People of the Keys!

“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.”
(Romans 10:4)

End Of The Law

Dear Friends,

Greetings! Here is something we thought you may find of interest. It is taken from the First Council of Nicaea which occurred in AD 325.

“The First Council of Nicaea was a council of Christian bishops convened in Nicaea in Bithynia by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in AD 325. This first ecumenical council was the first effort to attain consensus in the church through an assembly representing all of Christendom.” Wikipedia

The following is taken from: A Church History of the Council of Nicaea A.D. 325 chapter Vll by CHR. Wordsworth D.D., Bishop Of Lincoln. Published 1881.

“The Mosaic Law, the Levitical Priesthood, the Mosaic Sacrifices, the Temple at Jerusalem and its Ritual, were from God : Christianity also claimed to be from Him. The Christian Church harmonized these two propositions, and proved that she was not an usurper, but the legitimate successor of Sion, and the heiress of all the prerogatives and blessings promised to the Patriarchs, and announced by Moses and the Prophets to the People of God. '" Novum Testamentum in Vetere latet ; Vetus Testamentum in Novo patet."' " The New Testament is enfolded in the Old ; the Old Testament is unfolded in the New," said S. Augustine ; and this saying expresses what had been shown by our Blessed Lord and His Apostles in their interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures, and in their illustration of them by the Gospel. The Manna, the Brasen Serpent in the wilderness, these had been Christianized by our Lord Himself (John vi. 48, 49 ; iii. 14). He had taught His Disciples to recognize in the Prophet Jonah a type of His own Death, three days Burial, and Resurrection (Matt. xii. 39, 40). The Passover received an Evangelical interpretation from St. John (John xix. 36) and St. Paul (i Cor. v. 7), and had been shown to have been fulfilled in Christ. St. Paul, especially in his Epistles to the Galatians and the Romans, had taught that the Law of Moses was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ (Gal. iii, 24), and that Christ was the end of the Law for righteousness (Rom. x. 4) ; and in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, that the Israelites, their Exodus and Passage through the Red Sea, the spiritual Bread from heaven, and the smitten Rock in the wilderness, were figurative of us and of our Christian privileges (i Cor. x. i ii) ; and in the Epistle to the Hebrews, that all the sacrificial Ritual of the Levitical Law, especially on the great Day of Atonement (Heb. viii. 2 ; ix. 2 28), were " shadows of the good things to come " (Heb. x. 2 10), which are realized in substance by the One Sacrifice on the Cross.

Thus they had prepared the way for S. Clement of Rome and S. Barnabas, declaring the typical character of the Old Testament History, and the fulfilment of its prophecies and ceremonies in Christ (Clem. Rom. c. 12; Barnabas, caps. 5, 6, 7, 8), and for the work of the Christian Apologists, S.Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Cyprian, and others in their controversies with the Jews. In a like spirit S. Ignatius, the disciple of St. John, declared that : the Prophets lived a Christward life " (ad Magnes. c. 8), and that " Christ was the Door, by which Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the Prophets, entered into the Kingdom of God " (ad Philadelph. c. 9).”

Have a great week ahead.

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McCain Explodes at Syrian Christians Who Describe Atrocities Committed By Rebels He Wants to Arm

by Duane Lester

11. FEB, 2014

Hell-bent on arming opposition forces in Syria—despite strong evidence that they’re run by Islamic terrorists—John McCain displayed behavior unbecoming of a United States Senator during a recent meeting with Syrian Christian leaders touring Capitol Hill.

The delegation of Syrian clergy came to Washington to raise awareness among lawmakers of the growing crisis among the region’s minority Christian community. Christians make up about 10% of the Syrian population and they are being targeted and ruthlessly murdered by radical elements of the rebel forces, according to the visiting church officials. They say the media and human rights groups in the west have been largely silent on the ordeal of the Christians in Syria.

A number of churches have been destroyed or burned, children were killed when rebels fired mortar rockets at an Armenian Christian school in Damascus and countless others have been abducted by Islamic fighters, the Syrian delegation reveals in a statement published by the research group, Westminster Institute, that brought them to Washington. Eleven nuns have also been abducted and are still in captivity and two bishops are still missing after getting kidnapped during a humanitarian mission.

But Senator McCain, an Arizona Republican, evidently doesn’t want to hear negative stories about the rebels he’s working to arm. So he stormed out of a closed-door meeting with the Syrian clergy officials last week. Held in the Senate Arms Services Committee meeting room, the reunion also included senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Graham is a Republican and the rest are Democrats.

McCain marched into the committee room yelling, according to a high-level source that attended the meeting, and quickly stormed out. “He was incredibly rude,” the source told Judicial Watch “because he didn’t think the Syrian church leaders should even be allowed in the room.” Following the shameful tantrum McCain reentered the room and sat briefly but refused to make eye contact with the participants, instead ignoring them by looking down at what appeared to be random papers.

The outburst was so embarrassing that Senator Graham, also an advocate of U.S. military intervention in Syria, apologized for McCain’s disturbing outburst. “Graham actually apologized to the group for McCain’s behavior,” according to the source, who sat through the entire meeting. “It was truly unbelievable.”

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The Christian Science Monitor  

Pat Robertson rejects 'young earth' creationism. 'Nonsense,' he says.

'Science Guy' Bill Nye debated creationist Ken Ham this week. Now, televangelist Pat Robertson says he disagrees with the biblically literalist view of Earth created in six days 6,000 years ago.

