Random Politics & Religion #10

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte placed the nation on lockdown Friday night after an explosion at a Davao City market killed at least 14 people and injured 71, the official Philippines News Agency reported.
Duterte, saying the explosion was an act of terrorism, authorized the police and military to search cars and frisk people at checkpoints, the PNA said. He put the nation under a "state of lawlessness," saying he has not declared martial law and has not suspended the writ of habeas corpus, the PNA said.

"We have to confront the ugly head of terrorism," Duterte said, standing near the explosion site on Roxas Avenue in Davao City, his hometown. "We will take this as a police matter about terrorism."
The explosion happened around 10 p.m. Friday (10 a.m. ET) at the Roxas night market near Ateneo de Davao University, said Chief Inspector Catherine Dela Rey, spokeswoman for Davao City Police.
The market is known to attract thousands.
The cause of the blast is not known, but presidential spokesman Martin Andanar said components of a suspected improved explosive device were found at the scene, according to CNN affiliate ABS-CBN.

Also, saw this just now. It's somewhat P&R related.
Setting the scene: Bill Nye shuts down a Moon Landing hoaxer.

Guys don't believe what you see on tv, but please believe everything you find on youtube!

Very true.

Fone that GIF is so good I am sorry I don't have a sock puppet to rate it up again.

Hangzhou, China (CNN)The United States and China on Saturday each submitted their plans to reduce carbon emissions to the United Nations, officially ratifying an agreement forged last year in Paris meant to curb climate change.
President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping submitted their nations' plans to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon here, the host city of this year's Group of 20 meetings.

The US and China are the world's largest carbon polluters, and officials hope their formal entry into the Paris accord will spur other nations to come aboard. The Paris agreement only goes into effect if 55 nations sign on.

Because the US plan was termed an "executive agreement," the White House says Obama did not require Senate approval for ratification.
"I believe that history will judge today's efforts as pivotal," Obama said after he and Xi formally submitted their nations' plans.
In talks with Xi after the announcement, Obama raised areas over which Washington and Beijing remain firmly at odds, including over the rising Asian power's territorial grabs in the South China Sea, its engagement in cyber warfare, a monetary policy often unwelcome in the West and longstanding concerns over human rights abuses.
"We will have candid conversations about some of those differences, issues like human rights, or cyber, or maritime," Obama said. "I am absolutely committed to ensuring not only that this is a productive meeting but that we are also setting the stage so that the next US administration comes in with a relationship that is on a strong and productive footing."

Obama, who touched down in Hangzhou just after 2 p.m. local time (2 a.m. ET), is embarking on a final bout of delicate overseas diplomacy before his successor is elected in November. He arrived in Asia on Saturday for meetings with some of his most nettlesome counterparts.

A pomp-filled arrival ceremony on the airport's tarmac was marred, however, by scuffles between US officials and Chinese security, who attempted to keep members of the media and some senior Obama aides away from the US President.
"This is our country. This is our airport," one Chinese official insisted when US presidential aides said that American reporters were allowed to view Obama's arrival. Officials also briefly attempted to block US National Security Adviser Susan Rice from moving toward the President.
The confrontation lasted only moments before the US delegation sped away toward the city center.
It was likely just the first tense moment on a trip rife with tension for Obama, who, during his final presidential trip to Asia, is taking a final stab at face-to-face negotiations to resolve simmering disputes.

Obama's aides insist China is a success story for the administration but acknowledge the persistent differences between the countries. They said those divergences would be covered in Obama's talks with Xi, as they have been for the past several years.
"Part of what I've tried to communicate to President Xi is that the United States arrives at its power, in part, by restraining itself," Obama told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in an interview ahead of the Asia trip, previewing his message.

"So where we see them violating international rules and norms, as we have seen in some cases in the South China Sea or in some of their behavior when it comes to economic policy, we've been very firm," he added. "And we've indicated to them that there will be consequences."
"Our relationship with China ... defies easy and simple definitions," said Daniel Kritenbrink, Obama's senior director for Asian affairs. "We recognize and are comfortable with the fact that there exists a broad range of tensions in the US-China relationship. We don't shy away from that tension."

For Obama, this week's trip to China and Laos is one of his last opportunities to shape American foreign policy before other leaders adapt their approach to the US based on the next president. He hopes to make a closing argument in some of his most fraught relationships before the business of state is handed off.
Aside from Xi, Obama planned formal meetings with the leaders of Turkey and the Philippines amid new disagreements.

At his second stop, in the Southeast Asian nation of Laos, Obama is planning his first face-to-face with the controversial new leader of key US ally the Philippines.
President Rodrigo Duterte's lewd comments about women and his harsh approach to battling drug crime have earned him the label the "Donald Trump of the Philippines."
Obama has worked hard to develop the Philippines' partnership with the US and its role as a regional counterbalance to China. He's visited the country twice in his second term, and announced on a stop there in November the return of a US military presence at a critical naval base on the South China Sea.
But Duterte's derogatory comments and a spike in extrajudicial killings of suspected drug dealers put the relationship in stormier waters.

