WND

PASTOR, AUTHOR DISHES DETAILS ON BIBLICAL PROPHECY

'I can see happening' what Scriptures say must happen

Published: March 19, 2016

War, genocide and chaos are constants throughout human history. Millions of Christians over the centuries have believed, wrongly, they are living in the end times. So why should Christians think today is any different?

Pastor and author Carl Gallups addressed this challenge in a recent appearance on the television program “Jewish Voice with Jonathan Bernis.” Gallups argued those walking the Earth today are in a truly unprecedented period of human history.

“We are the only and the first generation in global history, in 2,000 years, to see the return of Israel to the land,” Gallups said “That’s a 2,500, 2,600-year-old prophecy. An end times prophecy, a last days prophecy. I’m not a date-setter. I’m not an alarmist. I’m a teacher and preacher of the Word, and I’m a student of history and a student of current events. And I can see what the Scriptures say must happen, and I can see what’s happening.”

The author of “Be Thou Prepared” and other books said several unprecedented occurrences should make the church stand up and take notice.

First, he observed: “You’ve got Israel returning to the land in 1948. And people say: ‘Well, that’s ancient history.’ Really? It’s been less than 70 years! … It’s a flash!”

Second, Gallups said: “Jerusalem is back in the hands of a returned Israel. We’re the first generation to see those two things. The only generation.”

Third, Gallups argued: “We’re the only generation to see the Ezekiel 38 alignment of nations taking place before our eyes. My goodness, Russia and China are in the Middle East, putting their militaries together, on the Euphrates River. ISIS has broken out. Iran, Persia, is making compacts and alignments with Russia. Turkey has become Islamized. These are all prophecies, either very direct in the Scriptures or indirect.”

Host Jonathan Bernis concurred with Gallups’ analysis, marveling at how so many Christians seem complacent in spite of everything happening in the Middle East.

He compared the attitude of contemporary Christians to that of a frog placed in a pot of water that is gradually heated.

“When you look at the way everything aligns, it’s so obvious and yet it’s been so gradual in some ways, and now the water’s beginning to boil,” said Bernis.

Gallups warned Christians not to have a closed-minded view of the prophecy, warning such blindness is what doomed the Pharisees.

"These were the people who were the teachers of Israel, the handlers of the Word, they were the handlers of the prophecies," the pastor explained. "And yet, in the name of God, in the city of God, just outside of the Temple of God, they nailed the Son of God to a cross and proclaimed they were doing God a favor. They had a boxed in view of eschatology and said: 'This is how God has to do it, this is what Messiah will look like, this is what we believe and you don't fit it. Therefore, you are a heretic and we're going to do God a favor and be rid of you.' And they missed it entirely! And that's why I'm saying to the church in America, 'Please let's don't do this.'"

As Gallups observed, in the Bible, life went on as normal for most people right up until the moment of the Great Flood. The temptation, said the pastor, is to believe nothing has really changed.

But Gallups said: "Israel hasn't always been here. Jerusalem hasn't always belonged to a returned Israel. The alignment of the nations has not always been here. China and Russia and Iran have not always been in the Middle East. The Euphrates has not always been alive and exploding with persecution and butchery of Christians and Jews. The hatred towards this returned Israel is at a peak. The hatred at the things of Christ and the things of God is at a peak."

Gallups calls the gradual convergence of signs and events in alignment with prophecy the "progressive revelation principle." He told Bernis that Christians should look beyond the borders of the United States and carefully observe how closely international events are aligning with prophecy.

"The Scriptures, especially end times prophecies, are to be interpreted Middle Eastern first," said Gallups. "In America we think everything needs to be centered on what's happening in America. What's happening in America is Starbucks is opening and there's an NFL football game on TV, so all is right with the world. But that's wrong! All is not right with the world. We look at the Middle East; Christianity is being exterminated. Entire Christian communities, and towns and cities. Eliminated."

However, Gallups argued American Christians may not be isolated from persecution and danger for much longer. He sees the opening stages of Christian persecution in Europe and the United States. And he warns God has never promised Western Christians an easy life.

"We've been steeped in peace and prosperity," said Gallups. "We kind of came to this entitlement mentality, this feeling of we are entitled to the way things are. And I think people think it's going to be this way forever. And I don't see that in the Scriptures. I'm not a gloom and doom prophet, or Chicken Little here. But we're living in prophetic times, so let's just prepare for that, mentally and spiritually, physically and tangibly."

Gallups' book "Be Thou Prepared" is a practical guide for both Christian families and congregations to prepare for persecution, natural disasters and economic instability. But Gallups argues many Christians are misinterpreting what it means to be prepared for trouble. It's not just about survival, he told Bernis. It's about ministry.

"Let's prepare not to go hide in the woods under a log somewhere, but let's prepare so that when disaster or tough times come, we minister to the love of Christ around us," Gallups said.

"After all, that's what the first century church had to do," he concluded.

***

(Before deciding to publish the above video we sent out a link to a few people we know whom we thought may be able to shed more light on the claims made in the video. The following, from Jeff, was one of the responses we received back. We suggested he write the authors of the video with his commentaries to get their reaction.)

“Robert,

Thanks for the link. Yes, this is very interesting. The first part is very well done and I think it might even be better than "The Star of Bethlehem" video (http://www.bethlehemstar.com) in that it has more detail and does not try to prove the star "stopped" over Bethlehem because the wise men were north of Bethlehem when they saw it go retrograde.

The latter part of the video is scary in it's interpretation. However there are few things that I could not find corroborated with any other evidence, so I'm not sure where they got their information from.

The point about Sagittarius representing the Antichrist is very hard to believe. I've studied a bit about the Mazzaroth for my Revelation studies and neither Sagittarius nor it's stars are ever mentioned as representing or even relating to the antichrist or the devil. Saturn, maybe, but it's Hebrew name simply meant "slow" because it was the slowest of the wanderers. In modern astrology it's considered to slow things down or minimize whatever the constellation that's in represents. So, maybe, hinderer? It's usually called the "Teacher" because lessons are supposed to be learned.

Also, I didn't understand what it meant about Saturn entering Sagittarius around 2017. I guess I need to watch it a few more times.

Saturn is leaving Sagittarius in late 2017. It's been in Sagittarius for the past three years already. Because of the retrograde motions it will move in and out roughly between September 17 to December 20 in 2017.

The last few times Saturn (the Teacher, the one who slows things down to make them more responsible) was in Sagittarius (which is the sign of good fortune, real estate, and deep, open (and even bold) thought like philosophy, higher education, organized religion, and what people learn from long distance travel) there were major lessons in those areas.

Just thought those details in the video were a little unclear. There may be more there than they realize.

Thanks,
Jeff”

***

WND

THE DEATH OF EUROPE

Exclusive: Theodore Roosevelt Malloch explains results of rejecting transcendent truths

THEODORE ROOSEVELT MALLOCH

Published: March 29, 2016

I readily admit to being a Eurocentric Europhile.