By Harry Bruinius, Staff writer / February 6, 2014

NEW YORK

A day after “Science Guy” Bill Nye and Creation Museum founder Ken Ham faced off in a discussion about life’s origins – a debate pitting evolutionary science against the belief that God created the earth and all its creatures in six days – the televangelist and political provocateur Pat Robertson called the literalist view of six-day creation “nonsense.”

TV's 'Science Guy' Bill Nye and Ken Ham of the Creation Museum debated the origins of the universe. The debate at the Creation Museum in Kentucky included astrophysics, evolution and the Biblical story of creation. (Feb. 5)

“There ain't no way that's possible,” Mr. Robertson said Wednesday on his show, "The 700 Club,” taking issue with the "young earth" version of creationism, which holds that the universe is about 6,000 to 10,000 years old. “We have skeletons of dinosaurs that go back 65 million years,” Robertson said. “To say it all dates back to 6,000 years is just nonsense, and I think [it’s] time we come off of that stuff, and say this isn’t possible.”

“Let's be real; let's not make a joke of ourselves,” he said.

He has expressed these views before, in fact, but after the widely anticipated clash between Messrs. Nye and Ham, responses to the televangelist’s comments came quickly on Twitter and other social media sites. Many crowed that even a conservative fundamentalist like Robertson, who helped lead the rise of the religious right since the 1960s, couldn’t agree with Ham’s literalist views. Others saw his comments as a betrayal, if not a form of heresy.

But Tuesday’s debate and Robertson’s reaction underscore the deep cultural ambivalence and complicated history that American Evangelical Protestants have with the science of evolution. Indeed, the issue has haunted the conservative subculture for more than a century, and in many ways it continues to be a touchstone in the diverse intellectual and theological identity of politically powerful Evangelicals.

Today, 1 out of 3 Americans reject evolution, according to a Pew Research survey, including the nearly two-thirds of white Evangelicals and half of black Protestants who say humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.

But nearly 1 out of 4 Americans believes God has guided evolution, according to the Pew survey, a position that has sometimes been called “theistic evolution.” And a growing number of Evangelicals, like Robertson, are also embracing this view.

“I think that is the most significant data that emerged from these recent surveys,” says William Craig, professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, Calif. “Most Evangelicals still would say that human beings have not evolved, that they’ve always existed in the same form.”

“But what I find very significant is this increasing percentage that is saying human beings and other plants and animals have evolved, but that this process is superintended or guided by God,” Mr. Craig says.

After the Scopes “monkey” trial in 1927 – a media circus and much-watched cultural debate in which the aggressive atheist Clarence Darrow humiliated an ill-prepared William Jennings Bryan, the Evangelical firebrand and two-time Democratic nominee for president who had campaigned against the teaching of evolution – Evangelicals had mostly retreated from public life, only to reemerge in the 1970s, becoming a political force again when they supported Ronald Reagan en masse.

Since then, most Evangelicals have continued to fight the teaching of evolution, or they've insisted that creationism be taught alongside it as an alternative view.

But even as the United States has become significantly more liberal on culture-war issues like gay marriage and marijuana – which Robinson has said should be decriminalized – views on evolution may be changing as well.

“He probably does speak for a lot of Evangelicals who say, ‘Hey, I’m not going to die on this mountain,’” says Randall Balmer, chair of the religion department at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. “The science is pretty well established on this, and I don’t see that as a touchstone of faith.”

“I think many Evangelicals, like many Americans, are prepared to say, 'Hey, we can live with this,' ” he continues.

Yet after being criticized Thursday, Robertson felt the need to clarify his Wednesday comments.

"Contrary to how some media and bloggers are portraying these comments, Dr. Robertson certainly believes that God created the heavens and the earth and all that it is in them," said Chris Roslan, spokesman for the Christian Broadcasting Network, which the televangelist founded in 1961.

"He clearly stated in the segment: 'I don't believe in so-called evolution as it is currently presented, as non-theistic. I believe that God started it all and He is in charge of all of it ... but the fact that you have progressive evolution under His control, that doesn’t hurt my faith at all.' Dr. Robertson has long discounted the Young Earth theory and yesterday's comments are not a change of his views on creation."

Other Evangelical intellectuals, too, have argued that biblical faith need not adhere to literalist views and that a belief in the divinely guided evolution is perfectly compatible with faith.

And the literalist point of view, some say, actually has more in common with the "new atheists" like Richard Dawkins, whom many criticize as having an overly simplistic understanding of religious faith.

“For all their differences, the new atheists and the young earth creationists both agree that the truth of evolutionary theory depends on the nonexistence of God – that it’s inherently atheistic,” says Craig. “And Americans, I think, are not buying into that.”

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The Blood Moon

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The Telegraph

Spain invites descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled 500 years ago to return

Huge interest among Sephardic Jews worldwide in taking up offer of Spanish citizenship

Expulsion of the Jews from Spain

By Fiona Govan, Madrid and Robert Tait in Jerusalem

7:03PM GMT 11 Feb 2014

More than five centuries after Spain's Jews were forced to flee, convert to Catholicism or face execution without trial, their descendants are being invited to return and take up dual citizenship.

Spain's government has approved a draft bill that will allow descendants of those Sephardic Jews who were expelled in 1492, under the crusading Catholic rule of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, to seek dual citizenship.

