“I
will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.”
(John
14:18)
I Will Come To You
***
WND
PROTECTING CHRISTIANS, FIGHTING TERROR? RUSSIA'S ON IT
Syrian priest: 'It is miraculous that we are still alive. We owe that to Vladimir Putin'
Published: February 26, 2017
ALEKSANDAR PAVIC
A few years ago, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who then was Russia’s ambassador to NATO, warned that a new influence had appeared that was becoming a major threat to large segments of the world, namely, Asia, Europe and America.
“There is a new civilization emerging in the Third World that thinks that the white, Northern Hemisphere has always oppressed it and must therefore fall at its feet now. … If the northern civilization wants to protect itself, it must be united: America, the European Union and Russia. If they are not together, they will be defeated one by one,” he said.
He was primarily referring to radical Islam. And America, with its Christian foundation, Europe, with its own Judeo-Christian heritage, and even Russia, with its historic Russian Orthodox Christian church, would appear to have reason to join ranks.
So why would the American political elite be so averse to pursuing better relations with Russia, as President Donald Trump has suggested?
After all, every president in recent years has stated essentially the same goal. Remember then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “reset” under President Obama?
But opposition to Trump’s suggestions have been loud and long, despite what some have seen as extraordinary efforts on the part of Russia to protect Christians.
It was a 76-year old Flemish priest from the sixth-century Mar Yakub monastery in the Syrian city of Qara who put the issue in the context he understood best, his own life.
“It is miraculous that we are still alive. We owe that to the army of Assad’s government and to Vladimir Putin, because he decided to intervene when the rebels threatened to take power… Between ordinary Muslims and Christians, there is no problem. It is those radical Islamic, Western-backed rebels who want to massacre us. … Trump understands that radical Islam is a bigger threat than Russia.”
In Europe, many of the newly sprung nationalist, anti-globalist and anti-EU parties have expressed admiration for Russia’s defense of traditional values, along with European Christian intellectuals, who despair over Western Europe’s abandonment of its spiritual roots.
In the Balkans, Russia is the sole power standing up for Christians persecuted by Islamists and has refused to recognize the Western condoned secession of Kosovo from Serbia and the Muslim Albanians ISIS-like destruction of the millennial Christian Church heritage there.
And Archbishop Vsevovlod Chaplin declared, “Any fight against terrorism is moral; we can even call it a holy fight.”
He said Christian countries “can oppose pseudo-Islamic extremism only by basing themselves on traditional religious values.”
“Secularism will never be able to cope with the challenge of religious fanaticism and extremism coming to Europe today,” he said. “Secularism will always lose to religious or pseudo-religious extremism. Even if secularism successfully beats off religious and public radicalism with the help of power and money for some time, it won’t last long, only for 20-30 years.”
But at the recent Munich Security Conference, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said, “2017 is going to be the year of kicking Russia in the a** in Congress.”
He cited claims Russia hacked Democrat computer systems and thus tainted the 2016 president election.
He said Trump “should be working with us to punish Russia.”
Graham and fellow Sen. John McCain, another Munich Conference attendee, are spearheading a broad effort to challenge and possibly derail Trump’s oft-expressed goal of improving relations with Russia.
McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, expressed hope in January that the new U.S. president would give up on the idea of lifting the sanctions against Russia imposed by Barack Obama.
“If he does not, I will work with my colleagues to codify sanctions against Russia into law,” McCain said.
Graham reinforced McCain in Munich, announcing that he planned to introduce a bipartisan motion for new Russia sanctions that would get “north of 75 votes.” He also openly explored the possibility of invoking Article 5 of the NATO Treaty that “an attack on one party is an attack on all.”
Graham’s fiery rhetoric comes on the heels of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s resignation amid allegations that he and other members of Trump’s team had improper contacts with Russian diplomats, government and intelligence officials, something that both Flynn and the White House have denied.
But Russians, in the voice of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, have challenged those making such claims to “Give us some facts” regarding the claims of hacking.
“I have seen no facts, there were just some accusations that we tried to hack some Democratic Party website,” he said.
Congress is debating the issue and the FBI is investigating.
But Trump’s American First Foreign Policy states, “Defeating ISIS and other radical Islamic terror groups will be our highest priority,” which is in parallel with one of the points from Russia’s recent official foreign policy statement, dated just a few weeks ago.
That states, “The global terrorist threat has reached a new high with the emergence of the Islamic State international terrorist organization and similar groups that have descended to an unprecedented level of cruelty in their violence. They aspire to create their own state and seek to consolidate their influence on a territory stretching from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to Pakistan. The main effort in combating terrorism should be aimed at creating a broad international counter-terrorist coalition with a solid legal foundation, one that is based on effective and consistent inter-State cooperation without any political considerations or double standards, above all to prevent terrorism and extremism and counter the spread of radical ideas.”
Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin talked on January 28, and the White House said both “are hopeful that after today’s call the two sides can move quickly to tackle terrorism and other important issues of mutual concern.”
The Kremlin said, “The two leaders emphasized that joining efforts in fighting the main threat – international terrorism – is a top priority. The presidents spoke out for establishing real coordination of actions between Russia and the U.S. aimed at defeating Islamic State and other terrorists groups in Syria.”
The conflict then appears between the two presidents, whose focus is on terrorism, and the liberal elite in America and Europe, as well as the media entities such as the New York Times, CNN and others, who apparently want to deepen the rift between the U.S. and Russia.
Some think the tension is a leftover from the Cold War.
Russian officials have often expressed dismay at such sentiment, which Sergei Lavrov reiterated at the Munich Conference, opining that the U.S.-led NATO alliance has “remained a Cold War institution” aimed at restraining Russia, a continuation of the anti-Soviet policy of containment conceived by American diplomat George Kennan in the now famous ‘Long Telegram” of 1946, the essence of which was later published in “Foreign Affairs” magazine (under the byline “X”) in 1947, and became a pillar of U.S. Soviet policy in the years that followed.
Yet, it was Kennan himself who expressed grave concern exactly fifty years later that further NATO alliance expansion to the east, driven by the Clinton administration, would be, as the title of his New York Times article described, “a fateful error,” i.e., “most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.”
As Kennan put it: “Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.”
Furthermore, Kennan wondered: “Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the cold war, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?”
NATO, however, did expand, in 1999, 2004 and 2009, adding 12 more countries to the alliance (with tiny Montenegro being the latest to be invited, pending ratification by several more NATO countries, including the U.S.). In addition, in support of secessionist efforts of majority Muslim Albanians in Serbia’s southern Kosovo province, NATO unilaterally bombed traditional Russian ally Yugoslavia in spring of 1999, which was viewed by top Russian circles as a harbinger of things to come.
Putin told the Russian Federal Assembly in 2014, “Despite our unprecedented openness back then and our willingness to cooperate in all, even the most sensitive issues, despite the fact that we considered… our former adversaries as close friends and even allies, the support for separatism in Russia from across the pond, including information, political and financial support and support provided by the special services – was absolutely obvious and left no doubt that they would gladly let Russia follow the Yugoslav scenario of disintegration and dismemberment. With all the tragic fallout for the people of Russia.”
Then there is the issue of Ukraine, which is the latest source of Western-Russian tension, with both sides pointing to it as “proof of aggression” on the part of the other, with Western leaders claiming that Russia has “illegally annexed Crimea” and is supporting pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, and Russia accusing Western powers of engineering a coup in Kiev and installing anti-Russian extremists in power, and claiming that Crimea was illegitimately attached to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev during the Soviet era.
And, in the context of the Ukrainian crisis, NATO is deploying thousands of additional troops towards the Russian border, as a response to perceived threat of Russian aggression, even though Chair of the NATO Military Committee, Gen. Petr Pavel, conceded at the Munich Conference that he believed “that Russia doesn’t have a serious intent to attack NATO.”
And Russian has continued pursuing initiatives that would jointly benefit the two sides in the Cold War, including a policy proposal for a “European Security Treaty” launched by then-president Dmitry Medvedev in November 2009.
Although the proposal has met skepticism and outright rejection in the West, Russian leaders have not taken it off the table. For example, at the latest Munich Conference, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov repeated the call for a “common space of good neighborly relations from Vancouver to Vladivostok.”
At the root of these value- and civilization-based views is a process that has gone almost unnoticed by the rapidly secularizing West, that of Russia’s rapid re-Christianization. The Russian president has reportedly authorized over 2 billion rubles (U.S. $100 million) of tax money to rebuild churches that were destroyed under the previous Soviet regime. Furthermore, over the past quarter century, since the fall of communism, the ROC has built or restored from ruins more than 25,000 churches.
“This means that a thousand churches a year have been opened, i.e., three churches a day,” according to Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, chairman of the Department of External Church Relations.
Not unlike Donald Trump, Putin regularly professes his religiosity, even in a 2013 New York Times article, written on the anniversary of 9/11, and calling for a cautious approach to Syria, which ended with the following line: “We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”
And just several days later, in a widely reported speech at Russia’s conservative Valdai Club, Putin called on Russians to “strengthen a new national identity based on conservative and traditional values such as the Orthodox church, warning that the West was facing a moral crisis,” criticizing Western countries for “putting on the same level multi-child families and single-sex partnerships, belief in God and belief in Satan,” as well as the “excesses of political correctness.”
Even Rev. Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, noted, “What Russia is doing may save the lives of Christians in the Middle East.”
Regarding Syria, he explained, “You understand that the Syrian government for their good and for their bad over the history of this country, they have protected Christians, they have protected minorities from the Islamists.”
***
LIFE SITE
Flashback: Pope’s retreat preacher speaks on Antichrist as a ‘pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist’
February 20, 2017 (LifeSiteNews)
In 2007, the climate change hysteria and general collapse of moral consensus was not as present in governments, educational institutions, and society, and now at the highest level in the Catholic Church, as it has been the past few years.
