REPORT: ISIS Has Destroyed the Ancient Babylonian City of Nineveh

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2000px-AQMI_Flag_asymmetric.svgThe Islamic State has destroyed the ancient city of Nineveh, YNET reported Friday. The Israeli news site didn’t provide any details of the destruction, but the news followed an earlier report this week about the destruction of the gates of Nineveh.

ARA News in Syria reported that local activists had confirmed ISIS demolished the so-called Gate of God (Misqi) that was built in the seventh century B.C., when King Sennacherib ruled over Babel, which is now Iraq.

Local media activist Zuheir Mousilly told ARA News that since Islamic State took over Mosul (which is modern day Nineveh), the terrorists have destroyed most of Iraq’s historic sites and monuments. These include the Assyrian city of Nimrud, the Winged Bulls and the Mosul National Museum that was destroyed after ISIS stole removable artifacts.

Nineveh was mentioned in the book of Jonah and was once the largest city in the world. Under Sennacherib, the city became truly magnificent. The Babylonian King, who also laid siege to Jerusalem but failed to conquer, built many famous buildings and laid out new streets and squares in Nineveh. (Read more from “REPORT: ISIS Has Destroyed the Ancient Babylonian City of Nineveh” HERE)

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Why China’s Economy Is on Borrowed Time

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maxresdefault (93)On Friday China announced its economy had expanded at a 6.7 percent rate in the first quarter of 2016. While this is the slowest growth since the depths of the great recession, it conveniently remains within the government’s official target of 6.5-7.0 percent. Unlike all developed countries, there will be no revisions to this figure in the coming months or quarters.

There were two factors that kept Beijing’s growth within its target range: Easy money and the property market. The level of “total social financing,” or borrowing, rose 16 percent in March from a year ago.

This was fueled by the bond issuance by local governments as part of its bailout program and investment in ‘fixed asset investment’ which is largely composed of infrastructure and factories.

With total debt approaching 300 percent of GDP and massive overcapacity in many industries such as coal, cement, chemicals and refining, this development only exacerbates China’s serious structural problems.

The property market witnessed a strong recovery in China’s largest cities, causing property investment to rise at its fastest pace in a year. Outside the largest four cities, however, where 95 percent of home sales occurred, the housing sector remains sluggish. With an estimated 70 million inventory of unsold homes, China’s housing construction rebound does nothing to begin resolving this problem.

If this pattern sounds eerily familiar, it should. Debt issuance, investment in factories and the property market have been consistently the engines for growth since the economic crisis and beyond. China’s economic plan to move toward a more market-oriented policy, such as improving property rights, financial sector liberalization and Hukou reform (giving the massive migrant work force basic rights in urban areas) have been slow in development or nonexistent.

How long can this trend last? As the well-known economist Herb Stein once said, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” (For more from the author of “Why China’s Economy Is on Borrowed Time” please click HERE)

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Failed Obama ‘Reset’ Has Encouraged Russian Aggression

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6Yzp2IFSgB3zTsa73qLnFRHuNABPFkpsPeople seem a bit surprised—even perplexed—by the breathless news reports and video of Russian warplanes “buzzing” an American warship operating in international waters in the Baltic Sea this week.

The reality is that they shouldn’t be.

That, of course, isn’t to say that we shouldn’t be deeply troubled for the safety of our sailors on the USS Donald Cook at the hands of some “hot dog” Russian pilots involved in reckless and provocative actions that could have had dire and or unintended consequences.

But, that said, there’s a method to Moscow’s madness.

First, there’s the matter of geography. The Baltic Sea has long been a Russian security priority. For instance, the Baltic waters lap up against the Russian coast at the iconic city of St. Petersburg (once Leningrad), where a successful invading force could drive into the heart of Russia, including reaching Moscow.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union controlled the southern Baltic Sea coastline from Russia through the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia), across Poland and into East Germany. In Moscow’s eyes at that time, the Baltic Sea should be a Soviet “lake.”

Today, rather than lined with Soviet Republics and loyal members of the Warsaw Pact, that same coastline is instead populated with NATO states with rough relations with the Russians. That’s not at all comforting to Kremlin & Co.

The only section of the southern Baltic Coast that isn’t part of NATO is Kaliningrad, a Russia-controlled outpost between Poland and Lithuania that Russia sees as not only isolated and vulnerable, but strategic to Russian security.

