NEW MYSTERIOUS VIRUS HAS THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION EXTREMELY WORRIED!!

World Health Organisation calls emergency meeting to respond to SARS-like outbreak

Health experts have started an emergency international meeting to devise ways of combating a mysterious virus that has been described as the single biggest worldwide public health threat after claiming 38 lives, mostly in Saudi Arabia.

A Saudi man walks towards the King Fahad hospital in the city of Hofuf, 370 kms East of the Saudi capital Riyadh.  Photo: AFP/Getty Images

By Alex Spillius

6:49PM BST 20 Jun 2013

Amid fears of a new pandemic more deadly than Sars, 80 officials and doctors, including two from Britain, gathered in Cairo yesterday to examine ways of tackling Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, dubbed MERS.

The coronavirus is casting a shadow over the annual Muslim pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia, where four new deaths were announced on Monday.

The three-day meeting called by the World Health Organisation will look at developing guidelines for Ramadan. In October, more than two million people are expected to attend the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

"Everyone is very aware of the fact that Ramadan begins next month and that there will be a large, large movement of people in a small crowded spaces," said Gregory Hartl, a spokesman for the WHO. "So the more we know about this virus before that starts the better."

There are also concerns that tourists could bring the virus back to their home countries. It appears to have an incubation period of up to 12 days and a fatality rate of 60 per cent.

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Cases have also been found in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Tunisia and Jordan. Most were patients transferred home from the Middle East for treatment or people who had travelled to the region and became ill after they returned.

Dr Jon Bible, a clinical scientist, who treated one of the three British cases last year, said: “You don’t want to have this.”

Sufferers, he said, “are very close to death at all times. They are in respiratory distress at all times, it’s like a very serious pneumonia”.

His patient at St Thomas’s Hospital survived after several months of artificial respiration and even now has breathing difficulties.

The relief for authorities is that it has not yet mutated so as to gain the ability to jump easily from person to person.

Mr Hartl said: “We have been lucky it hasn’t started to spread in any sustainable way between humans. We still have time, but we have to use that time to act.”

An international team of doctors who investigated nearly two dozen cases in eastern Saudi Arabia found the virus has some striking similarities to SARS, which killed 800 people around the world as it spread a global health panic in 2003.

Unlike SARS, though, scientists remain baffled about the source of the new virus, which was first reported in April 2012.

The symptoms of both are similar, with an initial fever and cough that may last for a few days before overpowering pneumonia develops.

"To me, this felt a lot like SARS did," said Trish Perl, a senior hospital epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Medicine, who was part of the team. Their report was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr Perl said they pinpoint how it was spread in every case - through droplets from sneezing or coughing, or a more indirect route.

The team was alarmed to find MERS only spread within hospitals, even though some hospital patients were not close to the infected person.

"In the right circumstances, the spread could be explosive," said Dr Perl.

What is of particular concern is the high fatality rate of the virus. It has caused death in about 60 percent of patients so far, with 75 percent of cases in men and most in people with serious health conditions. There are currently no known treatments.

Margaret Chan, WHO director-general, previously called MERS a “threat to the entire world”.

Dr Dipti Patel, joint director of Public Health England’s National Travel Health Network and Centre, said: “Given that there have only been a relatively small number of confirmed MERS-CoV coronavirus cases worldwide, people planning to travel to the Middle East should continue with their plans but follow the general advice about staying safe and healthy when travelling, and especially the available guidance on the Hajj and Umrah."

RAYMOND IBRAHIM ON HOW MANY MUSLIMS ARE FORCING CHRISTIANS TO CONVERT TO ISLAM - OR FACE DEATH OR MUTILATION!!

ISLAMIC FORCED CONVERSIONS, BOTH  PAST AND PRESENT

by RAYMOND IBRAHIM

The lost history of Christians forced to convert to Islam—or die—is reemerging, figuratively and literally. According to the BBC: “Pope Francis has proclaimed the first saints of his pontificate in a ceremony [last Sunday] at the Vatican—a list which includes 800 victims of an atrocity carried out by Ottoman soldiers in 1480.They were beheaded in the southern Italian town of Otranto after refusing to convert to Islam.” 