Please bear with me as I detail some personal history to establish the background for why I make this statement.

My family roots are in Scotland, Holland and Germany, and my entire education, faith and upbringing, while quintessentially American, are deeply rooted in the European experience. My faith is founded in the Protestant Reformation that shook Europe 500 years ago.

• I spent nine formative summers teaching and touring throughout all of Europe while I was in graduate school and as a young professor.

• I still recall with wild enthusiasm my first trip to Europe in 1972 at age 19. I studied and took degrees and have lectured at European universities. I was a Deutches Austauschendienst at Kiel Universitat and was made an honorary member of the Christian Democratic Party of the Netherlands as early as 1979.

• I was president of the four ancient Scottish universities trusts in the United States. I wrote a doctoral dissertation largely about European ideas – in politics, philosophy and economics.

• I lived four years in Geneva, Switzerland, in an ambassadorial post in the U.N. in the late ’80s until 1992 when European history shifted and the Cold War ended. I had a front-row seat as deputy executive secretary of the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe. I was an executive board member of the World Economic Forum, which started as the European Management Forum for CEOs.

• I was actually present at the Berlin Wall just days after it came down. My friends in Eastern Europe, the radical economists, all became leading figures – ministers, central bankers and prime ministers in their respective countries after the fall of the Soviet Union.

• I was an advisor to the Polish government during its shock therapy and privatization. I speak several European languages, regularly read European books, magazines and newspapers and have been a firm supporter of the so-called Atlantic Alliance my entire life.

To steal a line from President Kennedy, “Ich bin ein Europaisch.”

So, it is with a deep sense of disappointment and true sadness that I have to say what I am about to say.

Adrift without a soul

Europe’s churches are empty. Mass on Sundays, in any Gothic cathedral, is virtually unattended, except for a handful of tourists, vacant. The actual celebration of Mass is typically conducted in a side chapel, fit for the dozen or so worshipers who show up for service.

Europe is adrift without a soul and evolving rapidly away from its moorings.

In his book,” The Cube and the Cathedral,” George Weigel described a European culture that has become not only increasingly secular but in many cases downright hostile to Christianity.

The cathedral in his title is Notre Dame, now overshadowed in cultural importance by the Arc de la Defense, the ultra modernist “cube” that dominates an office complex outside Paris.

“European man has convinced himself that in order to be modern and free, he must be radically secular,” Weigel writes. “That conviction and its public consequences are at the root of Europe’s contemporary crisis of civilizational morale.”

Recall the rancorous debate over whether or not “Christianity” should be explicitly acknowledged when drafting the European Union’s constitutional treaty.

By the time the draft constitution was completed, a grudging reference to “the cultural, religious, and humanist inheritance of Europe” had been shoehorned into the preamble’s first clause. This was about as much religion as Europe could stomach in a constitution that runs some 70,000 words.

Practicing Christianity in Europe today enjoys a status not dissimilar to closet status reserved for smoking marijuana or engaging in unorthodox sexual activities decades ago. Few Europeans will mind if you do so in private, but please have the courtesy to keep the matter private.

Today Christianity in the EU is considered at best a retrograde and largely atavistic practice barely tolerated in a self-described “progressive” society devoted to obtaining the good material life, including long holidays, short work hours and generous government benefits.

Dare we ask what is the deeper source of European antipathy to religion?

The problem goes all the way back to the 14th century, when scholastics like William of Ockham argued for “nominalism.” According to their philosophy, universals – concepts such as “justice” or “freedom” and qualities such as “good” – do not exist in the abstract but are merely words that denote instances of what they describe. A current of thought was set into motion, Weigel among others believes, that pulled European man away from transcendent truths. One casualty was any fixed idea of human nature.

If there is no such thing as human nature, then there are no universal moral principles that can be read from human nature. If there are no universal moral truth, then religion, positing them, is merely a form of oppression or myth, one from which Europe’s elites see themselves as now liberated. And they look down on their American and Third World cousins who continue to believe in such irrational flights of fancy.

I think the critics are on firm ground when they analyze Europe’s present condition, with its low birth rates, heavy government debts, Muslim immigration worries and tendency to carp from the sidelines when the fate of nations is at stake. Like Weigel, one could sketch the worst-case scenario – the “bitter end” – for a Europe that is religiously bereft, demographically moribund and morally without a compass: “The muezzin summons the faithful to prayer from the central loggia of St. Peter’s in Rome, while Notre-Dame has been transformed into Hagia Sophia on the Seine – a great Christian church become an Islamic museum.”

One need not find this scenario altogether plausible to feel persuaded by more measured arguments about Europe’s atheistic humanism. Without a religious dimension, a commitment to human freedom is likely to be attenuated, too weak to make sacrifices in its name. Europe’s political elites especially, but its citizens as well, believe in freedom and democracy, of course, but they are reluctant to put the “good life” on hold and put lives on the line when freedom is in need of a champion – in the Balkans, the Sudan, Darfur or in Iraq cum Syria.

The good of human freedom, by European lights, must be weighed against the risk and cost of actually fighting for it. It is no longer transcendent, absolute. In such a world, governed by a narrow utilitarian calculus, sacrifice is rare, churches go unattended and over time the spiritual capital that brought forth all that we know as the West is at risk of being lost.

Europe is a society adrift, untied from the source of its greatness – the very cultural foundation that provided the values making Europe great is disintegrating, leaving Europe (and soon the entire West) on sinking sand. More specifically, as the past is erased, re-written, or ignored, the rich Judeo-Christian history of Europe is being left behind. And at what cost?

As I ponder this thesis, I am reminded of Orwell’s quote, “We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” It is obvious, “culture determines civilization.” Without its distinctly Christian history, Europe would not be what it is. Unfortunately, we may now have more accurately to write, “… Europe would not have been what it was.”

America is now alone in defending freedom and upholding the tradition of faith and reason.

***

CHARISMANEWS

Blasphemous Blockbuster Film Claims Jesus Was a Mutant

11:00AM EDT 3/17/2016 JESSILYN JUSTICE3

The latest installment in the X-Men franchise stirs the water of blasphemy by claiming Jesus was the original mutant—and that the Son of God is one in the same with other major religious figures.

"I've been called many things over many lifetimes," says the titular character known as Apocalypse. "Ra, Krishna, Yahweh."

The fictional story follows the omnipotent En Sabah Nur, later known as Apocalypse, who terrorizes the globe for centuries with his four horsemen.

"You are all my children, and you're lost because you follow blind leaders, but I am here now. I'm here for you," Apocalypse says.

Sound familiar? That's not the only rip-off from the Bible.Watch the trailer to see what else the movie claims.

***

CHRISTIAN POST

BY KEVIN PORTER , CHRISTIAN POST REPORTER

March 20, 2016|11:54 am

(PHOTO: SCREENGRAB/ABC/"OF KINGS AND PROPHETS")

The ABC biblical drama "Of Kings And Prophets" premiered March 8, 2016.