The new law would offer the prospect of an EU passport to up to 3.5 million people worldwide, many in Israel but others thought to reside in France, the United States, Turkey, Mexico, Argentina and Chile.

Spanish consulates in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are among those said to be facing a flood of requests for more information since the plan was announced.

An estimated 300,000 Jews resided in Spain before the infamous Spanish Inquisition of the 15th Century, when the "Reyes Catolicos" reconquered Spain from its Arab rulers and ordered Jews and Muslims to convert to the Catholic faith or leave the country.

Two years ago Spain announced that it would grant automatic citizenship to Jews of Sephardic descent in a gesture of reconciliation but there were few takers as the current law stipulates that they had first to renounce their existing citizenship.

But the conservative government of the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy is now going further and will make it easier for those with Sephardic roots to take up dual citizenship.

"The law we've approved has a deep historic meaning: not only because it concerns events in our past of which we should not be proud, like the decree to expel the Jews in 1492, but because it reflects the reality of Spain as an open and plural society," Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon said after the cabinet approved the draft law last Friday.

Prospective applicants must prove their Sephardic background through their surnames, language or ancestry and get a certificate from the federation of Jewish communities in Spain.

Applicants do not have to be practising Jews, Mr Gallardon said and those who have knowledge of the Ladino language – the Judeo Spanish tongue spoken by the Sephardic Jews - will also be considered.

The word Sephardic comes from Sefarad, or Spain in Hebrew, and those who can prove their origins will have two year deadline to apply for citizenship once the bill is approved by Congress. The law potentially applies to an estimated 3.5 million residents of countries where many Sephardic Jews eventually settled, and was welcomed by Jewish leaders internationally.

"We're very pleased to hear the Spanish government has facilitated the process of allowing Sephardic Jews to seek Spanish nationality without giving up their citizenship," said Lynne Winters, director of the American Sephardi Federation in New York.

Dr Abraham Haim, president of the council of sephardi and oriental communities of Jerusalem, called it "a very advanced step".

Maya Weiss-Tamir, an Israeli lawyer who handles application for Spanish citizenship, said she had received many phone calls from people with family names that appear on the legislation's list.

Her office already inundated with the files of Jewish exiles from Spain but said many would-be applicants had difficulty proving their ancestral ties to the country.

"People want to work, to live there, and there are sentimental considerations too," she told Israel's Ynet news site. "[But] on the way proof was lost, and there was a Holocaust, but there are people who have data that goes back many years.

"We're talking about links that go back more than 500 years. Proving such a historical link is not simple for historical and objective reasons."

But she said the new legislation would change rules that require Israeli applicants to live in Spain for two years while giving up their Israeli passport to qualify for citizenship.

"The law will lighten the burden on the descendants of the expelled and will define their unusual circumstances," she added.

Tens of thousands of Israelis have used their family backgrounds to apply for and receive EU passports in recent years. Many have taken up the citizenship of Germany and Poland, despite their historical associations with the Holocaust.

Spanish Muslim groups have long been campaigning for the Spanish state to grant nationality rights for the descendants of Muslims who were expelled or forced to convert during the same period as the Sephardic Jews but no legislation has yet been proposed to award them the same rights.

“It seems unfair that one thing is being offered to the Jews but will not be considered for the Muslims who suffered the same fate,” said a spokesman from the Junta Islamica de Espana.

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The Jerusalem Post

NYT's Thomas Friedman: Third intifada is already underway

By JPOST.COM STAFF

02/05/2014 10:46

Thomas Friedman a columnist for ‘The New York Times' Photo: REUTERS

Israel is already facing a third intifada, influential New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman claims in an article published on Wednesday

Writing from Ramallah, Friedman states, "Being here, it’s obvious that a Third Intifada is underway. It’s the one that Israel always feared most — not an intifada with stones or suicide bombers, but one propelled by nonviolent resistance and economic boycott."

Friedman contends that the leaders of this uprising are not even Palestinians, saying that this intifada is led "by the European Union in Brussels and other opponents of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank across the globe. Regardless of origin, though, it’s becoming a real source of leverage for the Palestinians in their negotiations with Israel."

The Times columnist points out that US Secretary of State John Kerry already exposed this threat when he recently warned that a campaign to boycott and delegitimize Israel threatens to gain momentum if peace talks fail.

Friedman also noted that Israel is correct to see some boycott campaigners as finding a new guise for anti-Semitism. However, he emphasizes that ignoring foreign trends and opinions by continuing building in the settlements is not the way to go about things.

Moreover, Friedman remarks that current calls by Israel for measures of security may be falling on deaf ears as this intifada employs a "strategy of making Israelis feel strategically secure but morally insecure." He brings up how historically when Israel felt its security threatened, the Israeli public felt no regret fighting back as in response to rocket attacks from Gaza after unilateral disengagement. However, in situations where Israel has achieved security, as in after pushing Egypt out of Sinai and surrounding the 'third army' in 1973, Egyptian diplomacy moved Israel to feel morally insecure with its gains.

Friedman warns, "This incessant trashing of Kerry by Israeli ministers, and their demand that Palestinians halt all “incitement” — but that Israel be free to keep building settlements in their face — is not winning Israel friends in Europe or America. It is only energizing the boycotters."

