“And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.”
(Daniel 9:27)

He Shall Confirm The Covenant

Dear Friends,

Greetings! Our friend and collegue, Luke, who has on several occasions contributed material to People of the Keys has completed a study he has been working on for several years concerning Daniel 9:27.

In this study Luke presents some radical new/old ideas that just might just have us alter how we have looked at this verse for many years.

He supports his conclusions from the writings of the early Church Fathers along with multiple scripture references to back his position.

If he is correct, our perspective on “the last seven years” will need to be examined.

Also if he is correct the verses from Daniel 8:13-14 would take on a far greater importance then was previously thought. At the end of his paper we will provide a link to these verses in Daniel 8 from a previous study published on People of the Keys.

Read for yourself and see what you think. If you care to write us with your reaction to Luke's material we would be happy to hear from you.

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What if we have been wrong about the last seven years, The 70th week of Daniel? - "Part 1"

I realize merely suggesting this may be very unsettling for some of you. Let me explain. Over the years I have followed the history of the Middle East conflict, and the ensuing Peace Process, meticulously. I have always taught "the last seven years" of Bible prophecy from the starting point of Daniel 9:27, with all the various corresponding time scriptures outlined in a diagram, perfectly joined together leaving no room for doubt as to when/how the End would begin, with the Antichrist either making, or in some way playing a major role in a 7 year peace agreement (confirming the covenant with many) between the Arab Muslim world and Israel, with the city of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount being central to this agreement, enabling the Jews to rebuild the Third Temple and resume their sacrificial blood offering of animals, once again for the sins of the Jewish nation. But after the first three and a half years the Antichrist would break this "covenant - peace agreement", cause the daily sacrifice of animals to cease, stand in the Temple at Jerusalem and declare himself to be God, which would then begin the last three and a half years known as "The Great Tribulation."

It could be said that the Benchmark, or point of reference in our interpretation of Endtime Bible prophecy, in large part, is "hinged" on our interpretation of this one verse (Daniel 9:27) as conveyed in the above scenario. (Which is also the dominant interpretation among fundamentalist evangelical Christian denominations today, with the addition of a "secret rapture".) About 4 years ago I began to do some research and investigate what the "early church" in the first century AD, and the subsequent future generations that followed, what the various church fathers of the Christian Faith taught and believed, specifically with regard to their interpretation of the "70 weeks prophecy", and who confirms the covenant of Daniel 9:27.

If we discover that some of the teachings being promulgated about the Endtime in this "modern" church age are found to be "in error", and not those things originally taught by the Lord's first century disciples, nor the overwhelming majority of the founding fathers of the Christian faith throughout the succeeding 1800 years A.D.

"No prophecy (should be) of any private interpretation." (2Pet.1:20)--The very thing on which the Scofield Bible and a lot of other Bible Prophecy students have based their interpretations: Perfectly private revelations, only theirs and nobody else's, different from the prophetic interpretations of Christians for hundreds of years previously!"

"The only kind of interpretations you can pretty well count on are those which have been generally accepted for hundreds of years by a fairly large school of prophetic interpreters, Bible students and people who really know the Bible!" David Berg

The dominant Endtimes prophetic theme being taught today by the overwhelming majority of fundamentalist evangelical Christian denominations is twofold. Popularized by Hal Lindsey's "Late Great Planet Earth" in the 70's, and now today in 2014 we have the Hollywood Premier of "Left Behind", staring Nicholas Cage. The theme, First a "secret pre-trib rapture of Christians", followed with "the Antichrist confirming a seven year covenant" with Israel. But is that what the Lord taught His disciples? And what about the succeeding generations since, what did the historic church fathers believe and teach over the following centuries since the days of the early church?

When doing research relating to the scriptures, if our hearts are right with the Lord the goal is not to find information to merely support our personal theories, but to seek after the truth, even if it causes us to re-evaluate and change any of our former beliefs. Learning and change are signs of growth. The research I have done over the past four years has brought me face to face with something that was very difficult to accept and change, as it would pretty much upset my whole applecart in the things I have always taught and believed about key points of Bible prophecy. But the more I prayed, wrestling with this, asking the Lord for His answers, the more difficult it was for me to ignore.

"Well, I'd certainly lots rather change when God shows me something and be right, than through pride and arrogance and inflated ego and fear of embarrassment refuse to change and refuse to be changed by God himself in the matter of some point of doctrine or some point of prophetic interpretation or some point of theological affirmation of some kind or other. I would rather suffer the blow to my ego and the embarrassment of my pride and be right, than stiffen my resistance against anything new and close my mind like most Christians and churches who say, "My mind is made up, don't confuse me with the facts!" I would rather suffer the embarrassment and the blow to my pride and my ego and be right, than to insist and go on in the way I've always thought and always told and always taught to try to save my reputation and my ego and my pride to try to get out from the embarrassment of being accused of always changing my mind! I would rather change my mind and suffer the consequences and be right, than to refuse to change my mind and be wrong!" David Berg

What I learned from my research about Church history is that for 1800 years the overwhelming majority of Christians from the first century "Early Church" throughout the time of the Reformation believed that the covenant of Daniel 9:27 was confirmed by Jesus in 26 AD when He was baptized by John, at the beginning of the 70th week, with Jesus being cut off, crucified in the midst of the week. And that the dominant interpretation of "the going forth of the commandment" in Daniel 9:25 was in 457 BC, with no "gap" of time between the 69th and 70th week.

Over the centuries, the great commentators have agreed that Christ is the One who confirmed the covenant with many (see Matthew Henry, Matthew Poole, Adam Clarke, Jamieson Fausset and Brown, Edward Young, John Calvin, John Wesley, Geneva Study Bible, etc). The Church Fathers such as Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Athanasius, Augustine and Eusebius regarded the 70th week of Daniel as having already been fulfilled by Christ’s earthly ministry, as did the Venerable Bede, John Wycliffe, Luther, Melancthon, John Gill, etc.

However, some prophecy teachers in recent times have come up with an alternative interpretation that places the fulfillment of Daniel’s 70th week into the future.

The doctrines being taught today of a "secret pre-trib rapture", the miss-application of a "gap of time" between the 69th and 70th week of Daniel's prophecy, with the Antichrist "confirming a seven-year covenant" in the distant future, were unheard of during the days of the Early Church and throughout most of the succeeding 1800 years of Church History.

After learning these things from many who researched Church History my thoughts were turned again to the scriptures themselves looking for answers as to how this could be. Surely if the history I've researched and read is correct the scriptures must somehow bare witness of this. We must then ask, did Jesus ever teach His disciples about "a last seven year" timeframe, with the Antichrist "confirming a covenant", the covenant mentioned in Daniel 9:27? When the disciples asked the Lord what shall be the sign of His coming, Jesus went into great detail explaining the signs of His return, but not a word about the last seven years, and nothing about the Antichrist confirming any covenant. It's nowhere to be found in any of the four Gospels. Which to me seems rather strange if that were true, after all, the disciples were expecting the Lord to return in their lifetime and they would need to know this and be able to teach others the same. Jesus did however very clearly tell His disciples of an event, spoken of by Daniel the prophet that would trigger the last three and a half years before His return, but nothing about a covenant. If the covenant had already been confirmed by Jesus, as Church history reveals, it would answer why the Lord did not refer to a future Antichrist covenant as a "sign" of His return to watch for. But for the benefit of a doubt lets suppose the authors of the four Gospels somehow forgot to mention this one (major) detail. But again, if it were true, surely it would show up in some of the many other New Testament books, or at least in one of them, right? But nothing! Not a single word. Not even in the most detailed prophetic book in the entire Bible, "The Revelation of Jesus Christ", which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass.

But still the above rationale alone is not enough to win me over to the side of Church history. So my next inquiry to search in the scriptures, with the apparent absence of any "seven-year covenant" being confirmed by the Antichrist, was to ask, what does the New Testament say about "a covenant", possibly even referring to "the covenant" of Daniel 9:27, as the Church fathers taught for century's since the days of the Early Church. There's an old saying, I'm not sure where it originated, when something is "Hidden in plain sight". It basically means it's so obvious that you don't see it, or pay any attention to it, or it doesn't even cross your mind. From my research it appears this "modern" church age has been so heavily indoctrinated over the past 100 years, about this one verse (Daniel 9:27), that we would not dare consider it being applied to the one we love above all others in this life. It has been so drummed into the psyche of every evangelical Christian denomination for the past century that whoever it is that confirms this covenant is not good, but is a deceiver, an anti-christ. Hence, we would not dare equate this scripture with the one we know to be the embodiment of all that is good. When I started reading again what has been recorded in the books of the New Testament about "the covenant, the new covenant, the new testament", it was like the lights "all of a sudden" came on. It was right there in front of me the whole time, numerous scriptures I've read repeatedly over the past 40 years, but never did I equate them with the covenant of Daniel 9:27 that our Lord and savior "confirmed with many" almost 2,000 years ago.

Jesus did not make a seven-year covenant with His disciples. But Jesus and His disciples did confirm the covenant during the 70th week, during the last seven years of the 490 year prophecy of Daniel chapter 9. The scripture says, "He shall confirm the covenant", (which means to "authenticate, ratify, endorse, put into effect, etc") which the apostle Paul established in saying, "Jesus Christ was a minister....to confirm the promises made unto the fathers:" (Romans 15:8). What promises? Luke says, "To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; The oath which he sware to our father Abraham." (Luke 1:72-73) "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ,......till the seed should come .......was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator." (Galatians 3:16,17 and19) The prophet Isaiah also spoke of this covenant saying, "and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David." (Isaiah 55:3) Again Paul said, that it was Jesus, "through the blood of the everlasting covenant," (Hebrews 13:20).

The "seven years" of the 70th week was the allotted time, given for the Jews, to accept their Messiah, as a nation. Which we know from history and the scriptures the house of Israel failed to do. Daniel had just finished reading the book of "Jeremiah", when praying desperately, confessing the sins of his people, and beseeching the Lord to forgive them. In answer to Daniel's prayers the angel Gabriel told him that God was going to send his people the Messiah, to forgive their sins. The timeframe of when the Messiah would arrive was foretold in the 70 weeks prophecy, which ended 490 years after "the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince". The commandment was given in 457 BC. (Ezra 7) The end of the 70th week was in 33 AD, and the beginning of the 70th week, the last seven years of Daniel's 490 year prophecy would commence in 26 AD with the Baptism of John, when our Lord began His public ministry and ended seven years later with the stoning of Stephen. Up until that time Gospel was almost exclusively preached to the Jews. (Matthew 10:5-6, Matthew 15:24) "To the Jew first". (Romans 1:16) "Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles." (Acts 13:46)

In Daniel 9:26 it says, the Messiah would be cut off after 69 weeks, which means He would be cut off during the 70th week! The 69th week ended in 26 AD. Then in Daniel 9:27, the scripture reverts back to the Messiah who is the focal point of the entire 70 weeks prophecy, not a future Antichrist. It says, "And he (the messiah) shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: (i.e. during the 70th week, this last seven year period, Jesus and His disciples would confirm the covenant, that the "promised seed" of the Messiah had arrived) ,and in the midst of the week he (the Messiah) shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, (God would no longer accept another sacrifice for sins).

