“For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe.”
(1 Timothy 4:10)

All Men

***

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Thou Shalt Marvel

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WND

SAUDI ROYAL MAKES EYE-OPENING STATEMENT ON ISRAEL

'It is, in essence, a recognition of the right of the state to exist'

Greg Corombos

April 4, 2018

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive to the Murabba Palace, escorted by King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia May 20, 2017, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to attend a banquet in their honor (Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead)

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud says Israelis “have the right to have their own land,” and although there’s no immediate change in official Saudi policy, a former Clinton administration official says that position could lead to a seismic shift in the region and the quest for Middle East peace.

The Atlantic reporter Jeffrey Goldberg asked the crown prince, who is effectively running Saudi Arabia, whether he believes the “Jewish people have a right to a nation-state in at least part of their ancestral homeland.”

“I believe that each people, anywhere, has a right to live in their peaceful nation. I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land. But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations,” said bin Salman. (Emphasis added.)

When pressed about whether he has any religious objection to the existence of a Jewish state, the prince gave a more detailed answer.

“We have religious concerns about the fate of the holy mosque in Jerusalem and about the rights of the Palestinian people. This is what we have. We don’t have any objection against any other people,” said bin Salman.

Bin Salman also made it clear that the threat posed by a nuclear Iran is a critical factor in warmer relations with Israel, stating that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini “makes Hitler look good.”

The crown prince also gave some reasons for cooling the optimism. In the same interview, bin Salman also said there is not an anti-Semitism problem in Saudi Arabia and that “there is no Wahhabism. We don’t believe we have Wahhabism.” He also does not recognize Israeli territory gained since 1967.

Nonetheless, American Foreign Policy Council Senior Fellow Lawrence J. Haas says the prince’s comments on Israel could be earthshaking.

“This statement is, potentially, monumentally important. It is, in essence, a recognition of the right of the Israeli state to exist,” said Haas, who served as communications director for Vice President Al Gore in the Clinton administration and staunchly opposed the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration.

After 70 years of Arab refusal to recognize the modern state of Israel, Haas said this kind of gesture by bin Salman provides at least a flicker of hope for that hostility to change.

“If this leads to a more formal recognition and peace deal between those two countries, this could really have tremendous effects that stretch across the entire region,” Haas explained. “So I think it’s terribly important.”

Bin Salman has been cracking down on corruption, relaxing restrictions on women in Saudi society, and he permitted an Israeli flight to use Saudi airspace. Haas said the slow thaw has been happening for a while.

“This is part of a gradual warming of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia that has really taken place over the course of the last five to 10 years,” he said. “Lots of back channel communications, appearances by Saudi officials and Israeli officials at the same events. I believe there was even a handshake at one point.”

While bin Salman is working to modernize Saudi Arabia, Haas said the obvious point of agreement between the two nations is the need to confront a massive, mutual threat from Iran.

“There’s no question that that’s the overwhelming driver for Saudi Arabia,” Haas said. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and Israel and Saudi Arabia probably have the most to lose when it comes to the rise of Iran.”

Iran has repeatedly threatened to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. While Saudi Arabia is the leading Sunni Muslim power, Iran is the clear leader among Shiite Muslims.

According to Haas, teaming up against Iran gives Israel and Saudi Arabia the opportunity to coordinate strategies, share intelligence and rally more of the region to their side.

Haas believes Saudi Arabia warming toward Israel could have a major impact on other nations in the Middle East.

“It would be a pretty important signal to other countries that don’t have relations with Israel that at the end of the day, this is a long-running dispute we’ve had with Israel,” he said. “Israel isn’t going anywhere. We’ve got bigger problems, and maybe the rest of you need to get on board.”

There is a major concern for Haas and others who hope there can be meaningful progress toward stability in the region. They fear bin Salman may not live to achieve his goals.

“Any time you’re in a conversation about what the crown prince is doing in Saudi Arabia and how significant it may or may not be, you don’t have to be speaking very long before someone says, ‘If he survives,'” Haas said. “The threat being that he will suffer the same fate perhaps as (former Egyptian President) Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated by radical forces within his own country after making peace with Israel.

“He’s moving pretty aggressively, and you do have to wonder how successful he will continue to be as he pushes the envelope more and more,” he said. “We’ll have to see but people do worry about his fate.”

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PRESSTV

Saudi Arabia's bin Salman recognizes Israel

April 2, 2018

PressTV-Saudi crown prince meets pro-Israel lobbyists in US

The Saudi crown prince has met leaders of several right-wing pro-Israeli lobbying groups during his ongoing US tour.

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has recognized Israel, stressing that Israelis are entitled to their own land.

“I believe that each people, anywhere, has a right to live in their peaceful nation. I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land,” said bin Salman during an interview with the Atlantic published on Monday.

"But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations," he added.

He added that kingdom has no problems with Jews and that "there are a lot of interests we share with Israel."

He further noted that Saudi Arabia would establish economic ties with the Tel Aviv regime after conflict with the Palestinian Authority is settled.

The announcement is the latest step in the kingdom's path moving towards normalization of diplomatic relations with the Tel Aviv regime.

On Friday, bin Salman met with the leaders of a number of pro-Israeli lobbying groups during his tour of the United States.

According to a leaked copy of his itinerary, the Israeli Haaretz daily reported that bin Salman had conferred with officials from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Stand Up for Israel (ADL), the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), Presidents' Conference, B'nai B'rith and the American Jewish Committee (AJC).

Speaking in an interview with France 24 television news network on December 13, 2017, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said the kingdom has a “roadmap” to establish full diplomatic ties with the Tel Aviv regime.

The Israeli military’s chief-of-staff, Gadi Eizenkot, recently said the regime was ready to share intelligence with Saudi Arabia on Iran.

***

RT

Russia, Iran & Turkey set to fight any attempts to fuel separatism and split Syria

April 4, 2018

© Umit Bektas / Reuters

Preserving the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Syria through crushing terrorists and fighting foreign-sponsored separatist is a goal shared by Russia, Iran and Turkey, which they hope will bring peace to the region.

Russia's Vladimir Putin and Iran's Hassan Rouhani met in Ankara for a trilateral summit on Syria, hosted by their Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The leaders have reaffirmed the resolve of their countries "to oppose any separatist plans aimed at undermining the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria, as well as the national security of neighboring countries," according to a statement released after the summit.

The defeat of the terrorist remnants in Syria was described by the three leaders as a "common strategic goal," which must be reached to ensure lasting peace and to pave the path to an inclusive Syrian political solution to the years-long conflict.

"As our common strategic goal, we see the final defeat of the terrorists, who do not abandon attempts to destabilize the situation on the ground and are trying to undermine the peace process efforts," Putin said.

The military efforts against terrorism and separatism go hand-in-hand with the peace process and humanitarian efforts to help the Syrians. The three leaders urged the international community to step up and help Syrian people, instead of voicing only hollow promises.

"We urge all the countries to participate, instead of providing just lip service. Everybody talks about the necessity to join the humanitarian efforts, for instance, but in reality almost nobody besides Iran, Turkey and Russia does anything. We see small-time deliveries though the UN channels, but they are completely insufficient," Russia's president lamented.

While the joint statement did not explicitly point fingers at the forces behind the separatists in Syria, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani pinned the blame on the US and Israel during the joint press conference with his counterparts in the aftermath of the summit.

"They've been trying to topple the government, they wanted to spread chaos… They wanted to fuel insecurity in order to maintain their own interests but they have gained no success." Rouhani said, adding that the "illegal US presence and military intervention in Syria" are meant to ultimately lead to the "fragmentation of the country."

Erdogan, in his turn, stated that "we all know who benefits" from terrorism and separatist activities in Syria. Turkey's leader has also reaffirmed his commitment to driving the Kurdish militias away from the country's borders. Ankara sees the militias as terrorists and an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

"I'd like to emphasize that, as long as we don't ensure security in all the regions controlled by the YPG [People's Protection Units], primarily in Manbij, we won't stop," Erdogan stated. (Ezekiel 38)

***

BREAKINGISRAELNEWS

Barley Harvested in Preparation for Third Temple Wave Offering
By Staff Writer April 2, 2018

“And thou shalt put the whole upon the hands of Aharon, and upon the hands of his sons; and shalt wave them for a wave-offering before the LORD. And thou shalt take them from their hands, and make them smoke on the altar upon the burnt-offering, for a sweet savour before the LORD; it is an offering made by fire unto the LORD.” Exodus 29:24-25 (The Israel Bible™)

Preparing the barley for the Omer Offering (Photo courtesy Adam Propp)

On the second night of Passover, this past Saturday night, dozens of men, women and children went out to the fields to harvest barley, not so much as a reenactment but a real Temple-related Passover ceremony. The following day, the harvest was brought to Jerusalem where it was turned into flour and Kohanim (Jewish men descended from Aaron the Priest) performed a full-dress rehearsal for the Wave Offering, which will take place once again in the Third Temple.
Preparations for the event began on Friday before the holiday of Passover began. Members of the nascent Sanhedrin and representatives from the United Temple Movements went out to a field of barley near Ruchama in the Negev (southern Israel). They oversaw the selection of the finest sections of grain and tied them into sheaves, leaving the stalks connected to the soil.

On Saturday night, they returned, accompanied by many others who came to take part in the mitzvah (Biblical commandment). As are most Temple related activities, the harvesting was done with musical accompaniment.

Approximately 450 pounds of barley were harvested and brought to King David’s Tomb on Mount Zion where it was beaten, the chaff was removed and the grains were sifted through 13 sieves.
Finally, the grains were roasted and ground into a coarse meal. Olive oil specifically prepared for use in the Temple,was added, along with frankincense.
The result was presented in a reenactment of the Wave offering brought on the first day of Chol Ha’Moed (intermittent days between the first and last days of Passover). About 200 people participated in the event held in the Tekuma Park in the Old City of Jerusalem.
The Kohanim wore authentic priestly garments that conformed to the Biblical requirements. Rabbi Baruch Kahane served in the role of the Kohen Gadol (High Priest). In the Temple, a male sheep was brought as a burnt offering, but this was not done at the reenactment.

