferring actual weapons either by gift or sale.

But under the new regulations, used handguns, rifles, shotguns, individual light automatic weapons up to 50 caliber, and rifle and shoulder-fired grenade launchers up to 75 mm could be transferred to state agencies for donation to state and local public agencies.

In 2011, the Pentagon gave away $500 million in military equipment to help bolster the armories of local law-enforcement.

Earlier this year the American Civil Liberties Union became concerned about the issue, saying in March it was filing a series of open records requests in 25 states and National Guard offices in an attempt to discover the extent to which federal funding have helped local police departments become more militarized.

“Federal funding in the billions of dollars has allowed state and local police departments to gain access to weapons and tactics created for overseas combat theaters – and yet very little is known about exactly how many police departments have military weapons and training, how militarized the police have become, and how extensively federal money is incentivizing this trend,” the ACLU said on its website.

While the issue is now beginning to generate concern over perceived threats to constitutional liberties by the Obama administration in light of the IRS and NSA scandals, WND founder and CEO Joseph Farah began reporting the trend to militarize the police in 1998.

In a column headlined “The cops are out of control,” Farah lamented that while in years past seeing a police officer gave him a sense of security, it was no longer the case because of recent actions by SWAT teams.

“The recent incidents in Oklahoma, where police shot an unarmed mother holding her child in her home, in Virginia, where a SWAT team killed a watchman guarding a dice game at an after-hours club and in California, where a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raid on a gun shop resulted in the death of the shopkeeper, provide some hard evidence that police in America may be getting out of control,” Farah warned at the time.

He went on to note the danger of police agencies acquiring military gear even back then.

“The biggest danger we face is the federalization and militarization of all law enforcement. Interagency task forces, bringing together local and state police with federal agents are now the rule of the day,” Farah noted. “Federal agencies bribe local cops with funding, equipment and training programs.”

The challenged to the Fourth Amendment generated by the use of SWAT teams and no-knock warrants is likely to continue as a result of a ruling by the Indiana Supreme Court in 2011.

In a 3-2 ruling, the court ruled that there is no right for a private citizen to resist illegal entry by a police officer. The court stated in its ruling “that there is no right to reasonably resist unlawful entry by police officers.”

The case involved Richard Barnes, who faced misdemeanor charges for resisting a police officer who had entered his home without a warrant. According to the ruling, the case began when Barnes got into an argument with his wife, Mary. During the argument Barnes threw a phone against a wall, prompting his wife to call 911. She told the dispatcher that Barnes was throwing things but did not strike her. The call went out as “domestic violence in progress.”

Officer Lenny Reed arrived at the scene and met Richard Barnes outside as he was leaving with luggage. Barnes told the officer he was leaving and raised his voice. Mary Barnes then came out, threw a bag at her husband and told him to get the rest of his stuff.

The couple returned to the apartment and Richard Barnes blocked the officers from entering. Reed attempted to enter the apartment and was thrown against the wall by Barnes. Officers Jason Henry and Reed used a choke hold and Taser to subdue Barnes.

After being found guilty of battery on a police officer, resisting law-enforcement and disorderly conduct, Richard Barnes appealed the ruling. His basis was that the jury had not been given instructions regarding the right of a citizen to reasonably resist entry into his home.

The Indiana Supreme Court, in a stunning conclusion, stated: “This court is faced for the first time with the question of whether Indiana should recognize the common-law right to reasonably resist unlawful entry by police officers.”

“We conclude that public policy disfavors any such right.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/07/frightening-new-reason-to-fear-police/#upY6oKMof93ObtY5.99

Spacecraft Sees Giant 'Hole' In the Sun

A space telescope aimed at the sun has spotted a gigantic hole in the solar atmosphere — a dark spot that covers nearly a quarter of our closest star, spewing solar material and gas into space.

The so-called coronal hole over the sun's north pole came into view between July 13 and 18 and was observed by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO. NASA released a video of the sun hole as seen by the SOHO spacecraft, showing the region as a vast dark spot surrounded by solar activity.

Coronal holes are darker, cooler regions of the sun's atmosphere, or corona, containing little solar material. In these gaps, magnetic field lines whip out into the solar wind rather than looping back to the sun's surface. Coronal holes can affect space weather, as they send solar particles streaming off the sun about three times faster than the slower wind unleashed elsewhere from the sun's atmosphere, according to a description from NASA.

"While it’s unclear what causes coronal holes, they correlate to areas on the sun where magnetic fields soar up and away, failing to loop back down to the surface, as they do elsewhere," NASA's Karen Fox at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., explained in an image description.

These holes are not uncommon, but their frequency changes with the solar activity cycle. The sun is currently reaching its 11-year peak in activity, known as the solar maximum. Around the time of this peak, the sun's poles switch their magnetism. The number of coronal holes typically decreases leading up to the switch.