The most extraordinary new development has been the head of the Roman Catholic Church
proclaiming "proselytism is the strongest poison against the ecumenical path" and “Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense.”
gradually abandoning Church teaching of a "just war",
recently proclaiming that “Liberation Theology was a good thing for Latin America,”
upsetting the traditional applications of Catholic moral teachings
calling on all "to defend our Sister Mother Earth" while accepting the false claims about climate change alarmism as coming from "a very solid scientific consensus,"
trashing capitalism, and urging for a Marxist-sounding new international economic order
strongly urging the opening of borders to millions of undocumented, poorly vetted Islamist immigrants with their radically different culture and religion-based laws.
proclaiming that “The most serious of the evils that afflict the world these days are youth unemployment and the loneliness of the old"
Pope Francis has also been inviting increasingly virulent, prominent New World Order enemies of Christianity, such as Paul Ehrlich, Professor John Bongaarts,the vice-president of the Population Council, and China's “organ czar,” to speak at Vatican conferences and advise the Church on policies.
A worldly, modern "social justice" list of priorities dominates Vatican actions and statements today - a dramatic change from the more emphatically spiritual and moral emphases of recent papacies.
Now, Francis has even just praised and worked together on a February conference in California with the George Soros-funded organization, PICO — People Improving Communities through Organizing.
OnePeterFive reports, "Leftist watchdog website Discover the Political Networks describes PICO as a group that 'uses Alinsky-style organizing tactics to advance the doctrines of the religious left.'' In an Aug. 23, 2016 article, LifeSite's Westen reported that Soros paid out $650,000 to PICO and another organization to "influence Pope Francis’ September 2015 visit to the USA with a view to 'shift[ing] national paradigms and priorities in the run-up to the 2016 presidential campaign.'"
And so, Westen's 2007 article, given the astounding developments that have taken place since its original publication, is now read in a dramatically different light than when it was first published. Back then - not so long ago - few of us would have believed that much of what has happened since 2007 could actually happen. We just could not have imagined that things could go so far awry in so little time.
Readers should always keep in mind that prayer and personal sacrifices offered to God have great power to change the course of history, even when that course appears to be unstoppable. The phrase "Be not afraid," or versions of it, appear 365 times in the New Testament. Living that is one necessary mark of a true Christian, although temporary lapses are just being human.
Before the article, I include two relevant quotes - one quote from John Paul II and the other from Pope Benedict:
In 1976 Pope John Paul II, as then Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, warned,
“We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has ever experienced. I do not think that the wide circle of the American Society, or the whole wide circle of the Christian Community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, between the gospel and the anti-gospel, between Christ and the Antichrist.”
Also, in 2010 Pope Benedict stated the following in his Christmas message to the Vatican Curia:
“[O]ur world is at the same time troubled by the sense that moral consensus is collapsing, consensus without which juridical and political structures cannot function. Consequently the forces mobilized for the defence of such structures seem doomed to failure….
“Alexis de Tocqueville, in his day, observed that democracy in America had become possible and had worked because there existed a fundamental moral consensus which, transcending individual denominations, united everyone. Only if there is such a consensus on the essentials can constitutions and law function. This fundamental consensus derived from the Christian heritage is at risk wherever its place, the place of moral reasoning, is taken by the purely instrumental rationality of which I spoke earlier. In reality, this makes reason blind to what is essential. To resist this eclipse of reason and to preserve its capacity for seeing the essential, for seeing God and man, for seeing what is good and what is true, is the common interest that must unite all people of good will. The very future of the world is at stake.”
Pope’s retreat preacher speaks on Antichrist as a 'pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist'
By John-Henry Westen
VATICAN CITY, March 1, 2007 (LifeSiteNews) - Papal watchers are wondering what message Pope Benedict XVI was giving when he selected retired Bologna archbishop Cardinal Giacomo Biffi to preach the annual Lenten retreat to the Pope and the top members of the Vatican.
Rocco Palmo, expert Vatican reporter for The Tablet, the international Catholic weekly published in London England has noted the significance of the selection of the Lenten retreat preacher. "Since time immemorial—or, at least, the retreat’s heightened profile over the 20th century—the selection of the preacher has become a closely-watched indicator of the prevailing winds in the papal apartment," said Palmo on his blog. "(T)he choice often falling to a voice the Pope might like to tout… and not just for a higher prominence on the preaching circuit."
Palmo added weight to his remarks noting that "Before their respective elections to the papacy, both Joseph Ratzinger and Karol Wojtyla were tapped to lead the annual exercises."
This year’s selection when it became known created a stir since Cardinal Biffi, while he is known for orthodox faith and frank words, is most well known, at least in the secular media, for his preaching on the Antichrist. In fact, the Times of London reported in 2004 that the Cardinal described the Antichrist as "walking among us".
The Lenten retreat did not disappoint. Cardinal Biffi picked up on his oft repeated theme of the Antichrist, basing his remarks on the works of Vladimir Soloviev, a Russian religious philosopher who has received praise from Pope Benedict prior to his elevation to the pontificate.
Quoting Soloviev, the Cardinal said "the Antichrist presents himself as pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist."
"He will convoke an ecumenical council and will seek the consensus of all the Christian confessions, granting something to each one. The masses will follow him, with the exception of small groups of Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants," he said according to a Zenit translation of a Vatican Radio summary here: http://www.radiovaticana.org/it1/Articolo.asp?c=120479 . (Feb. 20, 2017 - Translation is no longer available on Zenit and the only Zenit report on the 2007 retreat mentions only the first day's talk and not the later one on the Antichrist)
In his "Tale of the Antichrist" Solovyov foresees that a small group of Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants will resist and will say to the Antichrist: "You give us everything, except what interests us, Jesus Christ". For Cardinal Biffi, this narrative is a warning: "Today, in fact, we run the risk of having a Christianity which puts aside Jesus with his cross and resurrection."
The 78-year-old cardinal added that if Christians "limited themselves to speaking of shared values they would be more accepted on television programs and in social groups. But in this way, they will have renounced Jesus, the overwhelming reality of the resurrection."
The cardinal said he believes that this is "the danger that Christians face in our days … the Son of God cannot be reduced to a series of good projects sanctioned by the prevailing worldly mentality."
The preacher of the Spiritual Exercises added that "there are relative values, such as solidarity, love of peace and respect for nature. If these become absolute, uprooting or even opposing the proclamation of the event of salvation, then these values become an instigation to idolatry and obstacles on the way of salvation."
Cardinal Biffi affirmed that "if Christianity—on opening itself to the world and dialoguing with all—dilutes the salvific event, it closes itself to a personal relationship with Jesus and places itself on the side of the Antichrist."
Cardinal Biffi’s reflections, in fact, are very similar to remarks Pope Benedict made last Fall in a meeting with Swiss Bishops. While Pope Benedict did not speak of the Antichrist, he spoke of a new false or "substitute" religion, calling it also a "successor" of religion.
"Modern society is not simply without morality, but it has, so to speak, ‘discovered’ and professes a part of morality", the Pope told the Swiss bishops. "These are the great themes of peace, non-violence, justice for all, concern for the poor, and respect for creation."
However, the Pope warned that these "great moral themes" have "become an ethical complex that, precisely as a political force, has great power and constitutes for many the substitute for religion, or its successor."
"It is only if human life is respected from conception to death that the ethics of peace is also possible and credible," concluded the Pope. "It is only then that non-violence can express itself in every direction; only then that we truly welcome creation, and only then that we can arrive at true justice."
***
BREAKINGISRAELNEWS
Is the Temple Menorah Hidden in the Vatican? Ancient Legend Says ‘Yes’
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz February 22, 2017 , 12:30 pm
“And he said unto me: ‘What seest thou?’ And I said: ‘I have seen and behold a candlestick all of gold with a bowl upon the top of it and its seven lamps thereon.’” Zechariah 4:2 (The Israel Bible™)
Arch of Titus Menorah Relief in Rome (Wikimedia Commons)
An ancient legend which holds that the Temple menorah is hidden away in the depths of the Vatican is coming to light again with the announcement of an upcoming exhibit jointly hosted by the Papal seat and Rome’s ancient Jewish community. Intended to showcase the growing Jewish-Vatican relationship, the theme of the exhibit actually brings this sore subject to the forefront, raising suspicions that despite a long tradition of Vatican protests, the rumors persist for good reason.
Arnold Nesselrath, a Vatican Museums official, announced the theme of the upcoming exhibit on Monday, noting that the connection between the Vatican and the menorah is graphically illustrated in an image frescoed on a wall of the Vatican’s Borgia Apartment. The apartment was built for Pope Alessandro VI, whose papacy began in 1492, the same year Spanish Jews were given the choice of forced conversion to Catholicism or expulsion.
Organizers said in the statement that the exhibit “recounts the multi-millennia, incredible and suffered history of the menorah.” The story of the menorah’s suffering began in 70 CE, when the Temple was destroyed and the menorah, standing over 5 feet tall and made from over 130 pounds of solid gold, was taken into exile in Rome by the Emperor Titus.
This event is illustrated in the famous Arch of Titus Menorah Relief, which depicts Roman soldiers carrying the menorah away after the destruction of the temple. Jewish sources also contain many first-hand accounts reporting the Menorah being seen in Rome soon after the destruction of the Temple.
Josephus Flavius, a first-century Roman-Jewish scholar of priestly descent, reported that the Temple artifacts were indeed taken to Rome and placed in Vespasian’s Temple of Peace, completed in 75 CE.
The historic trail of the menorah seems to have been lost during the 5th century. Historians conjecture that the artifact was taken by the Vandals who sacked Rome in 455, after which it was melted down and the gold dispersed. But there are no historical accounts from this time relating the event.
Since that time, there have been several unverified sightings of the Menorah in the Vatican, but most are second-hand or anecdotal claims that point fingers without providing actual proof. In the second half of the 12th century a Spanish Jew known as Benjamin of Tudela made a tour of the known world, traveling as far east as Mesopotamia. He claims in his journal that the Jews of Rome knew that the Temple vessels were hidden in a cave in the Vatican.
These rumors continue until today. The Vatican receives hundreds of letters every year from Jews and non-Jews requesting the vessels be returned to the Jewish People. Though the Vatican responds there is no proof of the Temple vessels being in their possession, requests for their return continue. In a meeting with Pope John Paul II in 1996, Shimon Shitrit, then the Israeli Minister of Religious Affairs requested the Vatican’s aid in searching for the Temple vessels as “a goodwill gesture”. Haaretz reported that “a tense silence hovered over the room after Sheetreet’s request was heard.”
