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Vatican introduces exorcism training for Italian priests to cope with 3-fold surge in demand


RT
Fri, 23 Feb 2018 15:53 UTC
Exorcism
© Alessandro Bianchi / Reuters
Sicilian priest Benigno Palilla has said that the requests for exorcisms has tripled.
The Vatican is introducing exorcism training for Italian priests to cope with a surge in demand for the expulsion of evil spirits. Requests have tripled of late, according to Sicilian priest and trained exorcist Benigno Palilla.

The priest told Vatican Radio that the number of exorcism cases has risen to almost 500,000 each year. Palilla put the increase down to the upturn in people seeking out tarot readers and psychics. "Doing so opens the door to the demon and to possession," he said. However, he conceded that not all of the cases were related to demonic possession and some were in fact a result of psychological or spiritual problems.

The occult market in Italy is booming, according to a 2017 consumer report which claims 13 million people turn to psychics and pseudo healers annually. Unemployment, economic problems and uncertainty about the future are among the top reasons for seeking these services, the report noted.

Comment: The surge in demand for exorcisms has been increasing around the world for a number of years:

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Hourglass

East Ghouta: Syria wants to liberate it, the West wants to save the terrorists occupying it


Moon of Alabama
Fri, 23 Feb 2018 16:34 UTC
ghouta
© REUTERS/ Bassam Khabieh/File
Daily mortar and missile attacks against the Syrian capital Damascus have been ongoing for years but intensified in recent months. The often quoted Syrian Observatory notes:
... raising to 116 persons at least including 18 children and 14 citizen women, who were killed as a result of the fall of these shells since the beginning of escalation on the capital Damascus and its suburbs on the 16th of November, and the SOHR documented the injury of more than 563 persons who were injured in these daily targeting during 3 consecutive months.
Other accounts report higher casualty numbers.

Some of the attacks on Damascus city hit well-designated targets. The Russian embassy in Damascus has been mortared several times. Earlier this month more well-targeted projectiles hit other Russian interests:
Maxim A. Suchkov‏ @MSuchkov_ALM - 4:03 AM - 7 Feb 2018
#Russia's trade mission in #Damascus got hit by 120-mm bomb & is badly damaged. Earlier Rus aid delivery point in the city came under fire killing two local Syrians, Rus non-gov delegation (Christian & Muslim leaders who brought collected aid) had to be evacuated.
All these mortars and missiles were fired from east-Ghouta, a Takfiri-held area consisting partly of densely urban blocks and partly of agricultural villages. Some 400,000 people originally lived in the area but the number of people living there now is likely less than half of that.
ghouta map

Comment: Yep, it's Aleppo all over again. Former UK ambassador to Syria Peter Ford told RT: "A naive viewer might imagine that Assad was just bombing civilians for the hell of it because the jihadi fighters are totally absent from the picture. And the pictures are literally provided by the jihadists themselves." Yet even after the liberation of Aleppo exposed the media blitz as based on total lies, they're doing the exact same thing, following the same script.
"We have seen this kind of atrocity level pulled over and over again a few months ago, with Aleppo for example," Jim Jatras, political analyst, and media and government affairs specialist, told RT. "Every time the Al Qaeda linked groups are on the ropes and the Syrian army is on the verge of liberating territory, then we hear all these horror stories, some of which may have a basis in truth, some not, about how civilians are suffering but nothing on who the terrorists are who are controlling these areas and oppressing the people who live there."
The media are saying Ghouta is the new Srebrenica. These people have no shame. John Wight writes, for Sputnik:
Srebrenica has long been a potent weapon in the arsenal of regime change propagandists, rolled out when the chips are down in the last gasp attempt to sow moral panic and bounce the 'international community' - namely Washington and its vassals - into action against a government that refuses to acquiesce in its own downfall.

Writing in the Guardian, Simon Tisdall asserts, "With every child who dies, with every act of brutality that goes unpunished, eastern Ghouta more closely resembles what Kofi Annan once called the worst crime committed on European soil since 1945. Eastern Ghouta is turning into Syria's Srebrenica."

Such sentiments beg the question of why no reference to Srebrenica is ever made when it comes to Israel's regular massacre of Palestinians in Gaza, civilians who when they aren't being massacred are being besieged, reduced to a state of abject immiseration by the only democracy in the Middle East? And, too, why no reference to Srebrenica over Saudi Arabia's brutal military campaign in Yemen, described by Amnesty as the 'forgotten war'?