Indeed, after the less-than-stellar response to the Crimea crisis, there’s been a constant concern among some that Moscow might try to carve out a Russian-controlled access route to Kaliningrad through NATO member Lithuania

Of course, taking on NATO is different than taking on Ukraine.

Second, the Russian show of force in the Baltic is meant to send a signal of strength in response to perceptions of American weakness, resulting largely from the White House’s failed “reset” policy toward the Kremlin, going back to 2009.

In fact, concerns about Russian aggression in the Baltics and Eastern Europe along NATO’s eastern flank have caused the Pentagon to rotate a Brigade Combat Team (BCT) back to Europe under the European Reassurance Initiative.

This effort involves several thousand U.S. soldiers, a couple hundred tanks, armored vehicles and artillery pieces that will join 60,000-plus of America’s bravest already in Europe. U.S. pre-positioned weapons stockpiles will also be improved.

The returning American BCT will be forward-deployed along NATO’s eastern flank to frontline states including Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.

It’s a good move, but is it enough?

Not surprisingly, Russia isn’t happy about the U.S.-NATO moves and has promised an “asymmetric response,” which may include this week’s dangerous fly-bys of the Russian Su-24 Fencers against the USS Donald Cook in the Baltic.

More Moscow mischief may be in the offing.

Sure, Russia could get more feisty, but considering the failure of the White House’s “reset” policy toward the Kremlin so far, it’s probably time for a serious change toward Russia—one that comes from a position of strength. (For more from the author of “Failed Obama ‘Reset’ Has Encouraged Russian Aggression” please click HERE)

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Declassified Cable: Pakistani Intelligence Agency Funded Deadly Attack on CIA Personnel. US Gov’t Won’t Comment

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The_CIA_Original_Headquarters_BuildingIt was the deadliest attack sustained by the CIA in 26 years, and according to a just-declassified U.S. intelligence cable, Pakistan’s military intelligence agency paid a notorious Islamist terror group $200,000 to carry it out.

State Department spokesman John Kirby, asked about the claim Thursday, declined to “speak about intelligence matters.”

The shock allegation – that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate financed the Haqqani network’s suicide bombing that killed seven CIA employees at Camp Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan on December 30, 2009 – is contained in a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document, marked secret and dated February 6 of the following year.

It was obtained, in heavily-redacted form, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Security Archive, an independent non-governmental research institute at The George Washington University.

Claims about collusion between the ISI and terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan are not new, but the document indicates that the military intelligence agency of a major recipient of U.S. military funding directly financed the costliest attack against CIA personnel since Hezbollah bombed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983. (Eight CIA personnel were among 17 Americans killed in Beirut, where a total of 63 people died.) (Read more from “Declassified Cable: Pakistani Intelligence Agency Funded Deadly Attack on CIA Personnel. US Gov’t Won’t Comment” HERE)

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Turkey Arrests, Detains Without Charge, US Evangelist; Russia Says Turkish Civil War Underway

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6711234961_a6d9c006b7_oBy Morning Star News. Turkish authorities have detained a U.S. evangelist and ordered him held for 30 days without charge ahead of deportation, sources said.

Declaring David Byle “a danger to public order,” authorities in Turkey took him into custody on April 6 after asking him to report to the immigration office in Istanbul regarding his application for a residency permit.

Byle, 46, was told his application had been denied; he was immediately taken into custody and then transferred to the Fatih police station in Istanbul. Police held him for two days before transferring him on Friday (April 8) to a holding center for foreigners awaiting deportation, the sources said. . .

The arrest took place days before Byle was set to teach a class to a group of Turks on how to tell people about the gospel, though there was no public indication of a link between the arrest and the scheduled training. (Read more from “Turkey Arrests, Detains Without Charge, US Evangelist; Russia Says Turkish Civil War Underway” HERE)

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Putin: Ankara ‘Not So Much Fights Radicals as Cooperates With Them,’ Civil War Underway in Turkey

By RT. The Turkish authorities are not so much fighting with the radicals, but working side by side with them instead, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during his annual Q&A session, noting that there is a civil war going on in southern Turkey.

“We believe that the current Turkish leadership not so much fights the radicals, but rather cooperates with them,” Putin said.