Following Shitrit’s bold appeal, Israel’s Chief Rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar made a similar request upon their first visit to the Vatican. This was repeated when then-President Moshe Katsav visited the Vatican. In 2004, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) sent a team to Rome to search the Vatican storerooms for signs of archaeological artifacts. They reported finding nothing unexpected.
And still, the rumors persist. In 2013, just before the newly-elected Pope Francis came to Israel for his first official visit, Rabbi Yonatan Shtencel, a resident of Jerusalem, made a sensation in the media when he wrote a letter to the Vatican requesting that the Pope take the opportunity to return the golden menorah stolen from the Temple. Shtencel turned to the new Pope as a leader with a “willingness to listen to other nations”.
“It is time for the holy vessels, stolen at the time of these difficult historical events and taken to Rome as spoils of war and remaining to this day in the hands of the Vatican authorities and under your control, to change status,” Rabbi Shtencel wrote. He stated that by doing so, the many years the Vatican had possessed the vessels would change from theft to a “trusteeship” for the Jewish People.
Archbishop Guiseppe Lazzaratto responded, saying the Vatican had given the matter “serious attention”. Though he did not admit the Temple vessels were in the Vatican, neither did he deny it. He reaffirmed the growing affinity between the Church and the Jews, noting that withholding the vessels would go against that trend.
“If you can provide me with any evidence that the sacred vessels are indeed kept in the archives or somewhere else in the Vatican, I will be very pleased to forward your request to the Prefect of the same archives and to Pope Francis himself,” he replied.
Under Article Ad
***
HAARETZ
WATCH In Last Monologue, Israeli Comedy Show Host Implores Israelis to Wake Up and Smell the Apartheid
Assaf Harel's scathing indictment of Israeli society has gone viral.
Haaretz Mar 02, 2017 1:47 PM
An Israeli comedy show host's searing indictment of Israeli society has gone viral on social media, raking in over 5,000 shares in the two days since it was posted on the show's Facebook page on Monday.
In the video, Assaf Harel of "Good Night With Asaf Harel" castigates Israelis for ignoring the occupation and claims that Israel is an apartheid state.
In last monologue, Israeli comedy show host delivers searing indictment of Israeli society
"Good Night," which was aired by Channel 10, was one of Israel's most controversial shows on mainstream television in recent years. In one instance, the show was fined after Harel ridiculed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for exploiting his brother's death for political gain.
The episode was "Good Night's" last, as the show was not renewed for another season due to poor ratings, even though the show has gained a strong following on social media.
***
BREAKISRAELNEWS.
NASA Discovery of 7-Planet System Conforms Exactly to Zohar’s Description of Pre-Messiah “Nibiru”
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz February 28, 2017 , 11:30 am
This artist’s concept shows what each of the TRAPPIST-1 planets may look like, based on available data about their sizes, masses and orbital distances. (Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Last week NASA announced the discovery of a relatively close star system, but according to one opinion, the discovery comes 2,000 years after it was first described in detail by a classic Jewish text as a necessary element preceding the Messiah.
The Israeli filmmaker and lecturer who revealed the connection claims the new astronomical discovery goes by many names but in his video on the subject, he calls it by its most popular: Nibiru.
NASA research revealed seven planets orbiting a dwarf star, called Trappist-1, roughly eight percent the size of the sun and located 39 light years away from Earth. Four of its seven planets are similar in size and mass to the Earth, and three are in what scientists believe is a habitable zone.
The recent discovery required NASA’s most advanced telescope, the Spitzer space telescope, to verify its results, but Jewish sources have been discussing the appearance of a seven-planet star system preceding the Messiah for thousands of years.
This is the claim made by Yuval Ovadia, an Israeli filmmaker who has made several award-winning films on the subject of Nibiru and Planet X. Ovadia spoke to Breaking Israel News about his last video, “Amazing Revelations”.
Ovadia emphasized the similarity between NASA’s recent discovery and the description in the ancient Jewish sources. 2,000 years ago, the Zohar, the foundational work of Jewish mysticism, predicted the appearance of a star with seven ‘stars’ orbiting it.
After forty days, when the pillar rises from earth to heaven in the eyes of the whole world and the Messiah has appeared, a star will rise up on the east, blazing in all colors, and seven other stars will surround that star. And they will wage war on it.
“Jewish sources say that this astrological phenomenon is a necessary part of the geula (redemption),” Ovadia said. He explained that if the star does not appear, then any claim that the Messiah has arrived will be rejected by Judaism. He pointed to an example: 400 years ago, Rabbi Yaakov Sasportes used the absence of a new star as an argument against Shabbetai Tzvi, a Jew who falsely claimed to be the Messiah.
The belief in a planet-sized object that will catastrophically collide with or closely pass by Earth in the near future has resurfaced in recent years, with the astral body referred to as Nibiru or Planet X. Many rabbis have acknowledged the possibility of the object hitting Earth.
“This is not a foreign idea that was incorporated into Judaism,” Ovadia, an observant Jew, told Breaking Israel News. He noted that the Bible contains a prophecy of a star signalling the arrival of the Jewish Messiah.
I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not nigh; there shall step forth a star out of Yakov, and a scepter shall rise out of Yisrael, and shall smite through the corners of Moab, and break down all the sons of Seth. Numbers 24:17
Ovadia lectures on the subject and has been following it closely for many years. He believes that data is being suppressed.
“There is not enough knowledge on this subject because the authorities, especially NASA, obscure the facts,” Ovadiah claimed. “One day they will say it is impossible, then the next day they will say it is far away. It can’t be both.”
The appearance of this pre-Messianic star is predicted to be catastrophic, accompanied by extreme natural disasters. The Vilna Gaon, an 18th century Jewish scholar, stated that the power of this star system could destroy the world. Ovadia explained that this may not be caused by the star colliding with the Earth but rather by God exerting his influence on global weather events via the star.
“We are already seeing its influence. In the last ten years we have seen a sharp rise in the number and intensity of natural catastrophes,” Ovadia told Breaking Israel News. “Authorities admit that the number of meteors striking the earth has gone up enormously in recent times.”
The NASA discovery seems to confirm his claims, but for Ovadia, the conclusion is more important.
“The fact that the star exists is incontrovertible,” Ovadia states emphatically. “It exists. But we knew this all along. It is part of our tradition. The rabbis who wrote about it tell us that Jews have a major part to play. Our actions, our relationship with God, can influence the outcome.”
***
WND
NEW 'PREPPERS' STRATEGIZE TO DEFEAT GENOCIDE
Direct South African government incitement blamed for deaths of thousands of whites
Published: February 25, 2017
ALEX NEWMAN
With their country collapsing, persecution growing, and well-founded fears of genocide and bloody communist revolution, a group of Western-minded Christians in South Africa is preparing for the worst.
Meet the Suidlanders, or “Southlanders,” who describe their organization as “the world’s largest non-state civil defense organization.”
Their motto is simple but encapsulates their mission well: “Servants of the All-Highest, free before the whole world.”
Basically, they refuse to be victims.
In media reports from around the world, the Suidlanders have been compared to American “preppers,” people stockpiling supplies in preparation for everything from an economic collapse or an EMP attack to a foreign invasion.
But in reality, the situation the white South Africans are facing is much more bleak than what most Americans can comprehend.
And their preparations, while completely non-violent and non-military in nature, are much more serious and far-reaching than those of American “preppers” collecting extra beans and rice in the pantry.
The Suidlanders organization, which began as an evangelical ministry calling for national repentance but morphed into a group preparing for societal chaos, is made up primarily of “Afrikaners” and Boers, as they sometimes prefer to be called.
The estimated three million Afrikaners are the descendants of primarily Dutch Calvinists, French Huguenots, as well as German and Scandinavian Lutherans who originally settled at the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of Africa in the 1600s.
It was most uninhabited, except for the Hottentot people, who were decimated in an early 1700s smallpox epidemic along with many whites and a handful of nomadic San bushmen.
But inspired by an 1838 covenant with God, whose protection they sought amid hopeless odds staring down a massive Zulu army at the Battle of Blood River in the South African interior, the Afrikaners were forged into a unique nation (or tribe, as some see it) in Africa over a period of centuries – complete with a unique language, history, culture, and essence that are all in mortal danger.
Once the dominant people group in South Africa, with control over most levers of power, they surrendered that power in a 1992 vote. Since the advent of majority rule two years later, the Afrikaners have become an embattled minority, fighting for survival in the face of official racism, discrimination, and even the very real threat of genocide.
So the Suidlanders have good reason to be concerned.
And they are coming to America next month to share their story with Americans, who share more in common with the Afrikaner than any other people in the world.
The Rainbow Nation collapsing
South Africa appears to be on the brink of collapse, even though the mainstream media has done little to report on the looming doom.
Infrastructure is crumbling, racial tensions and genocidal sentiments are being whipped up by political leaders, land grabs are accelerating, attacks on free speech are ramping up, university campuses are burning, and the economy is in complete disarray.
And even before the latest developments, the country was swirling around the drain, according to many experts who have spoken to WND over the years.
This month, the normally soft-spoken former South African President F.W. de Klerk, who along with Nelson Mandela oversaw South Africa’s transition from apartheid to “Rainbow Nation” democracy, sounded the alarm.
Specifically, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient who shared his prize with Mandela, blasted South African President Jacob Zuma, the current South African leader, who famously went on national television and sang a genocidal song advocating the slaughter of the European-descended Afrikaners, for his increasingly dangerous actions.
“President Zuma is determined to accelerate our descent along the road to state capture, economic crisis and racial confrontation,” De Klerk said at a conference marking 27 years since he announced the release of Mandela from prison.
The current rulers are contributing to the nation “stumbling aimlessly down the road to societal collapse,” said De Klerk on February 2.
In what some critics derided as a striking understatement, De Klerk also accused the ruling establishment of being “openly hostile” to white people based “on negative racial stereotypes.”
The attitude was creating a “negative racial climate” aimed at “taking away the legitimate economic and cultural interests of [white] citizens, based purely on their race,” De Klerk added.
If current trends and government racism continue, he added, it will “lead to the disappearance of the white minority in South Africa within the next 50 to 60 years,” the widely respected former South African president warned.