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Sir Gerald Kaufman

“We must impose sanctions”

MP for Gorton, Manchester

The time when we could condemn Israel and think that that was enough has long passed. The Israelis do not care about condemnation. They are self-righteous. We must now take action against them. We must impose sanctions. If the spineless Obama will not do it, we must do it—even unilaterally. We must press the European community for it to be done. – Sir Gerald Kaufman, MP for Gorton, Manchester

I once led a delegation of 60 parliamentarians from 13 European Parliaments to Gaza. I could no longer do that today because Gaza is practically inaccessible. The Israelis try to lay the responsibility on the Egyptians, but although the Egyptians’ closing of the tunnels has caused great hardship, it is the Israelis who have imposed the blockade and are the occupying power. The culpability of the Israelis was demonstrated in the report to the UN by Richard Goldstone following Operation Cast Lead. After his report, he was harassed by Jewish organizations. At the end of a meeting I had with him in New York, his wife said to me, “It is good to meet another self-hating Jew.”

“My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza.

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The Truth Wins

DNA Results For The Nephilim Skulls In Peru Are In And The Results Are Absolutely Shocking

Michael Snyder 

February 11, 2014

How can we explain elongated skulls that are thousands of years old that contain genetic material “unknown in any human, primate or animal known so far”? For months, many of us have been eagerly awaiting the results of the first DNA tests to ever be performed on the famous Paracas skulls.

The results for one of the skulls are now in, and the scientist that did the testing is declaring that this skull represents a “new human-like creature” unlike anything that has ever been discovered before. So are these actually Nephilim skulls? Do they come from a time when the world more closely resembled “the Lord of the Rings” than most people living today would ever dare to imagine? There are those who believe that extremely bizarre hybrid races once roamed the planet.

With each passing year, the scientific evidence continues to pile up on the side of those that are convinced that the Nephilim actually lived among us. As the knowledge of this evidence becomes more widespread, what is that going to do to the commonly accepted version of history that all of us have been taught?

If you are not familiar with the Paracas skulls, the following is a pretty good summary from a recent article by April Holloway…

Paracas is a desert peninsula located within the Pisco Province in the Inca Region, on the south coast of Peru. It is here were Peruvian archaeologist, Julio Tello, made an amazing discovery in 1928 – a massive and elaborate graveyard containing tombs filled with the remains of individuals with the largest elongated skulls found anywhere in the world. These have come to be known as the ‘Paracas skulls’. In total, Tello found more than 300 of these elongated skulls, which are believed to date back around 3,000 years. A DNA analysis has now been conducted on one of the skulls and expert Brien Foerster has released preliminary information regarding these enigmatic skulls.

As Holloway noted, it is researcher Brien Foerster that has been leading the charge in reviving interest in these elongated skulls. Now that the DNA results are in, interest in these skulls is almost certainly going to skyrocket. The following quote from the geneticist that conducted the DNA analysis comes from Brien Foerster’s Facebook page. Please keep in mind that this geneticist was not told the history of these skulls in advance. So he was able to examine them without any preconceived notions. What he found was absolutely shocking…

Whatever the sample labeled 3A has came from – it had mtDNA with mutations unknown in any human, primate or animal known so far. The data is very sketchy though and a LOT of sequencing still needs to be done to recover the complete mtDNA sequence. But a few fragments I was able to sequence from this sample 3A indicate that if these mutations will hold we are dealing with a new human-like creature, very distant from Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans.

As I have written about previously, forensic analysis of these skulls show that they were not deformed by “cradle-boarding”. There are many examples of skulls that have been “cradle-boarded” down in South America, but the skulls that Foerster has been investigating are much different from those skulls. The following is more from April Holloway about these skulls…

The cranial volume is up to 25 percent larger and 60 percent heavier than conventional human skulls, meaning they could not have been intentionally deformed through head binding/flattening. They also contain only one parietal plate, rather than two. The fact that the skulls’ features are not the result of cranial deformation means that the cause of the elongation is a mystery, and has been for decades.

In fact, in a previous article I discussed how a sample of red hair from one of these skulls was sent to a lab to be analyzed. The tests on that sample of hair also showed that these skulls are not human.

Or at least they are not fully human.

So can we conclusively say that these are Nephilim skulls?

Of course many researchers are extremely excited about these findings, but they are warning everyone to stay cautious. For example, consider what L.A. Marzulli is saying about these skulls…

Our Geneticist has had his mind blown as the email indicates, but we must be cautious with our conclusions until all the evidence can be examined.

With that in mind, take a good look at the two skulls in the picture above. I took this photo when I returned to the Chongos Necropolis a few weeks ago. The skull on the left shows only one parietal plate and a complete absence of a parietal suture. Is this a genetic trait that is only found in the Paracas skulls? If so, what does it signify?

Chongos is one of the most enigmatic places I have ever found myself in. On this visit to the area we were accompanied by the mayor and an armed escort! Chongos is where the sample for the DNA testing and the subsequent results I posted above, has come from.

Are these really Nephilim skulls? In my opinion, the evidence is beginning to stack up in that direction, but we must be cautious and patient for all the evidence to come in.

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Argus Panoptes in Greek Mythology

Argus Panoptes (Ἄργος Πανόπτης), guardian of the heifer-nymph Io and son of Arestor, was a primordial giant whose epithet, "Panoptes", "all-seeing", led to his being described with multiple, often one hundred, eyes.

