The U.S. And Turkish Forces Coming Into Military Conflict. Erdogan Is Confronting The ‘Strongest Fortresses’ In His Push To Control The Region

U.S. President Donald Trump urged Turkey yesterday to curtail its military operation into Syria urging not to bring U.S. and Turkish forces into conflict. But sooner or later, the U.S. and Turkey must clash. So is Erdogan coming close to “confront” “the strongest fortresses” as predicted in Daniel 11:39?

We ought to pay close attention to that part of the world where things could turn on a dime. Isaiah and Ezekiel gave us a series of events that define Antichrist’s expedition. These are Syria, Egypt, Arabia, Iraq and North Africa.

This is exactly what we see Turkey’s Erdogan focusing on these days. And its not only a plan, but action is speaking louder than rhetoric, as we see Erdogan quickly and incrementally expanding his military muscle into the Red Sea area, Sudan, Qatar, Somalia, Iraq and Syria while the world remains asleep.

Students of prophecy fail to see the link for a simple reason. For example, when they saw Syria in turmoil, most focused on “the destruction of Damascus” mentioned in Isaiah 17 while they excluded other prophecies. Yet isolating one chapter ignores the bigger picture: these prophecies encompass much territory. Antichrist is not simply “the Assyrian”, he is “King of Babylon” (Iraq/Arabia) and at the same time, he is “Pharaoh of Egypt” and he also “confronts the strongest fortresses” (Daniel 11:39).

This combination is key.

He is also Gog of Magog (Asia Minor). And him being “Pharaoh of Egypt” means that he later on invades and rules over Egypt. Erdogan is coming closer to Egypt as he positions his military in the Red Sea.

Then the prophets reveal that he is possessed with Lucifer himself.

Antichrist comes as “Gog” and as “King of Babylon” and as “Pharaoh of Egypt” and as “The Assyrian” and as “the man of sin” where God provided ample explanations to his rise, his alliances, even including when he and his cohorts and allies are cast into hell and even names his allies one by one in Ezekiel 28 to Ezekiel 39.

We must view the Antichrist in such combination and not isolate chapters and verses.

Yet the same students rarely if ever do follow the news to see who is attempting such combined control of such region. They focus on Erdogan’s desire to rule Jerusalem and not realize that Antichrist wants more.

So this week we read the headlines revealing that Erdogan of Asia Minor, the Gog of Turkey, isn’t backing down from his threat to invade Manbij in Syria after he’s done in Afrin. He’s now saying that he’ll attack Manbij even if it risks a military confrontation with the US (the strongest fortress). The U.S. currently has forces in the city along with the Kurdish SDF:

REUTERS – President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday Turkey would extend its military operation in Syria to the town of Manbij, a move that could potentially bring Turkish forces into confrontation with those of their NATO ally the United States.

CNN Turk is reporting that Trump and Erdogan have already spoken on the phone yesterday, and that Trump warned Erdogan not to risk a confrontation with US forces:

In a blatant move, Erdogan warned the U.S., that his country would expand its military operation in Syria to include the city of Manbij. He even pointed that his move could put the Turkish forces in confrontation with the United States.

Erdogan is already challenging the strongest fortress.

So will the Trump administration risk war with Turkey over these areas of Syria? Are these prophecies about to spark in fulfillment into an escalating war?

Answer: Not yet.

First of all, both realize that the United States does not have any reliable military partner in Syria other than the Kurds. Secondly, The United States involvement in Syria is its hope to use the YPG’s control of the area to give it the diplomatic muscle it needs to revive U.N.-led talks in Geneva on a deal that would end Syria’s civil war and eventually lead to the ouster of President Bashar Assad.

Such ‘ouster’ is what both, the U.S., and Turkey wants after all.

Both have, and are openly collaborating with the Islamist Free Syrian Army (FSA).

Trump (as we have predicted he will do) is less focused on foreign policy than he is focused on ‘making America great again’.

This ‘greatness’ is to expand U.S. economic might and not international control.

He is unlikely to commit more troops or covert operators to Syria, even if Turkey made a move from Afrin to Manbij.

Therefore, Turkey will enter Syria and establish the buffer zone of control and with this it encroaches to consume much flesh later on.

Thirdly, the United States has little pressure it can apply on Turkey given that the U.S. military is heavy dependent on a Turkish base to carry out air strikes in Syria against anyone, be it Bashar al-Assad or the Islamic State. The U.S. also risks losing its base with a bundle of nuclear weapons stationed on the Incirlik base.

Therefore, Turkey’s confrontation with the “strongest fortress” (the U.S.) has to wait till the last straw breaks the elephant’s back.

But what about the bigger picture?

Erdogan’s expedition goes beyond Syria. Reuters last month even statesthat this expedition into North Africa is to revive what was once under Ottoman hegemony.

His expedition into North Africa is also going according to plan. He is now expanding his military fortresses in the Sudanese island of Suakin on the Red Sea. The ultimate goal of Turkey’s presence in Sudan is a military one. Erdogan said in his speech, given at the University of Khartoum, that defense industry will be among the major investments that Turkey will make in Sudan. The strategic reason for Turkey to be in the Sudanese island of Suakin is historical.

Sawākin, Sudan

Turkey is expanding its hegemony in Africa in the name of “rebuilding” and reinvigorating its authority in the Muslim world as a global power.

Erdogan is now looking to expand towards Chad and then Tunisia (part of biblical Phut), where these too will follow in his footsteps. His alliances with north Africa (biblical Phut), Sudan and Somalia (biblical Cush) and Iran (biblical Persia) is being formed. So far what we have stated decades ago, on how the neo-Ottomans will create its Antichrist empire is coming to fruition, exactly as we stated. Accuracy, patience and long-suffering is key in comprehending the events to come.

Ultimately, this is about reviving the Ottoman Empire, and the Sudanese, the Somalis, the Chadians and the Tunisians — that is, the people of Cush and Phut — are receiving Turkey in Submission just as we predicted they will do.

But it is Egypt, that Daniel is clear about; it is taken by military might. Eventually: “He shall have power over the treasures of gold and silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt; also the Libyans and Ethiopians shall follow at his heels.” (Daniel 11:43)

Erdogan’s policies to approach Sudan by reviving the history of the Ottoman Empire and deploying forces in different areas in the Middle East and Africa do not satisfy Arabs, especially Egypt.

It will still take years from now until Erdogan’s footsteps repeat the Ottoman Empire, when they fully took control of all Syria, Palestine and Egypt within 500 years ago, from 1516 to 1517.

Students of prophecy must exercise patients. Today, the ”new Ottomans” simply fulfill an event out of hundreds to come.

Headed by Erdoğan, the neo-Ottomans are moving further from Al-Bab into Afrin and next stop is Manbij. Americans entered Manbij and now Turkey will have to go to direct conflict with Syrian forces (covered by the Russian Aerospace Forces) and Kurds (covered by the USA) to expand the control zone in Syria where the victor will be Turkey. The U.S. will simply pull its forces and yield to the Islamists.

This we guarantee will be the outcome. Just be patient.

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The U.S. Is Quietly Sidelining a Turkey in Decline

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…To understand that strategy it is first imperative to understand the present state of Turkey’s military.

While it is true that Turkey’s military is second only to the U.S. in size among NATO allies, the state of the Turkish military is atrocious. As former Pentagon official Michael Rubin from the American Enterprise Institute wrote this week in the Washington Examiner, Erdogan has gutted his armed forces in the wake of the failed military coup against his regime in July 2016.

Forty percent of Turkey’s senior officer corps has been purged. A quarter of Turkish pilots are in prison. Turkey has twice as many F-16s as trained pilots.

Turkey’s performance in combat in Syria has been abysmal, from the very earliest stages of the war. Rubin noted that in 2012 Syrian forces downed a Turkish F-4, and Kurds have downed Turkish helicopters.

Syria has been a prime killing ground for Turkish tanks. Kurds, ISIS and Syrian regime forces have all destroyed Turkish tanks. The Kurds have nabbed Turkish intelligence officers. Turkey’s power projection capabilities are weak.

• Turkey threatens Israel:
  https://www.haaretz.com/1.5176550
• Turkey threatens Greece and Cyprus:
  http://www.ekathimerini.com/
• Turkey threatens Europe:
  https://www.euractiv.com/
• Turkey threatens Syria:
  http://www.newsweek.com/
• Turkey threatens Iran:
  http://www.aljazeera.com/
• Turkey threatens Saudi Arabia, Gulf Countries:
  https://www.geo.tv/
• Turkey threatens Armenia:
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/
• Turkey threatens the Netherlands:
  http://www.independent.co.uk/
• Turkey threatens Russia:
  http://www.bbc.com/
• Turkey threatens China:
  http://www.bbc.com/
• Turkey threatens the US:
  http://www.independent.co.uk/
• Turkey threatens Iraq:
  http://www.independent.co.uk/
• Turkey threatens Argentina:
  https://armenpress.am/
• Turkey threatens Australia:
  https://thediplomat.com/
• Turkey threatens Germany:
  https://www.express.co.uk/

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Esau’s Sacrifice to Ishmael | Cost Of U.S. War On Jihadists: $5.6 Trillion, 7,000 Deaths, 52,500 Injuries

The United States is expected to spend nearly $6 trillion through 2018 on government-wide costs related to the wars waged in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria since 2001, reveals a study by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

According to Brown University’s Cost of War project analysis, authored by Neta Crawford, the total estimated cost of U.S. wars between 2001 and 2018 amounts to about $23,386 per individual American taxpayer, which is more than three times the amount ($7,740) calculated by the Pentagon.

The Pentagon’s study, dubbed the “Estimated Cost to Each Taxpayer for the Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria,” places the total authorized war spending on those conflicts between 2001 and 2018 at $1.5 trillion.

Unlike assessments conducted by the Pentagon and other analysts, Crawford’s estimate takes into account trillions in conflict-linked spending appropriated mainly through the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security, State, Defense, and Veteran Affairs.

On top of direct war spending through the Pentagon, the Brown University study includes $880 billion in new base defense costs linked to combat operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, in addition to nearly $780 billion in Department of Homeland Security costs.

Moreover, the study notes that spending on veterans benefits has increased by nearly $300 billion since 2001 due to those wars.

Nevertheless, the Brown study notes that its “estimate is also conservative,” adding:

This report has not included here state and local government expenses related to medical care of veterans and homeland security. Nor does this report calculate the macro economic costs of war for the US economy. And while this report discusses some of the ways that families bear the burden of caring for seriously veterans [sic], I have not added a value for the costs of their uncompensated care.

The Cost of War project acknowledges that, since the U.S. Congress has yet to pass a budget for 2018, the figures for that period are estimates based on the previous year’s appropriations or the amount that the relevant department has requested.

Overall, Brown University found:

As of late September 2017, the United States wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria and the additional spending on Homeland Security, and the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs since the 9/11 attacks totaled more than $4.3 trillion in current dollars through FY2017. Adding likely costs for FY2018 and estimated future spending on veterans, the costs of war total more than $5.6 trillion.

Besides the trillions of dollars spent on the post-9/11 conflicts, the wars have imposed a profound human cost on Americans: nearly 7,000 U.S. military fatalities and more than 52,500 injuries, according to Breitbart News’s analysis of casualties in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria since 2001.

“Each one of the nearly 7,000 US soldiers killed by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could be assigned a statistical value of human life — a dollar value to their deaths,” points out Crawford. “The Costs of War Project has not estimated the economic impact on the United States economy — the loss of economic productivity — of the deaths and injuries of US service members due to the wars.”

Crawford reports that the reason she does not break down the cost by individual war zone is that many of the expenditures overlap.

“The long duration of these wars, the fact that they occur simultaneously, involving many of the same personnel and equipment, has meant that their expenses and future costs related to personnel are increasingly difficult to disaggregate,” she notes

In response to the September 11 attacks, the United States launched its “Global War on Terror,” which covered the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Syria.

It began with the war in Afghanistan in October 2001, then Iraq in 2003, and it ultimately expanded into Syria in 2014.