Mrs. Marike de Klerk, the former first lady of South Africa, was murdered by a black security guard in Cape Town.
During the apartheid era, there were fewer than 20 race-based laws.
Today, more than 100 race-based laws discriminating against whites have been created under the guise of “empowering” blacks.
The result has been hundreds of thousands of whites excluded from the labor market, living in squatter camps that have recently been garnering international media attention.
Estimates suggest as much as 10 percent of the white population is now living in squatter camps, with one analyst classing it an “economic genocide.”
More than a few experts predict that the Afrikaner will not survive as a people unless current trends change.
Many whites with the ability to do so have already fled South Africa, with estimates suggesting at least a fourth of whites have left the country.
And as WND reported in December of 2013, despite some improvements after the fall of apartheid, the nation is crumbling on virtually every metric, contributing to the exodus.
Genocide and chaos
President Zuma, the controversial polygamous and animist ruler from South Africa’s Zulu people, has also blamed Christianity and whites for South Africa’s escalating problems, painting a target on the backs of Christians.
Here’s Zuma singing the genocide song:
This month, a massive brawl broke out in South Africa’s Parliament, with members of the genocidal “Economic Freedom Fighters” (EFF) party and members of the far-left African National Congress, which rules South Africa in a partnership with the Communist Party, beating each other amid a speech.
The leader of the increasingly powerful and aggressive EFF, Julius Malema of the amaPedi people, has also advocated the extermination of whites and the theft of their property.
Like Zuma, he regularly sings genocidal “struggle” songs.
Malema also suggested recently that the time to slaughter the embattled minority was fast approaching.
“This is our continent, it belongs to us,” said Malema, adding that “no white person is a rightful land owner” in South Africa or anywhere on the African continent.
“We are not calling for the slaughter of white people‚ at least for now,” he added, with the genocidal threat sparking alarm among whites and blacks across South Africa.
The dire situation, while quickly deteriorating, is hardly a new development.
WND reported in 2012 that Genocide Watch chief Gregory Stanton, a former anti-apartheid activist, had visited South Africa that year and warned that white South African farmers were facing a genocidal onslaught and were on the road to facing full-blown genocide.
Stanton also warned that racist and communist forces were taking over the nation.
Genocide Watch, a highly respected U.S.-based nonprofit organization led by arguably the world’s foremost expert on genocide, had already been sounding the alarm on the genocidal scheming in South Africa for a decade.
Over those 10 years, thousands of white South African farmers, known as Boers (the Dutch word for farmer), were massacred in the most horrific ways imaginable.
Often, the victims are brutally tortured, with a Bible sometimes being left on their mangled bodies.
This month, Tanya Wiers, a 44-year old white South African mother of three, was stabbed more than 20 times before having her eyes gouged out, the Daily Mail reported last week. The area in which she was murdered is dominated by Malema’s Pedi people.
Unlike the overwhelming majority of cases, which go unsolved, a young black man was arrested for the crime.
Similar scenes of genocidal horror targeting whites especially are a regular occurrence in today’s South Africa.
Experts say the ongoing slaughter constitutes a clear effort to exterminate the whites or at least drive the remaining ones – now less than 10 percent of the population – out of the country.
In other words, South Africa appears to be facing the literal U.N. definition of geocide.
More than 3,000 farm murders have been documented, representing a significant number considering the total number of commercial white farmers is now estimated at around 35,000, down from around 80,000 when Mandela assumed power.
Tens of thousands of other whites have been murdered throughout South Africa, too, according to estimates.
Because the government refuses to compile crime statistics based on race or ethnicity, many experts believe the true scope of the problem is being deliberately obscured by government.
Warning signs
Stanton, who has successfully predicted genocides and is widely regarded as the world’s leading authority on the phenomenon, says the signs are troubling.
“Things of this sort are what I have seen before in other genocides,” he said of the murdered white farmers after a fact-finding mission to the “Rainbow Nation” in June of 2012.
“This is what has happened in Burundi, it’s what happened in Rwanda,” he continued in a speech to the Transvaal Agricultural Union in Pretoria. “It has happened in many other places in the world.”
After his fact-finding mission, Stanton also said there was “strong circumstantial evidence of government support for the campaign of forced displacement and atrocities against white farmers and their families.”
“There is direct evidence of government incitement to genocide,” he added, calling for Zuma to be impeached and Malema to be put on trial for the crime of inciting genocide.
In an email to a prominent Afrikaner monitoring the dangers, Stanton noted that Genocide Watch had raised the Genocide Stage level for South Africa to Stage 6 based on “evidence that the murders of Afrikaaner farmers and other whites is organized by racist communists determined to drive whites out of South Africa, nationalize farms and mines, and bring on all the horrors of a communist state.”
At the time, Genocide Watch used an 8-stage model for genocide, with stage 6 representing the planning and preparation phase, stage 7 being the extermination phase, and the 8th and final stage being denial after the fact.
Since then, the scale has changed and now has 10 stages. South Africa is now listed by the group as being on stage 6, which is the “polarization” phase, with preparation being the next phase after that.
“We returned it to polarization after the ANC expelled Malema and kicked him out of the presidency of the ANC Youth League,” Stanton said.
Others say the situation has deteriorated significantly since then.
Also added to the list of victims in South Africa were immigrants facing xenophobic attacks, as well as police.
And after some racists and others falsely cited his findings to declare that South Africa was already facing a genocide, Stanton emphasized in 2014 that he had never said that.
“Dr. Gregory Stanton, Founding President of Genocide Watch, warned that early warnings of genocide are still deep in South African society, though genocide has not begun,” the group said in a 2014 statement.
Stanton and Genocide Watch have also urged the U.S. and Australian governments to allow white South Africans permission to immigrate to escape the threat.
The Suidlanders are prepping, not leaving
For many white South Africans, and the Suidlanders in particular, the warning signs are everywhere.
And so, to deal with what they believe is looming catastrophe, the group is involved in extensive preparations.
The group says it is dedicated to the protection and welfare of its members, mostly conservative Christian Afrikaners in South Africa.
Beside their logo, they often include the following description: “Suidlanders is an emergency plan under international humanitarian law, according to the protocols additional to the Geneva conventions with regard to the protection of victims of armed conflicts of 8 June 1977.”
Under the Geneva Convention protocols cited by the group, the protections apply specifically to identifiable groups, such as ethnic groups.
In a wide-ranging interview with WND, Simon Roche, chief of the Suidlanders’ headquarters, explained that such protections would have applied to Jews during World War II, Tutsi people in Rwanda amid the genocide there, or Croats in Serbia during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia.
“We, as a particular persecuted group – over 74,000 whites murdered by blacks since 1994 and over 3,500 farmers alone murdered by blacks since 1994 – which happens to be white, are no different,” Roche explained, saying the group was not racist but was responding to hate being whipped up against South African whites.
Among other problems, the Suidlanders leader, who unlike many Afrikaners speaks perfect English, noted that in 2015, Zuma pointed to the arrival of whites in 1652 as “the start of trouble in this country.”
Roche also noted that Zuma regularly sings songs advocating the slaughter of Afrikaners and Boers.
Primarily, though, the Suidlanders are a Christian organization, he explained.
“We are a unique group whose roots lie deeply in Christianity and whose identity was forged through covenants made with God Almighty,” the group says in its promotional materials.
The organization, which says it has around 6,000 active members, 12,000 associate members, and 70,000 family members, estimates that some 800,000 people will participate if and when the need arises to put its evacuation plans into effect.
The general plan is to escape the cities and head for well-stocked farms in the countryside.
There are hundreds of routes planned to get out of South Africa’s cities in the event of crisis, and hundreds of separate destinations depending on where in the country the members are located.
The organization also has a national headquarters, communications systems, refugee coordination, security, and medical preparations in place for if and when they are needed.
The Suidlanders were initially founded as an evangelical ministry by former military intelligence officer Gustav Muller, who dedicated his life to the Lord and still believes that his core mission is to call his people to repentance.
But over the years, the Suidlanders has become an organization dedicated also to “bringing Boers to the Lord to prepare for a crisis,” Roche said.
Raising funds and awareness in America
Now, two leading members of the group, including Roche, are coming to America to raise awareness of their plight and try to raise funds for their anticipated flight to rural farms when the time comes.
The two men – Roche, who runs the group’s headquarters, and Andre Coetzee, chief of security for the organization – will be giving a series of presentations regarding their preparations for anticipated chaos in South Africa in the months and years ahead.
The presentations will begin on March 5 in Lake Mary, Florida, with a presentation in Daytona Beach the next day. They conclude March 25 in San Diego, California.
In between are stops in Nashville, Tennessee, South Carolina, Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, San Francisco, and San Diego.
While a number of events have already been scheduled, the two speakers are trying not to set anything too firmly in stone so that they can remain flexible.
Their presentation, which has already been seen by multiple journalists at major publications around the world, will be given free of charge to groups, churches, or individuals that request it, if it can be fit into the schedule.
The plan is to go where the Lord leads them, Roche said.
“The Suidlanders team will be in the U.S.A for an extended period and they are well-prepared to travel, so don’t hesitate to inquire about hosting an event in your area,” Roche added.
Inquiries can be made at: hk@suidlanders.co.za, via Skype by contacting simon.roche3, or by phone at 011 27 84 969 8658, he said.
The goal of their tour is to raise awareness of their plight, and funds for preparations such as diesel, trucks, food, medical supplies, communications gear, and similar supplies.
All preparations are legal, and all donations are strictly for vital necessities for civilian non-combatants, the group explained.
Details on the legal trust that governs all donations to the group are available from the Suidlanders’ administration department upon request.
Motivations and prophecies
Among other concerns, the group and its leaders are readying to help get their members out of the cities and population centers and to farms in the event of civil war, revolution, or societal collapse.
Many in the organization also take inspiration from a Christian leader who died almost a century ago known as Nicolaas Van Rensburg.
Some South African Christians, particularly among Boers, consider him to be a prophet.
Among other predictions, Siener (Seer), as he is affectionately known, foretold that South Africa would one day be a democracy ruled by a black government.
He also predicted that the first black ruler would be deemed a saint by the world, with leaders from all over the world paying homage at his funeral.