The epithet Panoptes, reflecting his mythic role, set by Hera as a very effective watchman of Io, was described in a fragment of a lost poem Aigimios, attributed to Hesiod:

And set a watcher upon her, great and strong Argos, who with four eyes looks every way. And the goddess stirred in him unwearying strength: sleep never fell upon his eyes; but he kept sure watch always.

In the 5th century and later, Argus' wakeful alertness was explained for an increasingly literal culture as his having so many eyes that only a few of the eyes would sleep at a time: there were always eyes still awake. In the 2nd century AD Pausanias noted at Argos, in the temple of Zeus Larissaios, an archaic image of Zeus with a third eye in the center of his forehead, allegedly Priam's Zeus Herkeios purloined from Troy. According to Ovid, to commemorate her faithful watchman, Hera had the hundred eyes of Argus preserved forever, in a peacock's tail.

Argus was Hera's servant. His great service to the Olympian pantheon was to slay the chthonic serpent-legged monster Echidna as she slept in her cave. Hera's defining task for Argus was to guard the white heifer Io from Zeus, keeping her chained to the sacred olive tree at the Argive Heraion. She charged him to "Tether this cow safely to an olive-tree at Nemea". Hera knew that the heifer was in reality Io, one of the many nymphs Zeus was coupling with to establish a new order. Wikipedia

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BLACKLISTEDNEWS.com

NEW DRONE TECHNOLOGY “EQUIVALENT TO THE CAPABILITIES OF 100 PREDATOR DRONES”

February 8, 2014

The ARGUS drone system paints a mosaic image from dozens of cameras. (Source: NOVA)

To understand the extent to which the federal government has the ability to spy on us, we must attempt to understand the technologies it has at its disposal. Through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Defense Department has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on one particular project alone. Known as ARGUS, it is a surveillance platform with the capability to maintain continuous 24/7 surveillance, day or night; able to track multiple moving targets miles apart in high definition without refocusing the camera; and with a resolution so astounding that it can detect objects as small as a cellular phone from several miles in the sky. It quite literally provides ubiquitous surveillance over a whole city from one drone.

“This is the next generation of surveillance,” said Yiannis Antonaides, an engineer for BAE Systems who led the design of the project. “It is important for the public to know that some of these capabilities exist.”

THE GOVERNMENT’S ALL-SEEING EYE

ARGUS stands for Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance. Its alternative designation is Wide Area Persistent Stare (WAPS). The project integrates many sophisticated technologies into a formidable surveillance system, combining images from 368 independent into a single mosaic image. The result is a video with a combined resolution of reportedly 1.8 gigapixels.

The massive collection of data is equivalent to having 100 Predator Drones hover over a medium-sized city at once.

A mosaic image created by ARGUS. (Source: DARPA)

As DARPA describes the project:

The Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance (ARGUS) program developed airborne sensor systems that provide a persistent, real-time, high-resolution, wide-area, day-night video surveillance capability. The ARGUS Infrared System (ARGUS-IR) uses an advanced infrared (IR) composite focal plane array (FPA) sensor. The nighttime persistent capability provided by ARGUS-IR combined with the daytime capability provided by the ARGUS Imaging System (ARGUS-IS) enables 24-hour day/night surveillance. ARGUS-IR’s wide-area, high-update-rate, high-resolution imaging capability enables detection and tracking of dismounts as well as vehicles.

The ARGUS system can simultaneously view an area of 15 square miles from an altitude of 17,500 ft. While never losing track of the greater image, ARGUS can allow users to open up dozens of zoomable sub-windows and track individual vehicles and people anywhere in the city-wide field of view. It can spot objects as small as six-inches wide.

“There’s actually enough resolution to be able to see the people waving their arms or walking around; what kind of clothes they are wearing,” said Antonaides, pointing out a bird flying in the air several miles below the camera.

The system is capable of streaming a million terabytes of HD video every day, which is the equivalent of 5,000 hours of high definition footage. This immense trove of data is capable of being stored in perpetuity, so that the government can “rewind” the video and view things that have gone on under the drone days or weeks earlier.

“If we had our choice, we would like ARGUS to be over the same area, 24 hours per day, 7 days a week,” said Antonaides.

The technology is intended for unmanned drones, but has also been outfitted on Blackhawk helicopters.

GIGANTIC PRICE TAG

Despite maintaining perennially unbalanced budgets, the federal government continues to spend a seemingly unlimited amount resources on realizing its science-fiction fantasies of “ubiquitous” surveillance over the population.

The ARGUS program has itself consumed a total of three-quarters of a billion tax-payer dollars. Most of the spending has been passed under President Obama’s tenure. Police State USA analyzed DARPA’s spending reports and came up with the following breakdown of the ARGUS budget:

FY 2008 – $114.752 million

FY 2009 – $118.880 million

FY 2010 – $117.041 million

FY 2011 – $109.476 million

FY 2012 – $88.118 million

FY 2013 – $101.339 million

FY 2014 – $117.233 million (predicted)

Admitted total: $766,839,000.00. (Source: DARPA Budget Summary Reports for FY 2010-2014)

Remember these figures when people in Washington D.C. are complaining about the next government shutdown. The federal government never has shortage of resources when it comes to controlling populations and spying.

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM ARGUS

The government remains tight-lipped about where ARGUS is deployed. It has certainly been applied overseas in America’s unending global war against people who don’t like foreign governments intervening in their countries. As we have witnessed, most wartime gadgets are perfected on foreign populations, and ultimately make their way back to the USA to be used against the citizens.