After airing only two episodes, the ABC television network has cancelled it's risque "soap opera"-like biblical saga "Of Kings and Prophets."

Said to be inspired by the Bible's Old Testament, the drama sparked controversy due to its graphic sex and violence, which prompted the Parents Television Council to issue a warning to advertisers on March 1. PTC president Tim Winter sees the cancellation as a victory.

"We're very delighted in that decision made by ABC," Winter told The Christian Post on Friday. "We certainly question why they would ever put it on the air to begin with, but the good news is it has received a death sentence just two weeks in."

Winter added, " ... this was an epic failure in terms of how the show was produced, how it was marketed." He credits his organization's "direct private conversations" with some of the world's biggest sponsors (PTC has more than 200 in its Rolodex) as catalysts for the show's demise.

"Some of them (advertisers) had actually sponsored the first show, and we showed them the clips and they backed away from the second episode ... " Winter told CP. "So when those ad dollars leave, the TV network is faced with a very difficult choice. It was an embarrassing decision for them, I believe."

Winter described "Of Kings and Prophets" as a "knock-off" of "The Bible," History Channel's 2013 hit miniseries which debuted to 13.1 million viewers. With "Of Kings and Prophets," however, viewers were in store for something much different.

"The objective always was to be as explicit as possible, but we're going to wrap it in the cloak of a Bible story and hopefully the people of faith will watch it — and they rejected it ...," said Winter.

ABC execs were vocal about their efforts to push the limits with the failed series. "We're going to go as far as we can," said showrunner Chris Brancato about "Of Kings and Prophets," as previously reported by CP. He added, "This story is an Old Testament [story that's] violent [and] sex-drenched. It's one of the world's first soap operas ..." Brancato even once described the series as a "non-dragon" version of the HBO hit "Game of Thrones."

ABC's efforts apparently went too far. "Of Kings and Prophets" was cancelled without airing its remaining episodes. The show premiered March 8 with only 3.3 million viewers and that number dropped to 2.4 million during the second episode.

(The Old Testament was filled with sex and violence. Ed)

***

Ancient Origins

Archaeologists Discover that Earliest Known Arabic Writing Was Penned by a Christian

SAM BOSTROM

21 MARCH, 2016 - 23:51

The oldest known Arabic writing found in Saudi Arabia, from ca. 470 AD belong to a Christian context and predates the advent of Islam with 150 years.

In December 2015, researchers from a French-Saudi expedition studying rock inscriptions in southern Saudi Arabia published a 100-page-long report in France’s Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres that reported that the oldest Arabic text, carved on a large rectangular stone that was found in Saudi Arabia, is simply of a name, “Thawban (son of) Malik,” decorated with a Christian cross. The same cross systematically appears on the other similar stelae dating more or less to the same period.

The discovery is sensational since it shows that the origins of the Arabic alphabet used to write the Koran belongs to a Christian context. This pre-Islamic alphabet is also called Nabatean Arabic, because it evolved from the script used by the Nabateans, the once-powerful nation that built Petra and dominated the trade routes in the southern Levant and northern Arabia before being annexed by the Romans in the early 2nd century.

Example of Nabatean script to the god Qasiu. Basalt, 1st century AD. Found in Sia in the Hauran, Southern Syria. (Public Domain)

The ancient text is a legacy of a once flourishing Christian community in the area also linked to the rise of an ancient Jewish kingdom that ruled over much of what is today Yemen and Saudi Arabia

Christians in the Desert

The Muslim tradition preserved in the book of Koran portrays the pre-Islamic region as chaotic and filled with unrest that Mohammed manages to unify with the help of the powerful message of Islam

However, the Islamic text makes no mention of the numerous Christian and Jewish communities across the Saudi peninsula that flourished during the days of Mohammed.

Recent studies of works by ancient Christians and Muslim records have re-shaped our image of the societies that existed in the region and shed new light on the complex history of the region before the advent of Islam. One of the important kingdoms in Arabia at the time was the Jewish kingdom of Himyar.

A bronze statue of Dhamar Ali Yahbur II, a Himyarite King who probably reigned in late 3rd or early 4th century AD. Displayed in Sana'a National Museum. (CC BY 2.0)

The kingdom was founded in the 2nd century AD, and around 380 AD the elites of the kingdom of Himyar converted to some form of Judaism. By the 4th century,

Himyar had become an important player in the struggle for regional power. The Kingdom of Himyar’s headquarters was situated in what is today Yemen, from where its expansionist rulers led a series of campaigns conquering into its neighboring states, including the legendary biblical kingdom of Sheba.

Royal inscriptions found in the Saudi capital of Riyadhand and Bir Hima, north of Yemen, attest how the Himyarite kingdom during the 5th century expanded its influence into central Arabia, the Persian Gulf area, and into the region of Mecca and Medina, known as Hijaz.

Pre-Islamic rock art of Arabia at Bir Hima, carved into the eastern foothills of the Asir Mountains of Saudi Arabia. (CC BY 2.0)

According to ancient Christian sources, the Christians of the nearby city of Najran suffered a wave of persecution by the Himyarites in 470. The name of Thawban son of Malik appears on eight inscriptions, along with the names of other Christians. The French experts believe these inscriptions are a form of commemoration of Thawban and his fellow Christians that were martyred as they refused to convert to Judaism.

The researchers believe that the Christians choice of the early Arabic script to memorialize their comrades was an act of resistance that stood in sharp contrast to the inscriptions left by Himyarite rulers in their native Sabaean. To adopt a new writing system was a way of manifesting a separation from Himyar, and at the same time, a means to approach the rest of the Arabs to unify against their common enemy.

A portion of a war scene from the Himyarite era. (CC BY SA 3.0)

The growing resistance and outside pressure eventually brought down Himyar. In the years around 500, it fell to Christian invaders from the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum. For the next century, Himyar was a Christian kingdom that continued to exert control over Arabia. During the latter half of the 6th century, one of its rulers, Abraha, marched through Bir Hima, conquering, Yathrib, the desert oasis that 70 years later would become known as Medina – The City of the Prophet.

Featured Image: A photo showing some stelae found with Arabic inscriptions. Source: Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA)

SPUTNIK

People Vs. AIPAC: Mighty Pro-Israel Lobby Loses Grip in US

02:03 19.03.2016(updated 06:06 19.03.2016)

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) will hold a high-profile conference starting this weekend attended by many powerful American politicians. The meeting promises to become the most interesting event in a history of the political lobby, author and journalist Max Blumenthal told Loud & Clear’s Brian Becker.

AIPAC is considered to be the “main arm of the pro-Israeli lobby” in the US, has long seen unconditional bipartisan support in the US Congress. The lobby has long attempted to impose its will on US leaders in questions of foreign policy. For instance, it carried out a costly and ultimately unsuccessful campaign in the US to urge the American establishment to oppose the Iran nuclear deal, Blumenthal said. But this year, he pointed out, AIPAC has seen a decline in its political support.