While at the time the idea sounded ridiculous, and resulted in a tremendous loss of respect among his contemporaries, present-day supporters believe that prophecy was fulfilled in Nelson Mandela.
Van Rensburg also predicted major turmoil for his people, the conservative Christian Boers of South Africa, after the advent of black rule.
“Secondly, we are inspired by the very clear temporal evidence around us of an onslaught upon conservative Christian Caucasians in South Africa,” Roche continued, saying the examples were “too numerous to mention.”
Outsider view
Dr. Harry Booyens, a scientist and prominent Afrikaner author who left his homeland in dismay and moved to Canada, wrote “AmaBhulu – The Birth and Death of the Second America.”
The massive book documents the history of the Afrikaner nation from the arrival of some Dutch, French, and German settlers to today.
While he is not a member of Suidlanders or even an expert on the group, he does appreciate what they are doing.
“I also think they are perfectly correct to prepare for an upheaval, if not a revolution,” Booyens said, adding that they have “strong grounds for their fears.”
He speculated that if the Suidlanders lived in the United States, they would be supporters of President Donald Trump and Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
“They’d be in church every Sunday morning, and they would help anyone who needs help,” said Booyens, adding that their leader was a “perfectly decent ex-military intelligence guy” and that “they insist that they subscribe to all that is stated in the Geneva Convention.”
He did question and even criticize some of their views on prophecy, the birth of the Afrikaner nation, and other matters.
But he defended them against other critics who think the Suidlanders are being alarmist.
“It is easy for liberal folks to sit in the West Cape or, if you wish, elsewhere behind protective walls in urban protected communities, and mock these folks, question their motives or their intelligence,” Booyens told WND. “But, once you have visited a small town like, say, Tarkastad in the East Cape, as I have, you will innately understand.”
“I keep telling folks, take the people from Kansas and stick them in Rwanda,” Booyens added. “That is what the eastern half of South Africa now is.”
“Take a good hard look at these people,” said Booyens, whose book draws many parallels between the Afrikaners and Americans. “They are ordinary decent White Protestant Christian folks, like most folks in Middle America. This what the West looks like when it comes to an end. Take a good hard look and weep. Then extend a hand to these folks and do something before America slides into the same abyss.
:President Trump may well be a very rough diamond, but he represents the reaction of millions of Americans to but one thousandth of what these folks in South Africa have been exposed to,” he added. “That is why I keep telling folks in North America it costs one air fare of around $2,000 to go and see your future… unless you take action NOW.”
Over the potential long-term solutions:
Over the long term, though, Booyens suggests that white South Africans would be wise to emigrate or move west to the Western Cape, so as to form a majority and eventually consider formal legal secession with help from other embattled ethnic groups in South Africa.
“By now there is so much discrimination against ‘Coloreds’ by the ANC that they will go along,” he predicted. “Those feelings will only grow stronger.”
With whites numbering fewer than five million in South Africa today – amid a total population of over 50 million – obviously not all of them are on the same page.
Other Afrikaners hoping to create an independent homeland are looking to other areas of South Africa.
But alongside growing fears and preparations, support for the idea of Afrikaner self-determination is gaining ground among significant segments of the white population and allies among other ethnic groups facing the brunt of ANC-Communist Party rule.
Willie Cloete, the leader of South Africa’s newly formed National Conservative Party, is among those seeking self-determination for the Afrikaner people.
Citing the deteriorating situation, the fears of genocide, the official discrimination, the end of Bible and prayers in school, and more, he said it was time for Afrikaners to regain control over their own destiny.
“All the different peoples of South Africa should govern themselves in separate states with good neighboring relations,” argued Cloete, who said his party is based on Christian values and would like to unify Afrikaners.
Cor Ehlers, a South African farmer and anthropologist, believes that without self-determination, Afrikaners will cease to exist as a people.
And so, he has made it his mission, as the chairman of the Onafhanklike Afrikaner-selfbeskikkingsekspedisie (OASE) organization, which in English means Independent Expedition for Afrikaner Self-determination, to pursue that goal through peaceful international norms.
Citing the South African constitution (Section 231) and a variety of international treaties and covenants to which South Africa is a party, he noted that the Afrikaner people, like all peoples, have the right to self-determination.
He believes that, if a fair and internationally monitored referendum were to take place, the vast majority of Afrikaners would support self-determination.
“Representing the majority of white people in South Africa, Afrikaners clearly face a very dark future in Africa, if at all,” he said, adding that many Westernized blacks and Indian people would also prefer to live in an Afrikaner nation than under the ANC regime.
He added that it would be good for the broader West, too.
“We believe Afrikaners enjoying self-determination over specific territory will bolster Western interests in Southern Africa which is increasingly leaning towards Marxism,” Ehlers said.
All citizens of the nation, regardless of race or other characteristics, would have equal voting rights, he said, warning of a fringe racist group that also promotes self-determination but does not legitimately represent the Afrikaner people.
The negotiations, of course, would be long and arduous, he said.
But Ehlers told WND that he believes it is possible, and the best solution for all involved.
OASE will eventually be sending a delegation of legal experts to the United States to sound the alarm about South Africa, seek support for Afrikaner self-determination, and more.
For now, Ehlers also pointed to Steve Hofmeyr, a prominent and popular Afrikaner singer, as one advantage held by embattled Afrikaners trying to stop the eventual disappearance of their people.
Seeking help from Trump
Hofmeyr, who apparently has the support of hundreds of thousands of Afrikaners within and outside of South Africa, is hoping to raise money to come to America and meet with President Donald Trump to make him aware of the potential for genocide in South Africa.
“I have no doubt the costs will be met,” he said about the fundraising. “But, as an Afrikaner, I am convinced that we’ll have to first survive some in-fighting, some government rage and then the overlooked practicalities of getting such an appointment with POTUS (the president of the United States of America).”
“But once there, I would repeat keynotes of my European and UN addresses,” continued Hofmeyr, who, like Trump, is occasionally smeared as a racist by political enemies despite the lack of evidence for such a charge.
“Genocide is only one article of it,” the singer said. “The advent of land grabs, the end of freedom of expression and 114 extra race-based laws has turned us into an insignificant communist state, deserving of sanctions – not the lenient U.S. checkbook.”
Other South African leaders involved in the struggle, such as Freedom Front Plus (FF+), which has hundreds of thousands of mostly Afrikaner supporters, are working inside Parliament and outside of South Africa at the at the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) and other forums to advance their cause.
On a practical level, they are calling for a return to the Commando system to protect farmers.
The system, which was disbanded by the government in 2003, was a sort of “home guard” defense system for rural areas and farms.
Citing the murder this week of four members of the Smuts family on their farm, Werner Weber, leader of the FF+ party in Mpumalanga, said it was time to bring back the Commando structures.
South African authorities have also vigorously pursued gun control, leaving many victims defenseless.
The attacks on gun rights and the dismantling of the Commando system has also caused observers to sound the alarm about potential genocide, which historically is often perpetrated after the victims are disarmed.
Preparing in the meantime
While South Africans and Afrikaners in particular try to figure out what to do about their plight, the Suidlanders are praying and getting prepared for the worst.
Precise details of their plans are not released to the public, for obvious reasons.
But the general idea is that, if and when a severe crisis develops, members will be notified by text message or other means to head for a rendezvous point with their families.
From there, they will join up with a convoy to move together toward predetermined “safe areas,” which will be well stocked with supplies to help care for the needy, including refugees who may not have prepared themselves.
Members are expected to ensure that they have their own supplies for themselves and their families, too, so that care and available resources can be focused on the many expected refugees who did not prepare.
The ANC-Communist Party government is aware of the Suidlanders and their preparations but has so far declined to comment.
With problems getting worse, the Suidlanders are hoping to educate their American cousins on their plight, and perhaps even find support.
***
MailOnline
New 'silver bullet' pill powered by your own stomach acid sends data straight to your phone while it works
The pill powers up when a zinc electrode interacts with stomach acid
The creation was unveiled at the world's biggest science conference in Boston
Small sensors continually monitor temperature and heart rate and it administers medicine
By GIULIA CROUCH FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 01:52, 25 February 2017 | UPDATED: 01:53, 25 February 2017
A 'silver bullet' pill powered by your own stomach acid will send health data from inside your body to your phone.
It is believed the tiny pill could revolutionise medicine by constantly monitoring your health and administering medicine.
Researcher Dr Phillip Nadeau, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said: 'The self-powered pill would monitor your vital signs from inside for weeks.
A 'silver bullet' pill powered by your own stomach acid will send health data from inside your body to your phone
'It sits there making measurements and transmitting them to your phone.'
The creation was unveiled at the world's biggest science conference in Boston.
It was inspired by a lemon battery which uses citric acid to charge a zinc nail and copper penny electrodes.
A version of the pill, that powers up when a zinc electrode interacts with stomach acid, was tested on pigs.
Small sensors continually monitor temperature and heart rate.
The 30mm-long device took six days to travel through the digestive tract of a pig.
Scientists want to create a smaller version of the pill for humans - the prototype measures 10mm.
The version with star-shaped arms is designed to stay in the stomach without risking blockages.
Brigham and Women's Hospital's Giovanni Traverso said: 'Taking a capsule once a month could change how we think about delivering medication.'
***
***
***
Economic Collapse
IS SOMETHING STRANGE HAPPENING INSIDE THE EARTH?
So many of these long dormant volcanoes are roaring back to life
Michael Snyder | - MARCH 1, 2017
IMAGE CREDITS: LEAHHELINSKI | FLICKR.
Why are “giant fountains of lava” suddenly pouring out of some of the most dangerous volcanoes on the entire planet, and why are so many long dormant volcanoes suddenly roaring back to life?
The spectacular eruption of Mt. Etna in Italy is making headlines all over the world, but it is far from alone. According to Volcano Discovery, 35 major volcanoes either are erupting right now or have just recently erupted, and dozens of others are stirring. So what is causing this upsurge in volcanic activity? Is something strange happening inside the Earth?