After the reversal, new coronal holes appear near the poles. Then as the sun approaches the solar minimum again, the holes creep closer to the equator, growing in both size and number, according to NASA.

The $1.27-billion (1 billion euros) SOHO satellite was launched in 1995 and is flying a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). It watches solar activity from an orbit about the Lagrange Point 1, a gravitationally stable spot between Earth and the sun that is about 932,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from our planet.

Yahoo News

Obama Funding Syrian Rebels Beheading Christians, Using Child Soldiers

And virtually no one seems to even be questioning the Obama administration’s support of these chaotic troops who kill innocent citizens using US-funded arms in a bid to throw Syria’s current system into insanity. What’s perhaps even worse is that Obama has been pushing to continue this funding in a battle with reasonable lawmakers in a move that highlights his continued support of Syrian rebels who massacre innocents in public beheading sessions (that are met with applause and cheers).

It’s even hidden in the mainstream news, yet the media pieces on the subject somehow fail to generate any social media sharing or view counts for the most part. Just look at the August 2012 Reuters admission that Obama secretly went ahead and enabled support for Syrian rebels while bypassing any form of checks or balances. Flash forward to June 2013 with the headline ‘Syrians behead Christians for helping military, as CIA ships in arms’ in The Washington Times publication, and we’re still letting this happen.

ARMING THE CARNAGE ON RECORD

From the report in The Washington Times:

“A priest and another Christian were beheaded before a cheering crowd by Syrian insurgents who say they aided and abetted the enemy… The reported beheading of the two Christians comes about the same time America has started sending arms to rebel fighters, the Wall Street Journal revealed this week.”

In other words the supposedly ‘Christian’ (a laughable declaration) Obama not only allows for these rebels to kill all Christians who do not convert and pay excessive taxes to the rebel army, but is the driving force behind it. How truly Christian of him. In fact, let’s look at the options innocent Christians are given by the Syrian rebels who wield CIA-given weaponry as according to the missionaries who have been to the Christian communities in Syria:

1. Renounce their Christian faith and convert immediately to Islam (to potentially have your life spared after swearing to the Syrian rebels and Islam).

2. Pay an extremely heavy tax to the Syrian rebels to potentially save your life and be able to secretly continue being a Christian (unless they decided to behead you anyway).

3. Immediately choose death, likely via beheading in the center of town to scare off your friends and family from challenging the Syrian rebel army.

4. Flee for your life and hope the Syrian rebels don’t find you or kill your family. All of your belongings left behind now belong to the Syrian rebels.

As you can see, these are the truly ’humane’ options supported by the United States government. And they’re getting away with this thanks to the general public having no idea what’s going on. In two months, the funding officially runs out — at least for this fiscal year. Amazingly, however, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees both went ahead and approved the continued support of the Syrian rebels. Just like how our elected officials recently sided with the NSA in continuing the gargantuan funding that fuels the agency.

The media is doing a great job on covering a bogus debate (if they cover the subject at all) over whether or not they need more funding to take down Assad, and once again it’s up to independent news outlets to blast this information out.

If you ever had doubts as to the true nature of the sociopaths inside government and the lengths they will go to secure their agenda, you now have proof.

Infowars

Pope Francis On Gays: Who Am I To Judge Them?

Pope Francis has had a busy week at World Youth Day in Rio as he visited his slums and prisons, blessed the Olympic flag and brought three million people to Copacabana Beach for a final Mass on Sunday morning.

Now he has made another headline, this time when the pontiff said, "Who am I to judge a gay person?"

While taking questions from reporters on the plane back to Rome, Francis spoke about gays and the reported "gay lobby." According to the Wall Street Journal, thePope's comments about homosexuality came in the context of a question about gay priests.

The pontiff broached the delicate question of how he would respond to learning that a cleric in his ranks was gay, though not sexually active. For decades, the Vatican has regarded homosexuality as a "disorder," and Pope Francis' predecessor Pope Benedict XVI formally barred men with what the Vatican deemed "deep-seated" homosexuality from entering the priesthood.

"Who am I to judge a gay person of goodwill who seeks the Lord?" the pontiff said, speaking in Italian. "You can't marginalize these people."

John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter reported on the meeting as well and said the Pope also addressed the question of the Vatican's reported "gay lobby".
He hasn’t run into significant resistance to reform inside the Vatican, and joked that if there really is a “gay lobby” he hasn’t yet seen it stamped on anyone’s ID cards.

Father James Martin, S.J. who is an admirer of Francis, said that the pontiff's comment about gay people is consistent with the rest of his papacy.
"One of Francis's hallmarks is an emphasis on mercy, which you see in that response. That mercy, of course, comes from Jesus. And we can never have too much of it."