The government has big plans for its nearly billion dollar project. It continues to pour money into the system to integrate things like infrared vision and other advanced imaging features.

(Source: NOVA)

In the near future — as more of these platforms are deployed — it would be a fair assumption that every major U.S. city could be monitored and recorded from above nearly continuously, by ARGUS and other varieties of drones.

The FAA has cleared around 30,000 drones to take to the skies above the United States by 2015. They are now routinely used by agencies like the FBI, DHS, and DEA.

Drones have already been used to specifically track crime suspects inside the USA. Courts have ruled that a warrant is not necessary to hover above private property and spy on the occupants. Since as early as 2012, drones have been used by cops to surveil suspects and make arrests. A North Dakota man was recently sent to jail based on drone evidence.

ARGUS, with the capability of opening up 65 independent close-up surveillance windows within its greater image, gives the government the potential to set up a formidable surveillance dragnet from above. The drone operators could set-up dedicated windows to monitor a targeted individual’s home, workplace, all his friends’ homes, all his relatives’ homes, and all of his favorite hangouts, if so desired.

Besides simply spying on Americans’ every movement, the drones may take on other roles in law enforcement, with many dangerous implications. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says that it would be legal for an armed government to target and kill Americans on U.S. soil in an “extraordinary circumstance.”

The government’s incredible potential for domestic spying and surveillance is already here and Americans have failed to react in any meaningful way. The applications of such a power in the hands of an increasingly tyrannical government does not seem to bode well for residents of the land of the free.*

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The Independent

Switzerland votes to limit the number of EU migrants

Narrow approval for referendum will tear up agreements with the EU on free movement of people and good

JOHN LICHFIELD

PARIS

Monday 10 February 2014

Against all expectations, the Swiss narrowly approved a referendum proposal to stop “mass migration”, which will tear up agreements with the EU on free movement of people and goods.

The official result recorded that 50.3 per cent of voters had backed the measure.

The proposal, tabled by the right-wing populist UDC (Democratic Union of Centre) party had been fiercely condemned by Swiss business groups and opposed by the federal parliament, President and government.

The result obliges Switzerland to impose unspecified annual ceilings on all foreign migrants, including Britons and other EU citizens and daily cross-border commuters from France, Italy and Germany.

Such limits would breach “open borders” treaties with Brussels, which also allow Swiss goods to circulate freely within Europe and give Swiss businesses the right to bid for EU government contracts.

The Swiss political scientist Pascal Sciarini said the country faced economic “chaos” because all its diplomatic and commercial agreements with the EU would have to be renegotiated from scratch. Over half of Swiss exports go to the EU.

The UDC argued that migration, currently running at 80,000 people a year, threatened to swamp the culture and identity of Switzerland. The country has a population of 8,000,000, of whom one in four were born abroad.

Unless ceilings abolished by a previous referendum in 2000 were re-established, the UDC said, Swiss housing, health, education and transport services would collapse under the pressure from the foreign “invasion”. The “yes” campaign’s posters showed black legs striding purposefully over a Swiss flag – recalling the party’s much criticised poster in a 2009 referendum showing white sheep ejecting a black sheep from Switzerland.

Although the party was again accused of using the race card, the most dramatic effect of the referendum result will be to scramble relations between Switzerland and its neighbours and ethnic cousins in Germany, France and Italy.

Yves Nidegger of the UDC said that a majority of Swiss people had rejected the “alarmist” tactics of business and mainstream parties who had warned that the “ten plagues of Egypt ” would strike the country if it voted “yes”.

Far from taking their revenge by ejecting Switzerland from its EU trade agreements, he said, many European countries would soon follow the “respectable and exemplary” Swiss lead and impose their own curbs on free movement of people within Europe.

Martine Brunschwing-Graf, president of the federal commission against racism, used another biblical image to make the opposite argument. She said that Switzerland had suffered “ten lean years” after it refused to join the EU single market in 1992. Its economy had boomed since it reversed the decision in 2002.

“Now we are throwing away our good fortune,” she said.

Under the Swiss constitution, a referendum needs both a majority of cantons and a simple majority of the popular vote to pass. The proposition “against mass racism” easily won a majority of cantons. The polling institute GfS estimated that the “yes” had won 50.4 per cent of the popular vote – compared to only 43 per cent in favour in the final opinion polls.

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LewRockwell.com

‘F….Europe’

By Eric Margolis

February 10, 2014
“F….Europe!” Such were the words used in Kiev, Ukraine by Victoria Nuland, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe.

Nuland was referring to the European Union’s reluctance to get too deeply involved in Ukraine’s current strife or to impose sanctions on the former Soviet republic. But Nuland perfectly captured Washington’s sneering view of Europe as a collection of feeble and irrelevant banana republics.

Nuland is a prominent American neoconservative. Like her fellow neocons, she disdains Europe for being unwarlike, mildly critical of Israel, and often insufficiently responsive to Washington’s demands - or even insubordinate, like the awful French.

How delicious was it that Nuland’s pithy reference to Europe and her plans for a new western-confected government in Ukrainian – where the US insists it is not at all interfering – were picked by Russian electronic intelligence and played to the world. How dim for Madame Nuland to speak so thoughtlessly on her cell phone.

Of late, Nuland and other senior US officials have been blasting Moscow for “meddling” in Ukraine. The leaked phone recording has Nuland telling the US ambassador to Kiev which of the three opposition candidates Washington wants to run Ukraine.