After this offering is brought, the new grain of the harvest year is permitted to be eaten. The leftovers of the sacrifice are kept by the priest and is listed as one of the twenty-four priestly gifts.

On the second night of Passover, Jews begin counting 49 days until the holiday of Shavuot, when two loaves made from fine wheat flour are brought to the Temple as an offering.

***

Mondoweiss

Israel just lost American Jews

Phillip Weiss

April 5, 2018

It finally happened. In the last day or so, major mainstream voices condemned Israel’s shootings of unarmed Palestinian protesters on March 30, in which 17 were killed.

Chris Hayes did it on MSNBC last night. “A frankly unconscionable use of force.” Ayman Mohyeldin of MSNBC called out the racism in the media’s indifference to the killings. David Rothkopf of the Carnegie Endowment questioned Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. The New York Times, Washington Post and J Street all criticized the murders (albeit with equivocations), while on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show, Cornel West said Martin Luther King Jr would have spoken out against Israel’s “massacre” in Gaza, and Brian Lehrer, an Israel supporter who regularly hosts neoconservatives, did not seek to contradict West.

Why did the dam break and what does it mean?

It happened because the left is applying all the force here, largely through social media; and the rightwing advocates are silent. Bill Kristol, Jeffrey Goldberg and Jennifer Rubin seem to have taken one look at the awful videos from Gaza and, finding the Israeli actions indefensible, turned back to Trump.

It is hugely meaningful: The American Jewish love affair with Israel is over. We are going to see more and more outright signs of the breakup in the discourse and in our politics too in coming years.

Let’s consider the dynamics first. The mainstream editorials appeared only after social media, alt web sites, and human rights groups said emphatically for several days what was plain as the nose on your face: that these were war crimes. And more important, the mainstream spoke after seeing there was no pushback from the Zionist center/right.

The Onion did as much for the narrative as anyone. “Teen On Birthright Trip Hadn’t Expected To See So Many Dead Palestinians,” it mocked. The Onion‘s fictitious young Jew, Sarah Caplan, said she was “surprised that there were so many people her age in the Israeli Defense Forces killing Palestinians.”

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem condemned the shootings as crimes the day they happened. Four days later, Human Rights Watch called the killings “unlawful” and “calculated,” and said the soldiers fired because of a “longstanding culture of impunity.”

Then Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch threatened to prosecute Israeli officials for war crimes.

Israel, we will be watching & documenting what you do in Gaza on Friday. Domestic impunity won’t protect you from prosecution abroad.

IfNotNow, the non-Zionist Jewish group, did not need to be told these were murders. It led demonstrations at the Israeli consulate in Boston on Tuesday, at which eight young Jews were arrested for saying the killings go against the spirit of Passover, and at the offices of a New York Jewish establishment group last night:

The group called on the URJ [the Union for Reform Judaism], the largest denomination of American Jewry — which has taken bold progressive positions against gun violence and Israel’s mistreatment of liberal Jews, among other issues — to condemn the shocking murders of Palestinian protesters by the IDF.

Some voices in high places spoke out. Mohyeldin of NBC hit the racist blind spot in the mainstream coverage of Gaza:

Its not just a double standard among liberals & progressives… ask yourself what the mainstream media coverage would have been like if 15 Israelis were killed? This conflict will never be solved so long as the public & politicians remain misinformed & uninformed

After Rula Jebreal wrote, “The 1-state reality…is gun practice to liquidate humans rights, ultimately killing Israeli democracy,” David Rothkopf responded eloquently,

Until every resident of the land over which Israel enforces control has equal rights and protections under the law it’s not a democracy.

Rothkopf is as Jewish establishment as they come. The former head of Foreign Policy magazine, he once tarred Walt and Mearsheimer as gentile anti-Semites (“they made a cynical decision to cash in on anti-Semitism by offering to dress up old hatreds in the dowdy Brooks Brothers suits of the Kennedy School and the University of Chicago”). But Rothkopf was enraged:

Israel’s brutal treatment of the demonstrators in Gaza…and Gaza itself…is the anti-Passover. It represents the height of hypocrisy: A supposedly Jewish state violating the most basic concepts of the religion in order to defend its “right to exist.”

Notice his sarcasm about a mantra Israel supporters have tried to shove down our throats forever: its right to exist.

The most important element of the reaction to the massacre was the fact that the neocons and rightwing loudmouths were quiet. They know they cannot defend Israel’s conduct, so they sat on their hands. Bill Kristol is silent. Jeffrey Goldberg silent. Jennifer Rubin silent. Bret Stephens silent. Bari Weiss silent. Tamara Cofman Wittes, silent.

The usual chorus of very connected mainstream hooligans who campaign for Israel in the press and on television was dumfounded. They don’t understand why Israel did this, they just wish it would go away. (And they can all say that they have bigger fish to fry: Trump. But it must tear them up that Netanyahu loves Trump.)

Their silence left the field to Bernie Sanders, for his good statement on the killings–including to Jake Tapper on TV. Followed by Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Rep. Betty McCollum of Minnesota:

I am horrified by the tragic wounding & killing of Palestinian protesters in Gaza last Friday. Attacks on peaceful Palestinian protesters must end, and the U.S. & the international community must do more to support a resolution to the conflict.

Ari Fleischer is surely right, when he observes that progressive Democrats are beginning to turn against Israel:

Democrats – welcome to what your party has become. 1) It’s not a protest when you cross a sovereign border. It’s an invasion. 2) The Democrats used to support Israel. Now, many of them don’t.

Liberal media is responsive to these stirrings. This week there were finally outspoken Palestinian voices on the most important platforms. Diana Buttu had an op-ed in the Washington Post saying, It’s “time to crack down on Israel.”

[A]s the United States and the E.U. continue to try to appease Israel, Palestinians pay the price — with their lives.

Rawan Yaghi got an op-ed in the New York Times, with a wrenching description of a visit to the protests on Sunday:

I left the protest thinking of the rest of Gaza — shellshocked for years, its borders closed and its United Nations-funded infrastructure in decay. I thought of the kids in my neighborhood who play football in what used to be the ground floor of a tall residential building, with bare concrete columns and poking iron rods as their only audience. And I thought: Once again, Gaza the Injured has come out to protest, and to scream for life.

So the left was dominating the commentary on the massacre; and mainstream voices finally spoke up.

The New York Times ended its three-day silence on the killings with an editorial that had unusually sharp language for Israel. The Israeli ambassador to the U.N. was angered. Though the Times typically framed the matter as a crisis for Israel, with the headline, “Israel Courts Catastrophe in Gaza Protests,” it dared to pronounce that Israel should “not use live ammunition on unarmed demonstrators.”

Israel’s response appears to have been excessive, as human rights groups have asserted.

A godawful Washington Post editorial said that Israel fell into Hamas’s “trap” by killing so many Palestinians. But it conceded that Israel had suffered “a moral and political blow.”

J Street ended its three-day silence with a statement putting blame on Palestinians and Hamas, but noting the “disturbingly high number of casualties.”

We urge the Israeli government and IDF to exercise maximum possible restraint and to use non-lethal force in such situations. We are dismayed that members of the Israeli government have already dismissed out of hand calls to conduct a thorough and independent investigation of these events.

And last night Chris Hayes broke his silence with a segment denouncing the shooting of 750 Palestinians. “Yes that is a correct number.” After the usual disclaimers about Palestinian extremism, he said that that “in no way justifies what Israeli soldiers appear to have done, which is perch on a hill and pick off protesters with sniper fire.” They “rained down bullets on unarmed people, again and again and again.” Then Hayes called out the “vast number of Congressmen” who have said nothingagainst the massacre.

Yes, Hayes was late, but he knows the story. He and Mohyeldin work for a network that is run by a man (David Cohen) who threw fundraisers for the Israeli army, and that is chaired by a man (Brian Roberts)“known for his affinity for Israel.” Jake Tapper works for a network whose marketing exec wrote speeches for Netanyahu.

My headline says that American Jews are done with Israel. The deluge is coming. Ten years ago Max Blumenthal came out as an anti-Zionist at rallies for the Israeli massacre of the moment, and it was shocking. Today David Rothkopf comes out as an anti-Zionist, and we all get it. So much has happened since Cast Lead of ’08-09. One massacre after another, that ravening Israeli Jews fully approved. American Jews are not going to hold the bag any more.

Thanks to Ofer Neiman, Allison Deger, Scott Roth, Bob Herbst, and James North.

REUTERS

Erdogan calls Netanyahu 'terrorist' as insults fly after Gaza deaths

Reuters Staff

April 1, 2018

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu a “terrorist” on Sunday, escalating an exchange of insults that started after he criticized Israel’s lethal military response to a demonstration on the Gazan border.

Israel has defended the killing of 15 Palestinians during Friday’s demonstration and Netanyahu tweeted that the Israeli army “will not be lectured by those who have indiscriminately bombed civilian populations for years”, referring to Turkey.

Erdogan told supporters on Sunday: “We don’t have the shame of invading on us, Netanyahu. You are an invader and right now are present in those lands as an invader. At the same time, you are a terrorist.”

In another speech he said: “You are a terrorist state. It is known what you have done in Gaza and what you have done in Jerusalem. You have no one that likes you in the world.”

In a later tweet, Netanyahu said: “Erdogan is not accustomed to being answered back to, but he should start getting used to it. He who occupies northern Cyprus, encroaches on Kurdish territory and massacres civilians in Afrin cannot preach to us on values and morals.”

Israel’s defense minister has rejected calls for an inquiry into Friday’s events.

Hamas, the dominant Palestinian group in Gaza, said five of the dead were members of its armed wing. Israel said eight of the 15 belonged to Hamas, designated a terrorist group by Israel and the West, and two others came from other militant factions.