The moral outrage of these champions of regime change is of course, and in time-honored fashion, selective - although no less egregious for all that. But making it even more contemptible is the fact they betray not one tincture of evidence of having learned any lessons from Iraq or Libya, previous and recent examples of regime change wars, resulting in both countries being pushed into the abyss of societal collapse and chaos, and out of which, in the case of Iraq, the monster of Salafi-jihadism emerged.
More recent coverage on East Ghouta:

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Propaganda

Complicit media enable Rep. Adam Schiff's Russian bot conspiracy theories

Mollie Hemingway
The Federalist
Wed, 21 Feb 2018 16:39 UTC
Adam Schiff

Adam Schiff
For more than a year, Adam Schiff has been hopping to all the TV stations claiming, without benefit of specifics, the existence of a vast conspiracy between President Trump and Russia.

Last week, Laurence Tribe suggested, without evidence, that a plane crash in Russia was related to fallout from the Russian dossier operation orchestrated and funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Tribe is a Harvard Law professor, a passionate critic of President Donald Trump, and a known Russia conspiracy theorist. So it should have been surprising that the same day he was tweeting out plane crash conspiracy theories, he also argued in a "facially absurd" op-ed in The New York Times that Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., should be charged with obstruction of justice - no, really - for performing congressional oversight of the FBI.

Then again, it was only last March that The New York Times published another Russia conspiracy theorist named Louise Mensch talking about Russian hacking. Yes, the same Louise Mensch who believes that the "Marshal of the Supreme Court" told Trump about his impeachment and that Steve Bannon faces the death penalty for espionage. (Forget it, she's rolling.)
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Network

US Establishment Hysterical About Russian Trolls - Even Pro-Gun Tweets Are Their Fault

Andrés Perezalonso
Sott.net
Fri, 23 Feb 2018 18:02 UTC
Mueller Trump Russiagate
Russiagate is no longer about whether or not Russia 'hacked' the 2016 US election, or 'rigged' it to ensure Trump would win. No, U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's indictments last week against thirteen Russian nationals and three Russian entities based in St Petersburg means that the Russian government stands accused of the broader crime of 'sowing discord' in the US body politic as a whole.

The indictments were based on: The Russians are accused of having "the strategic goal of sowing discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election." In order to do this, they adopted false online personas; traveled to the United States "to collect intelligence" and staged political rallies while posing as American voters.

As he presented the document, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein stressed that there was no evidence that these actions changed the results of the election. No actual votes were altered, nor was there any indication of any links to either the Russian government or the Donald Trump campaign. This was not about 'collusion' or the alleged hacking of the DNC, but about the manipulation of public opinion via the purchasing of social media ads and the creation of multiple social media accounts, which they called 'trolling'.
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Mr. Potato

Trudeau ridiculed by Indians for wearing 'fake and annoying' traditional outfits on his first visit to India

Chris Pleasance
Daily Mail
Thu, 22 Feb 2018 18:23 UTC
Trudeau India

Justin Trudeau has come in for criticism for his outfit choices while visiting India, with even the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister weighing in
Justin Trudeau has been ridiculed on social media by Indians for his 'tacky' and over the top outfit choices while on his first visit to their nation as Prime Minister.

While many praised his clothing during the first two days of his trip, patience was wearing thin by the time he attended a Bollywood gala on Tuesday night, before the tide turned against him on Wednesday.

Ministers, authors, journalists and ordinary Indians lined up to mock him on Wednesday, saying his wardrobe was 'fake and annoying'.

Perhaps taking note of the criticism, the Canadian leader donned a suit on Thursday as he visited Jama Masjid, one of India's largest mosques.

Comment: Considering the propensity for the far-left to eat their own, it's interesting to note the relative silence from the SJWs regarding Trudeau's 'cultural appropriation'.

What a total soy boy.

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Snakes in Suits

Governor Eric Greitens of Missouri indicted for blackmailing mistress with sexually explicit photo


RT
Fri, 23 Feb 2018 09:00 UTC
Eric Greitens
Governor Eric Greitens of Missouri has been indicted on a felony charge of invasion of privacy, over the alleged blackmail of his mistress in a nude bondage photo. He is said to be out of custody on a personal recognizance bond.

The charges stem from an affair Greitens had with his hairdresser in 2015, while his wife was either pregnant or had just given birth to their second child. Greitens admitted to the affair and apologized, but denied reports that he had tried to blackmail the mistress into silence by threatening to release a sexually explicit photo of her.

A grand jury in St. Louis indicted the governor on Thursday, accusing him of knowingly taking photographs of the woman and transmitting the image "in a manner that allowed access to that image via a computer." He was reportedly taken into custody but soon released on a personal recognizance bond, pending a hearing scheduled for March 16, 2018.
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People

Oxfam's 'Aid For Sex' scam exposed

Raul Ilargi Meijer
The Automatic Earth
Fri, 23 Feb 2018 15:23 UTC
oxfam
Oxfam. I'm wondering if I should warn this is not for the faint of heart, or say don't read on an empty stomach. If so, hereby. I know I found it hard.

The first and foremost thing the BBC last week felt its audience should know about the sleaziest scandal to come out of Britain in quite some time -and that's saying something- is that an actress had turned her back on the aid organization. Your news in bite-size pre-chewed headlines.

While a guy who 'served' Oxfam in Bosnia claims it's nobody's business if he visited the local hookers in his spare time. The head office even specifically refuses to ban staff from doing that. Not violating a staff member's civil liberties trumps a question like what drives desperate women -girls- into prostitution that same staff member pays for with money donated to aid desperate people.
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Pistol

Two people shot dead outside UBS bank in Zurich, Switzerland


Daily Mail
Fri, 23 Feb 2018 15:34 UTC
A police operation is underway in Zurich after two people were shot dead outside a bank. Pictures have emerged of what appear to be two bodies lying on the ground outside a branch of UBS

A police operation is underway in Zurich after two people were shot dead outside a bank. Pictures have emerged of what appear to be two bodies lying on the ground outside a branch of UBS
A police operation is underway in Zurich after two people were shot dead outside a bank.

Officers descended on Lagerstrasse amid reports of a shooting near the Swiss financial capital's main train station.

Pictures have emerged of what appear to be two bodies lying on the ground outside a branch of UBS in the Europaallee area. A pistol could be seen close to the hand of one of the bodies, according to local media.

The circumstances behind the shootings are not yet clear, but police described it as a 'violent crime' and that there is no indication it was linked to terrorism.

Emergency crews found one person dead and a second with serious injuries, who subsequently died.

Comment: Update 25 Feb 2018 - Swiss authorities are now reporting that this was a murder-suicide over a domestic.

Why do it outside a bank then?

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Nuke

Washington's NPR got the Russian nuclear strategy wrong by confusing defensive with offensive

Matthew Bodner
Defense News
Thu, 22 Feb 2018 13:32 UTC
Russian Topol M intercontinental ballistic missile launcher
© Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
In this May 9, 2017, file photo, Russian Topol M intercontinental ballistic missile launcher rolls along Red Square during the Victory Day military parade in Moscow,. Russia says it has met the nuclear arsenal limits of a key arms control treaty but has some issues with U.S. compliance. Monday, Feb. 5, 2018, was the deadline to verify compliance by both the United States and Russia with the New START treaty signed in 2010.
When it comes to Russia, the Trump administration's Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) pulls no punches. Moscow's military, specifically its modernized nuclear forces, are featured significantly throughout the report. the attention paid to other potential nuclear adversaries, like China, does not come close to that paid to Russia.

The core of NPR's proposed footing vis-a-vis Russia rests on an understanding of Russian nuclear doctrine as offensive, rather defensive. Noted is Russia's monumental advantage in terms of non-strategic nuclear weapons, which the report's authors believe Moscow would use to escalate a conflict so as to intimidate the U.S. into backing down.

This assessment has been understandably controversial in Moscow, where officials have for years promised the nation's sweeping nuclear modernization program was entirely defensive in nature. Indeed, former Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, reiterated that several times at the recent Munich Security Conference.

"We've been trying to listen to the explanations given for that, but to be honest we have not gotten a clear picture," Kislyak said. "On top of that we get the sense that our American colleagues are looking at [low-yield] nuclear weapons more as a war fighting weapon than classical deterrence. It certainly creates additional questions."
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X

South Carolina wants to make wearing saggy pants illegal


RT
Fri, 23 Feb 2018 08:58 UTC
protester
© Whitney Curtis / Reuters
A protester faces off with police in St. Louis, Missouri, September 15, 2017.
A new law in South Carolina would make it unlawful for people to expose skin or underwear by wearing their pants below their hips. The move is an attempt to curb the apparent popularity of saggy pants across the state.

South Carolina House Bill 4957 would make it illegal for a person to appear in public wearing trousers which are "three inches below the crest of his ileum exposing his skin or undergarments". It is presumed the lawmakers meant the 'ilium', (the hip bone) rather than the 'ileum' which is part of the small intestine.

"It's unbecoming, it's unprofessional", Democrat Representative Joe Jefferson from Berkeley County, one of the bill's sponsors, told WLTX.

Violations would not lead to a criminal record however, he assured his audience.

"I understand that some people are assuming that if one is caught, then they won't be allowed to go to college, grants, loans, all these other opportunities will be taken away. That's not the case at all. This is just to prevent these fellas and giving them at least an obligation to realize that they're walking around and they're convincing others to follow them." Jefferson said.

Comment: So now the fashion police has come to America. Next thing they'll be on the look out for people with clothes that are too expensive. And eventually we'll all be wearing the same thing - probably in the form of an orange jumper.

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