In the first half, author and journalist Robert Young Pelton discussed why people embrace jihad and how the Internet helps ISIS spread its cause around the world. The Global Engagement Council, set up by the US State Dept., is trying to combat and counter violent dialogue spread online, he reported. Yet most of the jihadis have migrated away from Facebook and Twitter and gone to messaging apps like Telegram and What's App, which they perceive as being more secure, and as a venue for recruitment, he noted. "The reality," he said, "is that the back end of all this social media is easily penetrable." For instance, working with a team, he was able to fairly easily identify the source of a recruiter in Afghanistan.
ISIS ranges from the Philippines to Libya, Iraq and Syria, and typically goes into a populated area that has a grievance, bringing in training staff, videos, flags etc. Then, he explained, they start taxing people and getting control of different operations and industries, kind of like how the Mob operated. Pelton also shared updates on the current turmoil in Saudi Arabia, as well as other Middle Eastern countries and places of war. The recent Saudi "anti-corruption" purge in which various princes and royal officials were arrested is an attempt to quell dissent and threats to the current power structure of King Salman, he cited. Saudi Arabia, he added, is also locked in a proxy war with Iran.
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Clairvoyant, counselor and educator Ellen Tadd has been challenging and refining many established concepts promoted by the metaphysical community such as the belief that you create your own reality, gut instincts are always correct, and that when we die we go into the light. In the latter half, she talked about her understanding of spiritual experiences, which began when her mother, via a trance medium, contacted her from the Other Side, two years after she died from MS. Her mother explained "that she had chosen a life of difficulty to learn compassion for those who suffer," and this lifted a veil for Tadd, who realized that everyone was "spirit temporarily here on Earth," and we all come here to learn.
Having studied the chakra system, she's concluded that the "solar plexus" chakra focused in the gut actually has led people and our culture to be more reactionary, in contrast to the "third eye" chakra in the center of the forehead, which deals with more thoughtful perceptions. The notion that 'people create their own reality' is actually more complex, she said, in that some people come here with larger degrees of destiny already plotted out for their lives. Many people, she continued, have different experiences when they die, as the spirit world is like a layer cake. Some get stuck in lower astral realms, others may go to a "morgue of healing" to get over the ravages of their physical body's illness, she detailed, adding that it's advisable for people to work through their regrets and attachments before they die.
News segment guests: John R. Lott, John Curtis, Steve Kates