Reporting by Ali Kucukgocmen and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem; Editing by Robin Pomeroy

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All News Pipeline

Will This Be 'The Trigger' For The 'Last War' Of The Human Race? Apocalyptic Islam Believes 'The Mahdi' Will Only Come When The World Is Engulfed In Chaos And Carnage

By Stefan Stanford
April 5, 2018
In this recent story over at the Daily Star that Steve Quayle linked to on his website on Tuesday morning they report that according to former Russian General Evgeny Buzhinsky, the world may soon be headed towards the ''LAST WAR'' in the history of the human race.
Also stating the obvious, "worse than the Cold War is a real war", that fact has clearly been lost upon some in the West who are still mindlessly, or purposely, pushing for war with Russia with Buzhinsky warning that the pressure being put upon Russia over what appears to be the false flag poisoning of Sergei Skripal has created a situation worse than the 'Cold War' ever was.
Also stating that 'regime change' won't work with Russia because the more pressure that is put upon Russia by the outside world, the more the Russian people SUPPORT Vladimir Putin and the Russian government, he also stated that he believes what is happening now is only going to escalate further.
"You expel diplomats, we expel diplomats, you further expel, what's the next step? It's a breach of diplomatic relations."
With relations between the US and Russia at their very lowest ever according to the Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov, should those who continually push for war with Russia get their wishes, they could be the last wishes they ever get.

Why would anyone here in America want a war with Russia that most likely would go nuclear and lead to 'the end'?
As we reported in this March 28th ANP story, 'Apocalyptic Islam' NEEDS a nuclear apocalypse to bring upon their 'mahdi'. While most of the civilized and free world would rather see the globalists here in America who are pushing for war with Russia participate in a massive 'cage match to the death' with each other than for our planet to be devastated by a nuclear war, as the National Review reported back on September 11th of 2015, Islamic extremists are trying to hasten the coming of the Mahdi.
Might there still be such 'extremists' within President Trump's government, holdovers from Barack Obama's 'Muslim Brotherhood in the White House', who have not yet been'purged' by Trump's new National Security Advisor John Bolton? Would such people secretly push for an 'end times' war to help bring in their 'Mahdi'? From the National Review story:
There is a dramatic shift underway in the Muslim world. The most serious threat we face in the Middle East and North Africa is no longer radical Islam but apocalyptic Islam.
We face not just one but two regional regimes whose rulers are driven not merely by violent political ideology, or by extremist theology, but by apocalyptic, genocidal eschatology, or End Times theology.
The first is the Islamic Republic of Iran. The second is the Islamic State, or ISIS. The leaders of the former are Shia. The latter are Sunni. Both believe that we are living in the End of Days as predicted in their ancient prophecies. Both believe that any moment now their messiah, the Mahdi, will be revealed on Earth as he establishes his global Islamic kingdom and impose sharia law. Both believe that Jesus will return not as the Savior or Son of God but as a lieutenant to the Mahdi, and that he will force non-Muslims to convert or die.
What’s more, both believe that the Mahdi will come only when the world is engulfed in chaos and carnage. They openly vow not simply to attack but to annihilate the United States and Israel. Iran and ISIS are both eager to hasten the coming of the Mahdi. Both believe that the Day of Judgment is coming soon, when they will be either rewarded for their actions or condemned to hell for eternity. And both are receiving relatively minimal international opposition. Consequently, both believe that Allah is on their side, that the wind is at their back, and that victory is both assured and imminent.
While some commenters on this Daily Mail story reporting on the 'last war in the history of mankind' have clearly bought the mainstream media's version of unfolding news 'hook, line and sinker', it's clear by reading comments from some of their readers that some believe there could actually be a 'winner' of such a war, and it would be the USA.
Proving just how clueless many of the masses are about recent global events, including knowing nothing of Russia and China's new hypersonic nuclear weapons, as we recently reported on ANP, according to US Senator James Inhofe, the US can't win a war against Russia or China due to those new, unstoppable hypersonic weapons with Senator Inhofe saying: "Right now, we're helpless!".
While Barack Obama was busy 'purging' and 'pussifying' the US military, Vladimir Putin and Russia were creating nuclear weapons that are still unmatched worldwide unless, of course we have something secret that even Senator Inhofe doesn't know about.
We should also look at the warning recently given by General John Hyten, the four-star head of US Strategic Command, who told reporters that "China and Russia are 'aggressively pursuing' hypersonic weapons, and the US can't defend against them." So why would anyone in Washington DC be pushing for war against nations that have weapons we are unable to defend ourselves against unless they actually WANT a nuclear apocalypse?

With both Russia and China issuing veiled and not-so-veiled warnings that any war between our nations would be brought home to US soil, will mushroom clouds rising up over Washington DC be the only thing that stops the insanity of those within government who endlessly and foolishly push for a war against a country that could completely destroy us?
Certainly 5 or 6 of Russian's 'satan 2' nuclear missiles raining down upon the East coast, vaporizing most of us and turning large swaths of our country into an uninhabitable dead zone for a thousand years or more would leave a lasting impression.
And while we continue to pray that President Trump and Vladimir Putin are able to put the escalating tensions behind them for the sake of the entire human race, as we reported on ANP back on April 2nd, more and more signs continue to emerge that what we may be headed for may not be able to be stopped. We pray God grant great wisdom and strength to President Trump, Putin and all of the other global leaders who are playing with billions of lives with a nuclear apocalypse the possible 'end game'.

With China's military recently telling Russia's military "we've come to support you against the US" according to this recent Newsweek story saved at via web archive while China's Defense Minister in Moscow recently stated "America must know how close Chinese and Russian armies are" gives us another sign that war against either country will be war against both of them, this April 2nd story over at Global Research warns us that nuclear war is no longer 'unthinkable'.
And while we'd never be able to forecast exactly how such a war would play out, and pray that for the sake of the human race such a war is forever avoided, we've gotten many signs from recent news stories how things might unfold.
As we hear from Defense Updates and read in this Independent Barents Observer story titled "Did Russia test doomsday weapon in Arctic waters?", Russia's Status-6 nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed unmanned underwater vehicle could supposedly deliver a thermonuclear cobalt bomb of up to 100 megatons against enemy’s naval ports and coastal cities.
Speaking to the BBC, Konstantin Sivkov with the Russian Geopolitical Academy says a 100 megatons warhead could produce a tsunami up to 500 meters high, wiping out all living things 1,500 kilometers deep inside US territory.

While some might call that 'fake news', the Pentagon here in America has already confirmed the existence of Russia's 'Status 6' also known as 'Kanyon'.
As we've also reported previously on ANP, another direction war might take would be the launching of Russia's 'Satan 2' nuclear missiles that military experts warn could completely vaporize an area the size of Texas or France as this Dallas News story reported back in 2016. With Russia recently testing those missiles to much fanfare as the Express reported 2 days ago, do we really need any more reasons to want to avoid an 'end times war' with Russia?
And finally as has been reported numerous times on ANP and within the independent news media, any long-term 'take down' of the electrical grid here in America, whether via a nuclear EMP or by a massive cyber attack, and all bets are off as the population of 2018 America is thrown back 200 years in time.
With such a 'grid take down' taking away the massive infrastructure that has been built up over many decades to support the 320 million+ people living here, America suddenly without electricity and all of the other 'luxuries' that make us a 21st century, 'modern day' nation spells total disaster with experts warning 90% of us could be culled.
So, with nobody in their right minds possibly wanting nuclear war, who are 'the forces' still driving us towards one?

***

RT

Moscow to West: Remember fate of Goliath when trying to cling to power

April 4, 2018

© SuperStock / Getty Images

The West is becoming an Orwellian version of itself in its desperate attempts to cling to power, Russia’s foreign intelligence chief said. If this continues, the West may face a similar fate to that of Biblical figure Goliath.Sergey Naryskin, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), delivered the strongly-worded message at an international security conference in Moscow on Wednesday. He accused the West and the United States in particular of failing to acknowledge that they can no longer dictate their will to the rest of the world.

Western nations “cannot and will not face the truth and acknowledge that their own influence, which used to be unchallenged, is now diminishing. They are still trying to build relations with other nations based on old principles rooted in colonialism, on coercion and dictate.”

The Russian official branded as “stunningly hypocritical” the West’s methods of projecting power today. “The US is trying to masquerade the brutal American dictate as ‘Euroatlantic’ or ‘international’ solidarity. To present the US-centered system of international relations, which is based on coercion and even blackmail, as an appearance of voluntary submission,” Naryshkin said, citing the recent expulsion of Russian diplomats as a glaring example of this approach.

He was referring to the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter on British soil last month. After the UK accused the Russian government of orchestrating the crime, London and its allies expelled over 100 Russian diplomats. Naryshkin alleged that the poisoning was “cooked up” by British and American intelligence services. He said the unwillingness of some European nations to join those expulsions is a sign that Washington’s system of “vassalage” is crumbling.

In its arrogance “the US increasingly resembles the overconfident Biblical strongman Goliath, who was slain by the young David.” The global community should pay attention to that story, the official stressed – otherwise the tension between the West and Russia may lead to “a new Caribbean [Cuban missile] crisis.”

The West is targeting Russia with wild accusations because it perceives it as a driver for change in the world, the Russian official said. Washington now has a “fixation” on fighting “a non-existent Russian threat,” and the forms of this fight have become “ridiculous,” according to the intelligence chief.

“Politics never was an honest business. But the amount and nature of lies spurred today in attempt to justify Western hegemony is unprecedented,” he said. According to Naryshkin, the West is using Orwellian ‘doublespeak,’ investing words with the opposite of their true meaning to justify its policies. “The situation is counterintuitive and really dangerous,” he warned.

“So many times big talk about human rights and democracy was accompanied by military interventions into sovereign nations. Those nations were plunged into bloody chaos that had no place for such a fundamental right as a right to live. Over the past two decades, hundreds of thousands of innocent people fell victim to NATO aggression in Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa,” he said.

There is a greater need "to reset the international relations system to make it work." That would require the countries to abandon double standards and "start speaking in a truly common language of humanity, before it is too late.”

Naryshkin was speaking at the opening ceremony of the 7th Moscow Conference on International Security. The high-profile event in the Russian capital is being attended by delegations from 95 nations.

***

RT

German police union chief proposes taking children away from ‘anti-Semitic parents’

April 5, 2018

FILE PHOTO: The Holocaust Memorial in front of the US Embassy in Berlin © Hannibal Hanschke / Reuters

Authorities should be allowed to take children away from parents who express anti-Semitic views, the head of Germany’s 2nd largest police union has stated, without elaborating on how or when such measures would be enforced.

“Authorities need to act decisively [against anti-Semitism] including when the aggression comes from migrants,”Rainer Wendt, head of the German Police Union (DpoIG) told Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper on Wednesday.

“If children are raised to become anti-Semites we shouldn't be afraid to take them away from their families.” He went on to accuse many school administrators of ignoring the problem, saying “they act according to the mantra 'it doesn't exist in my school.'”

There has also been a tendency not to willingly register anti-Semitism by Muslims – but it needs to be recorded without prejudice so that we can develop effective counter-strategies,”Wendt said.

Although Wendt did not specify how exactly he expects it to be determined that parents are anti-Semitic, Josef Schuster, the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, called last week for a better system to be introduced in schools. He said that teachers and students should have a way to report “anti-Semitic or other acts of violence without bureaucratic hurdles, in order to get a clearer picture of what is going on.”

Wendt’s remarks came just days after Wolfgang Schaeuble, speaker of the Bundestag, said that radical Muslim communities and immigrants with extremist views on Israel are contributing to anti-Semitism in Germany.

It also comes after a Jewish girl in a Berlin primary school was reportedly told by a Muslim classmate that she deserved to be beaten and killed because of her religion, in the third report of anti-Semitism in Berlin schools over the past 12 months. Another Jewish student in Berlin was recently forced to change schools as a result of violent bullying by Muslim classmates, who threatened him with a fake gun.

The police union chief's remarks come after it was reported that lawmakers from Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and sister party CSU were seeking to adopt measures to deport migrants who express anti-Semitic views in Germany.“Complete acceptance of the Jewish life” is a “criterion for successful integration,” a draft of the proposal said, according to Die Welt.

Germany saw an influx of around one million mainly Muslim migrants at the height of the refugee crisis in 2015. Merkel's open-door policy for those fleeing conflicts and persecution sparked outrage among her critics, who complained about a rise in migrant-related crimes and a strain on the social welfare system.

***

THE DAILY CALLER

Chinese Government Reinterpreting The Bible For The Masses

Joshua Gill

April 4, 2016

The Chinese government removed Bibles from online stores after announcing it is working on re-interpreting and translating the Bible so it conform to “Chinese-style Christianity.”

The Chinese government announced the impending “Chinese-style” reinterpretation of the Christian scriptures via an official document, “Principle for Promoting the Chinese Christianity in China for the Next Five Years (2018-2022),” released in Nanjing on March 28, according to ABC. Soon thereafter, online shoppers in China noticed Bibles were no longer available for online purchase in the country — neither digital nor print.

Bibles disappeared from the largest Chinese online marketplaces, including Taobao, Jingdong, DangDang and Chinese Amazon. Certain books on Christianity were also blocked from purchase on Taobao.

The purge of Bibles from online markets coincided with the Chinese government’s Tuesday release of a white paper, “China’s Policies and Practices on Protecting Freedom of Religious Belief.” The paper lists the ways religious liberties are allegedly protected in China. The government released the paper as part of an effort to prove China’s effort to establish good relations with the Vatican.

Religions in China “should adhere to the direction of localizing the religion, practice the core values of socialism, develop and expand the fine Chinese tradition and actively explore the religious thought which accords with China’s national circumstances,” the paper states.

Some speculate part of the reason for the ban of online Bible sales is China has not officially approved the Bible for circulation or given it an issuance number. Technically, the Bible is an illegal publication in China.

William Nee, China researcher at Amnesty International, called for the country to reverse its online Bible sale ban and said the move is likely a response to governmental fears of the spread of Christianity — a belief system that professes a higher power than the state and therefore clashes with “Chinese culture.”

“Most likely this ban on the Bible is an attempt to limit the spread of what the Government fears is an alternative belief system,” Nee told ABC.

The ban on online sales of the Bible and the effort to reinterpret it falls in line with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “sinicization of religion” policy — “to conform to Chinese culture.” In this case, it means to make of religion conform to the ruling Communist party’s policies and submit to Beijing.

Religions that are “Chinese in orientation” may operate in China and the government “must provide active guidance to religions so that they can adapt themselves to socialist society,” Xi declared, according to ABC.

The government’s efforts to reign in Christianity may actually be backfiring, according to Nee, despite making life extraordinarily difficult for believers in certain areas of the country.

“Despite all the pressure put on Christians, and indeed, perhaps because of it, China is seeing a surge of religious belief,” Nee said. “The situation for freedom of religion varies greatly form location to location, with some people going to church and holding Bible studies and other activities with little interference, while in other areas the Government is much more hard line.”

LIFE SITE

‘Catastrophic for the Catholic Church’: World media reacts to Pope Francis’ denial of hell

Annihilation , Eugenio Scalfari, Hell, Mainstream Media, Pope Francis

Dorothy Cummings McLean

ROME, April 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Mainstream media was in a furor last week over the news of Pope Francis purportedly saying that “hell does not exist” and that unrepentant souls in mortal sin simply “disappear.”

On the eve of the Holy Thursday, an Italian journalist published an article claiming that the pope had told him that hell does not exist. Eugenio Scalfari, 93, atheist journalist and founder of the left-wing newspaper La Repubblica, claimed on March 28 that Pope Francis had told him two days before that the souls of those who do not go to heaven are annihilated.

“Souls are not punished,” Francis allegedly said. “Those who repent obtain God's forgiveness and go among the ranks of those who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot be forgiven disappear. There is no hell — there is the disappearance of sinful souls."

Scalfari’s article — and then the Vatican’s vague warnings not to trust it — was picked up by mainstream media worldwide.

The story was highlighted in the United States by the Drudge Report, whose online headline shrieked “Pope Declares No Hell?” It linked to a March 29 article by Michael W. Chapman of CNS News, who called Francis’s alleged remarks “a denial of the 2,000-year-old teaching of the Catholic Church about the reality of Hell and the eternal existence of the soul.”

Chapman cited the translation of the popular Catholic news blog “Rorate Caeli.”

The New York Times led with the news that the Vatican had responded to the Repubblica piece with an assertion that Pope Francis does indeed believe in hell and that “no quotation of the article should be considered as a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father.”

The Times observed that Scalfari does not make notes or use a tape recorder during interviews. Despite this fact, the report also observed that this interview had been Scalfari’s fifth meeting with the Argentinian pontiff.

The “Daily Intelligencer” of New York Magazine said that it was“beyond ironic” that Good Friday was “marked by a murky debate over a claim that Pope Francis recently denied the existence of Hell in a discussion with an atheist friend.”

“It’s hard to imagine your average Pope having any atheists friends with whom he holds genial conversations. But Francis isn’t your average Pope, and so the controversy continues to rage despite the Vatican’s efforts to pour cold water on its hellish fires.”

'Left is even corrupting the Catholic Church'

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said that “it was easy to see, with this pope, that the left is even corrupting the Catholic Church”, something he had not thought possible after meeting the late Cardinal O’Connor of New York.

“This pope comes along, and I tell you, not just this,” Limbaugh said. “This pope is left-wing politically active on things like climate change. The whole left-wing agenda, the whole liberal agenda, this pope articulates it, and this pope is doing what he can to intermingle his own personal political beliefs with church doctrine. I never thought I would see that. I mean, I know there are leftists and liberals all over every organization, I’m not being naive, but the church is the church. What it believes is what it believes. It doesn’t change because public opinion changes, and yet it is, at least this pope seems to be doing just that.”

The Wall Street Journal intimated that with his remarks, which the Vatican did not deny, Pope Francis had yet again astonished.

“It was an extreme yet telling example of how Pope Francis has shaken up perceptions of Catholic doctrine,” wrote Francis X. Rocca, “drawing widespread attention from the non-Catholic world and causing turmoil within the church.”

Rocca detailed Francis’s emphasis on social and economic issues, and his downplaying of sexual and medical ethics. “Part of Pope Francis’ strategy has been generally to play down the importance of formal teaching,” he wrote.

The Boston Globe interviewed Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft, who disbelieved Scalfari’s report that Francis had told him hell doesn’t exist.

“I doubt he said that because it’s heresy outright,” Kreeft said and explained the significance of the doctrine of hell.

“If there’s no hell, then heaven is no big deal,” he told the Globe. “If there’s no valley, the mountain isn’t very high. If it doesn’t exist, then ultimately we don’t have free will. … Scratch the doctrine of hell, and you find the possibility of free will underneath it.”

'Catastrophic for the Catholic Church'

Online newsmagazine Vox.com observed that the Vatican communications department was once again scrambling after a scandal regarding a doctored photo led its chief, Dario Vignanò, to resign.

Journalist Tara Isabella Burton wrote, “If the Pope indeed said those words [attributed to him by Scalfari], the consequences would be catastrophic for the Catholic Church, which — according to its own catechism — ‘affirms the teaching of hell and its eternity,’ including eternal fire,’ although it stresses that ‘The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God’.”

Remarking on Francis’ relationship with Scalfari, Burton said that the question of whether or not Francis denied the existence of hell was “subordinate to another question”: “Why does Francis repeatedly engage in interviews with Scalfari, only to later say Scalfari misquotes his words?”

If the answer is that he’s trying to change doctrine by stealth, then Pope Francis risks appearing insincere.

“By participating in a kind of bait and switch — putting forth potentially heretical ideas, then formally denying them — Francis leaves himself open to the charge of disingenuousness,” Barton wrote.

Gwynne Dyer of Canada’s Hamilton Spectator asserted that “of course” Pope Francis had denied the existence of hell, and that “the reason why is obvious.”

“It is very hard for a well-educated person of modern sensibilities to believe that a loving god would condemn any of the human beings he created to an eternity of physical torture and mental anguish,” Dyer wrote “That is not what loving human fathers do, even to children who disobey them, so the traditional notion of Hell is a permanent problem for many Catholic theologians.”

But acknowledging that that Annihilationism is a heresy in the Catholic Church, Dyer believes that Pope Francis has found a “practical” way of communicating his true beliefs without wasting the time he wants to direct to “other, more urgent changes”:

“Pope Francis is a practical man, and he chooses his battles carefully,” Dyer wrote. “Changing Catholic doctrine on Hell would be a long battle that consumed most of the energy within the Church that he would like to devote to other, more urgent changes. Yet he still cannot resist making his true views known (in a deniable way) by having these occasional conversations with Eugenio Scalfari.

In the United Kingdom, the Catholic Herald demanded, “Why on earth does Pope Francis still trust Eugenio Scalfari?” Journalist Christopher Altieri called upon Francis to “disown not only the precise verbiage Scalfari reported in his piece, but the ideas foisted upon him therein—at least the ones that are manifestly heretical.”

“The longer he does not,” Altieri continued, “the stronger the case becomes for believing he cannot.”

Deploring all previous episodes of “Scalfarism”, Altieri acknowledged that Francis’s continued conversation with the elderly journalist may stem from the pontiff’s wish to save the atheist’s soul. But even this charitable motive suggests that the Pope’s judgement is “appalling”.

“If the Pope’s solicitude for Scalfari’s soul is indeed so great, and Scalfari’s protestation of friendship sincere, then let Francis resign the office and go talk with his friend all day over vino burino and biscola,” Altieri concluded.

'Game being played'

In Italy, a Vatican insider named Antonio Socci claimed on his blog Il Straniero (“The Stranger”) that the Vatican’s half-hearted distancing of Francis from Scalfari’s article had been precipitated by a threat from a “non-Italian” Cardinal. According to Socci, this unnamed Cardinal told Francis directly that the heretical statements attributed to him were grounds for the pontiff’s dismissal. The OnePeterFive blog has a translation of this as yet unsubstantiated story.

Socci speculated that Pope Francis and Scalfari are at some “game” in these interviews.

There is thus a game being played by Scalfari and Bergoglio for over five years now, in which the Argentine pope consents to a sort of double Magisterial track. When he speaks to Catholics he expresses himself in a certain vague and theologically ambiguous way. He avoids explicit statements and thus little by little demolishes doctrine (the tactic of boiling frogs slowly).

Meanwhile, he speaks through Scalfari to the secular world, making known his true ideas, which are so totally modern, in order to build up his “revolution” and to have popularity among non-Catholics and the media. [emphasis in original]

Some journalists acknowledged that on other occasions Pope Francis has certainly warned of the danger of souls going to hell. Meanwhile, the Catechism of the Catholic Church unequivocally affirms the existence of hell and the immortality of the human soul.

It states, "The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, 'eternal fire.' The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs (1035).”

It continues, "The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of hell are a call to the responsibility incumbent upon man to make use of his freedom in view of his eternal destiny. They are at the same time an urgent call to conversion: 'Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”'

"Since we know neither the day nor the hour, we should follow the advice of the Lord and watch constantly so that, when the single course of our earthly life is completed, we may merit to enter with him into the marriage feast and be numbered among the blessed, and not, like the wicked and slothful servants, be ordered to depart into the eternal fire, into the outer darkness where 'men will weep and gnash their teeth’(1036)."

THE CHRISTIAN JOURNAL

Holy Cross defends professor who wrote book saying Jesus was a ‘transgender’ ‘drag king’

By Emily

April 5, 2018

In an earlier article, we discussed the pure blasphemy written by Catholic professor Tat siong Benny Liew in the book “Queering Closets and Perverting Desires: Cross-Examining John’s Engendering and Transgendering Word across Different Worlds.”

Liew teaches “New Testament” and “Sex, Money, Power, and Sacred Texts” for the Religious Studies department of Holy Cross College.

Students from the Catholic and Jesuit College of the Holy Cross are being taught by someone who subscribes to perversion that endorses homosexuality, eroticism, sado-masochism, incest, androgyny, and sexualizing the Word of God. To read exactly what Liew wrote, please see here.

A petition was posted on TFP Student Action which urged the Jesuit college to stop teaching “drag king” blasphemy against our Lord. Over 16,000 people agreed and signed the petition calling for professor Liews removal.

The Bishop of Worcester, Massachusetts, Reverend Robert J. McManus, published a statement in the local Catholic newspaper calling on Holly Cross to request Liew disavow his highly offensive statements.

Of Liew, Bishop McManus wrote that his writings “cast doubts on the male sexuality of Jesus Christ based on Professor Liew’s seriously flawed analysis of some texts of the Gospel of St. John. I am deeply troubled and concerned to hear that someone who holds an endowed chair in New Testament studies at the College of the Holy Cross has authored such highly offensive and blasphemous notions. Such positions have no place in the biblical scholarship of a professor who teaches at a Catholic college and who, as such, should be supportive of the college’s Catholic identity and mission.”

And of Father Boroughs, the bishop wrote, “Academic freedom certainly plays a critical role in the intellectual life of a Catholic institution of higher learning like Holy Cross. However, how that academic freedom is exercised, particularly in the fields of theology or religious studies, cannot provide cover for blatantly unorthodox teaching. Clearly, the biblical conclusions that Professor Liew has reached in his writings are both false and perverse.”

The bishop added, “Holy Cross has a duty to, at least, ask Professor Liew if he rejects the biblical positions he penned some 10 years ago or if he supports and defends those positions today. If he disavows them, then he must state so publicly, so as not to create confusion about the nature of Christ. If he does not, then it is my duty as the bishop of Worcester to clearly state that such teaching is a danger to the integrity of the Catholic faith and, in prudence, warn the Catholic faithful committed to my pastoral care that such unorthodox teaching has no place in a Catholic college whose mission is to promote and cultivate the Catholic intellectual tradition.”

Holy Cross is a Jesuit college and is not controlled by the Worcester diocese that Bishop McManus leads.

Although we have criticized the pope, the sexual immorality running rampant with Catholic leaders, and other idolatrous parts of the Catholic faith, Bishop McManus took a stand against such blasphemy, which is more action than anyone at the university took.

The dismissive institutional statement said the book was originally “meant to foster discussion among a small group of Biblical scholars exploring marginalization.”

And Reverend Philip L. Boroughs, the president at Holy Cross, said he disagreed with the book but, knows Professor Liew to be a “dedicated teacher and an engaged scholar,” and that “he is a man of faith.”

Professor Liew was defended by the university as they have dismissed the local bishop as well as the 16,000 people who petitioned for the professors removal, and plan to carry on without even asking the teacher to disavow his extremely offensive writings.

***

BBC

Snoop Dogg tops gospel chart

March 29, 2018

Snoop Dogg performed at BET's Gospel Celebration in February 2018

The legendary rapper Snoop Dogg has scored his first number one on the American Billboard gospel chart.

Going straight in at the top, Bible of Love is the 16th studio album from the rapper, real name Calvin Broadus.

It's a run that goes back 25 years to his number one album, Doggystyle, back in 1993.

The 32-track double album features guest spots from gospel artists like Erica Campbell, Marvin Sapp, Tye Tribbett and Charlie Wilson.

It also made it into the Billboard 200 chart where it came in at 148.

Speaking at the Essence Festival a few days before he hit number one, Snoop said he hoped to bring a bit of light with his new music.

"With all of the negativity happening in the world right now, I figured it was time to do something positive to bring people together," he said.

"I did my share of bringing dark moments. Now it's time to bring the light."

It's not the first time Snoop has left behind RnB and hip hop to score a hit in another genre.

In 2013 he started calling himself Snoop Lion and released a reggae album, Reincarnated.

***

MailOnline

We will all be forced to serve under an immortal robot DICTATOR whose power we can 'never escape', warns billionaire Elon Musk

• He made the comments in the new documentary Do You Trust This Computer?

• Musk warns that AI built by authoritarian governments could outlast individuals

• The warning comes shortly after Musk said that regulation of AI was drastically needed because it's a 'fundamental risk to the existence of human civilisation'

By ELLIE ZOLFAGHARIFARD FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 09:31, 6 April 2018 | UPDATED: 14:14, 6 April 2018

Elon Musk has famously compared AI to 'summoning the devil'.

Now the Tesla billionaire claims the technology could lead to the creation of immortal robot leaders from which humanity can never escape.

His comments were made in the new documentary 'Do You Trust This Computer?' by Chris Paine which premiered in Los Angeles last night.

Elon Musk has famously compared AI to 'summoning the devil'. Now the Tesla billionaire claims the technology could lead to the creation of immortal robot leaders from which humanity can never escape

The documentary explores the potential advantages and dangers of AI.

In it, an impassioned Musk talks about the nightmarish possibility that AI built by authoritarian governments could outlast individual leaders.

This, he say, will create a permanent structure of oppression.

We could create 'an immortal dictator from which we would never escape,' he claims.

According to Mashable, the billionaire felt so strongly about the dangers of AI that he has paid for the film to be free on YouTube this weekend.

'It's a very important subject,' he told a crowd Thursday night at the film's premiere in Los Angeles.

'It's going to affect our lives in ways we can't even imagine right now.'

The warning comes shortly after Musk outlined his dire prediction for AI in a talk to employees at one of his companies, Neuralink, according to Rolling Stone.

He said there is 'maybe a five to 10 per cent chance of success' if we went to war with robots.

He also made a warning in July that regulation of artificial intelligence is needed because it's a 'fundamental risk to the existence of human civilisation.'

The billionaire said regulations will stop humanity from being outsmarted by computers, or 'deep intelligence in the network', that can start wars by manipulating information.

Governments must have a better understanding of artificial intelligence technology's rapid evolution in order to fully comprehend the risks, he said.

'Once there is awareness, people will be extremely afraid, as they should be...By the time we are reactive in AI regulation, it'll be too late,' he added.

'Normally the way regulations are set up is when a bunch of bad things happen, there's a public outcry, and after many years a regulatory agency is set up to regulate that industry,' said Musk.

'It takes forever. That, in the past, has been bad but not something which represented a fundamental risk to the existence of civilisation.'

Pressed for more specific guidance, Musk said the first step is for government to get a better understanding of the fast-moving achievements in developing artificial intelligence technology.

Musk's comments come as AI experts warn a South Korean University is in the process of developing a secret robot army that could destroy humanity.

Top academics claim the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Kaist) is working with weapons manufacturer Hanwha Systems to develop the technology.

More than 50 leading academics from 30 different countries have now signed a letter boycotting the institution and expressing concern about its AI plans.

Calling it a 'Pandora's box', the experts believe AI and automated killing droids should not be used as weapons of war.

Experts are distressed at the possibility of AI robots being developed for malicious purposes and claim it could lead to a third revolution in warfare.

Jon Rappoport's Blog

Artificial embryo created – no egg, no sperm, no problem

by Jon Rappoport

March 29, 2018

Over the past 35 years, I’ve been showing how elements of the Brave New World are coming together.

Lately, I’ve been focusing on 5G wireless, the Internet of Things, gene-editing, and DNA-altering vaccines. We now have a very important piece of the puzzle: artificial embryos. A chilling prospect.

MIT Technology Review has the story: “In a breakthrough that redefines how life can be created, embryologists working at the University of Cambridge in the UK have grown realistic-looking mouse embryos using only stem cells. No egg. No sperm. Just cells plucked from another embryo.”

“The researchers placed the cells carefully in a three-dimensional scaffold and watched, fascinated, as they [the cells] started communicating and lining up into the distinctive bullet shape of a mouse embryo several days old.”

“’We know that stem cells are magical in their powerful potential of what they can do. We did not realize they could self-organize so beautifully or perfectly,’ Magdelena Zernicka¬-Goetz, who headed the team, told an interviewer at the time.”

Zernicka-Goetz says her ‘synthetic’ embryos probably couldn’t have grown into mice. Nonetheless, they’re a hint that soon we could have mammals born without an egg [or sperm] at all.”

“…The next step, she says, is to make an artificial embryo out of human stem cells, work that’s being pursued at the University of Michigan and Rockefeller University.”

“Synthetic human embryos would be a boon to scientists, letting them TEASE APART EVENTS early in development. And since such embryos start with easily manipulated stem cells, labs will be able to employ a full range of tools, such as GENE EDITING, to investigate them as they grow.” [Emphasis is mine.]

Do not doubt for a second that scientists will edit genes in these embryos, in order to see what fundamental changes they can make in human beings.

And do not doubt that, in a lab off the beaten track, researchers will try to bring a synthetic human embryo to term, as a living breathing baby.

The Technocrats’ Holy Grail? Engineered births without parents, without sex, without inherited traits—but instead, intentionally programmed traits.

In his 1932 novel, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley presented many portraits of the plan. For example:

By the time they were decanted the embryos had a horror of cold. They were predestined to emigrate to the tropics, to be miners and acetate silk spinners and steel workers. Later on their minds would be made to endorse the judgment of their bodies. ‘We condition them to thrive on heat,’ concluded Mr. Foster. ‘Our colleagues upstairs will teach [program] them to love it’.”

The underlying theme of the “new society”: create both the environment and the humans who inhabit the environment.

Technocracy is that system of systems. It cannot tolerate natural life or the free individual.

Which is why it must be rejected.

AMMC

WND

SCARY, HOT NEW DRUG CALLED ‘SPIRIT MOLECULE’

Johns Hopkins studies effects of DMT, including encounters with ‘autonomous beings’

April 6, 2018

WASHINGTON – It’s one of the most popular new hallucinogenic drugs being smoked by young people around the world, with many users reporting “spiritual encounters” with entities that sound a lot like demons.

And now, Johns Hopkins University is studying the alarming effects of DMT, or Dimethyltryptamine, asking volunteers who have taken the drug about encounters they may have had with “seemingly autonomous beings or entities.”

One researcher characterized DMT as a “spirit molecule.”

So bizarre are the effects that users have described crossing into another world and seeing “machine elves,” aliens or cartoon cats. One woman reported being swarmed by apparently alive Slinky toys.

The research team is headed by Roland Griffiths, a behavioral biologist with a history of studying psychedelic substances that produce “mystical-type and near-death experiences.”

DMT is a “tryptamine” molecule that occurs naturally in many plants and animals but has been synthesized since the 1930s. Users often smoke the substance and report almost immediate hallucinogenic effects.

One regular user, Terence McKenna, had this to say about the experience: “What arrests my attention is the fact that this space is inhabited. You break into this space and are immediately swarmed by squeaking, self-transforming elf-machines … made of light and grammar and sound that come chirping and squealing and tumbling toward you.”

Others have described interactions with non-human beings, describing them as “jokers,” clowns, aliens or “helpers.”

Neuroscientist Michelle Ross offered this account of her experience with the drug: “There were little cartoon cats going around, and ice cream cones. … It felt like I was with deceased, amazing and really important people. I was surrounded by people who were influential but cared about me and wanted me to be there and be safe. It was an oddly emotional feeling. It was very abstract.”

Another man reported: “There was this creature that was, like, dancing around me and it looked like the thing from ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas.’ As it danced around it would shape shift and spit out these colors.”

The National Survey on Drug Use and Health reports the number of people in the U.S. who have used DMT in some form is up every year since 2006 – from an estimated 688,000 in 2006 to 1,475,000 in 2012. The newest users, the global survey found, were more likely to be young, male and in school.

The cult film “Enter the Void” in 2009 and the 2010 documentary “DMT: The Spirit Molecule” are believed to have ignited popularity of the drug in recent years.

***

WND

GOVERNMENT SUCCESSFULLY TESTS HUMAN PLUG-IN MEMORY

Volunteers demonstrated up to 37% improvement

April 1, 2018

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is declaring success in its work to develop a “fully implantable, closed-loop neural interface capable of restoring normal memory function” for military personnel who suffer brain injuries, reports Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

“Volunteers in the study demonstrated up to 37 percent improvement in short-term, working memory over baseline levels,” according to the agency.

It launched the “Restoring Active Memory” effort in 2013. The goal was an implantable interface for brain injured people, not just military, but anyone affected by Alzheimer’s and other causes.

“RAM researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and the University of Southern California published in the Journal of Neural Engineering that they have demonstrated the first successful implementation in humans of a proof-of-concept system for restoring memory function by facilitating memory encoding using the patient’s own neural codes,” DARPA said.

Justin Sanchez, the program manager, said the “cumulative investments in neurotechnology over the past two decades have brought us to an extremely exciting point today where we’re testing tangible technologies that have the potential to alleviate some of the worst effects of brain injury and illness.”

The project has dealt mainly with episodic memory, the collection of past personal experiences that occurred at a particular time and place, such as where a car is parked or what was on the dinner plate late night.

Alzheimer’s affects this memory, as do brain injuries.

Researchers focused their study on the hippocampus, a region of the brain that is central to memory formation, and its sub-regions that “together to support memory encoding and retrieval.”

***

RT

China can succeed with petro-yuan where Gaddafi failed – killing the US dollar in oil trade

March 31, 2018

Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi attends a celebration of the 40th anniversary of his coming to power at the Green Square in Tripoli September 1, 2009. © Zohra Bensemra / Reuters

Muammar Gaddafi wanted to shatter the dominance of the greenback in the Middle East by introducing gold-backed dinar, but failed. China has a chance to finish what he started, one industry expert has told RT.

“Ideas related to oil trade in currencies other than the dollar arose more than once. Some of them were severely suppressed by the United States, one example is Muammar Gaddafi, who proposed the introduction of a regional currency gold dinar and trading oil in the Middle East in this currency,” Aleksandr Egorov, foreign exchange strategist at TeleTrade, told RT.

However, this time, an attempt to oust the dollar could be successful. China has launched oil futures backed by yuan, and Beijing has what Gaddafi didn’t, according to the expert.

“Along with the Chinese role in the global economy and the growing interest in the renminbi, China is also protected by a nuclear shield. It can afford to try to shatter the monopoly in oil trade. This will give even more weight to the Chinese yuan. In addition, China's economy is the world's largest consumer of oil, and consequently, all world producers of raw materials will have to reckon with the strategy of the Chinese authorities,” Egorov said.

According to the analyst, the timing for the launch of the petro-yuan is perfect. Key oil producers Russia, Iran and Venezuela are under pressure from US sanctions, and it is a good moment for them to ditch the dollar in oil trade and substitute it with the yuan.

Mikhail Mashchenko, an analyst at social network for investors eToro, agrees. “From the point of view of Russia's geopolitics, it is certainly beneficial to reduce the role of the dollar in foreign trade. And it has been done, let’s recall the record growth of the country's gold reserves. The other states that are constantly under the threat of new sanctions, like Iran and Venezuela, can profit, too. The contracts in RMB will allow to trade oil without US approval,”he told RT.

Both analysts agree that it will take time before the petro-yuan can become a real threat to the dollar. China needs to win the support of the world's largest oil producers Russia and Saudi Arabia, or the initiative is doomed, says Mashchenko. He added that the yuan is fully controlled by Beijing, which could also spook potential investors.

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ASIA TIMES

Crown Prince’s overture to Syria’s Bashar while in the US

Saudi leader dropped a bombshell on the weekend, saying that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad is not going to be ousted from power; it was a stunning reversal of their 'regime change' plan for Damascus

By M.K. BHADRAKUMAR

April 1, 2018

US President Donald Trump wants to get out of Syria 'very soon' but Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is anxious for US troops to remain. The two leaders met at the White House in Washington on March 20, 2018. Photo: Reuters/ Jonathan Ernst
The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman dropped a bombshell in the course of a weekend interview with Time magazine that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad is not going to be ousted from power. He said, “Bashar is staying. But I believe Bashar’s interest is not to let the Iranians do whatever they want to do.”

This remark by the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia is a stunning reversal of Riyadh’s policies in Syria hinged on “regime change” in Damascus. One can call it an admission of defeat. But then, there is always the tantalizing possibility of sub-plots in politics and this could be one such situation of sub-plots gaining ascendance.

MBS, 32, remains an enigma wrapped in mystery. Some say he’s a great reformer while others call him an impetuous practitioner of coercive politics. Indeed, the two personality traits needn’t be contradictory necessarily, as history shows.

What cannot be overlooked is that MBS belongs to a new generation, which is acutely conscious of the Kingdom acquiring the skills of “soft power”. Soft power traditionally meant money power in the Saudi political lexicon. But things are changing.

Bid to win friends and influence

No Saudi ruler ever before launched such a media blitzkrieg as a curtain raiser to visits to the UK and the US. The Saudi public diplomacy used to be brash, but today there is an earnest attempt to win friends and influence people. And these are early days for MBS’s rule.

Put differently, Saudi diplomacy is transitioning. Thus, while on a visit to the US, MBS announces on the one hand that Saudi Arabia and Russia (read MBS and Vladimir Putin) – have agreed on a long-term energy alliance, while on the other hand, effectively signaling that he is ready to do business with Bashar.

Evidently, MBS is thinking through the Saudi predicament. Stable, high oil prices are achievable only with Russia’s cooperation and such a convergence simply doesn’t exist with the US – although the petrodollar is the life-blood of the American economy and US-led international financial system.

MBS has just announced that the curtain is coming down on the 70-year-old “oil-for-security” pact between Saudi Arabia and the US agreed upon by Franklin Roosevelt and King Abdulaziz, founder of the Saudi Kingdom, in 1946 on the banks of the Nile.

Curiously, in a journey that took a quarter of a century, China chose just this past week to open its own oil futures on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange in contracts that will be denominated in yuan rather than US dollars, and where a futures contract is based on a basket of medium and heavy crudes that closely resembles grades that China imports in significant volumes from Saudi Arabia and Russia. The cacophony over the Skripal spy case should not detract the profound strategic implications of the Saudi-Russian oil alliance that MBS announced.

Saudis at odds with Trump on Syria

Again, MBS chose to speak of the dramatic shift in the Saudi policy toward Syria while he is still on American soil. Importantly, he spoke soon after meeting President Donald Trump in the White House on March 20 and discussing Syria with Defence Secretary James Mattis.

Even more importantly, MBS’s interview with Time followed just hours after Trump told a cheering crowd in Richfield, Ohio on Thursday, “We’re coming out of Syria very soon. Let the other people take care of it now, very soon. Very soon, we’re coming out.”

MBS, nonetheless, disagrees: “We believe American troops should stay for at least the mid-term, if not the long-term.” He told Time that the American troop presence inside Syria was the last effort stopping Iran from continuing to expand influence with regional allies, besides allowing Washington to have a say in Syria’s future.

But how far his sage advice will influence Trump is in serious doubt. In fact, after Trump spoke, news trickled in that two US military personnel were killed and five others wounded in the northeastern Syrian town of Manjib in a bomb attack on Thursday. On Friday, the White House provided an official transcript of Trump’s getting out “very-soon” remarks in Ohio.

On Saturday, reports appeared that Trump has separately ordered this week a hold on more than $200 million in recovery funds for Syria earmarked for basic infrastructure projects, such as restoring power and water and rebuilding roads, demanding more information on how the money would be used and also seeking that other countries step up to the plate and pay more.

CBS News reported that the decision was relayed to the State Department on Friday in a call that White House chief of staff John Kelly made to Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan. To be sure, MBS is astute enough to know that recent changes in the State Department and White House National Security Council significantly enables Trump to force his will on the Administration’s Syria policies.

MBS is reportedly set to visit Baghdad and Najaf very soon. A Saudi consulate may open in Najaf, the holy center of (Iraqi) Shi’ism. Following Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s two visits to Saudi Arabia last year, the rapprochement between the two countries rapidly gained traction, especially in the economic field.

Similarly, MBS prefers to put Saudi money where the mouth is – in Damascus – rather than fund the Pentagon commanders’ fanciful infrastructure projects in power and water or rebuilding roads on a remote patch of land in the middle of nowhere along the western banks of the Euphrates.

MBS sees that the “regime change” agenda in Syria has exhausted itself. Make no mistake, he hinted at doing business with Bashar. After all, Bashar is no stranger to the Saudi royals.

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MailOnline

Mark Zuckerberg admits Facebook scans the contents of ALL your private Messenger texts in the latest blow to the scandal hit firm

• Facebook checks messages to ensure they are in line with community standards

• Zuckerberg confirmed the policy of scanning texts during a podcast interview

• It sparked further privacy concerns in the wake of Cambridge Analytica scandal

• The consulting firm bought data from 50 million unsuspecting Facebook users

By Tim Collins For Mailonline

PUBLISHED: 18:29, 4 April 2018 | UPDATED: 05:22, 5 April 2018

Mark Zuckerberg, pictured here in July 2017, has admitted Facebook scans the contents of messages that people send each other on its Messenger app blocking any that contravene its guidelines
Facebook scans the contents of messages that people send each other on its Messenger app blocking any that contravene its guidelines, it has emerged.

The scandal-hit firm, still reeling from revelations surrounding Cambridge Analytica, checks images and texts to ensure they are in line with its community standards.

While the intentions behind the practice may be well-meaning, the news is likely to add to users' concerns over what the social network knows about them.

It follows revelations that the Trump-affiliated consulting firm obtained data on at least 50 million unsuspecting Facebook users.

This information was used to target voters in the US, based on psychological profiling, with political adverts spreading disinformation.

Facebook is also facing criticism for collecting years of data on call and text histories from Android users.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the policy during a podcast interview with Vox's editor at large, Ezra Klein.

Zuckerberg told his host a story about receiving a phone call from staff at his Mountain View firm.

He was informed that their systems had blocked attempts to send sensational Messenger instant messages about ethnic cleansing in Myanmar.

About the experience, the 33-year-old billionaire said: 'In that case, our systems detect what’s going on.

'We stop those messages from going through.'

The news has been met with mixed reactions on social media, with a number of users expressing concern.

Messenger says that it doesn’t use data from messages it has scanned for the purposes of advertising, according to reports in Bloomberg.

The company told the website that it uses the same tools to prevent abuse in messages that are in place across Facebook as a whole.

Users are able to flag posts or messages that they feel are in violation of the site's house rules.

This will either cause one of the social network's community operations team to manually review the content, or automated systems can also make decisions.

'For example, on Messenger, when you send a photo, our automated systems scan it using photo matching technology to detect known child exploitation imagery or when you send a link, we scan it for malware or viruses,' a Facebook Messenger spokeswoman said in a statement. 

'Facebook designed these automated tools so we can rapidly stop abusive behaviour on our platform.'

But that is likely to be of little comfort in the current climate, with privacy at the forefront of many Facebook user's minds.

One Twitter user, Kevin Chastain, claims to have experienced Messenger texts being used to target advertising, tweeting: 'So I was messaging my wife about dinner tonight mentioned a particular place on Facebook messenger and then opened up Facebook about to see an ad for that restaurant.

'Tell me they aren’t in on every convo I have. Scary!'

Zuckerberg took out full-page adverts in nine major US and British newspapers in late March to apologise for the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

In the ads, the Facebook founder vowed to clamp down on allowing third parties access to data which can be sold on.

The ads, done in simple black text against a plain white background, were headlined: 'We have a responsibility to protect your information. If we can't, we don't deserve it.'

'You may have heard about a quiz app built by a university researcher that leaked Facebook data of millions of people in 2014,' the apology begins.

'This was a breach of trust, and I'm sorry we didn't do more at the time. We're now taking steps to make sure this doesn't happen again.'

'We've already stopped apps like this from getting so much information. Now we're limiting the data apps get when you sign in using Facebook.'

'We're also investigating every single app that had access to large amounts of data before we fixed this. We expect there are others. And when we find them, we will ban them and tell everyone affected.'

'Finally, we'll remind you which apps you've given access to your information - so you can shut off the ones you don't want anymore.'

'Thank you for believing in this community. I promise to do better for you.'

The apology was formally signed off by the Facebook chief.

The Facebook data scandal deepened after users found the social network had harvested information including call logs and text messages.

Some users discovered the firm had been storing complete logs of incoming and outgoing calls and text messages.

Others reported that data such as contacts in their address books, social events in their calendars and even friends' birthdays had been stored.

One user, Dylan McKay, reported that from October 2016 to July 2017 his logs contained 'the data of every [mobile] call I've made, including time and duration' and 'data about every text message I've received or sent'.

Rather than delete an account entirely, the social media site encourages people to 'deactivate' their profile as this leaves all personal data on its servers.

However, when users request to permanently delete their accounts, the site suggests: 'You may want to download a copy of your info from Facebook.'

Emma Kennedy tweeted that she had found that Facebook had recorded 'every single phone number in my contacts.

'They had every single social event I went to, a list of all my friends and their birthdays, and a list of every text I've sent'

'They have plundered my phone. They have phone numbers of people who aren’t on Facebook. They have phone numbers of household names who, I’m sure, would be furious to know their phone numbers are accessible. I’m appalled.'

A Facebook spokesman said: 'The first time you sign in on your phone to a messaging or social app, it's a widely used practice to begin by uploading your phone contacts.

'Contact uploading is optional. People are expressly asked if they want to give permission to upload their contacts from their phone – it's explained right there in the apps when you get started.

'People can delete previously uploaded information at any time and can find all the information available to them in their account and activity log from our Download Your Information tool.'

The company says an opt-out for uploading contacts is available and users can delete all uploaded contacts by turning off the continuous uploading setting in Facebook's Messenger app.

All previously uploaded contacts are deleted when a user permanently removes their profile. Contacts will also no longer continue to be uploaded.

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Mirror

Terrifying robot SPIDER can roll up into a ball and somersault towards you

The robot, dubbed BionicWheelBot, is inspired by the flic-flac spider - a species discovered in the Erg Chebbi desert on the edge of the Sahara in 2008

By Shivali Best

March 30, 2018

If you’re not a fan of spiders, you may want to look away now.

Scientists from Festo have designed a robotic spider that can walk or roll up into a ball and somersault.The robot, dubbed BionicWheelBot, is inspired by the flic-flac spider - a species discovered in the Erg Chebbi desert on the edge of the Sahara in 2008.