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Kuwaiti Columnist: The Arabs Need to Have Large Portions of their Brains Examined

In this video, Mr. Fouad Hashem also says: “in my view, on judgment Day, 90% on inhabitants will be Arabs and people who pretend to be pious Muslims.”

Why Have The Islamic Countries Failed To Develop Even With Resources Like Oil, While Countries With No Resources Like Switzerland Have Flourished?

Answer by Ryan Lackey, Technology Entrepreneur,

It’s true. Outside of oil and gas projects and a few specific infrastructure projects (ports like Jebel Ali and airports like Dubai), far less real economic development has happened in the oil-rich parts of the Arab world than would be expected based on their great endowment of human and natural resources. The Islamic world isn’t monolithic, and it’s probably worthwhile to address relatively stable oil-rich states separately from Iraq, Iran, and Libya, again separately from other Islamic states without much oil separately from Asian Islamic countries like Malaysia and Indonesia. Let’s look specifically at the stable oil rich Arab Islamic states for now. I’m not an academic economist, political scientist, or cultural expert, but I lived in the region from 2004-2010, ran several businesses there, and have experience as a tech entrepreneur in the US and Europe, so I can comment directly on some of the challenges.

(There are some really interesting aspects of Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, Malaysia, and Indonesia which would be interesting to address separately — they demonstrate what happens when some of these trends are reversed and taken too far the other way. Those countries deserve another question.)

Overall, the local standard of living has improved dramatically — walking around Dubai or even a moderately sized city anywhere in the region shows a reasonable standard of living, especially compared to a few decades ago. All those shiny new condo buildings, huge hypermarkets, highways, etc.

However, it’s all consumption of energy wealth, not evidence of other productive economic activity. While the economic theory of comparative advantage says you maximize efficiency by going all-in on areas where you have the greatest comparative advantage, economic efficiency isn’t the ultimate goal of life, and there are serious consequences to blindly maximizing current economic efficiency to the exclusion of all else. There is a huge qualitative difference between an economy built on natural resource extraction, where the populace is a cost center, and an economy built on productive labor by the population, where increasing capabilities of the society leads to more wealth. If you look at western countries, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and increasingly, China, they largely developed through manufacturing, initially low cost, low value add manufacturing, moving up the chain, and ended up with vibrant, well-educated, and diverse economies (even though Japan has demographic challenges, it will still be the #3 economy in the world in 2030). The alternative is an extractive economy like Argentina, which went from 10th in the world in 1930 to a basketcase for the past 80 years. That’s not to say that natural resource endowment hasn’t helped some countries (like the US), but natural resource economies in the absence of local value creation don’t tend to lead to well developed societies.

Wealth in a resource-based economy is distributed much more unequally and more inefficiently. It goes to a small number of people at the top, and they’re at the top due to tribal, family, or political connections, not due to skill or productivity. In a vibrant, competitive manufacturing economy, wealth tends to accrue to innovators and efficient operators, and someone with a new idea or better way of doing things has a chance to get to the top. Admittedly, this is imperfect even in the US, but it’s a better system than political patronage.

And, someday, the oil will run out (or won’t be burned because of global warming).

Outside simple products and services for local consumption (consumers spending income directly from energy related jobs, or from government redistribution of energy wealth), and development, funded by energy wealth, of local transportation, power, and water infrastructure (starting from a very low base), what local development there has happened has been economically inefficient — building empty skyscrapers in the desert. This has been largely directed by government, or influential families affiliated with government, and financed by huge capital flows from oil/gas and foreign investment from Russia, South Asia, and other parts of the Arab or Muslim world, and not the product of real free enterprise. Essentially, these investments don’t produce wealth; they’re just a way to store wealth generated elsewhere, as a form of regulatory arbitrage. Even crazier, most of the labor, including skilled labor, to build buildings and operate companies is imported, too — labor from China and Pakistan, accountants from the Philippines, advertising executives from the Levant, and engineers and architects from the UK and US.