In 2012, U.S. Congress heard testimony about the “escalating abduction,coerced conversion and forced marriage of Coptic Christian women and girls [550 cases in the last five years alone]

The BBC adds in a sidebar: “The ‘Martyrs of Otranto’ were 813 Italians beheaded for defying demands by Turkish invaders to renounce Christianity. The Turks had been sent by Mohammed II, who had already captured the ‘second Rome’ of Constantinople.”

Historical texts throughout the centuries are filled with similar anecdotes, including the “60 Martyrs of Gaza,” Christian soldiers who were executed for refusing Islam during the 7^th century Islamic invasion of Jerusalem. Seven centuries later, during the Islamic invasion of Georgia, Christians refusing to convert were forced into their church and set on fire. Witnesses for Christ lists 200 anecdotes of Christians killed—including some burned at the stake, thrown on iron spikes, dismembered, stoned, stabbed, shot at, drowned, pummeled to death, impaled and crucified—for refusing to embrace Islam.

If history is shocking, the fact is, today, Christians—men, women, and children—are still being forced to convert to Islam. Pope Francis alluded to their sufferings during the same ceremony: “As we venerate the martyrs of Otranto, let us ask God to sustain those many Christians who, in these times and in many parts of the world, right now, still suffer violence, and give them the courage and fidelity to respond to evil with good.”

Consider some recent anecdotes:

In Pakistan, a “devoted Christian” was butchered by Muslim men ”with multiple axe blows [24 per autopsy] for refusing to convert to Islam.” Another two Christian men returning from church were accosted by six Muslims who tried to force them to convert to Islam, but “the two refused to renounce Christianity.” Accordingly, the Muslims severely beat them, yelling they must either convert “or be prepared to die. . . . the two Christians fell unconscious, and the young Muslim men left assuming they had killed them.”

In Bangladesh some 300 Christian children were abducted in 2012 and sold to Islamic schools, where “imams force them to abjure Christianity.” The children are then instructed in Islam and beaten. After full indoctrination they are asked if they are “ready to give their lives for Islam,” presumably by becoming jihadi suicide-bombers. (Even here the historic patterns are undeniable: for centuries, Christian children were forcibly taken, converted to and indoctrinated in Islam, trained to be jihadis extraordinaire, and then unleashed on their former Christian families. Such were the Janissaries and Mamelukes.)

In Palestine in 2012, Christians in Gaza protested over the “kidnappings and forced conversions of some former believers to Islam.” The ever-dwindling Christian community banged on a church bellwhile chanting, “With our spirit, with our blood we will sacrifice ourselves for you, Jesus.”

Just as happened throughout history, Muslims today regularly “invite” Christians to Islam, often presenting it as the only cure to their sufferings—sufferings caused by Muslims in the first place.

In Pakistan, a Christian couple was arrested on a false charge and severely beaten by police. The pregnant wife was “punched, kicked and beat” as her interrogators threatened to kill her unborn baby. A policeman offered to drop the theft charge if the husband would only “renounce Christianity and convert to Islam,” but the man refused.

In Uzbekistan, a 26-year-old Christian woman, partially paralyzed from youth, and her elderly mother were violently attacked by invaders who ransacked their home, confiscating “icons, Bibles, religious calendars, and prayer books.” At the police department, the paralyzed woman was “offered to convert to Islam.” She refused, and the judge “decided that the women had resisted police and had stored the banned religious literature at home and conducted missionary activities. He fined them 20 minimum monthly wages each.”

In Sudan, Muslims kidnapped a 15-year-old Christian girl; they raped, beat and ordered her to convert to Islam. When her mother went to police to open a case, the Muslim officer of the so-called “Family and Child Protection Unit,” told her: “You must convert to Islam if you want your daughter back.”