The scripture says, "because they received not the love of the truth...... for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:" Although this scripture has a future application, the doctrine of the Antichrist who would confirm a seven-year covenant, the covenant of Daniel 9:27, which has been attributed to Christ for over 1800 years, appears to be a very "strong delusion", which I see as being akin to the false "secret pre-trib rapture" doctrine. How very much like the Devil to usurp the place of Christ, in the mind of believers, in claiming this covenant as his own, and for his son. The scriptures refer to a coming "flood of lies" that the serpent will cast out of his mouth to deceive. And the Lord issued a warning saying, "insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect." (Rev 12:15-16, Mat 24:24) Someone said, "It is knowing and believing that we are vulnerable that keeps us vigilant. Satan is seeking to deceive even the very elect if possible. And it is possible if we are careless, and assume things without careful study of all the sides, and ample proof from the Scriptures. We must be continually on our guard, never trusting any man." The first utterance the Lord gave His disciples questioning the signs of His return was, "Take heed that no man deceive you." (Mat 24:4) Paul repeats the same warning saying, "Let no man deceive you by any means:" (2 Thes 2:3) The New Testament scriptures enumerate of a deception unfolding on a grand scale, immediately preceding the second coming of Christ. By all accounts it appears "a time of trouble this world has never known", will be unleashed upon this earth, almost without warning, catching most Christians by surprise. Which seems to be why the Lord would say such things to His disciples, "Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh." (Matt 24:44) "For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth." (Luke 21:35) The Lord was speaking to His disciples not the multitudes. A "snare" has no warning, such as the Antichrist confirming a seven-year peace covenant with Israel, allowing us three and a half years to prepare before the Great Tribulation begins. Truthfully that would seem almost impossible for anyone not to believe if such a major sign as this were to occur. That would not deceive anyone. Which is why it's not heard of in any of the New Testament books.

If this interpretation is correct, that the covenant of Daniel 9:27 has already been confirmed by Jesus, and the 70th week completed, (and I'm very much inclined to believe it is) it appears the overwhelming majority of Christians are going to be deceived and taken by surprise. And that appears to be the enemy's strategy to deceive the followers of Christ in this "last generation" as we approach the second coming of our Lord. The "pre-tribers" we've always known were already in the enemy's "bag". And now it also appears those of us who are expecting the Antichrist to arrive on the scene with a "seven-year covenant" are also going to be caught by surprise and unawares. With this realization it begins to make more sense why there's not a single reference in the entire New Testament saying the Antichrist would confirm a seven-year covenant. And with the Daniel 9:27 covenant having already been confirmed and fulfilled by the Lord and His disciples, there's not a single scripture in the Old Testament either, nor anywhere in the entire Bible.

The prophecy says "70 weeks are determined upon thy people (the Jews) and upon thy holy city." The four Gospels all tell the same story. "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." (John 1:11) "Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." (Matt 21:43) "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate,....because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation." (Luke 13:35, 19:44)

In chapter 9 Daniel's prayer, and in the book of Jeremiah which Daniel was reading at the time, it says because the Jews had broken the Mosaic "covenant", (the first covenant) and had forsaken the "covenant" and worshipped other gods and served them, God told Jeremiah that He would make a "new covenant" with the house of Israel and Judah, the Jews. In the New Testament books this new covenant, also called the second covenant, replaces the old covenant, also called the first covenant. This New covenant was promised to Abraham, of which Christ would be the mediator of a better covenant. Isaiah 55:3 tell us it's an everlasting covenant. This is the covenant of (Daniel 9:27) that God revealed unto Daniel in the 70 weeks prophecy, that Jesus "confirmed with many" of His disciples during the 70th week. The 70 weeks of Daniel 9 is all about Jesus Christ, it has absolutely nothing to do with a future Antichrist. The prophet Malachi also foretold of John the Baptist who would prepare the way, the messenger of the covenant. John baptized Jesus in 26 AD, which began the 70th week, the last seven years, of the 490 year prophecy.(see Jeremiah 31:31 and Malachi 3:1)

Without any further explanation I'll let the scriptures speak for themselves. Below are some of the references "defining" the first and second covenant, the old and the new covenant, the mediator of a better covenant, till the seed should come, to thy seed which is Christ, confirmed before of God in Christ, it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator, the mediator of the new testament, the first testament and the new testament, a testament and the testator, the blood of the covenant, the mediator of the new covenant, the blood of the everlasting covenant, the new testament in my blood.

(Jeremiah 31:31) "Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:"

(Isaiah 55:3) "Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David."

(Malachi 3:1) "Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the LORD, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts."

(Luke 1:72-73) "To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; The oath which he sware to our father Abraham."

(Romans 15:8) "Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers:

(Galatians 3:16) "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ."

(Galatians 3:17) "And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect."

(Galatians 3:19) "Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator."

(Hebrews 8:6) "But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises."

(Hebrews 8:7) "For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second."

(Hebrews 8:13) "In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away."

(Colossians 2:14) "Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us (the first covenant), which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;"

(Hebrews 9:15) "And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance."

(Hebrews 9:16) "For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator."

(Hebrews 9:17) "For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth."

(Hebrews 10:9) "Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second."

(Hebrews 12:24) "And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant,"

(Hebrews 13:20) "Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,"

(Matthew 26:28) "For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins."

(Mark 14:24) "And he said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many."

(Luke 22:20) "Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you."

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If the above interpretation is true, which is not a new revelation but the original interpretation of Daniel 9:27, passed down through history from the days of the Early Church. So where and when did these new "modern" revelations begin to appear that speak of a "secret pre-trib rapture", a "seven year tribulation", a "gap" theory between the 69th and 70th week, and the Antichrist confirming a "seven year peace agreement" with Israel?

The details are much more complex than this, but in a nut-shell, these "new doctrines" began to emerge during the mid 1800's and were firmly established as "gospel truth" at the turn of the 20th century. Then with the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, and Jerusalem captured in the six-day war of 1967, it was then the dominant view of nearly all fundamentalist evangelical Christian denominations. Three of the principal proponents formulating these "new doctrines", interpretations and revelations were John Nelson Darby, Cyrus Ingerson Scofield and Sir Robert Anderson.

John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) is credited with originating the "secret rapture" theory wherein Christ will suddenly remove the church from this world before the judgments of the tribulation begin spoken of in the Bible's book of Revelation. Darby greatly influenced Cyrus Ingerson Scofield (1843-1921) who also incorporated this false doctrine into the notes of his Scofield Reference Bible, first published by Oxford University Press in 1909. One million copies were printed by 1930, firmly establishing his theory into different denominations and Bible schools of the United States in the 20th Century.

Then a famous Christian author named Sir Robert Anderson (1841-1918) wrote a book entitled "The Coming Prince". This book is considered the "backbone" on the subject of "Daniel's 70 weeks" among modern evangelical fundamentalist Christians today (Dan. 9:24-27) that popularized "a gap theory" between the 69th and 70th week of Daniel. This "new" theory places an undetermined amount of time between the 69th and 70th week (almost 2,000 years now and counting) with Daniel's 70th week believed to be "the last seven years" before Christ returns to earth. Again with a "secret rapture" happening before the 70th week begins. Sir Robert Anderson was especially close to Cyrus Scofield and preached with John Nelson Darby.

"Dispensationalists" as they came to be known, typically hold that a 'hiatus', which some refer to as a 'biblical parenthesis', occurred between the 69th and 70th week of the prophecy, into which the "church age" is inserted (also known as the "gap theory" of Daniel 9). The seventieth week of the prophecy is expected to commence after the rapture of the church.

In the mid 1800's these more modern, "new doctrines" began to evolve among the evangelical denominations for decades before coming into fruition with the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948. Since that time the current forecast and doctrines being promoted today constitute a "seven year Middle East peace agreement" between Israel and her Arab neighbors, but before that 7 year peace agreement, the rapture of the church will occur.

John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) visited America several times where this false rapture theology starting gaining a large acceptance in the 1850s and 1860s. The "seven-year tribulation" theory has its roots in dispensationalism, which in turn originated, not in historic Protestantism, but in the 1800's with Darby.

Darby claimed that all the events from the sixth to the nineteenth chapters of Revelation occur during a "seven-year tribulation." However, nothing in the book of Revelation say or even hints that the seven seals are loosed, the seven trumpets sounded and the seven plagues are poured out during a seven-year period. A seven-year period is not even mentioned in the book Revelation.

The historic position of Protestantism for 300 years since the Reformation has been that the 70th week immediately followed the 69 weeks with the death of Christ "in the midst" (middle) of the 70th week. In the 19th century, dispensationalists came along and said, "Not so, there is a parenthesis between the 69 weeks and the 70th week. This gap is the period between the first advent and the rapture. Then, they say, "The 70th week, seven years, begins to count when the anti-christ confirms a seven year covenant, and the seven years of the 70th week is the 'seven-year tribulation' during which Chapters 6-19 of the book of Revelation are fulfilled." The mere fact that this gap is purely an assumption, not founded on Scripture, seems to matter little to the seven-year dispensationalists.

The futurist view of Daniel's 70th week passed through certain refinements and additions, including the seven-year tribulation and the snatching away of the saints. For the first time, it was espoused by Protestant teachers through the influence and writings of John Nelson Darby of the Plymouth Brethren Church in England, the new doctrine spread to the United States. During the middle and latter nineteenth century, it received its biggest boost from Cyrus Scofield, who incorporated it into the notes of his Scofield Reference Bible published in 1909.

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At the end of the day it all comes down to faith. No amount of documentation and research, historical dates, graphs and statistics, or any manipulation of the scriptures should convince you one way or the other. There's so much very persuasive but contrary information available today from Biblical scholars on both sides of the aisle. But we can't judge matters of faith with our carnal minds. Jesus said to Peter "flesh and blood has not revealed this unto you but my father." My personal faith in the scriptures alone tells me that Jesus confirmed the covenant of Daniel 9:27, which is the "everlasting covenant" of the New Testament.