“AIPAC is being challenged in the way it has never been, by coalescence of BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement and by very unpredictable presidential campaign,” Blumenthal said to Becker, pointing to the ongoing presidential run in the country.

AIPAC now faces the possible win of two independently-minded candidates from Democratic and Republican sides, he said referring to Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.

“Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side has support from grassroots donors. He’s got millions of dollars from thousands and thousands of contributors and none of them have anything to do with AIPAC,” he said. “Trump is a self-funding candidate that does not really rely on kind of donors that AIPAC and pro-Israel lobby had hoped to dictate foreign policy on the Republican side.”

Another indication that the trends are reversing for AIPAC is a sea change in public opinion among American Jews toward Israel. Israel, as a culture presenting itself as an exponent of Jewish interests around the world, has lost points by openly suppressing Palestinians and occupying Arab lands in the West Bank.

“The fact is that Israel has an extremely right wing government since 2009,” Blumenthal asserted. “It’s taken an adversely religious, messianic overtone. It’s seeking to impose a kind of “McCarthyism” campaign of censorship on campuses across the country and across the West.”

The fundamentalist position is “anathema” for the liberal Jewish mind and mentality prevailing among the Jewish community in the US, he said, citing polls indicating that the US Jewish population is turning away from the current Israeli administration.

“Most young Jews don’t see Israel as a country committed to peace, don’t support Benjamin Netanyahu and don’t think he’s serious about a two-state solution,” he said. “The Israeli lobby is losing its bipartisan support and it’s losing Jewish grassroots. Liberal Jews overwhelmingly support Bernie Sanders – and you see the same amount among young Arab Americans and Muslim Americans. This is AIPAC’s nightmare.”

A recent petition, launched by the BDS movement, calling on Bernie Sanders not to attend AIPAC meetings, has shown that the political climate is changing. Despite the AIPAC’s fierce opposition and attempts to suppress those who support BDS, the petition has gained 20 thousand signatures, showing that people stand for equal rights, and, more specifically, equal rights for Palestinians, according to the journalist.

“It’s clear what the AIPAC agenda is. It’s not to find a solution to Israeli-Palestinian crisis. It’s to criminalize dissent against the special relations with Israel across the United States and across the West,” he said. “The Israeli lobby has become a major threat to free speech in the West.”

The Israeli government’s assault on free speech in the countries like the UK, France and Canada has been successful because AIPAC is dealing with “people who have something to lose,” such as politicians, according to Blumenthal. But dissent has gone beyond the rank and file of ordinary people, angry with the Israeli policy of oppressing Palestinians. Given that “Israel has no strategy of ending conflict with the indigenous population of Palestine,” the violence and dissent will intensify, Blumenthal said.

***

DOWNTREND.com

DISNEY THREATENS TO STOP SHOOTING IN GEORGIA IF STATE PASSES RELIGIOUS FREEDOM LAW

MARCH 24, 2016| BY BRIAN ANDERSON

The Walt Disney Company owns its own island, has a fleet of ships, and even a security force. They are pretty much every evil organization from any James Bond movie. Like all good super villains, Disney is using its considerable muscle to impose its will through terrorist blackmail. They just put the screws to the State of Georgia, threatening to stop shooting there if the state passes a religious freedom law.

On March 16, the Georgia legislature passed The Free Exercise Protection Act. Basically the law says that people with a religious conviction cannot be forced to participate in homosexual activities they object to. For example, an official can decide to not perform a gay marriage ceremony if he or she has a religious opposition to it. Or a baker doesn’t have to make a cake for a gay wedding for the same reason.

What the law doesn’t do is allow people to discriminate against gay people in employment, housing, education, etc…All it does is keep people from being bullied into accepting gay marriage if their religion says it’s wrong. The bill is sitting on Georgia Governor Nathan Deal’s desk awaiting his signature. He has until May 3 to sign or veto it.

The LA Times reports that Disney doesn’t care so much about people’s religious freedom, but they are concerned that gay people might be offended, so they are threatening a boycott.

“Disney and Marvel are inclusive companies, and although we have had great experiences filming in Georgia, we will plan to take our business elsewhere should any legislation allowing discriminatory practices be signed into state law,” said a Disney spokesman.

See, the deal is, big studios including Disney don’t like filming in liberal states like California and New York because the taxes and regulations are so high it doesn’t make economic sense. Instead, they film in conservative states that know how to attract business. Georgia gives some pretty sweet tax incentives to Hollywood and almost 250 movie and TV productions filmed there last year.

And while Hollywood prefers the business-friendly environment of red states like Georgia, they sure as hell don’t like their conservative values. This boycott threat is Disney’s way of trying to turn Georgia into a progressive s**thole like California.

So far the other major studios are not joining in Disney’s boycott, but the Motion Picture Association of America is applying some pressure.

“We are confident that Governor Deal will not allow a discriminatory bill to become law in Georgia,” said MPAA senior vice president Vans Stevenson.

I say if Disney wants to commit economic terrorism on the people of Georgia over their religious beliefs, maybe Christians nationwide should similarly boycott the evil Disney Empire. I’m sure Disney will get out of the social justice warrior game when their bottom line takes a huge hit.

***

FOX NEWS

King Tut tomb scans reveal hidden rooms, sparking speculation about Nefertiti's remains

Published March 17, 2016 FoxNews.com

Scans of King Tutankhamun’s burial chamber show hidden rooms that could contain metal and organic material, Egypt’s antiquities minister said Thursday, intensifying speculation that the chambers may contain the remains of Queen Nefertiti.

However, Mamdouh el-Damaty declined to comment on whether treasure or mummies are inside the chambers during a Cairo press conference. The minister explained that analysis of scans made by a Japanese team showed chambers that would be scanned again at the end of the month to get a better idea of what may lay inside.

"It means a rediscovery of Tutankhamun ... for Egypt it is a very big discovery; it could be the discovery of the century," el-Damaty said. "It is very important for Egyptian history and for all of the world." El-Damaty said last year he was convinced a hidden chamber may lie behind King Tut's tomb.

Mystery surrounds the remains of the famous Queen Nefertiti, who was one of the wives of Tutankhamun’s father, the Pharaoh Akhenaten.

Experts have long discussed the possibility that Nefertiti’s final resting place is next to Tutankhamun’s 3,300-year-old tomb in the southern Egyptian city of Luxor. Last year, for example, Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves wrote an article in which he claimed that Tutankhamun’s tomb contains two hidden doorways. The “ghosts” of the hitherto unrecognized doorways could lead to an unexplored western storage chamber and Nefertiti’s final resting place behind the chamber’s northern wall, he said.

Reeves argues that Tut, who died suddenly at the age of 19, may have been rushed into an outer chamber of Nefertiti's original tomb. The archaeologist told the Times of London in 2015 that he discovered the bricked-up doorways after examining digital scans of the walls of Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings, across the Nile River from Luxor.