Indeed, because Christian females are the most vulnerable segments of Islamic societies, they are especially targeted for forced conversions. In 2012, U.S. Congress heard testimony about the “escalating abduction,coerced conversion and forced marriage of Coptic Christian women and girls [550 cases in the last five years alone].Those women are being terrorized and, consequently, marginalized, in the formation of the new Egypt.”

As my new book Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians documents, wherever there are large numbers of Muslims—whether in the Arab World, Africa, Asia, or even in the West—Christians are being persecuted. Forced conversions are the tip of the iceberg, and certainly not anomalies of history.

JIM FLETCHER FROM THE BALFOUR POST ON "COLD TURKEY WARMS TO ENEMY ISRAEL"!!

COLD TURKEY WARMS TO ISRAELI “ENEMY”

by JIM FLETCHERShare on facebook

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Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. — Photo AFP

In geopolitics, discerning observers know that relations between countries blow hot and cold. Nowhere is this more evident today than in the complex relationship between Turkey and Israel.

He definitely needs Israel badly because he can’t send any cargo or goods by Syria, so he is using the port at Haifa to ship Turkish goods to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

For many years, Ankara was a surprisingly friendly regional partner with the Jewish state. Joint maneuvers, trade, and cordial public exchanges gave hope that the model could be duplicated eventually with Israel’s Middle East neighbors.

Then came the infamous “flotilla raid” of May 2010. Critics of Israeli policies regarding the Palestinians—including key religious leaders—boarded six vessels as part of the “Gaza Freedom Flotilla,” ostensibly carrying humanitarian aid. Israel worried about terrorist activity.

Israeli commandos boarded the Mavi Marmara and were confronted by attackers. In the ensuing struggle, nine people were killed. Israel was widely condemned by the international community and recently during a phone call between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkish Prime Minister Recap Tayyip Erdogan, an apology was forthcoming from Jerusalem.

Although Erdogan has seemingly taken Turkey in the direction of strengthening Islamic agendas, international observers have taken the conversation between the two men as a very hopeful sign.

As one who has intimate knowledge of the situation, former Israeli Ambassador to Turkey Uri Bar-Ner, has revealed some little-known insights that could be construed as silver linings in the complex Turkish-Israeli relationship. Bar-Ner points to the current political unrest in Turkey as an opening:

“As far as Israel is concerned, Israel is not mentioned at all in the present crisis; we are not part of it. He [Erdogan] and his foreign minister did not use Israel in any way in the present crisis.”

This refers to a tidal wave of protests arising largely from disaffected secularists in Turkey who are chafing under Erdogan’s moves toward a more autocratic regime. On Monday, Reuters reported that Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said the government might call out troops to quell the unrest:

“In Istanbul, the cradle of protests that have presented Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan with the greatest public challenge to his 10-year leadership, several hundred union members also marched in sympathy with anti-government demonstrations.”

Bar-Ner said that “What happened in the last few months is that they [Turkish government] have imposed rules that interfere with the personal lives of the people [such as Erdogan’s bizarre directive that women have three children in order to increase the population] and when you take all of this collectively, it creates resentment in young people.”

Erdogan’s government is secure, although there is the usual jostling for power. Bar-Ner, however, is watching Turkey’s political situation closely:

“He has opposition, but the latest turmoil is not threatening his position. He is doing it all because he wants to change the constitution so he can have a two-thirds majority in parliament and to transfer powers from the prime minister to the president. He can’t be prime minister indefinitely [due to term limits] but can run as president. Erdogan wants to do what Putin did in Russia.”

All this means that whatever Erdogan’s personal agenda might be for his country, he—like most heads-of-state—is constrained by outside forces. This bodes well for repairing damage to Turkish-Israeli relations. Bar-Ner provides some detailed analysis:

“The situation with Israel is that after the apology for the Mavi Marmara…they are playing a very tough game in negotiations. Turkey wants a million dollars for every death in the flotilla incident. Eventually we will reach an understanding, so that Israel’s ambassador will go back to Ankara—I believe he will.”

The whole affair is definitely not one-sided, however, as Bar-Ner reveals.