To those who want to believe Daniel 9:27 refers to the Antichrist confirming "a seven year" Middle East peace agreement, in a way I wish that were true. It would sure seem to make things easier, knowing we just need to wait till this covenant is made, and then we have another three and a half years to get ready. But what if you're wrong and there isn't going to be a seven-year covenant made with the Antichrist? You could be in for a big surprise, which is what the Lord seems to refer to repeatedly in the Gospels always telling His disciples to be ready.

On the other hand, if you believe the interpretation presented herein that the covenant of Daniel 9:27 is history, His-story, confirmed and fulfilled, by Christ and His disciples as the Early Church believed, and it turns out to be "wrong", you will have lost nothing. Why? Because you will be vigilant, ready, waiting and watching "as ye see the day approaching."

"Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready."

link to Daniel 8:13-14

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BBC

Does the Sabbath still exist on the isle of Lewis?

By Steven Brocklehurst

BBC Scotland news website

The isle of Lewis in the outer Hebrides is said to be the last place in Britain where the fourth commandment - Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy - is still strictly observed. But how has modern life changed attitudes to the Lord's Day on this island of 20,000 people?

They used to talk of the Scottish Sabbath, then it was the Highland Sabbath and now it is just the Lewis Sabbath, as the number of places keeping Sunday free for God has dwindled.

The Reverend Alasdair Smith, who is now in his 80s, and his wife Chrissie remember the days when people would be "horrified" by someone riding a bicycle on the Sabbath - even if they were cycling to church.

Chrissie says: "I went to Sunday school and enjoyed it because you could walk to the school with your friends and if it was a nice day you ambled back. Because that was the only time you got to go for a walk - to church or Sunday school - not for pleasure.

"But Sunday was special," she adds.

"I used to think wasn't God wonderful to have given us the Sabbath.

"I can sit without feeling guilty that I'm not washing or ironing or cleaning."

Alasdair Smith says it is a far more liberal society now.

His wife says: "There was far more of the hellfire and brimstone preaching when we were young."

He remembers the quiet of a Sunday in the West Highlands in the 70s and 80s, where he spent part of his childhood.

"We weren't church-goers but my mother always insisted we kept quiet on the Sabbath," he says.

"She wouldn't let my dad work in the garden and she would ask me to play behind the house so I couldn't be seen by our neighbours.

"As a child I resented that, because it made me feel guilty and furtive. I felt I was being watched and disapproved of - and that didn't seem fair.

Sabbath day is still observed in Lewis

"But now, as an adult, I suspect the neighbours wouldn't really have minded much if they had seen me - and I understand my mother was showing respect."

"What's more, as a city-dweller, I hate that Sunday is beginning to feel as busy as any other day of the week. A day of rest every week is a good thing for everybody.

"I'd be really happy not to be able to go shopping on a Sunday - it would force me to spend the day on other things, more important things.

"But, on the other hand, I wouldn't want to not be able to get to hospital because there was no public transport."

He adds: "The irony is that when I decided to make a film about the Sabbath, I was committing myself to working every Sunday for several weeks.

"I also had to ask people who keep the Sabbath to let me film them on that day - meaning I would be working, breaking the commandment. Some agreed to it - but others did not.

"Ultimately, it isn't just the quiet Sunday I miss: it's a whole culture - people who had lived in just the same spot for generations, faith, a strong sense of community and identity. I wanted to see if these things still exist in Lewis - the Sabbath is only part of it."

One of the people interviewed for the film, the Reverend Angus Smith, protested against the first Sunday ferry to Skye in 1965 and again when Lewis eventually got its first Sabbath sailing in 2009.

He says: "Things have changed. We have so many incomers on the island that the whole balance has changed."

Amanda Darling could be said to be an incomer, even though she arrived in Lewis to marry an islander.

Mandy loves traditional music and even speaks Gaelic but she is not keen on the strict Sabbath observance.

She says: "When it is howling with wind and rain and dark it would be quite nice to go to the swimming pool or the sauna.

"I would quite like to go to the sauna on a Sunday afternoon. Go to church in the morning if you want to."

For Mark and Rae MacDonald, observance of the Sabbath was one of the reasons why they moved back to Lewis from Edinburgh.

Rae says: "God wants us to have a break from our work outside the home and inside the home.

"We eat light meals so there is not too much kitchen work.

"It gives us time to spend with our children and focus on their souls as well as our own."

Her husband Mark says: "This community has always welcomed people who come here because they like it.

"But people who are Lewis born and bred question the moral integrity of moving to a place and not liking the way it is and trying to change it."

Two people who moved to the island and grew to love it are Jutta and Rille Grix-Feldt, who run the Juri Startent gallery in Uig.

Rille says he was a city boy from Berlin when he first came to the islands and he did not like it.

But 20 years later he loves the lifestyle and the community, even if his observance of the Sabbath is borne out of respect for his neighbours rather than Christian devotion.

Jutta says: "We keep the ground rules, for example, 'don't put washing out on a Sunday' and the gallery is closed.

"We don't have a barbeque in front of the house and drink wine," she says.

"But I wouldn't let myself be told not to have fun on a Sunday going swimming."

Her idea of a fun Sunday swim is a dip in the ocean.

But Jutta says she likes Sundays on Lewis because the Sabbath gives the "freedom" to read, relax and think.

She says: "Even if there are only some people who are still believing in the Sabbath I respect them.

"I accept it because on the other hand there is such a culture of communal support that I think you don't find very often."

But it is not just "incomers" who are glad to see that Lewis has changed.

The island now has Sunday flights, restaurants, pubs and one shop.

Uisdean Macleod says: "There is something about coming from an island that gives you quite a sense of belonging to a place.

"I want to live here but I want to have the same opportunities that are available everywhere else, especially for the kids."

***

THE INDEPENDENT

Pope Francis declares evolution and Big Bang theory are real and God isn't 'a magician with a magic wand'

Francis goes against Benedict XVI’s apparent support for 'intelligent design' - but does hail his predecessor’s 'great contribution to theology'

ADAM WITHNALL

Tuesday 28 October 2014

Speaking at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pope made comments which experts said put an end to the “pseudo theories” of creationism and intelligent design that some argue were encouraged by his predecessor, Benedict XVI.

Francis explained that both scientific theories were not incompatible with the existence of a creator – arguing instead that they “require it”.

“When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so,” Francis said.

He added: “He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfilment.

“The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it.

“Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”

The Catholic Church has long had a reputation for being anti-science – most famously when Galileo faced the inquisition and was forced to retract his “heretic” theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun.

But Pope Francis’s comments were more in keeping with the progressive work of Pope Pius XII, who opened the door to the idea of evolution and actively welcomed the Big Bang theory. In 1996, John Paul II went further and suggested evolution was “more than a hypothesis” and “effectively proven fact”.

Yet more recently, Benedict XVI and his close advisors have apparently endorsed the idea that intelligent design underpins evolution – the idea that natural selection on its own is insufficient to explain the complexity of the world. In 2005, his close associate Cardinal Schoenborn wrote an article saying “evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense – an unguided, unplanned process – is not”.

Giovanni Bignami, a professor and president of Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics, told the Italian news agency Adnkronos: “The pope’s statement is significant. We are the direct descendents from the Big Bang that created the universe. Evolution came from creation.”

Giulio Giorello, professor of the philosophy of science at Milan’s University degli Studi, told reporters that he believed Francis was “trying to reduce the emotion of dispute or presumed disputes” with science.

Despite the huge gulf in theological stance between his tenure and that of his predecessor, Francis praised Benedict XVI as he unveiled a bronze bust of him at the academy's headquarters in the Vatican Gardens.

“No one could ever say of him that study and science made him and his love for God and his neighbour wither,” Francis said, according to a translation by the Catholic News Service.

“On the contrary, knowledge, wisdom and prayer enlarged his heart and his spirit. Let us thank God for the gift that he gave the church and the world with the existence and the pontificate of Pope Benedict.”

***

The Telegraph

Pope Francis to investigate 'playboy priests' who posed naked online in scandal-hit disocese

A Catholic church representative is to probe the 'black sheep' diocese of Albenga-Imperia for alleged sexual harassment of parishioners and involvement in pornography

Bishop Mario Oliveri has run “the most gossiped about diocese in Italy” for over a quarter of a century Photo: Wikimedia Commons

By Nick Squires, Rome

8:47PM BST 23 Oct 2014

A scandal-ridden Catholic diocese in Italy where priests posted naked photos of themselves on gay websites, raided church coffers and sexually harassed parishioners is to be investigated by a special envoy to Pope Francis.

The Pope reportedly intends to send an “apostolic administrator” to assess allegations that the diocese of Albenga-Imperia, in the Liguria region of northern Italy, has hosted a string of “playboy priests” moon-lighting as barmen, stealing parish funds and getting tattooed.

Described by one Italian newspaper as “the most gossiped about diocese in Italy”, it has been run for the last 25 years by Bishop Mario Oliveri, 70.

He is expected to be replaced in the near future by an auxiliary bishop, according to Il Secolo XIX, the region’s main newspaper.

Pope Francis has already sent Adriano Bernardini, an apostolic nuncio, or ambassador, to conduct a preliminary investigation into the scandals thay have allegedly unfolded under Bishop Oliveri’s watch.

The bishop himself is not accused of any wrongdoing, but is reported to have been overly-charitable in recruiting “black sheep” priests with distinctly chequered pasts, including trainee priests expelled from seminaries for misconduct.

They include a priest who was found guilty of organising an under-age prostitution ring and others who posted nude photos of themselves on Facebook and gay websites.

Priests in the diocese have been accused of sexually harassing parishioners, living with gay partners and stealing Communion money.

Father Luciano Massaferro, for instance, a parish priest, was sentenced to nearly eight years in prison after being found guilty of sexually abusing an altar boy. He had been strenuously defended by the bishop.

The large number of scandals were brought to the Vatican’s attention by appalled parishioners, including a doctor, Luisa Bonello, who wrote to the Pope in February. She committed suicide last month.

When asked about the investigation, Bishop Oliveri, a fervent traditionalist who once celebrated a three-hour Mass in Latin, told La Repubblica newspaper: “I don’t want to talk about it. This is not the right time.”

A Vatican spokesman said the Holy See would not comment on an ongoing investigation.

“We never comment on these matters - they are confidential and it wouldn’t be correct,” Father Ciro Benedettini told The Telegraph. “We would only issue a statement at the end of the investigation, if any decisions are taken.”

Since being elected in March 2013, Pope Francis has shown that he has little patience for senior figures within the Church who transgress.