Nuland’s plans for regime change in Kiev have been a godsend to Moscow, which claims the US and EU are behind the uprising in Ukraine. She has just undermined the democratic Ukrainian opposition by making them look like American puppets.

Score one for Russia’s spooks. All Nuland could do was splutter about how Russian intelligence had intercepted her cell phone. This after the US National Security Agency was revealed to be bugging the phones and email of most of Europe’s leaders. What goes around comes around.

The loud-mouthed Nuland should resign.

All this was most amusing – except that it highlighted the growing US-Russian confrontation over Ukraine that risks turning very dangerous.

A senior Russian official close to President Vladimir Putin just warned Washington to butt out of Ukraine – or else. Europe is rightfully fearful that the Ukraine crisis could cause a head-on clash by Washington and Moscow – just as the little Russia-Georgia War over Ossetia almost did in 2008.

Interestingly, during that crisis, the US rushed warships to the Black Sea. This time, US Navy warships are back again in the Black Sea under the laughable excuse they are on station to evacuate US tourists to the Sochi Olympics if violence occurs.

Day by day, we see growing rancor between the US and Russia. Most of it is unfair criticism and childish spats, but the overall effect is creating the basis for war fever. The same bickering, cheap criticism and manufactured anger created the psychological basis in Britain for the utterly catastrophic World War I. Three years later, it was repeated in the United States to whip up anti-German fever.

The US media is barraging Russia and Putin with a drumfire of negative stories. The Sochi Olympics have come in for relentless, petty attacks and low-minded carping.

Anyone who knows Russia should be in awe that the normally bumbling, disorganized Ruskis managed to get their Olympic sites finished more or less on time - and that they still remain standing. Russians usually lose a lot of early battles, but they usually end up winning wars.

So what if Russia spent billions on the Sochi Olympics. Who is Washington to criticize Moscow after pouring over $2 trillion into the stupid wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now Syria, with nothing to show but huge debts, armies of refugees, and graveyards?

America’s national security establishment – what used to be known in Britain as imperialists - is now turning its guns on Russia, aided by the US corporate media. Vlad Putin’s Russia has re-emerged as America’s number one enemy. Muslims are out. At times, the Cold War seems to be inching back. The US narrowly escaped a dangerous military clash over President Barack Obama’s intemperate rush to war over Syria.

Nuclear powers must not indulge in such school-yard squabbles. World War I, whose 100th anniversary comes this fall, began just this way.

Putin’s Russia is no Utopia, but do we really want angry, expansionist Russians again on our eastern borders? Better they focus on Olympic games and shopping sprees. Unlike us, they have not started any wars lately.

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STRATRISKS

Russia threatening to intervene militarily in Ukraine

Source: Ya Libnan

February 7, 2014

A senior Kremlin aide accused the United States on Thursday of arming Ukrainian “rebels” and, urging the Kiev government to put down what he called an attempted coup, warned Russia could intervene to maintain the security of its ex-Soviet neighbor.

Sergei Glazyev, an adviser to President Vladimir Putin with responsibility for relations with Ukraine, told a newspaper that U.S. “interference” breached the 1994 treaty under which Washington and Moscow jointly guaranteed Ukraine’s security and sovereignty after Kiev gave up its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal.

His characteristically confrontational comments, on the eve of an expected meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich at the opening of the Sochi Winter Olympics, could add to tensions with Washington, and within Ukraine.

Asked by Kommersant-Ukraine daily whether Russia might “actively intervene” if the country’s crisis deepened, Glazyev recalled the Budapest Memorandum of 1994: “Under the document, Russia and the USA are guarantors of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and … are obliged to intervene when conflict situations of this nature arise.

“And what the Americans are getting up to now, unilaterally and crudely interfering in Ukraine’s internal affairs, is a clear breach of that treaty. The agreement is for collective guarantees and collective action.”

He did not specify what action Russia might take.

Washington, which has urged Yanukovich to share power with a unity government to end a violent standoff in the streets, has accused Russia of pressuring the leadership in Kiev to prevent Ukraine joining a trade pact with the European Union.

Yanukovich sparked the protests in November when he turned down the EU accord and took financial aid instead from Moscow.

“The United States is committed to working with both the Ukrainian government and the opposition to help de-escalate this crisis,” White House spokeswoman Laura Lucas Magnuson said when asked about Glazyev’s comments.

“We condemn the use of violence by any party in Ukraine. Russian officials should be doing the same,” she said. “Russia should not view the desires of the Ukrainian people for greater democracy and a closer relationship with Europe as a zero-sum game.”

U.S. ‘ARMS REBELS’

Glazyev, who was prominent in a Kremlin campaign last year that threatened economic sanctions against Ukraine if it took the EU deal, accused U.S. agents of giving “$20 million a week” for arms and other help to “the opposition and rebels” in Kiev.

“There is information that within the grounds of the American embassy, there is training for fighters, that they’re arming them,” Glazyev said. The U.S. embassy declined comment.

The Kremlin official suggested Yanukovich should use force if necessary to put an end to the protest movement that Glazyev called “an attempt at a coup d’etat, at the violent overthrow of authority” in which public buildings had been occupied.

“The authorities are not fulfilling their duty to defend the state, negotiating with putschists as if they are law-abiding citizens,” he said, accusing the West of “blackmailing” Yanukovich and wealthy oligarchs by threatening to seize their extensive foreign assets and blacklist them from travelling.