“He definitely needs Israel badly because he can’t send any cargo or goods by Syria, so he is using the port at Haifa to ship Turkish goods to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.”

Bar-Ner said that trade between Israel and Turkey has quietly increased significantly, and that additional factors are at play in the thawing relations between the two regional powers.

“Erdogan is at war with Syria, and has tensions with Iran and Egypt,” Bar-Ner says. “So his foreign policy has to be ‘peace at home and abroad.’ He made a deal with and Iran and Cyprus. He made a deal with Russia to build cheap housing in Russia.”

Indeed, a whole host of problems are bubbling-up for Turkey, including refugees pouring over the border from Syria, tensions with Iran, Cyprus, and Greece, and NATO demands for the placement of anti-ballistic missiles on the borders.

Bar-Ner says that Erdogan also must manage the nuance of governing styles between himself and the new Egyptian regime.

“There are problems with Egypt because he is at odds with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Erdogan says to them, ‘I am a secular democracy and I do what I want…why don’t you do what I do?’ But they [Cairo] don’t want that because they want
shariah.”

It also helps the balance of power in the region because, despite some perceptions, the U.S. is still an important player.

“The U.S. has one billion dollars worth of military hardware stored in Israel for the U.S. military, in case they need it,” says Bar-Ner.

At the end of the day, Bar-Ner says that in actuality, relations between Turkey and Israel are manageable.

“It won’t be the way it was, but ‘okay.’ Erdogan is only really friendly with Russia. He is at war with everyone else.”

THE IN-HUMAN ACT OF MUSLIM BEHEADING STRIKES AGAIN IN SHEFFIELD!! ALSO NOTE THE "FLASHBACK" REPORTS BELOW SHOWING THAT DECAPITATION IS GROWING IN THE WEST!!!

UK: Muslim Man Beheads 20 Year-Old Woman, Assaults Five Others In Sheffield

He apparently beheaded a Muslim woman. If media “reports” are any indication, it had absolutely nothing to do with Islam, of course. Although no reason was mentioned in the article below, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is yet another example of a woman paying the ultimiate price for somehow dishonoring the family, or was simply a Muslim woman acting too Western, or both. And that would have been insulting to the “prophet” …

By ANNA EDWARDS, Mail Online – “A 20-year-old man has appeared in court charged with the murder of a young woman who was beheaded in a knife attack.

Aras Hussein appeared at Sheffield Magistrates’ Court today accused of murdering Reema Ramzan, 18.

Miss Ramzan, who was from the Darnall area of Sheffield, died on June 4 following an incident at a property on Herries Road, in the city.

Detectives said she suffered a severe knife attack resulting in fatal injuries, including the severing of her head.

Hussein, of Sheffield, is also charged with assaulting five people at Sheffield’s Northern General Hospital, where he was taken following his arrest by police.

He stood in the glass-fronted dock today flanked by two uniformed police officers.

Sporting full beard and short, dark hair, he wore a navy blue T-shirt and spoke only to confirm his personal details and that he understood the charge.

Hussein was remanded in custody following a 10 minute hearing and told he will appear again a Sheffield Crown Court on Thursday.” Read more.

Flashback: Bis Dass Der Tod Uns Scheidet: Man Shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ Beheads Wife In Germany – “A German man was seen atop his roof, a knife in one hand and his wife’s head in the other this morning. The unidentified 32-year-old man allegedly screamed ‘Allahu Akbar,’ which means [Allah is greater] in Arabic, before decapitating his wife on the roof of his five-story apartment, according to a translation of the Berliner Morgenpost… The man reportedly sharpened his knife and then beheaded the victim while she was still alive. Horrified witnesses saw the man standing at the roof’s edge with his wife’s head in his hand …” Read more.

Flashback: Muslim TV Channel Executive Beheads Wife – “The founder of a New York television station has been convicted of beheading his wife in 2009 in the studio the couple had opened to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims after the September 11 terror attacks. Muzzammil ‘Mo’ Hassan never denied that he killed Aasiya Hassan inside the suburban Buffalo station the couple established to promote cultural understanding… From the start, his lawyers dismissed suggestions that culture played a role in the killing.” Read more.