In March this year, the Argentinean pontiff removed from his post Germany’s so-called “bishop of bling”, Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, after it emerged that he had spent 31 million euros of Church funds on his own residence in the diocese of Limburg.

His palatial residence featured a free-standing bath that cost 15,000 euros, a conference table that cost 25,000 euros and a private chapel that cost nearly three million euros to build.

The bishop’s extravagant spending was sharply at odds with the message of austerity and humility that Pope Francis has promoted since succeeding Benedict XVI 18 months ago.

In July, in an unprecedented move sanctioned by the Pope, a Catholic archbishop and former Holy See ambassador was defrocked after being convicted of sexually abusing teenage boys, making him the most senior Vatican figure to be punished for such a crime.

Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, who was the Vatican’s nuncio to the Dominican Republic, was found guilty of sex abuse by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

He is now under houses arrest, pending the outcome of criminal proceedings launched by Vatican judicial authorities.

He has been charged with sexual abuse of minors and possession of child pornography.

He is expected to be put on trial before a Vatican tribunal early next year and if convicted faces up to seven years in jail.

***

PRESSTV

Middle East borders bound to change: Israel minister

Fri Oct 24, 2014 11:31AM GMT

Israeli Minister for Military Affairs Moshe Ya’alon says the borders of many Middle Eastern countries are bound to change in the future as a result of recent developments in the region.

The Israeli minister said in a recent interview with the US-based National Public Radio (NPR) that the current borders would change in the coming years, as some have “been changed already.”

The Israeli minister added that the borders of some countries in the region were artificially drawn by the West.

“Libya was a new creation, a Western creation as a result of World War I. Syria, Iraq, the same — artificial nation-states — and what we see now is a collapse of this Western idea,” he stated.

However, Ya’alon said the borders of some nations, including the Egyptian border with Israel, would remain unchanged.

“We have to distinguish between countries like Egypt, with their history. Egypt will stay Egypt,” said Ya’alon.

The minister did not say whether the borders of Israel, also drawn by Western powers after World War I, would change or not.

Regarding the right to return for Palestinian refugees, Ya’alon said Tel Aviv could not allow such a move, as it would keep the Israeli-Palestinian conflict alive “forever.”

He also said that the insistence to remove Israeli settlers from the West Bank amount to ethnic cleansing.

The Israeli regime expelled more than 700,000 people from their homeland after it occupied Palestine in 1948.

Israeli forces have wiped nearly 500 Palestinian villages and towns off the map, leaving an estimated total of 4.7 million Palestinian refugees hoping for an eventual return to their homeland more than six decades later.

Since 1948, the Israeli regime has denied Palestinian refugees the right of return, despite United Nations’ resolutions and international laws that uphold the people’s right to return to their homeland.

Tel Aviv has built over 120 illegal settlements built since the occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds.

***

theguardian

Israel is changing, and suddenly Binyamin Netanyahu looks vulnerable

In August he appeared untouchable, but cracks are showing in the prime minister’s rightwing coalition. Can he reinvent himself?

Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem

The Guardian, Thursday 23 October 2014 13.02 EDT

Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu at a memorial ceremony for politician Rehavam Zeevi, who was killed by Palestinian militants in Jerusalem in 2001. Photograph: Gali Tibbon/AFP/Getty Images

A few weeks is a long time in Israeli politics. In August, at the height of the Gaza war, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s standing among Israelis was untouchable. Now, almost two months after the ceasefire, the talk in the Israeli media is about tensions within his crumbling rightwing coalition, early elections, and whether Netanyahu can reinvent himself politically.

In private, Netanyahu has reportedly told allies he does not believe his coalition can survive more than a few months. In public, Netanyahu has been more bullish, telling guests at a surprise 65th birthday party that the last thing Israel needs is elections, a message he repeated to his cabinet on Wednesday.

The question is whether his coalition partners – or even members of his own party – are listening.

A number of polls conducted since the end of the war with Hamas in Gaza have suggested a slow and continuing realignment in Israeli party politics, whose largest beneficiary has been the abrasive hard-right economics minister and champion of the settler movement, Naftali Bennett.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s political difficulties have been mounting. His plan to hold an early leadership primary within his own Likud party – viewed by some as a precursor to national elections – is opposed by a faction within the party led by central committee chairman Danny Danon, who has been attacking Netanyahu from the right.

Outside his own party, Bennett has emerged as Netanyahu’s biggest challenger for the mantle of leader of Israel’s right. He upped the ante again this week, reportedly threatening to destabilise the coalition – including by not supporting the government in a confidence motion on Monday – if Netanyahu does not sign off on more settlement housing approvals.

Another potential headache for Netanyahu is the mounting public interest in former Likud minister Moshe Kahlon, who announced on Monday his intention to form his own party focusing on the hot-button social issue of Israel’s cripplingly high cost of living – a party, polls suggest, that could take 10 seats, including from Likud.

The rightwing economics minister Naftali Bennett has benefited from realignments in Israeli party politics. Photograph: Oliver Weiken/EPA

Historically, so-called “atmosphere parties” in Israel have come from the left and lasted a single Knesset, but Kahlon is unusual in both coming from the right and in having an appeal calculated to pull in centre and left-of-centre voters, as well as those on the right.

On his other flank, Netanyahu is facing a new challenge from the justice minister and chief Israel peace negotiator, Tzipi Livni, whose own party is not expected to survive elections. Livni has announced that she has formed an alliance, representing just under a third of Israeli MPs, to push for a renewed peace process and to oppose the nationalists.

Speaking to journalists about the current political manoeuvres, analyst Amit Segal of Channel 2 television said: “What the Israeli political system is going through these days is not very natural in Israeli terms. Coalitions are usually very strong in their first year, muddle through the second and fall in the third year. This government actually started stumbling two months after it was formed.”

By Segal’s account, the distrust and dislike among the five coalition leaders is intense, not least between Netanyahu and Bennett, with the coalition further undermined by a lack of common ground between the parties.

Some of Netanyahu’s problems appear to be of his own making. His main virtue to the Israeli public, as Segal frames it, has been his aversion to political risk, not least over the peace process with the Palestinians. But while many Israelis like the comfort of certainty that Netanyahu has offered, his political approach has failed to keep up with events.

The cost of living remains as serious an issue for ordinary Israelis as it was at the height of the mass social protests three years ago.

Palestinian moves for recognition as a state at the UN, while likely to fail, have shown growing international frustration with a lack of progress on peace talks and continued Israeli settlement building.

And at the coalface of Israeli coalition management, where every deal is done over the still-twitching body of an ally fervently opposed to it, the economics of disappointment eventually take a toll.

Analyst Yossi Verter, writing in Haaretz, said that while no one in the coalition has an incentive to collapse it, its fragility is obvious. “Sometimes emotions play a role,” he wrote. “And when the wagon breaks down going uphill and its shafts are loose and rattling, even a small stone can throw it off course.”

Segal agreed, adding that although the parties may not want an election, even a small “miscalculation” could fire the starting gun.

Netanyahu, it appears, has a plan B in his overtures to Israel’s ultra-orthodox parties, including Shas and United Torah Judaism, who some have suggested could form the core of a new coalition with the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, if current alliances collapse.

If it is too early to predict Netanyahu’s departure, it is because – like Muhammad Ali in the Rumble in the Jungle – he has mastered the art of “rope-a-dope” in the political and international arena, bringing his opponents to the brink of exhaustion.

***

WND

POLICE: TEMPLE MOUNT ASSASSIN 'ACTED ALONE'

Rabbi wants to restore Jewish worship on Dome of the Rock site

Published: October 30, 20214

AARON KLEIN
The police investigation into the assassination attempt Wednesday night on Temple Mount activist Rabbi Yehuda Glick indicates the gunman acted alone and was not following the orders of a terrorist group, a senior Jerusalem police official told WND.

The official spoke only on background, because the police investigation is ongoing.

Sources within the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad terrorist organization told WND the shooting was not orchestrated by their group even though members of organization took responsibility.

As WND reported, Glick said last week violence on the Temple Mount “is escalating every day, and the police are simply helpless.”

“Police impotence leads to violence,” he said, predicting the situation would change only after an act of violence against Jews.

Rabbi Yehuda Glick

“When will the change take place?” he told Haaretz. “As soon as the Arabs harm someone on the Temple Mount, the prime minister will wake up and it will be too late.”

Glick, chairman of the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation, appeared in the new documentary released by WND Films, “End Times Eyewitness,” directed by Joel Richardson.

On Thursday, Israeli security forces killed the suspected shooter of Glick, identified as 32-year-old Islamic Jihad member Moataz Hejazi.

An Internet video shows Israeli forces closing in on Hejazi in Jerusalem’s Abu Tor neighborhood. The gunman was killed in an ensuing shootout.

Israeli media reports say Hejazi worked as a kitchen hand in the Begin Heritage Center’s restaurant.

Glick was shot in front of the center after giving a speech inside about the Temple Mount. Hejazi reportedly completed his shift work before attempting to assassinate Glick from a motorbike and then fleeing the scene.

Knesset Member Moshe Feiglin witnessed the shooting.

“The attempted murderer turned to him and confirmed in Hebrew, in a heavy Arabic accent, that it was Yehuda,” Feiglin told reporters.

Feiglin said that at the time of the shooting, Glick was loading equipment into his car after the Temple Mount conference.

Glick is being treated at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem where he is listed in serious but stable condition.

In response to the shooting, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich and Jerusalem Police Chief Moshe Edri ordered the closing of the Temple Mount to both Jews and Arabs until further notice.

Security was beefed up around the mount and through ought eastern Jerusalem.

Glick is the chairman of the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation, an umbrella of Israel’s major Temple Mount activist groups, which call for an increased Jewish presence on the mount.

Currently, non-Muslim prayer on the mount is banned, and Jewish and Christian visitations in restricted to only a few hours per day whereas Muslims usually have 24-hour access and full prayer rights.

In the interview with Richardson for “End Times Eyewitness,” Glick spoke passionately of the prospects for rebuilding the Temple. He said it was even possible that the existing Dome of the Rock Muslim shrine could be incorporated into the rebuilt Temple, but only one ingredient was missing – an Islamic faith that would be tolerant of Christians and Jews and willing to live in peace.

Glick said that because Islam worshiped one god, he could see a time when all three monotheistic religions could worship together in the Temple, as long as there was an understanding of tolerance and peace.