Thursday’s announcement sparked plenty of chatter on social media about whether Nefertiti’s remains are in the hidden chambers.

However, el-Damaty said it was too early to tell what the metal and organic material could be, saying only that he thinks the new chambers could contain the tomb of a member of Tutankhamun's family.

At the news conference, el-Damaty highlighted radar scans that showed anomalies in the walls of the tomb, indicating a possible hidden door and the chambers, which lay behind walls that were covered up and painted over with hieroglyphics.

The discovery of King Tut's nearly-intact tomb by Howard Carter in 1922 sparked a renewed interest in Egyptology and yielded unprecedented Pharaonic treasures, including the boy king's sarcophagus and iconic golden burial mask.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

***

The New York Times (Edited from a longer article.)

Life Among the Ruins

By KANISHK THAROOR

MARCH 19, 2016

The Temple of Baal, in Palmyra, Syria, in 2011. In 2015 it was razed by the Islamic State. Credit Yin Bogu/Xinhua Press, via Corbis

NEXT month, the Temple of Baal will come to Times Square. Reproductions of the 50-foot arch that formed the temple’s entrance are to be installed in New York and in London, a tribute to the 2,000-year-old structure that the Islamic State destroyed last year in the Syrian town of Palmyra. The group’s rampage through Palmyra, a city that reached its peak in the second and third century A.D., enraged the world, spurring scholars and conservationists into action. Numerous nongovernmental organizations are now cataloging and mapping damaged cultural heritage sites in the region.

It will be uncanny and thrilling to see this arch from an ancient desert civilization set against the bright lights of New York. Unfortunately, facsimiles can achieve only so much. Denuded of people, stripped of the rich social contexts in which they were once embedded, antiquities appear just as evidence of the grandeur of the past, the accomplishments of another place in another time. But what did these assemblages of stone mean to the modern Iraqis and Syrians who lived with them?

For Salam al-Kuntar, a Syrian archaeologist who works at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, the loss of the Temple of Baal was deeply personal. “I have a special love for Palmyra because the Temple of Baal is where my mother was born,” she said.

Ms. Kuntar’s grandfather was a policeman in Palmyra when its Roman-era ruins were inhabited. Well into the 20th century, generations of Palmyrenes made their homes in the shade of millenniums-old columns. The locals taught Ms. Kuntar’s grandmother — who was a young bride when she arrived in Palmyra — how to cook and how to bake bread.

Her daughter was among the last generation born inside the ancient city. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, French colonial authorities cleared the area of its inhabitants and dismantled their mud-brick house. That paved the way for the archaeological exploration and preservation of the site, but it also definitively ended ancient Palmyra’s habitation as well as the use of the Temple of Baal, which over the centuries had transformed into a Byzantine church, then a mosque, before eventually becoming part of the village where Ms. Kuntar’s mother was born.

When lamenting the masonry and sculpture destroyed by the Islamic State, we can easily overlook this shifting human story. We too readily consign antiquities to the remote province of the past. But they can remain meaningful in surprising and ordinary ways. “This is the meaning of heritage,” Ms. Kuntar said. “It’s not only architecture or artifacts that represent history, it’s these memories and the ancestral connection to place.”

Bulldozed by the Islamic State in 2015, the 1,500-year-old monastery of St. Elian, near Al Qaryatain, Syria, was a symbol of these connections. It was a modest and unadorned structure that had none of the glamour of the Temple of Baal; a 3D reconstruction of the rather plain sarcophagus that held the remains of its eponymous saint won’t be coming to a major Western city any time soon. But its importance lay in its role as a bridge between communities.

Al Qaryatain is a small town in the desert between Palmyra and Damascus. For centuries, Christian and Muslim pilgrims alike came to the monastery to seek the blessings of the saint. Muslims venerated St. Elian as a Sufi sheikh, known to them as Sheikh Ahmed the Priest. His tomb was draped in the green satin common to Sufi holy sites.

Until the turbulence of the civil war, the monastery hosted the festival of Eid Mar Elian every Sept. 9. Five to six thousand devotees — Muslim and Christian — would converge on the monastery, where under a large tent erected in the central cloister they would swap tales about St. Elian/Sheikh Ahmed, share plates of lamb and rice, and dance the dabka.

In attacking the monastery, the Islamic State was not simply leveling a holy place. The militants struck at a site that had knit Muslim and Christian communities together for centuries. Local legend has it that centuries ago, the townspeople decided that no matter whether Islam or Christianity gathered more believers, the group in the majority would always protect the one in the minority. Generations of pilgrims left affectionate graffiti on the sarcophagus of Mar Elian, including a Star of David suggesting that at least one Jew visited the saint.

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WND

UNUSUAL WEAPON SAVED EUROPE FROM ISLAMIC DOMINATION

Bill Federer recounts battles of Lepanto, Spanish Armada

Published: March 18, 2016

BILL FEDERER

Battle of Lepanto

News arrived in Europe in 1571 that Muslim Turks, under the command of Lala Kara Mustafa Pasha, surrounded the Christians in Famagusta, Cyprus. Muslims promised the defenders of Cypus that if they surrendered, they would be allowed to leave. Lala Kara Mustafa Pasha broke his promise and flayed alive the Venetian commander. He then killed all 6,000 Christian prisoners. He turned the beautiful St. Nicholas Church into the Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque. Turkish Muslims then intended to attack Rome, and from there conquer the rest of western Europe.

Pope Pius V used all the influence he had to get the Christian states of Spain, Naples, Sicily, Venice, Genoa, Sardinia, Savoy, Urbino, Papal States, Germans and Croatians to assemble into the Holy League, led by 24-year-old Don John of Austria.

On October 7, 1571, the largest and most decisive sea battle on the Mediterranean took place – the Battle of Lepanto off the western coast of Greece. Don John of Austria led the 212 ships with nearly 68,000 soldiers and sailors of the Holy League.

Ali Pasha led the Muslim Ottoman Turks, consisting of 82,000 soldiers and sailors on 251 ships powered by thousands of Christian galley slaves rowing under the decks. This was the last major battle with rowing vessels.

The morning of the battle, the Holy League was at a great disadvantage, struggling to row against the wind. Don John led his men on deck in a prayer. Suddenly the wind changed 180 degrees to favor the Holy League.

The Holy League ships collided into Ali Pasha’s ships. Fierce fighting went on for hours. Don John sailed his ship, Real, into Ali Pasha’s ship. Ali Pasha was finally killed and his head was hung from the ship. The Ottoman Muslims had 187 of their ships sunk or captured. Some 12,000 Christian galley slaves were freed.

Had the Muslims not been defeated, they would have invaded Italy and possibly conquered Europe.

G.K. Chesterton wrote in his poem, “Lepanto”:

Above the ships are palaces of brown, blackbearded chiefs,

And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,

Christian captives sick and sunless, all a laboring race repines

Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.