Continue reading…

Driver ploughs into pedestrians in France’s second ‘Allahu Akbar’ attack

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Ishmael Will Be a Wild-ass Man

My note: Not a single day goes by without hearing/witnessing about the horror massacre by Islamists of innocent men, women and children who do not even carry guns and bombs. The demonic heartlessness is characteristic of all the Jihadi zombies all over the globe. It’s amazing, this typical character of Islam / the Arab Muslim was predicted before the birth of Ishmael 4000 years ago, and it remains true of him today. His mother, Hagar was told of her son, Ishmael:

“He will be a wild-ass man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren“ (Genesis 16:12)

Ethiopia’s ‘Islam Lesson’ for the West

Yet another Christian church was destroyed by Muslims in Ethiopia—this time by local authorities.

Heaven’s Light Church, which served some 100 evangelical Christians, was demolished last November 28. The church had stood and functioned in the Muslim-majority city of Harar for five years. In the days preceding the destruction, officials forcibly removed the church’s exterior sign and warned believers not to worship there, citing complaints by a local Muslim. Officials further told church members who had previously congregated at the church “not to gather under what remains of the church building.” Accordingly, Christians are now meeting in homes of individual believers.

Prior to the demolition of the church, when some Christian leaders protested, they were illegally detained, released only after community members, “outraged by the wrongful detentions,” called “for their immediate release,” reported International Christian Concern, a rights advocacy group supporting the Christians:

These are no isolated incidents, explained ICC, adding that it had documented “numerous ongoing land rights battles between churches and their local governments across Ethiopia.”

In many cases, ICC said, “churches have been operating peacefully for decades on land given to them by now-deceased former congregants.”

However efforts by local majority Muslim populations to “eliminate the public presence” of churches resulted in the forceful closure, destruction and demolition of several church buildings in recent years, according to ICC investigators.

ICC’s Regional Manager for Africa, Cameron Thomas, accused Ethiopia of violating the rights of devoted Christians. “Corrupt officials willing to defend their religion [Islam] rather than the laws they’ve sworn to uphold, are violating Christians’ rights by forcibly closing, destroying and demolishing churches across Ethiopia,” the official said.

If this is the treatment Christian churches receive by Muslim officials and politicians—”sworn to uphold” the rights of every citizen, not just Muslims—one can imagine the treatment churches receive by Muslim mobs. One example suffices:

In 2011, after a Christian was accused of desecrating a Koran, thousands of Christians were forced to flee their homes when “Muslim extremists set fire to roughly 50 churches and dozens of Christian homes” in a Muslim-majority region in western Ethiopia. At least one Christian was killed, many injured, and anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 displaced. Around the same time, in another area that is 90% Muslim, “all the Christians in the city woke up to find notes on their doors warning them to convert to Islam, leave the city or face death.”

For those few Western observers who live beyond the moment and have an interest in the “big picture”—the world bequeathed to future generations—it is well to reflect on the question of numbers in the context of Ethiopia. As Jonathan Racho, another official at ICC, earlier said, “It’s extremely disconcerting that in Ethiopia, where Christians are the majority, they are also the victims of persecution.”

That Muslims are an otherwise peaceable minority group in Ethiopia, but in enclaves where they represent the majority, they attack their outnumbered Christian countrymen, suggests that Muslim aggression and passivity are very much rooted in numbers. This reflects what I call “Islam’s Rule of Numbers,” which holds that, wherever and whenever Muslims grow in number—and thus in strength and confidence—so too does Muslim intolerance for “the other” grow (video explanation here).

This naturally has lessons for the West, especially European nations like Britain and France that have a significant and ever-growing Muslim population—and where church attacks and even beheadings are now taking place.

By way of final illustration, the reader is left with the story of Islam’s entry into Ethiopia, one of the oldest Christian civilizations. According to Islamic tradition, in 615, when the pagan Quraysh were persecuting Muhammad’s outnumbered followers and disciples in Arabia, some fled to Ethiopia seeking sanctuary. The Christian king, or “Negus” of Ethiopia, welcomed and protected these Muslim fugitives, ignoring Quraysh demands to return them—and thus reportedly winning Muhammad’s gratitude.

Today, 14 centuries later, when Islam has carved itself a solid niche in Ethiopia, accounting for 1/3 of the population, Muslim gratitude has turned into Muslim aggression—not least a warning to Western states.

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Abraham / አብርሃም (Bible Film)

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