The pope did not offer much hope for those advocating for women Catholic priests, according to Allen at NCR, saying: Pope John Paul II “definitively … closed the door' to women priests.

Huffingtonpost.com

4 IN 5 IN US FACE NEAR-POVERTY

WASHINGTON (AP) — Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.

Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor and loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.

The findings come as President Barack Obama tries to renew his administration's emphasis on the economy, saying in recent speeches that his highest priority is to "rebuild ladders of opportunity" and reverse income inequality.

Hardship is particularly on the rise among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy "poor."

"I think it's going to get worse," said Irene Salyers, 52, of Buchanan County, Va., a declining coal region in Appalachia. Married and divorced three times, Salyers now helps run a fruit and vegetable stand with her boyfriend, but it doesn't generate much income. They live mostly off government disability checks.

"If you do try to go apply for a job, they're not hiring people, and they're not paying that much to even go to work," she said. Children, she said, have "nothing better to do than to get on drugs."

While racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to live in poverty, race disparities in the poverty rate have narrowed substantially since the 1970s, census data show. Economic insecurity among whites also is more pervasive than is shown in government data, engulfing more than 76 percent of white adults by the time they turn 60, according to a new economic gauge being published next year by the Oxford University Press.

The gauge defines "economic insecurity" as a year or more of periodic joblessness, reliance on government aid such as food stamps or income below 150 percent of the poverty line. Measured across all races, the risk of economic insecurity rises to 79 percent.

"It's time that America comes to understand that many of the nation's biggest disparities, from education and life expectancy to poverty, are increasingly due to economic class position," said William Julius Wilson, a Harvard professor who specializes in race and poverty.

He noted that despite continuing economic difficulties, minorities have more optimism about the future after Obama's election, while struggling whites do not.

"There is the real possibility that white alienation will increase if steps are not taken to highlight and address inequality on a broad front," Wilson said.

Sometimes termed "the invisible poor" by demographers, lower-income whites are generally dispersed in suburbs as well as small rural towns, where more than 60 percent of the poor are white. Concentrated in Appalachia in the East, they are also numerous in the industrial Midwest and spread across America's heartland, from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma up through the Great Plains.

More than 19 million whites fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for more than 41 percent of the nation's destitute, nearly double the number of poor blacks.

Still, while census figures provide an official measure of poverty, they're only a temporary snapshot. The numbers don't capture the makeup of those who cycle in and out of poverty at different points in their lives. They may be suburbanites, for example, or the working poor or the laid off.

In 2011 that snapshot showed 12.6 percent of adults in their prime working-age years of 25-60 lived in poverty. But measured in terms of a person's lifetime risk, a much higher number — 4 in 10 adults — falls into poverty for at least a year of their lives.

The risks of poverty also have been increasing in recent decades, particularly among people ages 35-55, coinciding with widening income inequality. For instance, people ages 35-45 had a 17 percent risk of encountering poverty during the 1969-1989 time period; that risk increased to 23 percent during the 1989-2009 period. For those ages 45-55, the risk of poverty jumped from 11.8 percent to 17.7 percent.

AP

Sci-Tech devices that can blow your mind

Israel bars European aid staff from entering Gaza, Western diplomat says

Several European aid staff have been barred from entering Gaza as part of Israeli measures in the wake of new EU guidelines barring cooperation with settlements, a western diplomat said Friday.

The diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the humanitarian aid staff had failed to receive permits to enter the Gaza Strip.

On Thursday, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon ordered defense officials to halt cooperation on the ground with EU representatives. This includes any assistance to EU infrastructure projects in Area C, which is under full Israeli civilian and military control. Ya'alon also reportedly planned to make it more difficult for EU officials to pass through the Erez Crossing, to the Gaza Strip or back to Israel.

In Brussels, Maja Kocijancic, spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, said on Friday: "The EU is concerned by reports in the Israeli media that the Israeli Minister of Defense has announced a number of restrictions affecting EU activities supporting the Palestinian people.

"We have not received any official communication from the Israeli authorities. Our delegations on the spot are seeking urgent clarifications," Kocijancic added.

In his decision, Ya'alon adopted a list of recommendations he received from the coordinator of government activities in the territories, Maj. Gen. Eitan Dangot. Israel's security establishment would adopt a cold shoulder policy toward EU activities in the territories, Haaretz learned from security sources Friday morning.

However, they clarified, this would apply only to specifically EU activities and not activities conducted by EU member states.

It seems that Ya'alon's moves are being made in coordination with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Following the EU announcement of the new guidelines, Israeli political and defense officials warned that Israel would retaliate to the new policy.

The European Commission published the guidelines barring EU agencies from funding entities connected to settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and residential areas in the Golan Heights on July 19.

Haaretz

French youths hit the road over job crisis