Flashback: Islam’s Rule Of Numbers: Islamic Beheadings Are Not Uncommon In The West, Including The U.S. – “As surreal as this event may seem, Islamic beheadings are not uncommon in the West, including the U.S. In 2011, a Pakistani-American who helped develop ‘Bridges TV’—a station ’designed to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims’—beheaded his wife. In Germany in 2012, another Muslim man beheaded his wife in front of their six children—again while hollering ’Allahu Akbar.’ Beheading non-Muslim ‘infidels’ in the Islamic world is especially commonplace …” Read more.

"COULD SYRIA IGNITE WORLD WAR 3"? A MUST READ IN-DEPTH ARTICLE FROM THE DAILY MAIL!

Could Syria ignite World War 3? That's the terrifying question as the hatred between two Muslim ideologies sucks in the world's superpowers

• Syrian conflict could engulf region in struggle between Sunni and Shia 
• Already claimed 93,000 lives and made 1.6million people refugees
• UK, France and U.S. taken different side to China and Russia

By MICHAEL BURLEIGH

The crisis in Syria may appear to be no more or less than a civil war in a country many people would struggle to place on a map.

But it’s much more than that: it is rapidly becoming a sectarian struggle for power that is bleeding across the Middle East, with the potential to engulf the entire region in a deadly power struggle between two bitterly opposed Muslim ideologies, Sunni and Shia.

Already, the war inside Syria has resulted in 93,000 dead and 1.6 million refugees, with millions more displaced internally. And those figures are escalating rapidly amid reports of appalling atrocities on both sides.

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The Syrian crisis has potential to engulf the entire region in a power struggle between Sunni and Shia

Syria is surrounded by countries in the Middle East that have allegiances to either Assad's regime or the rebels

The conflict started in 2011 with peaceful protests against the authoritarian regime of Bashar al-Assad, the seemingly mild successor to his father Hafez, who between 1970 and 2000 ruled Syria with a rod of iron. 

Hafez’s response to dissent from the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood was to wipe out a town of 20,000 people.

 

More...

• U.S. proposes $50MILLION A DAY no-fly zone in Syria after finding proof that government used chemical weapons against rebels
• Syria death toll stands at 93,000, with 5,000 people dying every month, says the UN
• Islamic group shoot dead Syrian 14-year-old boy in front of his parents for blasphemy after saying 'he wouldn't even give the Prophet a free coffee'

Fearing that Syria faced the kind of protests that had toppled the rulers of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya during the ‘Arab Spring’, Bashar al-Assad’s security forces used tanks and gunfire to crush the demonstrations. But it only stoked the fires.

The opposition developed into an armed insurgency, and now Syria has been engulfed in a civil war which has degenerated into a vicious sectarian conflict.

On one side are those who follow President Assad, who belongs to the Alawites — a splinter sect from Shia Islam.

On the other are a loose affiliation of insurgents drawn from the majority Sunni population, some of whom have close links to the Sunni jihadists of Al Qaeda.

The level of savagery is appalling. This week, up to 60 Shia Muslims were reported to have been slaughtered in an attack by opposition fighters in the eastern Syrian city of Hatla. 

William Hague, left, is in Washington with John Kerry, right, for talks which are likely to focus on the situation in Syria. The world's superpowers have taken a public stance on the Syrian conflict

The conflict in Syria has already claimed 93,000 lives and left 1.6million people refugees

A gloating cameraman who filmed the aftermath said: ‘This is the Shia carcass, this is their end.’

Sadly, it is an all too familiar story in a religious conflict that dates back to the 7th century.

After the death of the Prophet Mohammed in 632AD, there were four candidates vying to succeed him. 

One group, which would become the Shia (or Shi’ite) sect, favoured the claims of the Prophet’s grandson Ali, but he was passed over three times before eventually taking on the mantle, only to then be assassinated.

