As laid out in our popular article, The Daniel Project:

Biblical Prediction # 18~ The Kings of the East cross the Euphrates River for a great war  

“The Bible foretells in Revelation that the kings of the East, who many believe is the nation of China and or Russia along with her ancillary nations, will cross the Euphrates in an invasion of the Mideast and in preparation for war against Israel and perhaps Israel’s western allies. 

The scriptures, in anticipation of this event, speak to the “angels bound at the River Euphrates” to lead 2oo million men in battle. The remarkable thing here is the fact that going back through ancient history, at no time was there ever a population capable of producing, arming, and supporting such a massive army of men. Yet, in the modern day, the Chinese army currently lists an active duty capacity of about 318 million men fit for military service, which is about the size of the current US population, if we include illegals. 

Interestingly, and at the time of this prophecy of over 1,900 years ago, the population of planet Earth has been estimated at about 100 million people. So, how could an ancient prophet understand that the Earth would be heavily populated [enough] to support this massive of an army?”

~ Refocus Notes

Zerohedge

By Tyler Durden

Days after U.S. warships made a provocative passage through the Taiwan Strait on Monday, further making already strained tensions between the Washington and Beijing  — currently in the midst of a trade war — even hotter, the former top commander of the US Army in Europe has predicted the United States and China will likely be at war in 15 years. 

Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges made the bombshell and alarming comments at a Warsaw security forum on Wednesday where he urged European allies to do more in preparing their own defenses against Russia while Americans focus more on the Pacific. 

Gen. Hodges said, according to the Military Times:

I think in 15 years — it’s not inevitable, but it is a very strong likelihood — that we will be at war with China. The United States does not have the capacity to do everything it has to do in Europe and in the Pacific to deal with the Chinese threat.

This statement is hugely remarkable in that it signifies the thesis has just left the domain of academic international relations theoreticians and has now become a guiding assumption of military commanders with years of experience on the ground.

Hodges served as US Army commander in Europe during 2014-17, which makes his warning especially noteworthy, and he’s now an analyst with the Center for European Policy Analysis.

He addressed an ongoing policy debate among policy and defense official circles over whether it’s a mistake for Washington to focus its defensive efforts on “threats” like Russian and Iran. 

Meanwhile, international relations theorist John Mearsheimer recently drew controversy by expressing publicly at a policy conference that the United States should cool its rhetoric on Russian and Iran — and even work with the two countries — in order to focus on curtailing the true long-term threat of China. 

And interestingly, Steve LeVine writing at Axios early this week posed the question long on the Western public’s mind: what are the chances of a US-China war?

While both Gen. Hodges and John Mearsheimer shocked audiences by saying war is almost inevitable on the current trajectory of soaring US-China tensions, Harvard professor and the author agrees with them, and further explains just how this scenario would come about. 

LeVine recently crossed paths with Graham Allison, who published his explosive “Destined For War: Can America And China Escape Thucydides Trap?” a year ago which detailed the reasons for a coming major war is all but inevitable, sparking a global debate about the Harvard professor’s controversial thesis. LeVine followed up with Allison in relation to the recent uptick in tensions in the region of the South China Sea: 

He said, if history holds, the U.S. and China appeared headed toward war.

Over the weekend, I asked him for an update — specifically whether the danger of the two going to war seems to have risen.

“Yes,” he responded. The chance of war is still less than 50%, but “is real — and much more likely than is generally recognized.”

LeVine comments of Graham Allison’s central thesis, “Glued to a 2,400-year-old script, the U.S. and China seem to be on the same war-bound path that great powers have taken since Sparta fought upstart Athens.”

LeVine summarizes, based on Allison’s latest comments, that now more than ever the two great powers are inching toward that trap in their brinkmanship based on an “inexorable, invisible force prodding them to almost inevitable war”. Per the Axios report:

The U.S. has slapped increasing tariffs on Beijing, cordoned off U.S. tech, and jailed a Chinese spy, while Beijing has continued to build its military footprint in the disputed South China Sea, demanded tech secrets from Western companies, and more.