“One house for all of those who are out to say ‘God is one, his name is one,’” Glick told Richardson in the documentary film. “This is the dream. The Dome of the Rock has a strong potential to be that because it’s in the right location, it represents a religion faithful to one God. It only needs one more thing: agree to religious tolerance and peace among faithful people.”

Glick was born in the United States and moved to Israel with his parents as a young child.

***

EPOCH TIMES

Anomalous Native American DNA: New Tests Show Middle East Origins?

By Tara MacIsaac, Epoch Times | October 26, 2014

Last Updated: October 26, 2014 1:52 pm

Participants in Dr. Donald Yates’s Cherokee Native American DNA testing. Top Left: Karen Worstell’s grandmother Odessa Shields Cox is shown with her husband William M. Cox and Worstell’s mother, Ethel, as a baby, ca. 1922. Bottom Left: Karen Worstell. Right: Jan Franz. (Courtesy of Dr. Donald Yates)

The universe is full of mysteries that challenge our current knowledge. In "Beyond Science" Epoch Times collects stories about these strange phenomena to stimulate the imagination and open up previously undreamed of possibilities. Are they true? You decide.

Geneticist Dr. Donald Yates has been studying Cherokee DNA, particularly genetic markers passed on only from a mother to her children, not passed on along paternal lines. Anomalies in Native American DNA are often dismissed as signs of racial admixture after colonization, the anomalies are not attributed to the origins of Native peoples.

Yates chose to focus on the maternal line to make it easier to filter out any colonial-era admixture. It was far more common for male colonists to mate with Native American women than it was for female colonists to mate with Native American men when the Old World first met the New.

To further rule out admixture in his test results, Yates combined genetic testing with genealogical records where possible.

He found what he sees as strong evidence that Cherokee Native Americans have Middle Eastern ancestry—ancestry that cannot be accounted for by modern admixture, but which is rooted in the ancient origins of the people.

Native Americans are conventionally held to fit into a handful of haplogroups. The term haplogroup refers to a genetic population group stemming from a common ancestor. Haplogroup T is not among the haplogroups most geneticists recognize as Native American. Yates, however, said that it is prevalent among the Cherokee and has been for a very long time.

He wrote in his report, released earlier this month: “T is the leading haplogroup (23.1 percent), with a frequency on a par with modern-day Egyptians (23.4 percent) and Arabs (24.4 percent). T is thus a defining mark of Cherokee ancestry. … We can safely rule out recent European admixture. As we have discussed again and again, there was no available source for a huge, sudden influx of female-mediated Middle Eastern DNA on the American frontier. Even Sephardic Jews (11 to 14 percent), many of whom were also Indian traders, could hardly have accounted for such admixture.

“Moreover, had it occurred in the colonial period or more recently, the diversity, age, and unique characteristics of the T haplotypes would not have yielded the patterns noticed in this paper. Most T’s would have matched people in the Old World and we would simply be looking at an effect of migration. Instead, we have a North American branch of T with peculiar SNPs [Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms, a DNA sequence variation] which is evidently a cross-section of a very old population originating in the Old World.”

In a different part of the report, he explained one way to tell if the genetic characteristics are ancient in origin, or if they could be attributed to recent admixture: “Generally, the more mutations, the more ancient the type.”

While the level of the T-haplotype found across Yates’s 67 Cherokee test subjects is comparable to those found in Iraqi and Iranian Jews (about 24 percent), it is far higher than that found in nearby regions where one would expect admixture. In neighboring countries in the Middle East, as well as among Jews from other regions, the frequency of T is only 4–14 percent.

An example of how Dr. Yates combined genetic testing with genealogical research is the case of Kathleen Rogalla.

Kathleen Rogalla of Panama City, Fla. is descended from Deborah Cook(e), wife of William Chisholm (born 1720 in Amelia County, Va.). Cook is her ancestor in an unbroken female line. A woman named Amy or Annie (no last name) was Cook’s mother. Yates wrote, “It is unlikely Amy or Annie was the daughter of an Englishwoman … around the time of first intermarriages.”

Rogalla underwent genetic testing from another company, which she had sought out after taking an interest in her Native ancestry. This company told her she was of 100 percent European ancestry with no chance of being Native American. When Yates tested Rogalla, he found haplotype T in her results.

He wrote: “These historical accounts are given here in detail to document the early Cherokee affiliation of the line. More could be added. Suffice it to say that the Chisholms and all their marriage partners were well known to Cherokee leaders from the 1760s on … All the names are well documented in Cherokee and Melungeon genealogies, as well as U.S. Indian treaties, chiefs-lists and agency records. … There is every reason on genealogical grounds to regard her T* haplotype as Cherokee, not Eurasian.”

Yates is of Cherokee descent, he has a Ph.D. in classical studies, and he founded the genetics research institution DNA Consultants. These three credentials have given him a unique perspective on Native American history as it relates to these ancient cultures, and how DNA testing can support the theoretical link. He hypothesizes that an expedition of Ptolemaic Egyptians and others in the 3rd century B.C. sailed to North America and were the settlers from whom descended today’s Cherokee Native Americans.

***

PUTIN TO WESTERN ELITES: PLAY-TIME IS OVER

A unilateral diktat and imposing one’s own models produces the opposite result

Image Credits: Republic of Korea / Flickr

by DMITRY ORLOV | CLUBORLOV | OCTOBER 30, 2014

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 of you who have heard of the speech didn’t get a chance to read it, and missed its importance.

(For your convenience, I am pasting in the full transcript of his speech below.) 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.

The Russian blogger chipstone summarized the most salient points from Putin speech as follows:

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.

infowars/IW-SubPage/IW-SP-ARTICLE-300x250

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 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 onthe 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?

***

Zero Hedge

In Historic Shift, NATO-Member Poland Is Moving Thousands Of Troops To Its Eastern Border

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/27/2014 13:53 -0400

In the first sign that, just in time for winter, the tentative European jawboning alliance against Russia is collapsing (since the "costs", sanctions and other economic means inflicted upon the Kremlin ended up backfiring and pushing Europe into a triple-dip recession instead), earlier today Poland announced that it will move thousands of troops toward its eastern borders, i.e., Ukraine, in what AP dubbed a "historic realignment of a military structure built in the Cold War."

Why is NATO-member Poland doing something which will clearly only send antagonizing signals to Putin, who previously has made it quite clear that any NATO expansion via the Polish corridor will be met with an appropriate response? Not surprisingly, defense minister Tomasz Siemoniak said the troops are needed in the east because of the conflict in neighboring Ukraine.

"The geopolitical situation has changed, we have the biggest crisis of security since the Cold War and we must draw conclusions from that," Siemoniak said.

If indeed Poland is going through with this military reallocation, it is the most serious military signal yet to evolve out of the Ukraine civil war, because for the first time there is more than merely hollow rhetoric and empty threats: this time one NATO member is strategically, not tactically, shifting its power focus in a way that the Kremlin will have no choice but to view the move as a threat, and will in turn have to respond in kind.

The Polish defense minister added that at least three military bases in the east will see their populations increase from the current 30 percent of capacity to almost 90 percent by 2017, and that more military hardware will be moved to those bases as well.

He said it was not some "nervous or radical move" but that because of this "situation of threat we would like those units in the east of Poland to be more efficient."

Although Poland joined NATO in 1999, most of Poland's 120,000-member army is based along the country's western border, as a relic of its former status as a Soviet Bloc member.

The units in the east, like the air defense unit in Siedlce, have only 30 percent of jobs filled in line with a plan that calls for 100 percent of troops "only in the case of war."

As a reminder, here is what happened the last Russia felt NATO, and Poland, were stretching a little too close to its borders in December 2013, just months before the Ukraine conflict escalated out of control with the assistance of Victoria Nuland et al.

"Russia will deploy Iskander missile systems in its enclave in Kaliningrad to neutralize, if necessary, the anti-ballistic missile system in Europe."

- Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president, November 2008 in his first presidential address to the Russian people

2013 was a year when Europe tried to reallign its primary source of natgas energy, from Gazpromia to Qatar, and failed. More importantly, it was a year in which Russia's Vladimir Putin undisputedly won every foreign relations conflict that involved Russian national interests, to the sheer humiliation of both John Kerry and Francois Hollande. However, it seems the former KGB spy had a Plan B in case things escalated out of control, one that fits with what we wrote a few days ago when we reported that "Russia casually announces it will use nukes if attacked." Namely, as Bloomberg reports citing Bild, Russia quietly stationed a double-digit number of SS-26 Stone, aka Iskander, tactical, nuclear-capable short-range missiles near the Polish border in a dramatic escalation to merely verbal threats issued as recently as a year ago.

The range of the Iskander rockets:

From Bloomberg:

• Russia has stationed missiles with a range of about 500 kilometers in its Kaliningrad enclave and along its border with the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Germany’s Bild-Zeitung reports, citing defense officials it didn’t identify.

• Satellite images show a “double-digit” amount of mobile units identified as SS-26 Stone in NATO code

• Missiles were stationed within the past 12 months

• SS-26 can carry conventional as well as nuclear warheads

In other words, Russia quietly has come through on its threat issued in April 2012, when it warned it would deploy Iskander missiles that could target US missile defense systems in Poland. From RIA at the time:

Moscow reiterated on Tuesday it may deploy Iskander theater ballistic missiles in the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad that will be capable of effectively engaging elements of the U.S. missile defense system in Poland.

NATO members agreed to create a missile shield over Europe to protect it against ballistic missiles launched by so-called rogue states, for example Iran and North Korea, at a summit in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2010.

The missile defense system in Poland does not jeopardize Russia’s nuclear forces, Army General Nikolai Makarov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, said.

“However, if it is modernized…it could affect our nuclear capability and in that case a political decision may be made to deploy Iskander systems in the Kaliningrad region,” he said in an interview with RT television.

“But that will be a political decision,” he stressed. “So far there is no such need.”

We anticipate that Russian retaliation this time will be roughly along the abovementioned, nuclear lines.

***

THE VINEYARD OF THE SHAKER

Ukraine mini-SITREP: very ominous developments

This short post is just to inform you of the latest developments in the war in the Ukraine.

Following the use of a tactical ballistic missile against Donetsk by the Ukies, Zakharchenko has declared that the ceasefire was basically over.

Strelkov has made an official appeal warning that according to this information the Ukies were massing troops in preparation for an attack. According to Strelkov, the Ukie plan is for a very short and very rapid "push" towards Donestk and the Russian border to make any Novorussian state non-viable and thus to negotiate from a position of force. True, Strelkov does have a record of exaggerating threats in order to minimize them, but this time there are some strong signs that his analysis is shared by the Russian military, and these signs are the most ominous signs of all.