They are lost like slaves that swat, and in the skies of morning hung

The stairways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.

They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on

Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.

And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell

Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,

And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign –

But Don John of Austria has burst the battle line!

Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,

Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,

Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,

Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,

Thronging of the thousands up that labor under sea

White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.

Vivat Hispania! Domino Gloria!

Don John of Austria has set his people free!

Instead of following up on this victory and freeing Constantinople and Greek Islands from Muslim control, Spain sent their invincible Armada to conquer England. The Spanish Armada was destroyed in a hurricane in 1588. This caused Spain to loose its monopoly over the new world, opening the door for other European nations to settle colonies in America.

Adam Smith wrote in “The Wealth of Nations,” 1776: “The Spaniards, by virtue of the first discovery, claimed all America as their own, and … such was … the terror of their name, that the greater part of the other nations of Europe were afraid to establish themselves in any other part of that great continent. … But … the defeat … of their Invincible Armada … put it out of their power to obstruct any longer the settlements of the other European nations. In the course of the 17th entury … English, French, Dutch, Danes, and Swedes … attempted to make some settlements in the new world.”

Two years after the Spanish Armada sank, a boy was born in England named William Bradford, on March 19, 1590. At age 17, the same year Shakespeare produced his play, “Anthony and Cleopatra,” William Bradford fled from England to Holland with the persecuted Pilgrims. At age 30, William Bradford sailed with the Pilgrims to America. In 1621, William Bradford was chosen governor and reelected 30 times till his death.

William Bradford’s journal, “Of Plymouth Plantation,” is the main historical record of the Pilgrims, published in 1650: “Since ye first breaking out of ye lighte of ye gospell in our Honourable Nation of England … what warrs and opposissions … Satan hath raised … against the Saints … by bloody death and cruell torments … imprisonments, banishments. … What could now sustaine them but ye spirite of God and His grace? … Ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: Our fathers … came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto ye Lord, and He heard their voyce.”

William Bradford continued: “All great and honourable actions are accompanied with great difficulties. … Out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing … and, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation; let the glorious name of Jehovah have all the praise.”

Brought to you by AmericanMinute.com.

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RUSSIA INSIDER

Putin to Western Elites: Playtime is Over

An excellent blogger about Russia distills Putin's Sochi speech into 10 simple points

Dmitry Orlov

March 17, 2016

A longer version of this article originally appeared at the ClubOrlov blog.

Most people in the English-speaking parts of the world missed Putin's speech at the Valdai conference in Sochi a few days ago, and, chances are, those who have heard of the speech didn't get a chance to read it, and missed its importance.

Western media did their best to ignore it or to twist its meaning. Regardless of what you think or don't think of Putin (like the sun and the moon, he does not exist for you to cultivate an opinion) this is probably the most important political speech since Churchill's “Iron Curtain” speech of March 5, 1946.

In this speech, Putin abruptly changed the rules of the game. Previously, the game of international politics was played as follows: politicians made public pronouncements, for the sake of maintaining a pleasant fiction of national sovereignty, but they were strictly for show and had nothing to do with the substance of international politics; in the meantime, they engaged in secret back-room negotiations, in which the actual deals were hammered out.

Previously, Putin tried to play this game, expecting only that Russia be treated as an equal. But these hopes have been dashed, and at this conference he declared the game to be over, explicitly violating Western taboo by speaking directly to the people over the heads of elite clans and political leaders.

1. Russia will no longer play games and engage in back-room negotiations over trifles. But Russia is prepared for serious conversations and agreements, if these are conducive to collective security, are based on fairness and take into account the interests of each side.

2. All systems of global collective security now lie in ruins. There are no longer any international security guarantees at all. And the entity that destroyed them has a name: The United States of America.

3. The builders of the New World Order have failed, having built a sand castle. Whether or not a new world order of any sort is to be built is not just Russia's decision, but it is a decision that will not be made without Russia.

4. Russia favors a conservative approach to introducing innovations into the social order, but is not opposed to investigating and discussing such innovations, to see if introducing any of them might be justified.

5. Russia has no intention of going fishing in the murky waters created by America's ever-expanding “empire of chaos,” and has no interest in building a new empire of her own (this is unnecessary; Russia's challenges lie in developing her already vast territory). Neither is Russia willing to act as a savior of the world, as she had in the past.

6. Russia will not attempt to reformat the world in her own image, but neither will she allow anyone to reformat her in their image. Russia will not close herself off from the world, but anyone who tries to close her off from the world will be sure to reap a whirlwind.

7. Russia does not wish for the chaos to spread, does not want war, and has no intention of starting one. However, today Russia sees the outbreak of global war as almost inevitable, is prepared for it, and is continuing to prepare for it. Russia does not want war—nor does she fear it.

8. Russia does not intend to take an active role in thwarting those who are still attempting to construct their New World Order—until their efforts start to impinge on Russia's key interests. Russia would prefer to stand by and watch them give themselves as many lumps as their poor heads can take. But those who manage to drag Russia into this process, through disregard for her interests, will be taught the true meaning of pain.

9. In her external, and, even more so, internal politics, Russia's power will rely not on the elites and their back-room dealing, but on the will of the people.

To these nine points I would like to add a tenth:

10. There is still a chance to construct a new world order that will avoid a world war. This new world order must of necessity include the United States—but can only do so on the same terms as everyone else: subject to international law and international agreements; refraining from all unilateral action; in full respect of the sovereignty of other nations.

To sum it all up: play-time is over. Children, put away your toys. Now is the time for the adults to make decisions. Russia is ready for this; is the world?

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A world war has begun. Break the silence – John Pilger

This is an edited version of an address by John Pilger at the University of Sydney, entitled ‘A World War Has Begun.’

Published time: 22 Mar, 2016 21:20

I have been filming in the Marshall Islands, which lie north of Australia, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Whenever I tell people where I have been, they ask, "Where is that?" If I offer a clue by referring to "Bikini", they say, "You mean the swimsuit."

Few seem aware that the bikini swimsuit was named to celebrate the nuclear explosions that destroyed Bikini Island. Sixty-six nuclear devices were exploded by the United States in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958 – the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for twelve years.

Bikini is silent today, mutated and contaminated. Palm trees grow in a strange grid formation. Nothing moves. There are no birds. The headstones in the old cemetery are alive with radiation. My shoes registered "unsafe" on a Geiger counter.

Standing on the beach, I watched the emerald green of the Pacific fall away into a vast black hole. This was the crater left by the hydrogen bomb they called "Bravo". The explosion poisoned people and their environment for hundreds of miles, perhaps forever.

On my return journey, I stopped at Honolulu airport and noticed an American magazine called Women's Health. On the cover was a smiling woman in a bikini swimsuit, and the headline: "You, too, can have a bikini body." A few days earlier, in the Marshall Islands, I had interviewed women who had very different "bikini bodies;" each had suffered thyroid and other life-threatening cancers.