But would the current trade war alone or even wide scale tech theft and a few encounters on the open seas be enough to trigger escalation and actual war?

 NATO after its latest summit is strengthened military but weakened politically while Gen. Ben Hodges predicts war between US and China  

Likely not, says Allison, but instead a WWI type scenario of an unintended domino effect of one-upmanship in which, for example, the simple assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand triggered massive escalation leading to world war. By a similar scenario, writes LeVine of Allison’s comments, “the two countries will be pulled into conflict by miscalculation involving a third party, such as Taiwan.”

Says Professor Graham Allison:

“What happens is that a third-party provocation, an accident, becomes a trigger to which one of the two feels obliged to respond. and they find themselves in a war that neither wanted.”

We saw precisely this almost happen between the US and Russia over Syria on multiple occasions over the past two years — especially with the September accidental downing of the Russian IL-20 surveillance plane with 15 crew members on board after US ally Israel launched a wide scale missile assault on Syrian government facilities. 

But with the former commander of US Army forces in Europe now saying “in 15 years we will be at war with China” the thesis has just left the domain of academic international relations theoreticians and has now become a guiding assumption of top military commanders. 

A simple eye-opening conclusion containing the ring of truth to a mystery that's often complex & very difficult to explain.... ~ Refocus Notes

It's probably important to preface any conversation on morality by noting that humans often struggle—mightily—to agree on what morality is. While it’s a thorny topic to define and explain, it would, of course, be foolish to avoid the pursuit of moral truths for this reason.

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who has researched morality and culture for nearly 30 years, apparently agrees.

Haidt has spent the better part of his career attempting to understand and explain the underpinnings of human morality.

What Do We Know about Morality?

During a TED talk a number of years ago, Haidt shared his discovery that contrary to the idea that humans begin as a blank slate—“the worst idea in all psychology,” he says—humans are born with a “first draft” of moral knowledge. Essentially, Haidt argues, humans possess innate but malleable sets of values “organized in advance of experience.”

So if the slate is not blank, what’s on it?

To find out, Haidt and a colleague read the most current literature on anthropology, cultural variations, and evolutionary psychology to identify cross-cultural matches. They found five primary categories that serve as our moral foundation:

1) Care/harm: This foundation is related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. It underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.
2) Fairness/reciprocity: This foundation is related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. It generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy. [Note: In our original conception, Fairness included concerns about equality, which are more strongly endorsed by political liberals. However, as we reformulated the theory in 2011 based on new data, we emphasize proportionality, which is endorsed by everyone, but is more strongly endorsed by conservatives.]
3) Loyalty/betrayal: This foundation is related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. It underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's "one for all, and all for one."
4) Authority/subversion: This foundation was shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. It underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.
5) Sanctity/degradation: This foundation was shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. It underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).  

Morality and the "Other Side"

What Haidt found is that both conservatives and liberals recognize the Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity values. Liberal-minded people, however, tend to reject the three remaining foundational values—Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, and Sanctity/degradation—while conservatives accept them.

It’s an extraordinary difference, and it helps explain why many liberals and conservatives in America think “the other side” is bonkers.

Liberals might contend, of course, that these values are not proper morals at all but base human traits responsible for xenophobia, religious oppression, etc. Haidt rejects this thesis. And through a series of historical illustrations, psychological studies, and cross-cultural references, he explains that many liberals often fail to appreciate a timeless truth that conservatives usually accept: order tends to decay. (A truth, I’ll add, buttressed by the second law of thermodynamics.)

Now, Haidt is not suggesting conservatives are superior to liberals. He points out that conservatives tend to value order even at the cost of those at the bottom of society, which can result in morally dubious social implications. Liberals, however, often desire change even at the risk of anarchy.

Many people, of course, will refuse to accept Haidt’s explanation of moral reality. This is not surprising. The human inclination is to believe in one’s own understanding of morality, and many people will live their entire lives without seriously attempting to understand their ideological counterparts.  

Trapped in a "Moral Matrix"

These people, Haidt says, reside on both sides of the ideological spectrum. They exist in what he calls a “moral matrix.”