Russian sources - including the excellent Colonel Cassad blog - report that the voentorg aid-spigot has been fully re-opened including for some major deliveries. While, of course, I am very happy that the Novorussian resistance is getting much needed equipment (and specialists), this kind of full reopening of the voentorg also indicates to me that the Russian intelligence services have concluded that an attack is very likely, possibly very soon.

I have been following the situation in Banderastan pretty closely and I can only say that the cracks in the regime are visible all over the place. Whether Poroshenko and his US master's really believe that an attack can succeed (I doubt it) or whether they really want to force Russia into openly intervening (which I see as almost inevitable), the fact is that starting a major war might well be the only way to save the Poroshenko regime which currently is in free fall.

It is quite possible that Strelkov's blunt warning and, even more so, the reopening of the voentorg will convince the Ukies that Russia is ready to intervene and that their attack will not be allowed to succeed. What concerns me is that the Poroshenko regime (and his CIA patrons) might decide that even a defeat at the hand of the Russian military is preferable to the current death spiral: not only can a war save the regime, a Russian intervention would finally make the AngloZionist dream come true. Putin will try his utmost to avoid falling into this trap, and that means that Russia will have to provide massive covert support and aid to Novorussia. As for the Novorussians, they have to be strong enough to stop the initial assault. If they succeed, then the offensive will be effectively dead. But Strelkov is right, if the Ukie break through the Novorussian lines, then Russia will have to intervene.

This is an extremely dangerous situation.

The Saker

***

RT

Permanent winter: Russia turns back clocks for last time

Published time: October 26, 2014 19:41

On this last October weekend, Russia turned its clocks one hour back - a practice that had been abolished for three years. But the daylight savings time (DST) policy remains abandoned, with the government's decision to stick to winter time permanently.

The decision not to change clocks and keep summer time all year round was applied in Russia by its then president Dmitry Medvedev in 2011. Russia's clocks were then put one hour forward, not to be changed again later, making Moscow GMT+4.

The three-year experiment of living on perpetual summer time has proven to be unpopular among many Russians for various reasons.

Some complained dark morning hours affected their body clocks badly, with people having to wake up for work or children go to school in complete darkness.

"Dark mornings have a worse effect on people’s state of health than dark evenings," the head of sleep medicine at the Federal Medical and Biological Agency, Aleksandr Kalinkin, told TASS news agency.

Being more hours ahead of GMT also made sports fans frustrated, as it meant they had to stay up longer hours at night to watch broadcasts from Europe.

The abolished time changing has also caused confusion among travelers, who had to memorize various time differences in the summer and the winter. Many gadget and other digital clocks needed to be adjusted manually, as software did not always recognize the abolition of DST in Russia.

While the two latter problems might remain, with permanent winter - instead of summer - time in Russia, the country will now have more hours of sunlight in the mornings in winter, and "Europe will now be closer," as representatives of the Russian Academy of Sciences put it at a press conference in Moscow. The difference between the capital and GMT will now be plus three hours.

The revision will also bring back Russia's 11 time zones, from Kamchatka in the Pacific to Kaliningrad in Europe, with the number having been reduced to nine after the 2011 changes.

The decision of switching back to winter time was submitted to the Russian parliament at the beginning of the year, with the law approved and then signed by president Vladimir Putin in July. No seasonal time change is expected in the country any time soon.

The time changing dispute has been a long standing issue, both in Russia and internationally.

In 1981 DST was introduced in the Soviet Union, which was previously abolished by the bolsheviks in 1930. Variations have also occurred several times in Europe and America throughout the 20th century.

Now, clocks are set one hour back or ahead twice a year in over a hundred of the world's countries. DST practice is popular in Europe and America, while most Asian and African countries do not change their clocks.

Half adjustments of 30 minutes, or two-hour switches have also been used in several countries during the past century. Canada's province of Newfoundland and Labrador has had a two-hour change, while Australia's Lord Howe Island currently applies DST to its clocks by being moved 30 minutes.

First thought up back in the 18th century, the daylight saving practice has both opponents and supporters, with the most popular pros being for its energy efficiency, as it reduces the need for artificial lighting. Some researchers also suggest it provides financial boost in tourism, stimulating travelers to pursue outdoor activities.

***

Views and Previews

Hong Kong – The Battleground for the Hegemony of Dollar

Parwaiz Kahn

Whatever is going on in Hong Kong, must be seen in contest of the US dollar, and its hegemony in the global economy. The Occupy Central protests may just be the beginning. China should be ready for more, a lot more – Challenges to dollar have never gone unanswered.

Since the 1970, it has always been about the Dollar – specifically its role as the world’s Reserve Currency and the Petrocurrency – currency of settlement for petro-contracts. US supremacy, and its exceptional status, both depend upon the global acceptance of dollar in its designated role.

Dollars’ supremacy is a matter of life and death to the Ruling Elites of the US – No challenge to the dollar’s hegemony has gone unanswered – Iraq and Libya are the two latest reminder to the world; don’t mess with the dollar.

Now, China is posing a mortal threat to the supremacy of dollar. With its enormous manufacturing base and ferocious appetite for the raw material, China has emerged as the largest single trading partner to almost every significant country in the world, It is using this leverage to settle the bilateral trades in Yuan, and in the currencies of its trading partners. China has been striking agreements with many of its trade partners to do business using each other’s currencies. China and Russia, China and Brazil, China and Australia, even China and Japan — they all have currency swaps and other arrangements in place to bypass the dollar. That in itself is a very worrisome state for those who have to be worried.

On the global front, the perception has also changed. Many countries are realizing that using the dollar as the trade settlement currency is a lose-lose game for them – They become dependent upon the western banking institutions, and vulnerable to the arbitrary sanctions at the whim of the elites in Washington. Further, they end up accumulating the paper notes that have zero backing.

With a revitalized BRICS – producing almost 50% of the real global GDP in terms of the Purchasing power parity, the world has found an alternative to the dollar. And, China, with its large exchange reserves, is in a position to offer this alternative to its global partners. BRICS are posing a great threat to the supremacy of dollar.

The Petro-Kingdoms and Sheikhdoms are also seeing the signs on the sky. China has emerged as their largest customer, surpassing the US. The Arab oil kings and sheikhs are realizing that they have more dollars than they know what to do with.

The question is; how long will they want to keep all those dollars lying around? Especially, when Asia-Pacific now account for more than one-third of global oil consumption.

The fact is, the petrodollar system is already on the verge of breaking down – oil is no longer paid for in dollars alone. This trend has the potential to put the death knell to the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency. It is a serious situation.

The Ruling Elites in Washington are very nervous for quite some time now. The episodes of their nervous breakdowns have been on display in the theaters of Arab Springs and the fiasco of Ukraine – and, there seems to be no end to these episodes.

With the senseless, witless, and thoughtless sanctions on the Russian businesses, they have ended up forcing the Russians to pull away their money from the dollar-denominated accounts in the EU banks, and transfer them to the banks in Hong Kong – converted into Hong Kong dollars.

And, that was on top of the Cyprus bail-ins, and the hefty arbitrary fines on French institutions.

The world has started seeing the folly, and the dangers, of settling trades in the US dollar.

Destination Hong Kong

The combined effect of all these events and factors was to initiate a panic exodus of capital from the dollar-denominated western accounts. Hong Kong offered the only alternatives to these fleeing billions of dollars. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of capital – from the Russian oligarchs to the Petro Kings and Sheikhs - has since been flowing into the Banks in Hong Kong. And, that despite the occupy central protests and the strict scrutiny by the HK banks.

With the Rothchildian stigma on Dubai – There is no other alternative to Hong Kong. Hong Kong has emerged as the banking paradise for the businesses – from the legit ones to the crook ones. It is practically – affording them Chinese protection, and, at the same time, access to the emerging Trade Settlement Exchange in Shanghai.

In its new role as the global Banking Center, Hong Kong poses a great threat to the supremacy of the dollar – which is a direct threat to the US Supremacy. Lucky for the Hong Kongers – and thanks to the Chinese might, Hong Kong cannot be freed the Libyan way. The only option available to the Elites is to destabilize the island in hope that it will scare away the capital flow into Hong Kong.

The Dollar’s Supremacy has never been threatened like that before. It is facing some formidable enemies. With the perspective of the Western Elites, Hog Kong has to be pacified – This is the war for survivor.

The Empire has deployed all its assets in Hong Kong. It is a battle that The Empire cannot afford to lose. The protest in Hong Kong may just be the beginning. Expect more to come.

Unless, of course, an accommodation is made.

***

Louis M. Profeta MD

Emergency Physician at St. Emergency Physicians Inc., Author and Public Speaker on the Topic of Spirituality in Medicine

ER Doctor: What Scares Me Even More Than Ebola

October 25, 2014

I’ve been walking the earth for a half a century, so I’m sure I’ve picked up a bit along the way. I know the Gettysburg Address by heart. I can recite all the presidents. I can taste the difference between Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi, and I’m fairly certain I can tell you the starting lineup from the 1976 Cincinnati Reds. But if you ask me if I’m worried about Ebola, if our hospital is ready or if our nurses and staff are up to the challenge, chances are you will probably hear me say this:

“Hell if I know.”

I have been practicing emergency medicine for more than 20 years and I’ve seen close to 100,000 patients. I’ve written a few books, published some papers, lectured a bunch of times, pissed off about 10,000 soccer moms when I wrote an article telling them their kids weren’t playing the pros. I once even testified in front of a congressional sub-committee on hospital disaster preparedness. I’m still beating myself for at least not stealing a pen, but it was part of my duty as the physician director of mass casualty preparedness for our emergency department.

So you would think if anyone in the emergency department trenches would be versed as to how this Ebola scare will unfold, if it will spread, what to expect, how to diagnose, screen, protect and treat, then I suppose it would be me.

If an investigator for Joint Commissions or some other oversight agency, a member of the press or a committee trying to ensure CDC compliance were to pull me aside to spot check my Ebola acumen, they’d be satisfied with my answers and I’d leave them feeling like they had done due diligence as an administrator.

“Dr. Profeta, do we have enough protective stuff and does everyone know how to use it?”

“Yup.”

“Are the screening plans in place?”

“Yeah, ya betcha.”

“Is the staff versed in transmission and spread of Ebola?”

“Darn tooten.”

“Has everyone read all the CDC and hospital communiqués regarding Ebola?”

“Sure have.”

“Have you practiced the drills in the ER in case we have someone show up with a possible exposure?”

“More times than Lois Lerner has hit her hard drive with a hammer.”