Unlike the smiling woman in the magazine, all of them were impoverished: the victims and guinea pigs of a rapacious superpower that is today more dangerous than ever.

I relate this experience as a warning and to interrupt a distraction that has consumed so many of us. The founder of modern propaganda, Edward Bernays, described this phenomenon as "the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the habits and opinions" of democratic societies. He called it an "invisible government".

How many people are aware that a world war has begun? At present, it is a war of propaganda, of lies and distraction, but this can change instantaneously with the first mistaken order, the first missile.

In 2009, President Obama stood before an adoring crowd in the centre of Prague, in the heart of Europe. He pledged himself to make "the world free from nuclear weapons". People cheered and some cried. A torrent of platitudes flowed from the media. Obama was subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

It was all fake. He was lying.

The Obama administration has built more nuclear weapons, more nuclear warheads, more nuclear delivery systems, more nuclear factories. Nuclear warhead spending alone rose higher under Obama than under any American president. The cost over thirty years is more than $1 trillion.

A mini nuclear bomb is planned. It is known as the B61 Model 12. There has never been anything like it. General James Cartwright, a former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said, "Going smaller [makes using this nuclear] weapon more thinkable."

In the last eighteen months, the greatest build-up of military forces since World War Two – led by the United States – is taking place along Russia's western frontier. Not since Hitler invaded the Soviet Union have foreign troops presented such a demonstrable threat to Russia.

Ukraine – once part of the Soviet Union – has become a CIA theme park. Having orchestrated a coup in Kiev, Washington effectively controls a regime that is next door and hostile to Russia: a regime rotten with Nazis, literally. Prominent parliamentary figures in Ukraine are the political descendants of the notorious OUN and UPA fascists. They openly praise Hitler and call for the persecution and expulsion of the Russian speaking minority.

This is seldom news in the West, or it is inverted to suppress the truth.

In Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – next door to Russia – the US military is deploying combat troops, tanks, heavy weapons. This extreme provocation of the world's second nuclear power is met with silence in the West.

What makes the prospect of nuclear war even more dangerous is a parallel campaign against China.

Seldom a day passes when China is not elevated to the status of a "threat." According to Admiral Harry Harris, the US Pacific commander, China is "building a great wall of sand in the South China Sea."

What he is referring to is China building airstrips in the Spratly Islands, which are the subject of a dispute with the Philippines – a dispute without priority until Washington pressured and bribed the government in Manila and the Pentagon launched a propaganda campaign called "freedom of navigation."

What does this really mean? It means freedom for American warships to patrol and dominate the coastal waters of China. Try to imagine the American reaction if Chinese warships did the same off the coast of California.

I made a film called ‘The War You Don't See,’ in which I interviewed distinguished journalists in America and Britain: reporters such as Dan Rather of CBS, Rageh Omar of the BBC, David Rose of the Observer.

All of them said that had journalists and broadcasters done their job and questioned the propaganda that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction; had the lies of George W. Bush and Tony Blair not been amplified and echoed by journalists, the 2003 invasion of Iraq might not have happened, and hundreds of thousands of men, women and children would be alive today.

The propaganda laying the ground for a war against Russia and/or China is no different in principle. To my knowledge, no journalist in the Western "mainstream" – a Dan Rather equivalent, say – asks why China is building airstrips in the South China Sea.

The answer ought to be glaringly obvious. The United States is encircling China with a network of bases, with ballistic missiles, battle groups, nuclear-armed bombers.

This lethal arc extends from Australia to the islands of the Pacific, the Marianas and the Marshalls and Guam, to the Philippines, Thailand, Okinawa, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India. America has hung a noose around the neck of China. This is not news. Silence by media; war by media.

In 2015, in high secrecy, the US and Australia staged the biggest single air-sea military exercise in recent history, known as Talisman Sabre. Its aim was to rehearse an Air-Sea Battle Plan, blocking sea lanes – such as the Straits of Malacca and the Lombok Straits – that cut off China’s access to oil, gas and other vital raw materials from the Middle East and Africa.

In the circus known as the American presidential campaign, Donald Trump is being presented as a lunatic, a fascist. He is certainly odious; but he is also a media hate figure. That alone should arouse our scepticism.

Trump's views on migration are grotesque, but no more grotesque than those of David Cameron. It is not Trump who is the Great Deporter from the United States, but the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama.

According to one prodigious liberal commentator, Trump is "unleashing the dark forces of violence" in the United States. Unleashing them?

This is the country where toddlers shoot their mothers and the police wage a murderous war against black Americans. This is the country that has attacked and sought to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democracies, and bombed from Asia to the Middle East, causing the deaths and dispossession of millions of people.

No country can equal this systemic record of violence. Most of America's wars (almost all of them against defenceless countries) have been launched not by Republican presidents but by liberal Democrats: Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama.

In 1947, a series of National Security Council directives described the paramount aim of American foreign policy as "a world substantially made over in [America's] own image." The ideology was messianic Americanism. We were all Americans. Or else. Heretics would be converted, subverted, bribed, smeared or crushed.

Donald Trump is a symptom of this, but he is also a maverick. He says the invasion of Iraq was a crime; he doesn't want to go to war with Russia and China. The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton. She is no maverick. She embodies the resilience and violence of a system whose vaunted "exceptionalism" is totalitarian with an occasional liberal face.

As presidential election day draws near, Clinton will be hailed as the first female president, regardless of her crimes and lies – just as Barack Obama was lauded as the first black president and liberals swallowed his nonsense about "hope." And the drool goes on.

Described by the Guardian columnist Owen Jones as "funny, charming, with a coolness that eludes practically every other politician,” Obama the other day sent drones to slaughter 150 people in Somalia. He kills people usually on Tuesdays, according to the New York Times, when he is handed a list of candidates for death by drone. So cool.

In the 2008 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton threatened to "totally obliterate" Iran with nuclear weapons. As Secretary of State under Obama, she participated in the overthrow of the democratic government of Honduras. Her contribution to the destruction of Libya in 2011 was almost gleeful. When the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, was publicly sodomised with a knife – a murder made possible by American logistics – Clinton gloated over his death: "We came, we saw, he died."

One of Clinton's closest allies is Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of State, who has attacked young women for not supporting "Hillary." This is the same Madeleine Albright who infamously celebrated on TV the death of half a million Iraqi children as "worth it".

Among Clinton's biggest backers are the Israel lobby and the arms companies that fuel the violence in the Middle East. She and her husband have received a fortune from Wall Street. And yet, she is about to be ordained the women's candidate, to see off the evil Trump, the official demon. Her supporters include distinguished feminists: the likes of Gloria Steinem in the US and Anne Summers in Australia.

A generation ago, a post-modern cult now known as "identity politics" stopped many intelligent, liberal-minded people examining the causes and individuals they supported, such as the fakery of Obama and Clinton; such as bogus progressive movements like Syriza in Greece, which betrayed the people of that country and allied with their enemies.