An irrevocable split between the Shia — which is run by a clerical hierarchy — and the group that became the Sunnis came after a battle in 680, when Ali’s grandson was killed.

Today, in Syria and across the Middle East, the divide is a gulf in which theology plays an important role.

The main pillars of the current Assad regime are the army, the intelligence services and the Ba’athists, the local version of the national party Saddam Hussein led in Iraq. 

Assad’s backbone is stiffened by the influence of his mother and uncles, who want to crush the Syrian rebels.

Many wealthy businessmen in the capital Damascus also support the Assads, as do Christians who fear the rapid establishment of an Islamist state if he falls. 

At the heart of the Syrian regime are members of Assad’s Alawite sect, who make up 12 per cent of the population, yet represent 80  per cent of army officers and  90  per cent of generals.

There is also an Alawite militia called the shabbiha that specialises in murdering opponents.

Christians make up 10 per cent of the Syrian population, while another 10 per cent are Kurds, who are Sunnis and present in much larger numbers in Turkey, Iran and Iraq, too. 

 

Local TV report on Iranians voting to choose Ahmadinejad's...

The great danger is Syria might fragment into three or four pieces on sectarian lines, with anyone marooned in the wrong enclave liable to face vicious ethnic cleansing. 

And because the conflict is driven by religion, it could easily leap Syria’s frontiers to draw in regional powers.

So who is aligned with whom? Broadly speaking, Assad is supported by Iran (the main Shia power in the Middle East) and its militant Lebanese ally, the terrorist group Hezbollah. 

The latter is Iran’s main weapon in any fight with Israel.

As a result, Assad is advised (and protected) by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, and there are also between 5,000 and 8,000 seasoned Hezbollah fighters inside Syria. 

They have made a considerable difference — they fought the well-drilled Israeli army to a draw in 2006.

The forces against Assad are joined by thousands of fighters flooding the country every week from across the region.

The rebels have also benefited from the ferocious will-to-die of an Islamist group called Jabhat al-Nusra, which is allied with Al Qaeda in Iraq. 

Many more rebels are Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood persuasion. 

They are supported with guns and money from Sunni states such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Such are the complex connections between modern nations, and the globalised nature of international politics, that repercussions could be felt around the world.

What happens in Syria affects Israel, with which it shares a militarised border on the Golan Heights. And what affects Israel also involves the U.S., its staunch ally.

 

Although President Obama wants to downgrade America’s involvement in the Middle East now the U.S. can rely on reserves of cheap shale oil and gas at home, his own somewhat ostentatious concern for human rights keeps sucking him back in to side with the rebels.

That is also broadly the position of Britain and France, whose leaders seem swayed by lurid and unverified social media footage of atrocities.

But while leading NATO nations line up in sympathy with the rebels, on the other side President Assad is being backed by Russia — a long-time friend of Syria — and by China.

Russia and China feel they were tricked by the West over the way the Libyan regime was overthrown with Western aid two years ago, and are determined Assad won’t be ousted and murdered like Gaddafi.

The war in Syria therefore has had a destabilising effect on the entire region, and could exert a terrifying domino effect as states disintegrate. 

Whether such a nightmare scenario can be avoided — and global superpowers can be persuaded to keep their powder dry — we must wait to see with baited breath.

FIRST HAND REPORT FROM TURKEY - THE "KING OF THE NORTH" IN BIBLICAL PROPHECY AND A NATION TO WATCH OUT FOR IN TODAY'S CLIMATE!!!

First Hand Report

 From the Clashes in Turkey

Posted by Joel Richardson. 

Taksim Square moments before the police attacked with tear gas canons and grenades.

Joel Richardson

For the past twelve years, I’ve maintained a keen interest in the future of the nation of Turkey, writing frequently over the years about the re-emergence of this nation as a regional leader. My particular interest has been how all of this relates to the testimony of the Biblical prophets and how it will affect the mandate of the Church to share the gospel in this nation and the surrounding region. So I found it quite providential that a pre-planned trip to Istanbul to film for a forthcoming documentary by WND films coordinated perfectly with the events of the past few days as they have unfolded here in a rather dramatic fashion. If you haven’t been following the news, the nation of Turkey is presently experiencing massive social and political upheaval.