Obama is expected to complete one more foreign swing as President, traveling to Peru for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November and likely making additional stops in a presidential farewell tour.
But that trip is scheduled after the presidential election, meaning his stops in China and Laos this week will be his final chance to interact with world leaders before either Trump or Hillary Clinton make him a lame duck.
Amid his contentious bilateral agenda, Obama will find close allies at hand as well. His top global partner, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, is attending, as is Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Obama's newest foreign friend.
Obama is planning to meet British Prime Minister Theresa May for the first time since she replaced his stalwart partner David Cameron. The consequences of the Brexit vote were likely to arise in the summit's various economic sessions.
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, fresh from his meeting with Trump, also was scheduled to travel to Hangzhou for a slightly less scrutinized session with global leaders.

Fone that GIF is so good I am sorry I don't have a sock puppet to rate it up again.

It's been a tough week for the Islamic State group. First, one of its top leaders was killed in a coalition airstrike. Now reports have surfaced that its fighters are literally calling in sick over fears they might die.

Islamic State group militants near the Iraqi town of al-Shirqat, roughly 75 miles south of the key extremist stronghold of Mosul, are filing fake "sick notices" trying to convince their commanders they're suffering from incurable diseases, according to reports from Shiite militias fighting there, also known as the Popular Mobilization Units or PMUs. Low morale and a lack of faith in their commanders have prompted these fighters to do anything they can go get out of assignments to the crumbling front lines, the militia members say.

The news was first reported by Iranian news service Fars, run by the central government in Iran, which backs most of the PMUs. In this case the reports align with what others have observed on the ground. Deserters from al-Shirqat have reportedly been boiled alive by the group both as punishment and a threat to others considering similar actions.

U.S. officials say that they, too, have tracked steady rates of militants deserting or defecting from the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL.



"We've seen that our momentum is making the bad guys act in ways that show disorganization, desperation and poor morale," says Air Force Col. John Thomas, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which oversees all conflicts in the Middle East. "Young recruits are now running things in areas where more experienced ISIL leaders have left, for instance. We see headquarters literally moving underground. And we see skittishness and a fear by ISIL combatants of airstrikes on their positions at any moment – they are running around scared."

Central Command has also observed more of what Thomas calls "open defiance" against the Islamic State group by civilians still under its control, such as smoking in public or lashing out at its soldiers – both strictly forbidden by the organization's rules.

"There are clear signs of pockets of civilians forming a resistance and organizing to sabotage ISIL efforts. These are citizens who are sick of the oppression and sadistic behaviors of the Islamic State thugs running their towns and cities," Thomas says.

The U.S. general who oversees all operations in the Middle East said this week that recent gains by coalition forces – which include the PMUs – have caused some Islamic State group fighters to push back against their marching orders.

"Some of what we saw in the Manbij fight was direction from [Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi] to his fighters to fight to the death," Central Command chief Army Gen. Joseph Votel said at a press conference at the Pentagon this week, referring to the operation that liberated the Syrian border city. "Obviously, they didn't."

The reports of Islamic State group fighters filing formal sick notices also offers another notable insight into the bureaucracy the extremist network has established, as it continues to convince those it rules that it is a legitimate state. Its leaders have begun issuing passports and birth certificates, minting its own currency and establishing news services.

The longer this bureaucracy exists the more difficult the Islamic State group will be to defeat. Multiple columnists used the U.S. announcement it had killed the extremist leader Abu Mohammed al-Adnani as further evidence of a failed strategy, saying the Islamic State group's established network allows for a replacement to step into al-Adnani's place eagerly.

Time for some real substance:

Believe everything on FFXIAH. The Illuminati don't have the time or effort levels to wrap their tendrils around this place.

We aren't as busy as you might suspect

The mainstream media and Bill Nye are establishment/controlled.

Bart Sibrel's film, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon does show NASA faking their mission.



Watch the whole movie before you believe what you see on television news.

Certain images will indelibly mark memories of this year and one will be the gut-wrenching video of a five-year-old pulled from rubble in Aleppo with the frozen stare of trauma, his face streaked with soot and blood. “Cease fires” come and go. Hell, it seems, has a special purchase on Syria. When, for heaven’s sake, can it end? No one can answer.

When did it begin? That, at least, we can explain.

Rarely can one moment and one place be fixed as a trigger for events that unravel a whole part of the world for more than a century. But the blood-saturated disintegration of today’s Syria and much of the surrounding carnage and anomie have their origins 100 years ago, in the summer of 1916, and in British-ruled Cairo.

It was there that critical parts of a secret deal were put in place that carved up control of the Middle East – a land grab that could be completed only by having no regard for promises made and by betraying people who had shed much blood in expectation of those promises being met.

The deal was the Sykes-Picot Agreement(*), made between Britain, France and Czarist Russia, and named for its principal authors, Sir Mark Sykes for Britain and M. Francois Georges Picot of France.

In this arrangement Britain was to have control of Egypt, Palestine, parts of Arabia and a new nation that became Iraq. France was to get Syria. And Russia would have control of Turkey, including of Constantinople and the Dardanelles—the channel from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean that Russia had sought since the days of Peter the Great to give it “warm water” naval power....

Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it department.

The 100-Year-Old Carve-Up Bleeding the Middle East Today
How two men, one British, one French, got together and drew a new map – betraying promises and inventing nations like Syria and Iraq. And left a mess that destroyed Tony Blair.
The Daily Beast

Long and deep. Openers:
(*Please note that this was 1916, well before the end of WWI.)

Mithra, we were in the middle of that **** although it isn't mentioned in the article.

Inherit? No, part of the problem, if not from 1916, well before the armistice.