But if they were to ask me if there are any other issues they should be aware of, I’ll just stare with round blank eyes and keep my mouth shut until the right question is asked; the question they will pretend does not exist.

“Dr. Profeta, will they – the staff, you, your partners – show up? “

“That, I don’t know.”

Some years ago when I first started in practice, a very large hospital in our area was having trouble getting patients rapidly admitted from the ER to the floors. This resulted in a tremendous backlog of patients and extreme ER overcrowding. This naturally increased patient wait times and directly impacted the health of those coming to the ER. So, naturally, the hospital system formed a committee and hired consultants. They looked at every single variable: time to laboratory, time to X-ray, nursing changeover, bed request time and on and on and on. Do you know what they found? The roadblock in the movement of patients through this major medical system was housekeeping. Think about that. Housekeepers, traditionally the lowest paid and least-skilled division of employment of the hospital, were responsible for the movement and throughput of patients more than any other factor.

If the rooms on the floor were not cleaned fast enough, then no patients could move from the ER to the floor, and no patients from the waiting room to the ER. ER wait times rose and patient care suffered. Housekeepers handcuffed the entire system, and not because they were lazy. The regulations, protocols and procedures put into place to clean a room are so extensive that rapid room turnover was next to impossible with the current staffing model. That stuck with me. What is the rate-limiting step in a mass casualty scenario or massive patient influx that would handcuff us? Where will all the preparedness collapse? What is the leaking O-ring? What am I afraid will fail?

As I alluded to a bit earlier, I appeared before members of Congress who were investigating Midwest medical centers and regional hospital preparedness for a mass casualty event. The focus was on our readiness should a major earthquake hit the Midwest. The congressmen wanted to know if we had the capacity to mobilize our staff; they asked what assistance we needed. Toward the end of the discussion, they asked each of us what we were most afraid of. The responses were typical answers you would give to a member of Congress if you were seeking money (not having enough resources, not enough congressional or governmental support, not having enough staff or equipment or infrastructure, etc.)

When they got to me, asking what I worried about, I simply said: “The flu.”

Now, flash forward. I wonder if what I really meant to say was “Ebola.”

When it comes to our ER and our ability to provide the best care during the worst extremes, I have no doubt we can mobilize our hospital to care for hundreds and hundreds of seriously injured patients. We have modeled our Emergency Department response to a mass-casualty incident in much the way Israeli hospitals have structured their programs. (As a side note, Israel is light years ahead of us in terms of all mass casualty – chemical, biological, environmental, mad-made – preparedness.) Specifically, we model our plan after Western Galilee hospital on the border of Israel and Lebanon. This is a large, major, modern-day medical center under constant threat from Hezbollah rockets from Lebanon. They train and drill with a level of involvement, passion and commitment that exceeds anything we can muster.

The staff at my hospital in Indianapolis, however, has bought into it and I truly believe that there is no ER in Indiana, and few in the Midwest, that have a better plan in place. We also gained a better understanding of the type of injuries we would see in each scenario. More specifically, we wanted to know from a pure number standpoint how many patients would have to go to the operating room the minute they hit the door, how many would need to be on ventilators and how many would need emergent life-saving intervention. Fortunately, and not so fortunately, the proliferation of research in this area has provided plenty of hard data well documented in the literature. Ultimately, all things being equal, the data seems to indicate a suicide type bomb loaded with ball bearings or other projectiles placed in a crowded area will result in the largest number of patients requiring immediate, emergent and life-saving intervention. While a disaster like a major earthquake will result in far more fatalities, far less people will require absolute immediate operative or life-saving intervention. All we really need to know is, what type of event, how many patients, and it’s pretty easy to calculate what to expect from an acuity standpoint. In the ER, it isn’t the total number of patients that concerns us, it’s the number we get that will die if not treated in minutes or a few hours. The rest we have no problem letting wait.

Ultimately, though, what I am getting at is that the trauma from a major incident like an earthquake or terrorist attack is very predictable. All you really need to know is the type of event and the numbers and you almost immediately have a pretty good idea of what to expect.

But a real bad flu?

There is no way you can prepare for it. The goal should be to protect your hospital from it.

We have seen influenza pandemics before, the most notable being the Spanish flu of 1918. Researchers estimate between 20 and 100 million peopled died from this strain of flu. What was even more concerning was the number of deaths that occurred in previously healthy people. Each year in the United States, about 30,000-40,000 deaths and 200,0000 hospitalizations can be attributed in part to influenza. Most deaths are in the elderly with pre-existing serious health problems. The Spanish flu of 1918 was different. It killed the healthy, able bodied. It unleashed an incredible degree of viral savagery with an infection rate of nearly 50 percent. It was a biological holocaust.

Doctors and nurses treat flu patients lying on cots and in outdoor tents at a hospital camp during the influenza epidemic of 1918. (Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Thus my biggest fear has always been a strain of flu that is highly contagious with a high mortality rate. The Spanish-flu mortality rate of 1918 was 2 to 5 percent. Ebola has a 20 to 90 percent mortality rate, but it fortunately is not quite as contagious as Influenza. However, I still keep going back to flu and envisioning an epidemic of the Spanish type that will quickly fill all our inpatient beds, every ICU bed, every ventilator, every outpatient bed, every cot, gurney and chair in the ER and in all the waiting rooms. I’m afraid that a flu virus this aggressive will bring five dying flu victims to our ER each day and dozens more with a real possibility of dying.

This would occur on top of a department that is always operating at capacity and drowning in documentation and electronic medical record bureaucracy. After 30 days in our ER, nearly 150 people will have died, providers will be physically and mentally spent and morale will be at below-despair levels. Multiply it by 20 or so other hospitals in the area and now we are talking about 3,000 members of our community dead in only a single month. The obituary pages of the local paper will be thicker than the advertising section the day after Thanksgiving. Expand that number statewide and nationwide and the numbers become so immense they aren’t even real.

Now imagine a realistic scenario in which the flu vaccine only provides immunity to 50 percent of the recipients. That means that half of our ER staff who are seeing all these patients will have little protection, outside of gowns, masks, and gloves, against a virus that is spread primarily though coughing, sneezing and saliva. Simply put, some of us in the trenches in damn near every ER in America will almost certainly die. It could be me, it could be any one of my partners, colleagues and co-workers and it could be one of our children or a spouse who gets infected when one of us comes home thinking the headache and fatigue they are feeling is simply exhaustion from the workload of the day. Can you picture it?

Now imagine that huge numbers of hospital staff – from doctors to housekeepers, from food services to registration, from security and parking to transportation will decide not show up. They will call in sick or simply just say: “No, I’m not coming to work today.” In just a few days, human waste, debris, soiled linens, the sick, the dying and the bodies will pile up. We will be overwhelmed and unable to offer much in the way of assistance because the labor-intensive protocols that allow us to safely care for even one patient are just too exhausting. These procedures are barely repeatable more than once or twice of day, and fraught with so many steps and potential for mistake that it becomes too physically and emotionally taxing for the staff to do … so they simply wont show up.

And I am not sure I will, either.

I love emergency medicine. I love helping people and saving lives and I think I’m pretty good at it, but I am also a person and I have a wife and three children that I love and want to see grow up. I also am keenly aware that not a damn thing I do will have any real impact on the survivability of a patient with either the Spanish flu or Ebola. Fluids, rest and prayer is about all there is to offer. There is an old adage that says a hospital is no place for a sick person. I think whoever first said that had Spanish flu and Ebola in mind.

So we drill and we prepare and we post placards and do screening but no one is asking why in the hell are they coming to us in the first place? Fluids and rest can be provided anywhere: an empty warehouse or a huge tent in the middle of farmland. Why would we not just take the care to them in the form of special traveling Ebola-mobiles that triage and treat the patients at home? Why can we deliver the mail, pickup the garbage and recyclables at damn near every house in America, but we can’t pull up a retrofitted UPS van, drop off a mid-level provider in a hazmat gown, let them do an assessment, draw some blood, drop off cans of rehydrating formula to their doors, clean linen, biohazard bags, gowns and gloves for family members, slap a warning sticker on the front door, tell them you will stop by tomorrow and move on to some other location? I know I sound crass, perhaps like I don’t really have sympathy for these very ill patients. This could not be further from the truth. I’m just kind of angry. I know there is a better way than risking the infrastructure of a medical center for the sake of a few patients that will either do OK at home with simple supportive care or die no matter what care I provide. We’ve had years to prepare for this, we’ve hung all our hopes on a vaccine and not nearly enough thought on containment should a vaccine fail.

Today’s Ebola is tomorrow’s Spanish flu. We’ve had nearly a hundred years to get ready and the best we can come up with is plastic suits, double gloves, respirators, and masks. The battleground of this problem can’t be in the hospital. It is unwinnable in our emergency rooms.

I think I might just call in sick.

Dr. Louis M. Profeta is an emergency physician practicing in Indianapolis. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book, The Patient in Room Nine Says He's God.

***

SCIENTISTS: EBOLA CAN SPREAD BY AIR IN COLD WEATHER

Ebola can go airborne but hasn't in West Africa because it's too warm, researchers conclude

Image Credits: foreverdigital / Flickr (City Background)

by KIT DANIELS | INFOWARS.COM | OCTOBER 21, 2014

Ebola can spread by air in cold, dry weather common to the U.S. but not West Africa, presenting a “possible, serious threat” to the public, according to two studies by U.S. Army scientists.

After successfully exposing monkeys to airborne Ebola, which “caused a rapidly fatal disease in 4-5 days,” scientists with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) concluded Ebola can spread through air but likely hasn’t in Equatorial Africa because the region is too warm, with temperatures rarely dropping below 65°F.

“We… demonstrated aerosol transmission of Ebola virus at lower temperature and humidity than that normally present in sub-Saharan Africa,” the 1995 study entitled Lethal Experimental Infections of Rhesus Monkeys by Aerosolized Ebola Virus reported. “Ebola virus sensitivity to the high temperatures and humidity in the thatched, mud, and wattle huts shared by infected family members in southern Sudan and northern Zaire may have been a factor limiting aerosol transmission of Ebola virus in the African epidemics.”

“Both elevated temperature and relative humidity have been shown to reduce the aerosol stability of viruses.”

The study also referred to the 1989 Ebola outbreak at a primate quarantine facility in Reston, Va., in which the virus rapidly spread between unconnected rooms.

“While infections in adjacent cages may have occurred by droplet contact, infections in distant cages suggests aerosol transmission, as evidence of direct physical contact with an infected source could not be established,” the study added.

It is interesting to note this outbreak occurred in December 1989, when temperatures in Reston were usually below freezing, and it’s unlikely the indoor temperature in the vast quarantine facility was much higher.