“In fact, there is a civil war going on in southern Turkey. We try to ignore it, the international community pretends not to notice it, but it’s a fact. Moreover, [the war goes on] with the use of heavy weaponry and equipment, artillery and so on,” he said, highlighting the fact that terrorist attacks take place in Turkey “nearly each week.” (Read more from “Putin: Ankara ‘Not So Much Fights Radicals as Cooperates With Them,’ Civil War Underway in Turkey” HERE)

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Christian Defense Forces Mobilize Across Middle East

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hqdefaultBy Ahuva Balofsky. Persecution of Christians in the Middle East at the hands of the Islamic State (ISIS) has become so serious a problem that it has been recognized as genocide. Some Christians in the region are unwilling to go like lambs to the slaughter, however, and have begun forming militias to fight back.

One such group is the Babylon Brigade, some 500 to 1,000 Christian fighters who mobilized after ISIS took control of their hometown in Mosul, Iraq in 2014. Christians were forced to leave, convert or pay bribes, and many were expelled from their homes. Women were raped and sold into slavery or killed.

Not content to let things be, the members of the Babylon Brigade are offering resistance to ISIS forces. They are a part of a larger group called the Popular Mobilization Forces, which qualifies them for funding from the government.

ISIS “displaced us from our houses, they took our money, killed our young men and women and they took our properties,” the group’s commander, Rayan Al-Kildani, told NBC News. “Therefore, Christians decided to fight the terrorists of ISIS.” (Read more from “Christian Defense Forces Mobilize Across Middle East” HERE)

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U.S. Sends Weapon to Hit ISIS Communications

By Jamie Crawford. The United States has deployed tactical aircraft capable of attacking ISIS’s ability to communicate closer to the front lines of the battle against the terrorist group.

The U.S. European Command announced a squadron of Marine Corps EA-6B Prowler aircraft has been sent to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey to support operations against ISIS.

In addition to being able to intercept communications by ISIS, the Prowler can protect allied forces on the ground and strike aircraft by jamming any radar and communication devices ISIS has. (Read more from “U.S. Sends Weapon to Hit ISIS Communications” HERE)

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ISIS Sex Slaves Reveal the True Horror of What Is Going on Over in the Middle East

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15715981259_ea169dcafe_b (1)Could you imagine being kidnapped, being auctioned off like a piece of meat, and being endlessly gang-raped every day by some of the most evil men on the entire planet for months on end? This is what ISIS is doing to thousands upon thousands of women in Iraq and Syria, and some of their victims are as young as nine. The things that I am about to share with you are almost too nightmarish for words, but it is imperative that we understand what is going on. When ISIS conquers an area that is not Muslim, they believe that they can do whatever they want to the women because they are “infidels”. So innocent young women are being treated in some of the most horrible ways imaginable, and most of the rest of the world looks on with indifference. But of course what ISIS is doing is just the tip of a very big global iceberg. As you will see below, there are tens of millions of slaves in our world today, and sexual exploitation is involved in approximately 80 percent of those cases.

I came across a Daily Mail article earlier today that detailed what ISIS did to a young Yazidi woman named Khalida. When she was captured, she was brought to one of those infamous “auctions” where members of ISIS buy and sell women like trading cards…

A Yazidi woman sold as a sex-slave eight times by an ISIS jihadi says she was put on parade like she was being picked out in a ‘car showroom’.

Khalida, 20, was kidnapped and taken to Raqqa where she was put on display in a ‘meat market’ where women are purchased for as little as a mobile phone, or simply given away as ‘gifts’.

The most beautiful women are put into a separate ‘VIP’ room where leaders can take their time choosing their favourite three or four girls each.

Khalida and her sister were purchased initially by a very sick old man with a white beard that kept them locked away in a small room. From time to time he would rape them, and then afterwards his wife would beat them for “tempting” her husband.

Later she was sold to other owners, and she was gang-raped by ISIS fighters multiple times. Here is more of her story from the Daily Mail…

Raped up to three times a day her ‘slave master’ or gang-raped by groups of ISIS fighters, this quiet young woman was bought and sold by eight different men – each more brutal, callous and perverted than the last.

She told MailOnline she was force-fed contraceptive pills and once taken to hospital for a contraceptive injection after she was rendered unconscious by one particularly brutal gang rape.

‘They [ISIS] did not want me get pregnant, especially if there was more than one man because they would not know who the father of the baby was,’ she said.

This is going on day after day in the Middle East, and yet it doesn’t make a lot of headlines in the western world.

Perhaps we think that if we can ignore what is happening to them that we are justified in not doing anything about it.