People will have a difficult time agreeing on anything if they view the moral underpinnings of society through vastly divergent lenses. 

“If you think that half of America votes Republican because they’re blinded… then my message to you is you’re trapped in a moral matrix,” Haidt said. “You can either take the blue pill and stick to your comforting delusions. Or you can take the red pill, learn some moral psychology, and step outside your moral matrix.”

So what to make of all this? I must say, I found Haidt’s explanations pretty insightful. It certainly helps explain our contentious culture. Even many intelligent and reasonable people, after all, will have a difficult time agreeing on anything if they view the moral underpinnings of society through vastly divergent lenses.

It doesn’t seem a stretch to contend that liberals in America have largely abandoned the latter three values (with some exceptions, of course), or that conservatives are highly influenced by them.

I’ll be interested to hear what readers think of Haidt’s thesis. But remember, this is a bit of a catch-22: if one reflexively smashes Haidt’s theory, it may only be evidence that this person is living in a moral matrix himself.  

This article has been reprinted with permission from Intellectual Takeout.

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Here's an excellent & concise explanation from Rush on who Khashoggi was and what he was actually up to..which is a very far cry from what the media's been trying to sell to America...

Most notably, the US will most likely (soon) be adding the Muslim Brotherhood, a root terror organization that Obama, by the way,  adored, to the official list of known terrorist organizations of which many other countries have already recognized & published.

Khashoggi was a Trump critic and stalwart advocate/member of the Muslim Brotherhood terror organization, having joined with them all the way back in the seventies.

~ Refocus Notes

The Rush Limbaugh Show

Transcript From Rush Limbaugh

I think Jamal Khashoggi was much more than a journalist.

Yeah, he wrote opinion pieces for the Washington Post, and so they’re running around saying he was an American citizen, an American journalist. But I don’t think that’s who the Saudis saw when they saw Jamal Khashoggi.

I think they saw an enemy of the regime. I think they saw a guy who’s tight with the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood, the agents of change in the Arab Spring, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudis do not get along in any way, shape, manner, or form.

No, no. Do not misunderstand me. I’m not advocating or trying to excuse whatever they did to Khashoggi.

I’m just trying to tell you that he’s not an innocent, minding-his-own-business journalist going about his life gunned down. He was an enemy of the regime, and he once held a position in the Saudi government ” I’m telling you, the Drive-Bys have been dying to tie Trump to this murder.

I think that they would love to undermine Trump’s relationship with crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudis in general, and so would the Democrats. It’s just the latest in a never-ending parade of events that the left thinks they can use to destroy and get rid of Trump.

Khashoggi was a friend of Osama Bin Laden.

They went to high school together. But that’s not what you need to know about Khashoggi. Khashoggi’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood are what’s really relevant here. I think… They’re trying to tell us that Khashoggi was murdered by Mohammed bin Salman because Khashoggi was being critical of the regime and you just don’t do that. And while that’s true, I think there’s a lot more to this than just he got killed because of stuff he was writing in the Washington Post.

I found a piece on him by John R. Bradley at Spectator.us, and Bradley has been following Saudi politics, Middle East politics, Muslim Brotherhood expertise for many, many moons. And his story ran three days ago, and you haven’t seen a thing about this anywhere in the Drive-By Media like Missourians are not seeing a word about Project Veritas exposing Claire McCaskill.

The piece is entitled, “What the Media Are Not Telling You About Jamal Khashoggi — The dissident’s fate says a lot about Saudi Arabia and the rise of the mobster state.” Now, here are just some biographical things. The fate of Khashoggi has at least provoked global outrage, but it’s for all the wrong reasons. We are told he was a liberal, Saudi progressive voice fighting for freedom and democracy, and a martyr who paid the ultimate price for telling the truth to power.

John R. Bradley

“This is not just wrong but distracts us from understanding what the incident tells us about the internal power dynamics of a kingdom going through an unprecedented period of upheaval. It is also the story of how one man got entangled in a Saudi ruling family that operates like the Mafia. Once you join, it’s for life, and if you try to leave, you become disposable.” So the point this piece is gonna make is that Khashoggi’s not a distant and removed commentator/journalist writing about the Saudi kingdom from afar.

He used to be part of it.

He’s not… Well, the Khashoggis… Adnan Khashoggi was very, very tight with the royal family. I don’t know about bloodlines, but he was… You’re not allowed to become Adnan Khashoggi and acquire that much wealth — particularly running guns and arms — without being tight with the royal family. Jamal Khashoggi is a cousin of Adnan Khashoggi. This piece makes it clear (as you’ll hear in a moment) that Jamal Khashoggi — at one time in his life, at one point — was very, very tight with the ruling family, the royal family, was in the regime.

“This is not just wrong but distracts us from understanding what the incident tells us about the internal power dynamics of a kingdom going through an unprecedented period of upheaval. It is also the story of how one man got entangled in a Saudi ruling family that operates like the Mafia. Once you join, it’s for life, and if you try to leave, you become disposable. In truth, Khashoggi never had much time for Western-style pluralistic democracy.

“In the 1970s he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, which exists to rid the Islamic world of western influence.” Now, that right there will provide all of us the first source of serious conflict between Khashoggi and the current Saudi ruling royal family. “[T]he Muslim Brotherhood … exists to rid the Islamic world of western influence.” What’s Mohammed bin Salman doing? He’s trying to westernize the country! He’s a Millennial.

He’s trying to reform it in certain ways, letting women vote and letting women drive, but not much else. He wants the world to think that there’s massive reform happening in the kingdom. So he does something very visible, like letting women drive. But not much more. They’re still very subjugated. He’s meeting with all of the tech people in Silicon Valley and the Hollywood people. He wants to build a brand-new city from scratch — a huge, dynamic, brand-new city — that incorporates money from Silicon Valley and Hollywood and involves all of those people as developers and investors. 

But nevertheless he’s the first of the ruling royal family to ever talk this way, to ever travel the world and set something up like this, and this is anathema to the Muslim Brotherhood! They can’t stand this! There’s something else that the royal family’s doing, and I mentioned this when I was talking about who Khashoggi was and Mohammed bin Salman last week. That is this: Up to 9/11 and even many years after 9/11, the ruling religious dominance in Saudi Arabia was Wahhabism.

All of the clerics, all of the imams were Wahhabi Islamists, and these are the terrorist-inspiring Islamists.

These are the imams, the educators at all the universities which teach and recruit and inspire the Osama Bin Laden-type terrorism. Mohammed bin Salman wants to rid Saudi Arabia of the influence of Wahhabism. Well, that’s not gonna sit well with the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is not particularly tied to Wahhabism. 

They have their own version of terrorist Islam.

But the fact that the Saudi rile family, which, by definition, and by corporate structure, is in charge of Islam. Mecca and Medina are… Mecca is in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi royal family is Islam. It’s their charge with maintaining it, protecting it, defining it, the mosques, particularly in Mecca. And for Mohammed bin Salman to come along and try to eliminate the influences of Wahhabism, while at the same time importing such corporate scum as Hollywood and American technology? 

This is considered to be an absolute affront to people like the Muslim Brotherhood, which wants to get rid of any Western influence in Islam or in Saudi Arabia or anywhere else in the Islamic world! So Mohammed bin Salman has made himself a huge, huge target. Khashoggi, as a Muslim Brotherhood member, would be diametrically opposed to everything Mohammed bin Salman is doing. And that has been well established and has been documented. 

Rush Limbaugh

Again here, according to Mr. Bradley, “Khashoggi never had much time for Western-style pluralistic democracy.

In the 1970s he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, which exists to rid the Islamic world of western influence.” Well, here comes Mohammed bin Salman incorporating Western influence in Saudi Arabia. Khashoggi “was a political Islamist until the end, recently praising the Muslim Brotherhood in the Washington Post. 