When we arrived in Istanbul on Thursday, we were told that the protests in Taksim Square and Gezi Park had died down. According to our hotel manager, it was now little more than circle dancing and singing. So on Saturday night, we decided to check it out for ourselves.

We arrived a bit earlier in the day and had a few hours to wander about the park and talk to many of the protestors; secular Turks, Kurds, professors, reporters, and everyone in between. Tens of thousands of people milled about. There were numerous families with children in strollers, elderly and even several in wheelchairs. The police had the park surrounded with highly equipped trucks and hundreds upon hundreds of police outfitted with full riot gear and tear gas masks.

The calm before the storm.

An anti-Erdogan flyer in Gezi PArk adjacent to Taksim Square.

A protestor in Gezi Park.

As the evening rolled in, some of the crowds began chanting. The confrontation had begun. Little did we know that this would be the night that the Islamist AK Party had planned to utterly purge the park. The police moved suddenly and rapidly into the crowds. If you have seen the trucks mounted with powerful “water canons”, I have something to tell you. They do not spray water. It’s actually some form of sticky, caustic substance, mixed with water. It took less then fifteen seconds after the trucks began spraying, for the entire park to be filled with a painfully acidic mist. The explosion of tear gas canisters began to thunder and surrounded us in rapid succession. Thousands were fleeing in every direction. There were many woman, children, and elderly caught in the chaos.

I snapped this pic on my phone as we were leaving the park. Tear gas grenades surrounded us.

Quickly becoming overwhelmed by the effects of the gas, we made our way out of the park through a side street, content at this point just to escape, but the police had the opposite end of every street blocked. They began releasing more teargas grenades at the end of the streets, trapping those of us in the middle. Some were falling down. I was not far from doing so myself. Unable to see or breath, with no where left to go, we pushed our way into a hotel lobby. Hundreds of others followed. My team made our way to an upper floor hallway and allowed the effects of the gas to diminish. Through Instagram and Twitter we were able to follow what was happening in other areas of the square. In one case, the police actually released teargas into the hotel. There were many children and elderly incapacitated by the gas. Some were hit by rubber bullets. It was a brutal crackdown. And it is only getting worse. According to the Islamist AK Party controlled media, very little of this actually happened.

This was not the response of a government that genuinely values freedom of speech, protest, dissent, or even the lives of its own people. The AK Party chose to punish everyone and anyone in the park. It was a genuinely brutal crack down.

But the protestors are determined. After being removed from the park, they took to marching on the bridges.

On Sunday, we were told that the AK Party was planning to have a rally of its own, so we decided to see the other side. This wasn’t difficult because there were literally hundreds of free busses shuttling people to the event. As we approached the event, the Bosporus water way that separates the Asian side of Istanbul from the European side was filled with boats waving giant Turkish flags. Rows of large streamers alternating between the AK Party logo, PM Erdogan’s face, and the Turkish flag, literally ran for several miles running up the events. As we arrived, the throngs of chanting supporters were almost crushing. We made out way into the heart of the event.

A wide angle view of the AKP rally.

Throughout the day, we were asked dozens of times if we were with CNN. I’m glad we were not. The people there did not like CNN as was evident by the fact that every time the name CNN was mentioned from the platform, the crowds would all boo.

For a few hours under the hot sun, my team and I were literally surrounded by well over a million AKP supporters chanting, “Recep Tayyip Erdogan!” Others chanted AKP slogans or “Allahu Akbar, Tafir!

The platform. Massive images and banners of PM Erdogan were everywhere.

The AKP is a brazen cult of personality that revolves around Erdogan.

I truly felt as though I was at the Zeppelin Tribune, Nuremberg, Germany, 1938.

Pray for the nation of Turkey.