The tropical climates of the world, including the Ebola hot zone of West Africa but obviously excluding the U.S. and Europe, which have also had cases of Ebola. Credit: Me ne frego / Wiki

A 2012 study also by the USAMRIID, which exposed monkeys to an airborne filovirus similar to Ebola, reached a similar conclusion to the 1995 study.

“There is no strong evidence of secondary transmission by the aerosol route in African filovirus outbreaks; however, aerosol transmission is thought to be possible and may occur in conditions of lower temperature and humidity which may not have been factors in outbreaks in warmer climates,” the study entitled A Characterization of Aerosolized Sudan Virus Infection in African Green Monkeys, Cynomologus Macaques and Rhesus Macaques stated.

The study pointed out that filoviruses, which include Ebola and the Sudan virus used in this particular study, have stability in aerosol form comparable to influenza.

“Filoviruses in aerosol form are therefore considered a possible, serious threat to the health and safety of the public,” it added.

And the Pentagon took this threat of airborne filoviruses so seriously that it organized a Filovirus Medical Countermeasures Workshop with the Department of Health and Human Services in 2013.

“The DoD seeks a trivalent filovirus vaccine that is effective against aerosol exposure and protective against filovirus disease for at least one year,” the executive summary of the workshop stated.

The Pentagon’s concern with airborne Ebola runs contrary to health officials who claim the disease can’t spread through coughing and sneezing, but according to the Army studies, that may only be true in tropical climates.

“How much airborne transmission will occur will be a function of how well Ebola induces coughing and sneezing in its victims in cold weather climates,” the web site potrblog.com suggested. “Coughing and nasal bleeding are both reported symptoms in Africa, so the worst should be expected.”

***

Natural News

Vaccine pusher Paul Offit trying to revoke all religious and philosophical exemptions to vaccination

Tuesday, October 28, 2014 by: PF Louis

(NaturalNews) Introducing Dr. Paul Offit, the conflicted top pediatrician and millionaire vaccine producer and promoter who claims that a baby can theoretically tolerate 10,000 vaccinations at once. And he wants to make sure that your kids get their share.

Remember the lyrics from that Rolling Stones song "Sympathy for the Devil"? "Please allow me to introduce myself; I'm a man of wealth and taste... Pleased to meet you; Hope you guess my name; But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game."

Seems appropriate for Offit. In 2009 during a Philadelphia magazine interview, a reporter asked Offit if he was the Antichrist, and he replied, "I'm just one of the Devil's many humble servants." Maybe that whole conversation was tongue-in-check; maybe it was a huge Freudian slip.

Either way, it's totally appropriate for a man who is out to crush alternative medicine and who calls Linus Pauling a quack and vitamin or mineral supplements a waste of time and money while going beyond promoting vaccinations for everyone.

Offit's pushing for not allowing legal vaccination exemptions

Offit is absolutely demanding that everyone be forced into taking all of them, especially children from age zero to six. Dr. Offit publicly claims that all vaccine exemptions are bogus and should not be allowed, and he's actively campaigning or lobbying to get rid of them.

Anti-vaccination crusader Robert Kennedy, Jr., has said of Offit, "This is a man who has made himself the spokesperson for the vaccine industry. He portrays himself as an independent scientist. ... He does not disclose the millions of dollars of transactions."

That includes an "unspecified percentage" of the $182 million that Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania made after selling its royalty stake in the RotaTeq vaccine, which purportedly protects infants against rotavirus infections that cause diarrhea, resulting in millions for his part of the patent's intellectual rights.

And the manufacturer of that vaccine is Merck, the Monsanto of the vaccine industry. This "Devil's humble servant" is no doubt receiving ample remuneration for serving the Devil manifested as Merck.

Then there are Offit's books that resonate with the "Quackbuster" level of defamation, lies and ad hominem slander that attracts the mainstream media's sensationalist easy-scoop journalists.

They go to the official "authorities" and ask questions, repeat their answers and maybe explain how some foolishly disagree to cast the whole issue as some sort of uneven "debate" to create newsworthy controversy.

Offit's outspoken nonsense, his several books that attack vaccination refusers as being "dangerous to us all" are reviewed by several newspapers and magazines throughout the country. Easy publicity for the "Devil's humble servant." He's not shy, and he attracts an audience wherever he goes to deliver his lectures.

Unfortunately, Offit has a large platform in front of an ignorant public eye, while conscientious doctors who warn that vaccine risks far outweigh imagined benefits like Dr. Russell Blaylock, Dr. Suzzane Humphries and Dr. Sherry Tenpenny go unnoticed except by the few who know better than to even consider the likes of Offit and his vaccinators.

Vaccination dangers

To be sure, Offit's vaccine is not "green," that is, devoid of all toxic preservatives and toxic adjuvants to boost their so-called efficacy at temporarily creating antigens.

This is true for all other pharmaceutical vaccines. Bypassing the normal portals of the immune system by directly injecting these toxins into the bloodstream does not confer immunity.

What does confer total immunity is surviving whatever infectious viruses or bacteria to which one is exposed. Several experts have shown graphs of the different diseases that were seriously waning before their vaccines were introduced.

From those graphs, it appears to this author that exposure to peak infection periods resulted in that "herd immunity" that vaccine pushers claim will be achieved if 90 percent of a given population is vaccinated.

Excess antigen reactions from vaccines create "cytokine storms" that overwhelm normal immunity and cause several different types of adverse reactions, some short-term, some long-term, and some deaths. The real risks far outweigh the fake advantages.

Sources:

http://www.azlyrics.com

http://healthimpactnews.com

http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org

http://www.phillymag.com

https://www.google.com

http://science.naturalnews.com

***

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk warned that artificial intelligence could be our biggest existential threat and believes there should be some regulatory oversight at the national and international level, while speaking at the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics department’s Centennial Symposium Friday. (MIT Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics)

***

Theguardian

The British-American coup that ended Australian independence

In 1975 prime minister Gough Whitlam, who has died this week, dared to try to assert his country’s autonomy. The CIA and MI6 made sure he paid the price

John Pilger

theguardian.com, Thursday 23 October 2014 08.50 EDT

Prime minister Gough Whitlam watches ACTU president Bob Hawke drink beer from a yard glass Melbourne, Australia, 1972. Photograph: News Ltd/Newspix/REX

Across the media and political establishment in Australia, a silence has descended on the memory of the great, reforming prime minister Gough Whitlam. His achievements are recognised, if grudgingly, his mistakes noted in false sorrow. But a critical reason for his extraordinary political demise will, they hope, be buried with him.

Australia briefly became an independent state during the Whitlam years, 1972-75. An American commentator wrote that no country had “reversed its posture in international affairs so totally without going through a domestic revolution”. Whitlam ended his nation’s colonial servility. He abolished royal patronage, moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement, supported “zones of peace” and opposed nuclear weapons testing.

Although not regarded as on the left of the Labor party, Whitlam was a maverick social democrat of principle, pride and propriety. He believed that a foreign power should not control his country’s resources and dictate its economic and foreign policies. He proposed to “buy back the farm”. In drafting the first Aboriginal lands rights legislation, his government raised the ghost of the greatest land grab in human history, Britain’s colonisation of Australia, and the question of who owned the island-continent’s vast natural wealth.

Latin Americans will recognise the audacity and danger of this “breaking free” in a country whose establishment was welded to great, external power. Australians had served every British imperial adventure since the Boxer rebellion was crushed in China. In the 1960s, Australia pleaded to join the US in its invasion of Vietnam, then provided “black teams” to be run by the CIA. US diplomatic cables published last year by WikiLeaks disclose the names of leading figures in both main parties, including a future prime minister and foreign minister, as Washington’s informants during the Whitlam years.

Whitlam knew the risk he was taking. The day after his election, he ordered that his staff should not be “vetted or harassed” by the Australian security organisation, Asio – then, as now, tied to Anglo-American intelligence. When his ministers publicly condemned the US bombing of Vietnam as “corrupt and barbaric”, a CIA station officer in Saigon said: “We were told the Australians might as well be regarded as North Vietnamese collaborators.”

Whitlam demanded to know if and why the CIA was running a spy base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs, a giant vacuum cleaner which, as Edward Snowden revealed recently, allows the US to spy on everyone. “Try to screw us or bounce us,” the prime minister warned the US ambassador, “[and Pine Gap] will become a matter of contention”.

Victor Marchetti, the CIA officer who had helped set up Pine Gap, later told me, “This threat to close Pine Gap caused apoplexy in the White House … a kind of Chile [coup] was set in motion.”

Pine Gap’s top-secret messages were decoded by a CIA contractor, TRW. One of the decoders was Christopher Boyce, a young man troubled by the “deception and betrayal of an ally”. Boyce revealed that the CIA had infiltrated the Australian political and trade union elite and referred to the governor-general of Australia, Sir John Kerr, as “our man Kerr”.

Kerr was not only the Queen’s man, he had longstanding ties to Anglo-American intelligence. He was an enthusiastic member of the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, described by Jonathan Kwitny of the Wall Street Journal in his book, The Crimes of Patriots, as “an elite, invitation-only group … exposed in Congress as being founded, funded and generally run by the CIA”. The CIA “paid for Kerr’s travel, built his prestige … Kerr continued to go to the CIA for money”.

When Whitlam was re-elected for a second term, in 1974, the White House sent Marshall Green to Canberra as ambassador. Green was an imperious, sinister figure who worked in the shadows of America’s “deep state”. Known as “the coupmaster”, he had played a central role in the 1965 coup against President Sukarno in Indonesia – which cost up to a million lives. One of his first speeches in Australia, to the Australian Institute of Directors, was described by an alarmed member of the audience as “an incitement to the country’s business leaders to rise against the government”.

The Americans and British worked together. In 1975, Whitlam discovered that Britain’s MI6 was operating against his government. “The Brits were actually decoding secret messages coming into my foreign affairs office,” he said later. One of his ministers, Clyde Cameron, told me, “We knew MI6 was bugging cabinet meetings for the Americans.” In the 1980s, senior CIA officers revealed that the “Whitlam problem” had been discussed “with urgency” by the CIA’s director, William Colby, and the head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield. A deputy director of the CIA said: “Kerr did what he was told to do.”

On 10 November 1975, Whitlam was shown a top-secret telex message sourced to Theodore Shackley, the notorious head of the CIA’s East Asia division, who had helped run the coup against Salvador Allende in Chile two years earlier.

Shackley’s message was read to Whitlam. It said that the prime minister of Australia was a security risk in his own country. The day before, