Photo Credit: Associated Press Two new books are deepening a Vatican scandal with tales of mismanagement and greed, such as sainthood causes that can cost up to a half-million dollars and a monsignor allegedly breaking down the wall of his next-door neighbor – a sick, elderly priest – to expand his already palatial apartment.
Pope Francis has made it a top priority to reform the Vatican bureaucracy known as the Curia, a hive of intrigue and gossip. He appointed a commission of eight experts in 2013 to gather information and make recommendations after an earlier expose helped drive his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, to a historic resignation.
The leaks in the new books are seen as part of a bitter internal struggle between the reformers and the old guard. This week, the Vatican arrested two former members of the commission in an investigation into stolen documents. (Read more from “Vatican Scandals Heat up With Revelations of Greed, Intrigue” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-04 00:58:402016-04-11 10:56:34Vatican Scandals Heat up With Revelations of Greed, Intrigue
Hillary Clinton and other State Department officials were apparently warned by overseas U.S. diplomats about blaming the 2012 Benghazi terror strikes on an “inflammatory” Internet video, according to an email released Saturday by House Republicans probing the fatal attacks.
The email was sent three days after the fatal Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, and two days before then-National Security Adviser Susan Rice went on TV to say the attacks were inspired by the anti-Islamic video.
The email — released by the GOP-led House Select Committee on Benghazi — was sent from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya, to the State Department, which Clinton led from 2009 to 2013. But the names of the exact sender and receiver have been redacted.
“The film’s not as explosive of an issue here as it appears to be in other countries in the region,” the unknown sender wrote. “And it is becoming increasingly clear that the series of events in Benghazi was much more terrorist attack than a protest, which escalated into violence.
“It is our opinion that in our messaging, we want to distinguish, not conflate, the events in other countries with this well planned attack by militant extremists.” (Read more from “According to Email, Hillary Was Warned About Blaming Benghazi Attack on Video” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-03 00:41:282016-04-11 10:56:35According to Email, Hillary Was Warned About Blaming Benghazi Attack on Video
They arrived in an unceasing stream, 10,000 a day at the height, as many as a million migrants heading for Europe this year, pushing infants in strollers and elderly parents in wheelchairs, carrying children on their shoulders and life savings in their socks. They came in search of a new life, but in many ways they were the heralds of a new age.
There are more displaced people and refugees now than at any other time in recorded history — 60 million in all — and they are on the march in numbers not seen since World War II. They are coming not just from Syria, but from an array of countries and regions, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, even Haiti, as well as any of a dozen or so nations in sub-Saharan and North Africa. They are unofficial ambassadors of failed states, unending wars, intractable conflicts.
The most striking thing about the current migration crisis, however, is how much bigger it could still get.
What if Islamic State militants are not beaten back but continue to extend their brutal writ across Iraq and Syria? What if the Taliban continue to increase their territorial gains in Afghanistan, prompting even more people to flee? A quarter of Afghans told a Gallup Poll that they want to leave, and more than 100,000 are expected to try to flee to Europe this year.
There are between six million and eight million people displaced in Syria, along with more than four million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. (Read more from “A Mass Migration Crisis, and It May yet Get Worse” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-03 00:39:362016-04-11 10:56:37A Mass Migration Crisis, and It May yet Get Worse
Several schools in Germany have canceled an annual Christian celebration named after Saint Martin and replaced it with the more generic and secular “festival of lights” in consideration of the feelings of thousands of Muslims who’ve migrated to the country in recent days.
On top of that, numerous Dusseldorf daycare centers have outright abolished the celebration altogether, due to “consideration for the refugees,” Infowars reported, citing the Epoch Times.
As Pamela Geller reported on her blog, PamelaGeller.com, the notice of name-change has he dispute over the Saint Martin’s festival has been around for some time,” she wrote. “The left[ist] politician Rudiger Sagel struck two years ago … [and said] the festival should … be renamed to ‘sun, moon and stars’-fest.” (Read more from “Christian Festival Changed, Cancelled to Spare Muslims’ Feelings” HERE)
In a new audio message released late Sunday night, Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri urged 9/11-style attacks against the U.S. and praised a recent spate of stabbing attacks by Palestinians against Israelis.
The 16-minute message, discovered by Vocativ’s deep web technology as the recording was initially distributed on social media platforms, features al-Zawahiri calling for attacks against “the West,” especially against the U.S. for its support of Israel. “Those who support Israel should pay in their blood and economy the price for supporting the crimes of Israel against Islam and Muslims,” al-Zawahiri says on the recording, titled “We Shall Unite To Liberate Jerusalem” . . .
Al-Zawahiri urged Muslims to unite, saying they must establish a Caliphate and an Islamic state in Egypt and the Levant, and that they must “liberate Palestine.” Muslims today face “American-European-Russian-Shiite-Alawite aggression,” he said, before calling on jihadist organizations worldwide to stop infighting and “stand in one line, from East Turkestan to Morocco, against the satanic alliance that attacks Islam, its nation and its house.” (Read more from “Al-Qaeda Chief Urges 9/11-Style Attacks in New Audio Message” HERE)
By Aaron Klein. Insiders in the group that represents ISIS in the Gaza Strip claimed to WND Sunday that the global jihadist group will soon release information purporting to show how it helped to bring down the Russian passenger plane that crashed in Egypt, killing all 224 people on board.
Salafist jihadists in the Gaza Strip who operate under the ISIS banner in the territory said the global jihad group was indeed involved in the downing of the aircraft Saturday morning.
They claimed it was not a missile that brought the plane down and that supposed evidence will soon be released by ISIS . . .
According to the Daily Mail, Michael Clarke, director general of the Royal United Services Institute, told British radio he believes the early information indicates the jet could have been destroyed by a bomb on the aircraft.
Clarke told BBC Radio Five Live: “This aircraft was 200km north of its take-off zone, that means it was flying at around 31,000 feet. Terrorists, as far as we know, don’t have equipment to take down an aircraft at that height. (Read more from “ISIS Claims: We Downed Russian Airliner in ‘Sophisticated Attack'” HERE)
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Russian Investigators Arrive in Egypt After Fatal Plane Crash
By Alexander Marquardt, Mustafa Hameed, Patrick Reevell and David Chiu. The bodies of those killed when a plane headed to St. Petersburg crashed shortly after taking off from a resort town in Egypt will begin returning to Russia as investigators try to learn what caused the crash.
Of the 224 people on board the Metrojet Airbus A321-200 when it crashed, 187 bodies have been recovered, prosecutors told Egypt’s state news agency. They were expected to begin arriving in Russia on Sunday evening.
The plane took off from El Salam, Egypt, early Saturday before it disappeared from radar for 23 minutes, according to the Civil Aviation Authority. It crashed in a mountainous region near al-Hassana.
The head of Russia’s Inter-state Aviation Committee, which is investigating the crash, said the plane broke up in midair, scattering pieces for more than 12 miles, Interfax reported.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said the investigation may take months. He said he told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Egypt welcomes foreign cooperation in the investigation as to why the plane crashed. (Read more from “Russian Investigators Arrive in Egypt After Fatal Plane Crash” HERE)
Wildfires crackled across Siberia this summer, turning skies ochre and sending up enough smoke from burning pines to blot out satellite views of the 400-mile-long Lake Baikal.
To many climate scientists, the worsening fires are a consequence of Siberia getting hotter, the carbon unleashed from its burning forests and tundra only adding to man-made fossil fuel emissions. Siberia’s wildfire season has lengthened in recent years and the 2015 blazes were among the biggest yet, caking the lake, the “Pearl of Siberia”, in ash and scorching the surrounding permafrost.
But the Russian public heard little mention of climate change, because media coverage across state-controlled television stations and print media all but ignored it. On national TV, the villains were locals who routinely but carelessly burn off tall grasses every year, and the sometimes incompetent crews struggling to put the fires out.
While Western media have examined the role of rising temperatures and drought in this year’s record wildfires in North America, Russian media continue to pay little attention to an issue that animates so much of the world.
The indifference reflects widespread public doubt that human activities play a significant role in global warming, a tone set by President Vladimir Putin, who has offered only vague and modest pledges of emissions cuts ahead of December’s U.N. climate summit in Paris. (Read more from “Russian Media Take Climate Cue From Skeptical Putin” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-02 00:25:282016-04-11 10:56:41Russian Media Take Climate Cue From Skeptical Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his Security Council to assess Russia’s readiness to survive a nuclear, chemical or biological disaster and has told them to stockpile protective equipment if necessary.
The order was given during one of Putin’s regular meetings with the council that is made up of the heads of Russia’s intelligence, defense and law enforcement agencies. High-ranking ministers and the speaker of the Russian house of parliament are also permanent members of the group.
According to the government website, Putin told the council that it was important to review and potentially strengthen Russia’s defense protocols against “nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological threats, both in peacetime, and—God forbid, of course—in wartime . . .
The Russian president also proposed to the council that Russia should begin developing and producing personal protective equipment against nuclear, biological or chemical threats. “In the near future we should set up an inventory of individual means of protection for citizens, to determine which of them have become theoretically and technically obsolete, and develop measures to replenish stocks of such assets in accordance with modern designs,” Putin said. (Read more from “RUMORS of WAR: Putin Orders Russia to Stockpile Protective Equipment for Nuclear Threat” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-10-31 00:27:452016-04-11 10:56:43RUMORS of WAR: Putin Orders Russia to Stockpile Protective Equipment for Nuclear Threat
China’s naval commander told his U.S. counterpart that a minor incident could spark war in the South China Sea if the United States did not stop its “provocative acts” in the disputed waterway, the Chinese navy said on Friday.
Admiral Wu Shengli made the comments to U.S. chief of naval operations Admiral John Richardson during a video teleconference on Thursday, according to a Chinese naval statement.
The two officers held talks after a U.S. warship sailed within 12 nautical miles of one of Beijing’s man-made islands in the contested Spratly archipelago on Tuesday.
China has rebuked Washington over the patrol, the most significant U.S. challenge yet to territorial limits China effectively claims around its seven artificial islands in one of the world’s busiest sea lanes.
“If the United States continues with these kinds of dangerous, provocative acts, there could well be a seriously pressing situation between frontline forces from both sides on the sea and in the air, or even a minor incident that sparks war,” the statement paraphrased Wu as saying. (Read more from “China Naval Chief Says Incident Could Spark War in South China Sea” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-10-31 00:25:342016-04-11 10:56:43China Naval Chief Says Incident Could Spark War in South China Sea
Iran intends to dispatch “a fleet of warships” to the Atlantic Ocean shortly, the semi-state Fars news agency reported Thursday, quoting the regime’s navy chief.
“Our warships will soon berth at ports in the Atlantic Ocean,” Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari promised at a ceremony on Wednesday marking the return to port of Iranian warships that Fars said had taken part in joint drills with the Russian navy.
Sayyari said the Iranian vessels had been in the Caspian Sea and at the Russian port of Astrakhan. “The presence of Iranian warships in international ports shows the Iranian Navy’s prowess,” Fars quoted him saying.
Sayyari made a similar pledge to deploy warships in the Atlantic in early 2014. At the time, Iran promised to send its fleet close to American maritime borders as a counter to the US navy’s presence in the Gulf. But in April, the navy chief said the move had been canceled “due to a change in schedule.” (Read more from “Iran to Send ‘Fleet of Warships’ to the Atlantic Ocean” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-10-30 01:19:432016-04-11 10:56:45Iran to Send ‘Fleet of Warships’ to the Atlantic Ocean