According to the USGS, magma is “molten rock underground”, and lava is molten rock “that breaks through the Earth’s surface”. Right now, something is pushing magma up through the crust of the Earth at a number of key spots around the planet. On the island of Sicily, the “giant fountains of lava” that are coming out of Mt. Etna can be seen 30 kilometers away…
“Giant fountains of lava could be seen sprouting from the volcano, located on the isle of Sicily, as far away as Catania, around 30 kilometres away, and the resort town of Taormina.
The Meteorological Observatory in Nunziata said: “You can clearly see the lava fountains, although currently modest, as it escapes from the crater in the southeast.”
An orange air alert has been issued, meaning that airspace will remain open but authorities will continue to monitor the situation.”
On the other side of the world, a constant stream of molten rock has been springing out of Guatemala’s “Volcano of Fire” since February 25th…
“Guatemala’s Volcano of Fire erupted Saturday (Feb 25), spewing lava and sending up plumes of ash that rained down on nearby communities and could eventually reach the capital, civil protection authorities said.
The Volcan de Fuego, one of the country’s three active volcanoes, is located about 45km southwest of the capital Guatemala City. It was the volcano’s second eruption this year.”
And in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a “firehose of lava” has been pouring out of the Kilauea Volcano since December 31st.
Meanwhile, a number of large volcanoes that have been dormant for a very long time all over the world have started springing back to life.
For instance, the only active volcano in India has suddenly started “spewing lava and ash” after being silent for 150 years…
“Barren Islands volcano, India’s only active volcano, is reportedlyspewing lava and ash after a gap of 150 years. It erupted for about four hours in January, scientists from the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) claimed.
The volcano is situated in Barren Islands in the Andaman & Nicobar archipelago. Some unsubstantiated reports even claim that it is South Asia’s only active volcano.
Its first recorded eruption dates back to 1787. Since then, the volcano has erupted more than ten times, including the one this year.”
At one time scientists would speak of “dead volcanoes”, but now we learning that it really isn’t safe to speak of any volcano as being completely “dead”. So many of these long dormant volcanoes are roaring back to life, and why this is suddenly happening now is puzzling many of the experts.
And as you have seen, this isn’t isolated to just one or two geographic regions. It literally is happening all over the globe.
Last month, Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung in the southern hemisphere erupted seven times in the space of a single day, and meanwhile authorities in the northern hemisphere were warning us that four of Iceland’s biggest volcanoes are preparing to erupt.
Indonesia and Iceland are about as far apart as you can get, and yet they are both being affected by this worldwide phenomenon.
Without a doubt, something definitely appears to be causing a significant increase in worldwide seismic activity.
Let’s talk about earthquakes for a moment. A website known as the Big Wobble recently published an article that included two extraordinary maps. The first map showed the number of major earthquakes from January 1900 to January 1917, and the second map showed the number of major earthquakes from January 2000 to January 2017. The difference between the two maps was startling to say the least.
It is becoming extremely difficult to deny that something is happening to the crust of our planet, and many are becoming concerned about what we could soon experience if the level of seismic activity continues to rise.
We already talked about Mt. Etna, but a much greater threat in Italy appears to be awakening under the city of Naples. A massive supervolcano known as “Campi Flegrei” is close to a “critical state”, and if it erupts the consequences will be beyond catastrophic. The following comes from National Geographic…
“A long-quiet yet huge supervolcano that lies under 500,000 people in Italy may be waking up and approaching a “critical state,” scientists report this week in the journal Nature Communi cations.
Based on physical measurements and computer modeling, “we propose that magma could be approaching the CDP [critical degassing pressure] at Campi Flegrei, a volcano in the metropolitan area of Naples, one of the most densely inhabited areas in the world, and where accelerating deformation and heating are currently being observed,” wrote the scientists—who are led by Giovanni Chiodini of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics in Rome.”
If that supervolcano were to fully erupt, millions could die, the skies in the northern hemisphere would be darkened for months and the resulting “volcanic winter” would cause famines all around the globe.
And the same things could be said about the supervolcano that is awakening in North Korea too.
In the United States, we should be watching the volcanoes on the west coast for signs of trouble, and my regular readers know that I am particularly concerned about Mt. Rainier. There is an eruption of Mt. Rainier in “The Beginning Of The End“, and it is in there for a reason.
Someday Mt. Rainier will erupt, and the horror that this will mean for the Northwest is beyond anything that I could put into words for you right now.
We live at a time when our planet is becoming increasingly unstable, and a major natural disaster could change all of our lives in a single moment.
Just because our lives have been somewhat “normal” for an extended period of time does not mean that they will always be this way, and those that are ignoring the rumblings of our planet do so at their own peril.
***
***
Fort Russ
RAND Corporation's plan for dicing up Syria
February 26, - Fort Russ News -
US plan for the division of Syria may set off a new wave of refugees
The think tank of the Pentagon wants to divide Syria according to the model of Bosnia. The result would be ethnic cleansing and new, massive flood of immigrants.
The RAND Corporation, a leading US think tank close to the Pentagon, has published a report proposing a "Bosnian model" to resolve the Syrian conflict.
"In this sense, as in Bosnia in the mid-1990s, peace will be facilitated by demographic changes on the ground, external approval for such changes, and exhaustion of the combat parties. Unlike in Bosnia, however, peace would not arise from a detailed formal agreement but from a set of local and international understandings. In order to achieve the various understandings, the cease-fire agreement between Russia, Turkey and Iran is a good starting point, but it is insufficient. Sustainable long-term agreements will be most effective if they involve the consent of other key stakeholders, including the US, its golf partners and other supporters of the opposition to Assad."
The RAND Corporation calls for a decentralization of the country in control zones. The area from the west coast to Deir Ezzor with the exclusion of Rakka is to be controlled by the government in Damascus and the Russians. The area liberated by Turkey under Operation Euphrates Shield and the province of Idlib would be under Turkish control. The southern area of Daraa, on the border with Israel, would also be controlled by an "opposition" not described in detail by the RAND Corporation. A large part of Northern Syria would be controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), consisting of Kurdish militia and led by the US.
It is particularly noteworthy that the RAND Corporation is proposing to place the ISIS strongholds and oil centers Rakka and Deir Ezzor under an "international administration." "We therefore recommend that the United States place the Rakka province, after its liberation, under an international transitional administration, creating a neutral territory that is not held by either the regime or the opposition until the final solution of the civil war." The area should be controlled by the UN, which in turn uses provincial councils. RAND Corporation, on the other hand, argues against sending a purely UN peacekeeping force to the international zone. Instead, the US and Russia would have to organize the deployment of a "coalition force," which is given a UN mandate. Such a solution would not only tolerate the US and Russia, but also Turkey and other regional US allies, which would not leave Rakka and Deir Ezzor either under the control of the ISIS terrorist militia or control by the Kurdish militia, according to RAND Corporation.
On the Syrian map, it is noticeable that the city of Manbij is placed in the Turkish zone in northern Syria. The Turkish army has not yet taken Manbij, and the Kurdish militants of the YPG are against the city being occupied by the Turks. However, the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said at the beginning of the week that after the liberation of Al-Bab, Turkey would move to take Manbij.
Last year, Manbij was taken by the Kurdish militia. There are currently numerous associations of the Kurdish militia in Manbij, but the majority of the population is Arab and Turkmen.
The plans for the division of Syria are highly problematic: already in the Syrian war, massive ethnic cleansings have already taken place. These were carried out based on the planned petroleum pipelines. A territorial breakdown by ethnicity would greatly accelerate the trend towards expulsion. New escape movements would be the result. These would then come to Europe - which is desperately trying to shut itself off.
***
SPUTNIK
Terrorists Take Flight! Daesh Chief Al-Baghdadi Allegedly Orders Retreat in Iraq
© AFP 2016/
MIDDLE EAST
13:49 01.03.2017(updated 16:17 01.03.2017)
Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has acknowledged the terrorist group's defeat in Iraq, urging his supporters to take refuge in the country's mountainous regions, independent Iraqi news network Alsumaria reported.
© REUTERS/ KHALID AL MOUSIIraqi security forces advance towards the western side of Mosul, Iraq February 19, 2017
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the infamous terrorist group Daesh (ISIL/ISIS), gave a speech in which he admitted that his organization had suffered defeat in recent hostilities in Iraq, the independent Iraqi news network Alsumaria quoted a source in Nineveh province as saying on Wednesday.
Al-Baghdadi's speech came amid reports that Daesh commanders based in the western part of Iraq's Mosul are fleeing the city.
"Calling his speech a farewell address, al-Baghdadi circulated it among Daesh preachers and explained what was going on with the group. The preachers started talking about the defeats Daesh is suffering in Nineveh province and other parts of Iraq," the source said.
On Monday, Mahmud al Surdji, a representative of Iraq's Nineveh Plain Protection Units told Sputnik Arabic that government forces had taken full control of the highway connecting Mosul and the capital Baghdad.
According to him, forces from the 9th Armored Division have encircled the Daesh terrorists near Mosul's largest electric power plant, on the west bank of the Tigris River.
He said that later this week, the Iraqi army is planning to finish its operation to free the Wadi Hajar neighborhood.
He added that the liberation of this particular district will provide the army with access to other districts of the city which still remain under Daesh control.
Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, was captured by Daesh terrorists in June 2014. Iraqi and US-led coalition forces liberated the eastern part of the city in late January 2017, while its western part remains under terrorist control.
Last Sunday, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi announced the start of operations to liberate the western part of the city.
***
SPUTNIK
Reasons Why Daesh Chief Al-Baghdadi's 'Farewell' Looks Totally Fake
© REUTERS/ Goran Tomasevic
12:13 02.03.2017(updated 12:25 02.03.2017)
Commenting on Wednesday's reports that Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has issued his "farewell sermon" where he admitted the defeat of the terrorist group and urged the jihadists to "flee and hide," Russian political analysts explained why it looks completely fake and why the figure of the Daesh chief himself also raises certain doubts.
On Wednesday, independent Iraqi news network Alsumaria reported that Daesh (Islamic State/ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has acknowledged the terrorist group's defeat in Iraq and urged his supporters to take refuge in the country's mountainous regions.
The outlet said that the Daesh chief has issued what it called a "farewell speech" specifically directing the terrorists to flee besieged Mosul, their last major stronghold in Iraq or "blow themselves up when surrounded by Iraqi forces."
Alsumaria quoted a source in Nineveh province as saying that al-Baghdadi circulated his address among Daesh preachers to deliver it to fighters at different locations in Mosul.
Commenting on the reports, defense analyst Anton Mardasov, who heads the Department of Middle Eastern Conflicts of the Moscow-based Institute of Innovative Development, pointed out why the figure of the Daesh chief himself raises certain doubts.
Al-Baghdadi was one of the ideologists of the self-proclaimed Caliphate, he told Russia's online newspaper Vzglyad. He perfectly knows the Quran and manipulates the Islam, fitting the religious foundation under his political ideas.
The Daesh chief, he said, has developed the ideology of the Islamic State where he specified what differs this particular organization from other groups.
However, Mardasov further noted, there has been no reliable information about him since 2015 even though different Iraqi media sources regularly report about his alleged whereabouts and even about his death.
The expert suggested that Wednesday's report might have been fake news released by the Iraqi agencies in order to have a certain effect on the Islamists. He further explained why it seems to be fake.
"The Islamic State has never released any information about its defeats or otherwise losses. It is nontypical for the news agenda of the organization," he said.
However he further noted that within the group, the idea to flee to the hard-to-reach areas and dissolve among civil population has been discussed long time ago
Meanwhile, Sergei Seregichev, an expert at the Institute for Middle Eastern Studies has called al-Baghdadi nothing but a "talking head" of this umbrella organization.
"He is somewhat of a press-secretary," he told Vzglyad.
"The group itself is a network structure which looks very similar to that of mujahideens in the times of the Afghan war," he said.
He further suggested that in fact those are the field commanders who are in control of the group's activities and who make important decisions and act independently.
"Each field commander controls his own area where he fights and makes decisions," he said.
They will never get in the public eye, he added, as they or their relatives will get easily targeted and eliminated. Such field commanders, he said, might not necessarily look like mujahideens, they might be even wearing NATO's decent uniform and not wearing any beard.
Seregichev however noted that in the times of the media activism, there should be a certain flamboyant person who will occasionally voice certain theses on behalf of the organization.
"In reality, regardless of his impressive title and flamboyant appearance, al-Baghdadi does not make any decisions. He is simply a media image. And his task is to attract sponsor money and recruit young people into the ranks of the organization," he said.
He also suggested that this so-called "farewell speech" might have been aimed to imitate the running away of the terrorists in order to provoke an ill-planned attack of the Iraqi army on Mosul. Or, on the other hand, it might be misinformation released by the government forces to spread panic among the terrorists.
Meanwhile, political analyst, an expert in the Middle East and the Caucasus Stanislav Tarasov pointed out to Radio Sputnik at the timing of the al-Baghdadi's address.
"Look at the intrigue: only recently President Trump has received a new Pentagon's plan of the further fight against Daesh. He was only planning to start this fight, looking for potential allies and working out a strategy. And here comes the victory! The leader of the terrorists announces their defeat," he told Sputnik.
"It turns out that the US has already achieved its victory without even entering into any fight. It looks like the Islamic State is very much dependent on the US," he finally stated.
***
The Common Sense Show
All Hell Is Breaking Loose: Will We Survive the Soros Led American Spring?
As the old saying goes, when one thing happens, it is a coincidence. When something happens twice, it is a trend. When the event/action gets repeated for a third time, it is a pattern. And a pattern is what Trevor Louden, Doug Hagmann and myself has uncovered. What are we talking about?
The Overthrow of the United States Government
Trevor Louden, the author of Enemies Within, Doug Hagmann and myself are all saying the same thing. We are in the early stages of a civil war that is designed to take down the United States. The New World Order must destroy the US because there is no place in the New World Order for liberty and freedom. The idea of a nation state will go by the wayside and the planet will be governed corporate style, such as in the 1975 movie, Rollerball.
Prior to the election of Trump, the globalists were in the final phase of extracting as much material wealth from the people of the United States before collapsing the system. Now the globalists must fight to get back what ground they have lost due to the election of Trump.
The Democrats and the Republicans are united on the need to takedown Donald Trump. Trump is not their enemy, but rather the symbol that will be used to usher in the New World Order. President Trump is the convenient fall-guy from which to target so the globalists can squash, once and for all, the populist spirit of the American people prior to the nation’s destruction.
The Congress and the Senate are united on two fronts:
They both support free trade agreements and these “representatives of the people” have been handsomely rewarded for falling into line with the corporate takeover of the US government.
The globalists are promoting mass immigration in all major western nations. Why? The answer is simple, they seek to decentralize the major nations prior to establishing global governance. When the dominant language and the mores and the customs of the modern nations are gone, all that is left is globalism.
All, in all, this process can best be understood from 3 perspectives. The three perspectives, as I mentioned, comes from Trevor Louden, Doug Hagmann and myself.
Part One: The Enemies Within-Trevor Louden
In both his book and his documentary by the same name, Louden identifies 80 elected representatives of the American people who have been elected to the the House and the Senate who belong to front groups for either the Communist Party or the world’s biggest terrorist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, or both at the same time. Largely, these representatives, such as Elizabeth Warren and John McCain have been recruited from the ranks of those who enthusiastically supported free trade and the subsequent loss of millions of American jobs. McCain was a co-sponsor of CAFTA, a free trade agreement.
Louden details how these associations impacts the American people as it alters Congressional policies and laws that are passed.
Louden’s documentary is available on Amazon Prime. Also, I should mention that former Congressman West makes the exact same claims as does Louden and he names the same people. Am I talking about treason, you are damn right I am.
Part Two: The Subversive Groups of Obama and Soros-Doug Hagmann
In the following video, Doug Hagmann described, in detail, the emerging and covert army that is emerging in American designed to overthrow the government. As I said, Donald Trump is just a convenient target, the real objective is the subjugation of, the depopulation of, and the destruction of the US Constitution and all of American civil liberties.
At the heart of the subversive takedown of America is Obama’s Organizing for America. It is run by former President Obama and it has 250 nationwide chapters. Emanating from this parent group are other Obama/Soros organizations such as Indivisible. Indivisible receives their funding from Soros groups such as Moveon.org and the ACLU. It is interesting to note that last night Oscars, the looney left that dominates the Hollywood contingent were wea0ring blue ribbons to support the ACLU. Doug singles out Angela Padilla as one of the leaders in this movement. She is connected with the Soros funded La Raza which seeks to break up the United States through movements like CALEXIT of which Padilla, along with the Mexican Consulate and the drug cartel leadership compromise an intimate part of CALEXIT as are former Attorney Generals Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch.
Doug also points out that the group Indivisible has published “A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda” (ie how to destroy the Constitution, the economy and the social fabric of America).
Doug also identifies the Weather Underground, which is run through the man who launched Obama’s political career, Bill Ayers, has reared its ugly head, once again, to terrorize America. The social networking and planned rioting from Soros funded groups like the Center for Popular Democracy, the thugs from Acorn, which are funded by Ford Foundation and the Democracy Alliance will wreak havoc on the American people this Spring.
Doug notes that Twitter and Facebook are facilitating the revolution. As expected, the media is part of this and this is why President Trump labeled the media “the enemy of the people”.
The reader should get the idea, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. More detail is available in the following video produced by Doug Hagmann.
Part Three: The Implementation of Soros’ Led Takedown of America-Dave Hodges
I have previously stated that America is at a very dangerous time in her history. The enemy (e.g. George Soros and his puppeteers) are already inside the gates wreaking havoc.
The Arab Spring (2017) Comes to America
George Soros is following a script that he all too familiar with. Soros is implementing the Arab Spring strategies in very similar fashion to what he did over five years ago in the Middle East.
His playbook is a combination of Hillary Clinton’s hero, S. Alinsky and his book, Rules for Radicals.
It is becoming clear that Soros is implementing the strategies associated with the first three stages listed below. However, we can be certain that the globalists are going all the way.
The Final Solution
There will become a bifurcation point where soft kill methods, and diluting the native population through massive immigration will not be enough to ensure total dictatorial control over the planet by the globalists because its methods of replacement are not expeditious enough. That is when soft kill will need to become the Final Solution of hard kill.
In history, the pattern is always the same:
Step One
Perpetrate an economic collapse that will put millions of desperate people on the street. It is better if this can happen in the midst of some other social chaos to take fully advantage of the magnification effect.
The plan calls for the complete disintegration of law order. Soros has his excuse, the election of Donald Trump . Soros has properly engineered group think in which some groups, collectively, have manufactured enough fear based upon lies, that people are striking out. We are seeing this with riots in our major cities. Soros is perpetrating a race war and when it spreads to other segments of our population, not only will safety be imperiled but so will the distribution of goods and services.
Step Two
Combine the economic collapse with the creation of a false flag series of events which necessitates the need for martial law and extreme measures of subjugation.
It would appear that a mass casualty event is in the works, but the rioting of groups like Obama’s OFA will do quite nicely in the meantime.
Step 3
Cordon people off for their own protection by eliminating travel.
Step Four
Exploit whatever free labor can be extracted from this doomed group while they are being protected and this means the implementation of a Congressionally backed “New Deal like programs” which will promise to put people back to work. You can call them labor camps, I will call them FEMA Camps. This is precisely what Weatherman Underground leader, Bill Ayers, talked about doing.
Step Five
Systematically exterminate the undesirable group as a move to promote national unity against a contrived common enemy (e.g. Christians). By this time, Trump will be gone from power. The new radicals will impose the use of the NDAA will come into full view and we will witness unparalleled persecution of average citizens that “don’t fit in.
Step Six
World War III will evolve out of the turmoil as was the case with World War II-Serfdom will re-emerge
Step Seven
This is when global depopulation will begin in earnest. When the smoke clears and the bulk of humanity has been buried, the New World Order will truly be born.
Conclusion
These seven steps are all supported by past history. What makes Americans think that we are immune to established historical precedent?
***
Information Clearing House
A Budget Without Russians: The Empire’s Nightmare
By Fred Reed
February 25, 2017 "Information Clearing House"
Methinks the insane hysteria over Russia needs to stop. It probably will not. For reasons of domestic and imperial politics the American public is again being manipulated into a war frenzy by Washington and New York. It is stupid, without justification, and dangerous.
The silliness over Russia is, obviously, part of the Establishment’s drive to get rid of Trump. Yes, the man is erratic, contradictory, shoots before he aims, backs off much of what he has promised, and may be unqualified as President–but that is not why Washington and New York want to get rid of him. It is about money and power, as is everything in the United States. Wall Street, the Pentagon, the Neocons, and the Empire run America. Trump has threatened their rice bowls.
Consider:
He has threatened to cut the F-35, a huge blow to Lockheed-Martin and hundreds of subcontractors; to pull US troops out of South Korea, a blow to the Empire; to end the wars, a blow both to the Empire and the military industry getting rich from them; to pull troops out of Okinawa, crippling the Empire in the Pacific; to start a trade war with China with a forty-five percent tariff of Chinese goods, threatening American corporations with factories there; and to chase out illegal immigrants, an important source of cheap labor to businesses. He has called NATO “obsolete,” when leaving it would be the death knell of the Empire; and threatened to establish good relations with Russia, when the lack of a European enemy would leave NATO even more obviously unnecessary.
Thus New York and its branch operation in Washington resuscitate Russia as a bugbear to terrify the rubes, meaning most of the public. Money. Power. Empire.
What sense does this make–apart from money and power? Russia is an economically challenged nation of 145 million, less than half of Europe’s population and much less than half of America’s. Its economy is a small fraction of the combined economies of Europe and America. It is not on a war footing. It is not moving forces into position for an invasion. It is not mobilizing. To satellite photography, to NSA these things would be as obvious as leprosy on a prom queen. The Establishment would be screaming to high heaven if there were the slightest trace of preparation for war. The whole business is manufactured.
I frequently see the assertion that Russia “hacked” voting machines to give the election to President Trump. The majority who are excited about this, I suspect the very great majority, have not the foggiest idea what they are talking about. Hacking to most people means something they saw in a movie, with some bright kid going clickety-click-click on a laptop and penetrating NORAD. It is a vague menace lacking specific content. To them I would say:
If you cannot program in assembly language, you do not know how computers work. If you do not know TCP/IP from DHCP, you do not know how the internet works. If you cannot tell a dictionary attack from stack overflow, you don’t have a housefly’s idea how hacking works. If you have not investigated the various kinds of voting machines to see what would be involved in changing their vote totals, you probably ought to take up stamp collecting.
This is all orchestrated. So is the constant Putin bashing. His sin of course is that he doesn’t knuckle under to Washington. It is also the sin of Iran, China, Cuba, and North Korea.
The con is often silly. From time to time we see screaming headlines headlines, RUSSIAN BOMBER FLIES OFF AMERICAN COAST! Or somebody’s coast. Recently it was A SPY SHIP! The “bomber” is usually a Tu-95 Bear (NATO designation), an ancient four-engine prop job, though a beautiful aircraft, converted for reconnaissance. The idea that Moscow would send one lumbering plane to bomb America is too stupid–well, no, nothing is too stupid.
Tu-95. First flew in 1952. Yes, it can carry nuclear weapons. So can a Volkswagen Jetta.
Then there is the assertion that Russia hacked the DNC and gave its emails to Wikileaks. This is possible, but how would we know? (And would not revealing misbehavior be a service to the voting public?) Note that many people had an incentive to do it, from disgruntled Democratic insiders to anyone who stood to lose by Hillary’s election or gain by Trump´s, to the Trump campaign itself, to the many talented freelancers who just enjoy raising hell. Maybe .1 percent of the population, certainly not including me, have the expertise and access even to guess intelligently.
If you believe same intel agencies that lied us into Vietnam and Iraq, and that apparently are very much involved in anti-Trumpian machinations, you are the Establishment’s ideal citizen. For political reasons, specifically hostility to Trump, they will say anything that suits their purposes. and only inadvertently include the truth. If this seems an extreme claim, reflect:
In 1964 the CIA was running various kinds of attacks against North Vietnam, without admitting it. Two intelligence vessels, the Maddox and the Turner Joy, claimed that they had been fired upon by the North. They had not, and if they had been it would not have been unreasonable since the United States was inserting teams of saboteurs into the north. The result, and intention, was to chivy America into wars which devastated three countries and lead to millions of deaths. It worked.
After Nine Eleven, the government, using the intel outfits, deliberately led most of the public to believe that Iraq was developing the dread WMD, and thus get the United States to attack for the benefit of the oil industry, Israel, and the imperial lobby. It was nonsense and Washington had to know it. At the time Iraq was probably the most watched real estate on the planet. The result was destruction of an innocent country and the bloody mess that is now the Middle East. Which, note, had nothing to do with the interests of the United States or the well-being of its people.
All of America’s wars are for the benefit of others than Americans. Do you think you would be made better off by a war with Russia? China? Does the unending butchery in Afghanistan improve your life? Would you feel more secure if NATO–Washington’s puppet troupe–had bases in Montenegro? Wherever the hell that is?
The same game is now being played with Russia. Almost daily we read that Washington is sending troops to Poland, Bulgaria, Norway to confront the Russians, who are doing nothing that needs confronting.
“US to Send 1,000 Troops to Poland to ‘Deter Russia”’
Deter it from what?
This morning: “Germany Will Send Tank to Russian Border.”
A recent move was to send naval forces to the Black Sea, which is not America’s concern. What, precisely, are those ships supposed to do? Steam fiercely in circles, bowwow-grrr-woof? Do they have a purpose other than domestic American consumption? Are they to attack something, defend something in danger of attack, forbid the Russians to do–what?
Russia is not going to invade Europe, and Washington knows it perfectly well, so why put tiny combat forces on its frontiers? If there is going to be a deliberate war, Washington is going to have to start it. Attacking Russia with minor forces, or at all, is probably an idea nuttier than even Washington can invent. One hopes that Europe would not allow Americans to do what they usually do, get others to fight its wars in other people’s countries.
The danger with letting pasty neocons in New York play with military forces is that brinksmanship, fun for fern-bar Napoleons, can have not-fun consequences. If Washington puts naval forces in Russian waters in the Black Sea, the Russians will feel compelled to shadow the ships, to keep fighters flying overhead. A mistake occurs–mistakes do occur–and one side downs a plane belonging to the other. The wounded side feels obliged to respond. We have a shooting war. In closed waters bordering Russia, the US Navy would not win. Washington would then feel that it had to defend its ego by expanding the war. Wounded ego is important to the vast combative vanities who so often rise to power.
And there is no way to rein in these lunatics. They send the military where they like, attack whoever they choose, and we read about it after it has been done. One could almost wish we had constitutional government.
But I dream.
Fred, a keyboard mercenary with a disorganized past, has worked on staff for Army Times, The Washingtonian, Soldier of Fortune, Federal Computer Week, and The Washington Times.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
***
***
DW
Millions without drinking water as rainstorms batter central Chile
Landslides around the Chilean capital of Santiago have contaminated a major river and cut off the drinking water supply to around 4 million people. Officials have said that at least three people have died in the floods.
Emergency officers reported that landslides and falling debris caused by waters running down the Andes were contaminating the Maipo River.
At least three people were killed in the rainstorms and several others were missing, authorities said on Sunday.
"We are talking about 1.45 million homes that are going to be affected by the cutting off of the water supply, which will be total or partial in 30 districts" of Santiago, Claudio Orrego, the region's governor, told reporters. More than 60 percent of the capital's 6.5 million inhabitants are likely to be affected.
Aguas Andinas, the company that provides Santiago's water supply, said the ongoing downpours were making repairs difficult.
"We still do not know when the drinking water will be turned back on," Orrego said. "We cannot guarantee resumption of the service until the River Maipo clears up."
Another 373 people in a mountain valley near the capital were isolated after the nearby river banks overflowed.
Chile's president, Michelle Bachelet, wrote on Twitter: "Emergency teams are working on the ground to connect with isolated persons and re-establish the water supply wherever
Bodies recovered
Chile's national emergency services reported that a 12-year-old girl was killed in the O'Higgins region after a landslide swept away the car she was in. Santiago officials also said they had recovered two bodies from a river just outside of the capital.
The death toll could quickly rise, however, with as many as 19 people still reported missing according to Reuters news agency.
A summer of havoc
These were the second major floods to hit central Chile in the past year. In April, one person was killed after heavy rainstorms battered the San Jose de Maipo valley.
Subsequent flooding also forced some of the world's largest copper mines, located in the region, to shut down production.
Chile had just this week declared an end to a state of emergency after a series forest fires devastated large parts of the country.
***
www.organicandhealthy.or
This Is the Fruit That Will Make Your Liver 20+ Years Younger
Tuesday, February 21, 2017 17:18
The liver is an organ that if treated un-properly can affect the entire body and lead to serious illness.
With the help of vitamin K, the liver produces proteins that are important in blood clotting. It is also one of the organs that break down old or damaged blood cells. The liver plays a central role in all metabolic processes in the body. In fat metabolism the liver cells break down fats and produce energy.
The liver can regenerate on it’s own. It’s a strong and very important organ in our bodies. Treating it right and keeping it healthy isn’t hard at all. There are so many diseases and illnesses you can be diagnosed with if you haven’t taken take care of this organ.
Usually eating a bad diet, being overweight, excessive alcohol consumption, and even some medications can damage the liver and lead to even worse problems.
The tamarind fruit is great for eliminating fat in your liver and can treat almost all liver problems. The fruit will detox your body, improve your digestion, protect the liver, lower cholesterol, cure any problems with the bile and improve your overall health.
Here’s how to use it to heal fatty liver disease and hepatitis:
Put 2 handfuls of peeled tamarind and put them in a blender with a liter of water, then mix well, strain the mixture and drink the liquid during the day.
To prepare tamarind tea, put 25 well-washed tamarind leaves in a pot with 1 l. of water, then boil the mixture for 15-20 minutes and leave it to cool down afterwards.
Add some honey and brown sugar if you like, although we recommend drinking the tea unsweetened.
Drinking it twice a day (in the morning and evening) will cure any problems with your liver and improve your health.
***
Until
next week...keep on believing.
Almondtree Productions
“I
will give thee thanks; for thou art fearfully wondrous; wondrous are
thy works; and my soul knows it well.”
(Psalm 139:14)