The flic-flac spider can walk like other spiders, but can also also propel itself into the air, with a combined sequence of somersaulting and rolling on the ground.

This unique movement makes the flic-flac spider ideally adapted to its surroundings.

On even ground, the spider is twice as fast in rolling mode than when walking, while on uneven surfaces, it is faster walking normally.

This means that in the desert, where both types of terrain can be found, the spider can move safely and efficiently.

Like the flic-flac spider, the BionicWheelBot can adjust its movement based on its terrain.

To roll, the BionicWheelBot bends three legs each on the left and right of its body to make a wheel.

Two legs then extend, push the rolled-up spider off the ground, and continuously push it forward whilst rolling.

This stops the BionicWheelBot from grinding to a halt and ensures that it can move itself forward even on rough terrain.

Meanwhile in walking mode, the robot uses all six legs, with the other two folded up.

It is unclear whether Festo plans to sell the BionicWheelBot in the future.

View video

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View video

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i

CNN

A barber soothes a child with autism by singing -- and finds a new purpose

By Ashley Vaughan, CNN

March 30, 2018

(CNN)Clippers buzzing, scissors clinking, men talking loudly in the talcum-scented air. It's a comforting barbershop cacophony for most of the clients.

But for Jordie Rowland, it's an assault on the senses. He has autism and his cries pierced through the other noises in the Brisbane, Australia, barbershop.

"You could hear his distress before you saw him," barber Lisa Ann McKenzie told CNN.

Then, after two hard years of trying, the flailing child who couldn't sit through a haircut calmed down when the barber sang his favorite song -- "The Wheels on the Bus."

With that breakthrough earlier this month, McKenzie emerged with a new purpose: a day at her shop reserved just for kids with special needs.

Thrashing in the chair

Jordie Rowland, 11, has a severe form of autism. He is nonverbal and prone to sensory overload.

"At the very start, we would be lucky to get a half haircut done," McKenzie said.

She felt helpless against a condition she didn't understand.

"It was so disheartening. It was just pulling my heart out," she said.

McKenzie, herself a mother of four, read up on sensory sensitivity and autism. She learned how important routine is for many people with autism and she set up a plan.

A quieter cut

Every two weeks, Jordie and his parents arrived at the barbershop near closing time when things were quieter. McKenzie dimmed the lights and turned down the music.

"We weren't sure what would work but I felt it would decrease the sensory issues," she said.

McKenzie attempted to cut Jordie's hair for as long as he allowed it.

"We would do a quarter," she said. "It was four weeks before it looked like a normal haircut."

The new routine was a slight improvement for Jordie, but not for McKenzie's bosses. They reprimanded her for spending too much time on the boy, she said.

"They wanted us to stick with five haircuts an hour."

They also rebuked her for not charging Jordie's parents, she said.

"I wouldn't charge because it wasn't a haircut," she said.

A new shop, a big change

Three weeks later, the persistent barber opened her very own barber shop with plans for Jordie to be one of her first clients.

She says the first time he arrived, she allowed him to walk around and explore, which made him more comfortable.

This time when Jordie approached his haircut, he was calmer.

"We got three-quarters of the way through," McKenzie said.

One day as McKenzie attempted to cut Jordie's hair, she sensed he was becoming anxious. Without thinking, she started singing, "The Wheels on the Bus."

"I sing to all the kids when using the clippers so the noise of the clippers doesn't scare them," McKenzie said.

But she had never sang that song to Jordie.

"He looked straight at me. It's hard to describe but I felt like my heart exploded," she said.

Jordie allowed her to finish the haircut, complete with styling gel.

"I even got a big hug."

That day McKenzie left her shop with a new goal: to make families like the Rowlands feel safe and understood.

"She has been a great support to us in our journey with his haircuts," Jordie's mother told CNN.

The child whisperer

One Sunday a month, McKenzie offers "Sensory Sensitive Sunday Sessions" for children with special needs.

"You don't have to force the customers to sit in the chair -- it doesn't matter," McKenzie said.

She, and the five other barbers in her shop, are willing to cut hair on the floor or while the child is playing with toys.

She encourages barbers to make a connection with their clients before beginning the cut.

"The haircut will get better once the connection is stronger," McKenzie said.

Some of McKenzie's customers travel hours to experience her special touch.

The barber, who's also known as the "child whisperer," tries to make every one of them feel at home.

"We are a family," she said.

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HERTFORDSHIRE MERCURY

Hero schoolchildren who saved man trying to jump off bridge over A10 in Waltham Cross set for national awards

These five heroes are getting very well deserved awards

By

Narbeh Minassian

March 27, 2018

Shawn, Devonte and Sammy are being recognised for their heroics

Three heroic schoolchildren who refused to let go of a man trying to jump off a bridge and saved his life are set to be presented with national awards.

Devonte Cafferkey, 13, and Sammy Farah, 14, rushed to grab a man sitting with a rope around his neck on the edge of an A10 overpass in Waltham Cross on September 21 last year.

The boys were helped by 47-year-old Joanne Stammers, who is registered disabled with Klippel–Trénaunay syndrome, a rare disability that makes her highly prone to blood clotting.

Despite her condition, which prevents her from working, Joanne took over from the boys and held onto the man "for what feels like forever" and was left with bruising all over her arms.

Another man, James Higlett, did his part in saving the man’s life. All five will receive awards from the Royal Humane Society, a charity promoting life-saving intervention.

Shawn’s mum, Carol, has been amazed at the boys’ maturity and said they have “just got on with it” since their life-saving efforts..

She said: “I am extremely proud of all three of them, they are all good boys and it’s nice that they are getting recognised for doing something good in the community.

“Quite often in the national news there are a lot of negative reports about young people so it is nice to have something positive.

“They are very young and I marvel at how they are all dealing with it. Every time I speak to them I learn something new about what happened.

“For example, the man was passing out and got heavier for them, I didn’t know that until recently.”

Jacqueline Cafferkey, Devonte's mum, found out the good news a couple of weeks ago and described it as a “huge achievement”.

The three children, who go to St Mary’s High School, picked up Special Achievement Awards at the Broxbourne Youth Awards for their bravery.

Joanne described the award as a “great honour” and said she is still in touch with Jacqueline.

“It’s amazing to get this award, it’s obviously under sad circumstances but it’s also great that the kids are getting something for what they did,” she said.

“I am really pleased for them and I hope other children can see it’s worth stopping to help someone.”

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(José Manuel Suárez/Wikimedia Commons)

Science alert

Water Behaves Differently From All Other Liquids, And We Finally Know Why

The Universe is so amazing.

MICHELLE STARR

2 APR 2018

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Yaletown Naturopathic Clinic

Quantum Physics, Biology and Healing

Written By: Dr. Adam McLeod, ND

Although quantum physics and biology are often seen as two distinct and unrelated fields, there is actually a significant overlap of these fields which has profound implications in biology. In molecular biology we tend to focus on the physical interactions between molecules and these pathways are described in a lock and key model. In other words, the shape of one molecule is such that it is able to physically interact with a receptor and trigger a metabolic pathway. From the biology perspective we tend to disregard any other interaction as noise. Therefore if the molecule is not present then there will be no stimulation of the pathway.

On an intuitive level this makes sense, a stimulus is necessary for a pathway to become active. However, this reductionist view point is simply insufficient when quantum physics is taken into account and these are not incompatible theories! My background is in molecular biology and biochemistry and I am by no means an expert in quantum physics however these basic experiments provide intriguing information that clearly applies to biology.

Every molecule has properties of both waves and particles. This is best characterized by the famous double slit experiment.

If each electron is sent individually and if it is sent as a particle you would expect it to show a distinct pattern forming only 2 bands. If it is a particle going in a direct path there should be no interference pattern and it should form two distinct bands because it only has two possible paths.

If it was a wave then we would expect some waves to interfere with each other and others to add together. This is best visualized by looking at how you would expect a wave to behave in the double slit experiment and this is exactly how you would expect a ripple in a pond to behave.

The only explanation for why the wave pattern would be observed is that the electron is actually acting as a wave. These means that they are not fixed as wave or particles, they actually have characteristics of both. To better understand this concept I would highly recommend watching this brief video clip which effectively demonstrates how this experiment works.

We know this applies to small molecules and subatomic particles but what many people do not realize is that this also applies to larger molecules as well. Under the correct experimental conditions it is possible to get a molecule called a bucky ball to behave like a wave and demonstrate the exact same interference pattern on a double slit experiment. This is a huge molecule and it is much smaller than many compounds used in chemical signalling.

Think about how profound that is for a moment. A molecule this size is able to spontaneously change back and forth between being a wave and a particle. This implies that some of the most critical signalling compounds in your cells can spontaneously disappear and reappear. How you (“the observer”) choose perceive the particle influences its behaviour. No matter how you look at this information, what is clear is that biology has suddenly become much more complicated and this is a realm of science that has barely been explored.

What is particularly interesting about these experiments that investigate quantum physics is that the simple act of observing the experiment influences the results. In other words if you try to observe the particle it will act like a particle, in the absence of observation it tends to act more as a wave. This implies that we have much more of an influence on these biological pathways than previously thought. There is no reason to think that we would not have such an influence on much physically smaller but vitally important chemical signals in the body. Even if you argue that only a incredibly small fraction are influenced (for example 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000 molecules) this is still a massive number that has profound implications with our health. This is a new concept that has barely been explored by the medical community as quantum physics and biology tend to remain distant fields of study despite these obvious connections.

In my practice as a Naturopathic doctor I work exclusively with oncology patients and I have always believed that spontaneous remissions and incredible responses to therapy are connected in some way to the patients energy. When we look at the this exciting field of quantum biology, it brings us one step closer to unveiling the mechanism of action for these cases previously described as miracles in the literature.

Dr. Adam McLeod is a Naturopathic Doctor (ND), BSc. (Hon) Molecular biology, Motivational Speaker and International Best Selling Author. He currently practices in Vancouver, British Columbia where he focuses on integrative oncology.

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Until next week...keep on believing.
Almondtree Productions

“Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.”
(Mark 9:23)