Self-absorption, a kind of "me-ism", became the new zeitgeist in privileged western societies and signaled the demise of great collective movements against war, social injustice, inequality, racism and sexism.

Today, the long sleep may be over. The young are stirring again. Gradually. The thousands in Britain who supported Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader are part of this awakening – as are those who rallied to support Senator Bernie Sanders.

In Britain last week, Jeremy Corbyn's closest ally, his shadow treasurer John McDonnell, committed a Labour government to pay off the debts of piratical banks and, in effect, to continue so-called austerity.

In the US, Bernie Sanders has promised to support Clinton if or when she's nominated. He, too, has voted for America's use of violence against countries when he thinks it is "right." He says Obama has done "a great job."

In Australia, there is a kind of mortuary politics, in which tedious parliamentary games are played out in the media while refugees and Indigenous people are persecuted and inequality grows, along with the danger of war. The government of Malcolm Turnbull has just announced a so-called defence budget of $195 billion that is a drive to war. There was no debate. Silence.

What has happened to the great tradition of popular direct action, unfettered to parties? Where is the courage, imagination and commitment required to begin the long journey to a better, just and peaceful world? Where are the dissidents in art, film, the theatre, literature?

Where are those who will shatter the silence? Or do we wait until the first nuclear missile is fired?

***

ACTIVIST POST

Modern Warfare Just Changed Forever — Laser Weapons Are Ready For Use — Today

By Matt Agorist

MARCH 17, 2016

As if autonomous drones launching Hellfire missiles at targets acquired through the collection of metadata weren’t horrifying enough, the US military now has its own death rays — no kidding.

Since the days of Nikola Tesla, and his plans of a death ray, the up-and-coming military industrial complex has salivated over the idea of direct energy weapons. For pennies, the US could lay waste to their enemies instead of using highly expensive missile systems. However, this technology and the resources to build it remained elusive — until now.

Directed energy weapons (DEWs) are systems that emit energy without the means of a projectile, and can use visible light, infra-red or microwave radiation, with lethal effects.

The weapons are said to be particularly useful for targeting large numbers of targets with high precision, and some estimates put the cost of each shot of directed energy at just $1.

“The technologies now exist,” said Paul Shattuck, company director for Directed Energy Systems. “They can be packaged into a size, weight, power and thermal which can be fit onto relevant tactical platforms, whether it’s a ship, whether it’s a ground vehicle or whether it’s an airborne platform.”

“So everything exists today,” he said, “it’s just a question of the desire and when is that going to occur.”

Lockheed Martin has already shown the deadly accuracy of these weapons in tests. In milliseconds, one of their 30 KW laser weapons will melt a hole through solid steel.

When Defense News asked Lockheed Martin if they came to them tomorrow and asked for a laser weapon in the 30 KW range, the company said yes.

According to Defense News, that doesn’t mean that giant city-melting lasers are on their way. Right now, the weapons are limited to the 15-30 KW scale; going much further requires figuring out how to deal with atmospheric interference, an issue which becomes more complicated with weapons mounted on airborne systems.

However, Lockheed said that making a larger laser is similar to building out computer servers — Once you figure out how to connect them all, you can add more power by adding another server. The same is true for the laser weapons: you add more power slots into the rack and increase its power.

Just last year, the company held a demonstration at which they took out unmanned systems from over a mile away, melted a car engine, and sank a boat.

While they have only mastered the 30 KW system, Lockheed Martin says they are on track to deliver a 60 KW laser for the Army by the end of the year.

On one side of the issue, there is a bit of relief when taking into account the collateral damage associated with the U.S. military’s “surgical” drone strikes. However, the idea of such a powerful weapon in the hands of any government willing to go to war is terrifying.

Imagine the deadly capabilities running rampant in America’s kill-happy police state. The CIA could target domestic “terrorists” from miles away and burn holes through their heads without the need for any due process. Militaries could silently target a nuclear reactor and cause a Chernobyl-type event in seconds, and no one would know who did it. Enemies of the state could be wiped out silently and simultaneously without any evidence of what happened. Planes could be zapped out of the sky. The dangers are limitless.

Of course, the Pentagon is touting the “defense” capabilities of such weapons. However, with America’s track record in spreading death and destruction, the blacked-out apocalyptic sky is the limit.

***

RT

‘Turkey paying price for creating ISIS monster it can no longer control’

Published time: 21 Mar, 2016 12:38

Police forensic experts inspect the area after a suicide bombing occured in a major shopping and tourist district in central Istanbul, Turkey March 19, 2016. © Ismail Coskun / Reuters

It was expected ISIS would turn against the Ankara regime at some point, and Turks are now paying the price for creating and training a monster like this, political analyst Roula Talj told RT. The worst has started between Turks and IS, she concluded.

Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala said Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) is linked to Saturday's terror attack in Istanbul. The suicide bomber, who carried out the atrocity killing four, has been identified as Mehmet Ozturk. The incident happened in a crowded tourist shopping area killing people from a number of different countries.

RT: Turkey confirmed it thinks ISIS is behind the bombing in Istanbul? Was this expected?

Roula Talj: Of course it was expected. When you look at the number of ISIS members who entered Syria in the last few years, and then you see that the number of Turkish members went up to 25,500 fighters, you cannot expect to train a monster like this in Turkey and expect to use it against your enemies alone. One should expect that ISIS would turn against the regime in Ankara and in Turkey at some point.

RT: Why is Turkey becoming an ISIL target, and how do you expect Ankara to react?

RTj: Maybe Ankara is under pressure now from the Western community, especially the Europeans who are concerned about the amount of ISIS members trying to escape, or to take over Europe from Turkey. So probably they are under pressure and this is the response of ISIL to put pressure on Ankara. Maybe the worst has started between the Turks themselves and ISIS, and this is coming to the surface now.

RT: Turkey's been accused of both supporting ISIL by allegedly buying the terrorists’ oil, but also being part of the anti-ISIL coalition. Do you think Turkey's anti-ISIL efforts are genuine?

RTj: No, I don’t think so. It is known to everyone that the major ISIS training camps were in Turkey. Turkey’s intelligence knew very much [about] the number of ISIS members crossing to Syria and to other borders from Turkey. So, if they were genuine, they would have done something about it a while ago.

I think Turkey was using ISIS in its proxy war in Syria, and at some point it came under the pressure of Europeans and the international community, who is not going to make it easy anymore on those sponsoring ISIS and other extremist groups in the region, because it is no longer about Syria, it is about the entire world security. So Turkey now is paying the price of playing with a devil and creating a monster that it cannot control anymore. ISIS doesn’t need Turkey or anybody, they are self-sustainable. When Turkey was buying the oil from ISIL, it knew very well that was a way… to finance ISIL.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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'My Dinner With Andre' - movie that predicted the future in 1981

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

“That men may know thy way on the earth, thy salvation among all nations. Let the nations, O God, give thanks to thee; let all the nations give thanks to thee.”
(Psalm 67:2-3)