“He championed the ‘moderate’ Islamist opposition in Syria, whose crimes against humanity are a matter of record. Khashoggi frequently sugarcoated his Islamist beliefs with constant references to freedom and democracy. But he never hid that he was in favor of a Muslim Brotherhood arc throughout the Middle East.

His recurring plea to bin Salman in his columns was to embrace not a western-style democracy, but the rise of political Islam which the Arab Spring had inadvertently given rise to. For Khashoggi, secularism was the enemy.” 

He was not an Americanized Islamist.

He was not pro-democracy.

This was a Muslim Brotherhood advocate and member, and he is righteously indignant over the reforms of Mohammed bin Salman and wrote about them. But he threw in the words “democracy” and “freedom” and “liberty,” and this was all designed to cow Western readers and Western journalists into thinking that he was something that he’s not. 

Much like liberals have to mask who they are, that’s what Khashoggi was doing. “He had been a journalist in the 1980s and 1990s, but then became more of a player than a spectator. Before working with a succession of Saudi princes, he edited Saudi newspapers. The exclusive remit a Saudi government-appointed newspaper editor has is to ensure nothing remotely resembling honest journalism” makes it into the papers. So when the Saudi ruling family hired him to run journalism, it was to be PR. It was to be propaganda. 

Khashoggi did it. He took the money, he “put the money in the bank,” and he did what the royal family wanted him to do. He made “a handsome living,” which, according to Mr. Bradley here, has “always [been] his top priority. … Khashoggi had this undeserved status in the West” that our caller is talking about “because of the publicity surrounding his sacking as editor of the Saudi daily Al Watan back in 2003. … He was dismissed because he allowed a columnist to criticize an Islamist thinker considered to be the founding father of Wahhabism. 

“Thus, overnight, Khashoggi became known as a liberal progressive” in the Saudi Kingdom and outside. And that’s another reason why the left in this country champions him because that’s who he was. “The Muslim Brotherhood, though, has always been at odds with the Wahhabi movement. Khashoggi and his fellow travelers believe in imposing Islamic rule by engaging in the democratic process".....

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It's probably more like who can't beat her with her miniscule TRACE of a possibility for Central American native blood...Moreover, Graham's chances for beating her out will prove intriguing...

~According to the UK Daily Mail, the lying Sen. Warren's "Pow-Wow" cookbook was literally plagiarized word for word from a French Chef's cookbook ** and she even signed her name with word "Cherokee" on the cookbook.

~Warren actually altered her race from white to “Native American” at the Univerity of                              Pennsylvania

~The Senator was officially Listed as a "woman of color" at Harvard Law School.

~Warren identified herself as a "racial minority" in the American Directory of Law Teachers 

But, Trump, it should be noted,  is the "mentalist supreme"--he now has Senators taking DNA tests to prove native American Indian content...who saw that one coming?

~ One thing, however,  appears clear--Sen. Warren has been undergoing an identity crisis for a very, very, long time--insisting that she's Indian, when, in fact, she's far less native American than the majority of all Americans.

~She's living a lie, but, is it because she's uncomfortable with her true identity or true self?  " Serious mental illness includes diagnoses which typically involve psychosis (losing touch with reality or experiencing delusions)"

Hmm, Makes sense...

~ Refocus Notes

Zerohedge

By Tyler Durden

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) seems to have a newfound "Trumpian" swagger of late, all starting with his fiery speech during Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation - and culminating in several recent clips of the South Carolina Senator giving Democrats what for. 

On Tuesday, Graham "2.0" told Fox & Friends that he plans to take a DNA test to see if he has more Native American DNA than Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Warren has claimed to be Native American for decades - and was identified by Harvard Law as a "woman of color" - which promoted her as a diversity hire with a "minority background," prompting Trump to refer to her as "Pocahontas." 

"I’m going to take a DNA test," said Graham, adding: "I’ve been told my grandmother was part Cherokee Indian. It may all just be talk." 

He says that he'll announce the results of his test on the show when they come in, joking "This is my Trump moment. This is reality TV." 

"I think I can beat her," Graham said, in reference to Warren's fumbled announcement which revealed that she's a mere 1/1024th Native American - around half of the average white person...

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