Next, let me share with you the story of Nadia Murad. She was just 19 when ISIS conquered her town, and she saw ISIS kill all of the males in her family right in front of her eyes…

Murad and her mother and sisters watched out of the window, along with hundreds of other women and children from the Yazidi village of Kocho, as ISIS slaughtered their men and boys. “We could see outside—they were shooting the men and they were beheading them as well. They were also taking them away in buses.

“My six brothers were killed in this way.”

In the western world, we tend to think that such things could never happen to us. But in my new book I discuss how Christians all over the globe are eventually going to be facing this kind of persecution.

If you are under the illusion that you are somehow going to be exempt from all this, then you are going to be in for one heck of a wake up call.

After Nadia Murad watched ISIS butcher her family members, she was sold 13 different times, and her various “owners” were incredibly brutal…

I first met Murad in July last year, four months after she managed to escape from her captors in Mosul. She visited the UK with two other former captives and former Iraqi MP Ameena Hasan Saeed, who helped to smuggle her out of the Islamic State. Speaking anonymously, she described in blistering detail how she was abused, raped, and sold through the ranks of ISIS troops, enduring a total of eight months in captivity and 13 owners who kept her locked up, starved and disorientated.

At the time, she showed me scars from cigarette butts burnt into her skin by the fighters who worked for her first owner, a commander called Salman. He had his men gang rape her after her first disastrous attempt at escaping. “I found a small window so I climbed out and jumped from the second story, but one of Salman’s guards found me and brought be back to him. I could have died jumping, and after that I wished I had.”

I don’t know how anyone can read these stories without having an emotional reaction.

Just imagine if this was happening to your wife or your daughter. How would you feel?

Unfortunately, even if ISIS could somehow be wiped off the face of the planet tomorrow, that would only put a very, very tiny dent in the overall problem of sex slavery in our world. The following are 11 facts about human trafficking that come from dosomething.org…

1. Globally, the average cost of a slave is $90.

2. Trafficking primarily involves exploitation which comes in many forms, including: forcing victims into prostitution, subjecting victims to slavery or involuntary servitude and compelling victims to commit sex acts for the purpose of creating pornography.

3. According to some estimates, approximately 80% of trafficking involves sexual exploitation, and 19% involves labor exploitation.

4. There are approximately 20 to 30 million slaves in the world today.

5. According to the U.S. State Department, 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year, of which 80% are female and half are children.

6. The average age a teen enters the sex trade in the U.S. is 12 to 14-year-old. Many victims are runaway girls who were sexually abused as children.

7. California harbors 3 of the FBI’s 13 highest child sex trafficking areas on the nation: Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego.

8. The National Human Trafficking Hotline receives more calls from Texas than any other state in the US. 15% of those calls are from the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

9. Between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked into the U.S. each year.

10. Human trafficking is the third largest international crime industry (behind illegal drugs and arms trafficking). It reportedly generates a profit of $32 billion every year. Of that number, $15.5 billion is made in industrialized countries.

11. The International Labour Organization estimates that women and girls represent the largest share of forced labor victims with 11.4 million trafficked victims (55%) compared to 9.5 million (45%) men.

To me, those numbers are absolutely staggering.

Most people tend to think of slavery as something that happened in less civilized times, but the truth is that it has been estimated that there are more slaves in our world today than ever before in human history.

We live in a world that is absolutely brimming with evil. This is something that those that believe that people are “generally good” and that humanity has a “bright future” really struggle with.

If humans are “generally good” and we really have advanced so dramatically over their centuries, then why are there more slaves in the world today than ever before and why do we see so much evil all around us?

The answer to that question reveals a lot more about someone than you might think. (For more from the author of “ISIS Sex Slaves Reveal the True Horror of What Is Going on Over in the Middle East” please click HERE)

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Costa Rica Says Its Doors Are Closed to Cubans

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6.6.10CubanParadeUCByLuigiNovi5 (1)Costa Rica has issued a warning to the new wave of undocumented Cuban migrants hoping to travel by land from Ecuador to Central America and eventually the United States: they will not pass.

Foreign Minister Manuel Gonzalez Sanz told el Nuevo Herald that Costa Rica was already worn down by its handling of the previous wave of 7,800 Cubans who were detained or stranded here from November of 2015 until March.

“I want to make absolutely clear, to all the (Cuban) migrants who are coming and those already in Panama, that Costa Rica cannot and will not receive them,” Gonzalez said. The country “will make use of all domestic and international measures at its disposal to address this situation, if we face something similar to what we faced from November to March.”

He added that waves of undocumented Cuban migrants “will continue as long as the U.S. law that favors Cuban migration, the well-known Cuban Adjustment Act, continues,” and indicated that there’s a profound discomfort in the region with the Act. (Read more from “Costa Rica Says Its Doors Are Closed to Cubans” HERE)

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Russia and China Increase Defense Spending While US Continues Cutting

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NATO Operation Allied ForceEvery year at this time, we see the same kind of headlines: “U.S. biggest military spender in the world.” They’re are all based on the release of the global military spending database, an annual report compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

What the headlines usually miss is that U.S. defense spending is going down while global military spending is going up. The fact that the U.S. spends more on defense than any other individual nation dramatically misses the point.

First, we live in a world of growing threats against U.S. vital interests. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are driving the details of the Pentagon’s latest defense budget proposal. In the 2016 Index of U.S. Military Strength, China, Russia, and Iran were assessed as being particularly aggressive against the interests of the United States, while North Korea was rated as downright hostile. Each of these countries is actively attempting to coerce and bully its neighboring nations, and they all pose high to severe threats to the United States and our interests.

Second, the U.S. military budget has been cut by 25 percent in the last five years. This has resulted in dramatic declines in the U.S. military’s ability to fight and win. Fifteen years of conflict and years of tight budgets have taken a grave toll, worsened by these budget cuts. Top military leaders have told Congress that their readiness is, as the vice chief of staff of the Air Force recently put it, “at a near all-time low due to continuous combat operations, reduced manpower, an aging fleet, and inconsistent funding.”

Third, a big part of why the U.S. maintains a large military is because we have learned that major conflict in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia can be devastating to our economy.

A strong U.S. military can help deter conflict in these regions and, if deterrence fails, win a conflict quickly, thus mitigating a war’s effect on the U.S. The new budget data shows that military spending is increasing dramatically in Eastern Europe and Asia. Russia and China are driving these increases, but their neighbors are taking note and increasing their budgets as well.

While the changes from 2014 to 2015 are notable, they are even more striking when we look at these countries over time. From 2011 to 2015, the U.S. defense budget went down by 21 percent while China increased its military budget by 38 percent and Russia increased its military budget by 40 percent.

Putting these changes in regional context is even more striking. In the past 10 years, Russian forces have moved across their border to invade neighboring countries, most recently annexing Crimea from Ukraine and actively assisting a separatist force in destabilizing the eastern half of Ukraine.

China continues to assert its claims by force in the South China Sea, creating islands in long disputed international waters, then militarizing them, and intimidating other countries from freely using the seas and airspace around them. Iran is more active than ever, testing ballistic missiles, helping to fuel the turmoil being felt throughout the Middle East, and even seizing U.S. sailors. To make matters worse, North Korea continues to test nuclear weapons and missiles, in addition to issuing threats of a pre-emptive nuclear attack.

The fact that the U.S. spends more than a few other countries combined on defense is not particularly useful, but it is just one of many bad arguments for cutting defense spending. Instead of being distracted by the headlines, Congress should work on rebuilding the U.S. military so that it can do what the nation needs it to do: protect the U.S. and its interests around the world in many places at the same time. After fifteen years of conflict, our military needs robust funding to restore readiness and recapitalize for the future. A strong, modern military is vital for a strong America. (For more from the author of “Russia and China Increase Defense Spending While US Continues Cutting” please click HERE)

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Syrian Refugees Have Not Been Vetted for National Security

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20643299043_fbca1fb8e9_bRep. Dave Brat (R-Va.) says that “a gaping hole in our national security apparatus” means that Syrian refugees “have not been vetted” before they are resettled in the United States.

“Of course the major problem there is that they have not been vetted in terms of national security,” Brat told CNSNews.com. “We just want to [send a] message to the American people that the issue has not yet been resolved.”

“ISIS has made it very clear in their documents that their intent and their goal is to bring radicalized folks from around the world in through the southern border and to use the refugee program to do so,” Brat warned . . .

The first of the Syrian refugees have begun to make their way to the U.S. in what the Obama administration has described as a “surge operation” to speed up the refugee resettlement process from the usual 18-to-24 months to just three months.

CNSNews has reported that of the 1,075 Syrian refugees admitted to the U.S. since the Paris terror attack last November, 1,070 are Muslims and just four are Christians. (Read more from “Syrian Refugees Have Not Been Vetted for National Security” HERE)

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