Asked by the paper if Yanukovich should now use force to clear the protesters, Glazyev said: “As for starting to use force, in a situation where the authorities face an attempted coup d’etat, they simply have no other course of action.

“Otherwise, the country will be plunged into chaos.”

He said Yanukovich had done all he could to avoid violence, in contrast to the opposition, and accused leaders in the Ukrainian-speaking west of the country of being “separatists”.

Russia, he said, was concerned that the country should not split apart. But he suggested that a form of federalism be introduced to give regions substantial powers – including over their budgets and even international relations.

Citing the example of Greenland, which enjoys substantial autonomy from Denmark and unlike the Danish state is not part of the European Union, he said western and eastern Ukraine could have different economic relations with the EU and Russia.

“Today, economic, cultural and human ties between the regions of eastern and western Ukraine are less than the links between southeastern Ukraine and Russia and between the western regions and the EU,” Glazyev said, suggesting eastern regions might want to join a customs union that Putin favors.

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UK Floods:

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Independent.ie

Danske Bank locks 10,000 customers out of their accounts

Just 72 hours to withdraw funds from cash machines

A man walks past Danske bank branch

CHARLIE WESTON PERSONAL FINANCE EDITOR – 07 FEBRUARY 2014

THOUSANDS of customers of Danske Bank are set to be denied access to their money after the bank said it was closing their current accounts from today.

The bank has confirmed that 15,000 current accounts are to be "terminated" and the majority of customers who hold these accounts have yet to shut them down and switch to a new one.

Up to 10,000 people could find their funds frozen as they have failed to set up a new account with another bank. Danske said in October that it was closing its retail operations here.

Large numbers of those who have already started the switching process are also set to be locked out of their accounts before the new accounts can be set up.

A spokeswoman for the bank said: "Yes, some will be locked out of their accounts."

The bank said it was closing the current accounts today but it later conceded that it would allow these customers to use their debit/ATM cards over the weekend.

But by Monday, the accounts will no longer operate.

Customers who contacted the Irish Independent claimed the whole shut-down of Danske's retail operations was being handled in a "chaotic and shambolic" fashion.

Permanent TSB, to which large numbers are switching, is so worried about it that it is making arrangements to hand out €500 to each customer who has already signed up to switch from Danske but have chosen a date later this month for the tranfer to take effect.

Executives at Permanent TSB fear customers moving from Danske will have their funds and accounts frozen before the switches take place.

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MailOnline

70 MILLION Americans are on mind-altering drugs: shock statistic which shows full extent of use of illegal and legal narcotics

One in Five adults take prescription psychiatric drugs

Prescription drugs are the second most common substances to be abused

27,000 unintentional drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States

250million prescriptions for anti-depressants were written in 2010

10 per cent of high school pupils are prescribed drugs for ADHD

Anti-depressants have been linked to a series of school shootings

By TOM GARDNER

PUBLISHED: 12:21 EST, 10 February 2014 | UPDATED: 12:10 EST, 12 February 2014

More than 70million Americans - or one in five of the population - is on mind-altering drugs, a new study reported by WND.com has found.

The shocking survey revealed that prescription drug abuse as well as illegal narcotics use has reached epidemic proportions across the country.

Nearly 50 million people are thought to have been given high-strength substances by their doctors - leading to an alarming spike in drug-related deaths.

The death of movie star of Philip Seymour Hoffman from an apparent heroin overdose again promoted the spectre of illicit substances in the country's psyche.

But new research by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has suggested the far greater hazard is posed by over the counter prescription drugs, such as anti-depressants, sleeping pills and anxiety relief substances.

Experts have warned legal substances caused more overdose deaths than heroine and cocaine combined during the past decade, according to the U.S. report.

In 2010 more than 250 million prescriptions for antidepressants were written for Americans.

Shock: More than 27,000 people died in a single years as a result of an unintentional overdose on prescription drugs

A staggering 27,000 unintentional overdoses deaths were ascribed to prescription drugs in a single year, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention found.

The organisation was so alarmed by the figures, its report noted, WND reports, that: 'Prescription drug abuse is the fastest growing drug problem in the United States.'

For the last decade, 'more overdose deaths have involved opioid analgesics than heroin and cocaine combined.'

It feared the rise in the rate of opioid analgesics prescriptions – drugs marketed under the brand names Norco, Vicodin, Dilaudid, Exalgo, OxyContin, Percocet, Astramorph, Avinza - was likely to drive the trend even higher in the coming years.

The dangerous implications of so many people being prescribed these powerful mind-altering substances are finally being understood.

Recent research is beginning to draw a link between a popular sleeping pill called Ambien and - called as a hypnotic drug - to a series of crimes and serious accidents.

The drug was famously thought to have been a factor in a car crash involving the-Republican Patrick Kennedy.

Research into school shootings and violence among young people is finding links with the use of anti depressants.

Four and nine million by most estimates, mostly boys – to take Ritalin or similar dangerous psycho-stimulant drugs which can have similar side effects to cocaine or the amphetamines.

19 percent of high school-age boys in the U.S. are being diagnosed with ADHD and about 10 percent are currently being prescribed drugs for it, while 10 percent of high school-age girls are being likewise diagnosed.

Dr. William Graf, a pediatric neurologist in New Haven and Yale medical professor told the New York Times: 'Those are astronomical numbers. I’m floored.'

(“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1:7)

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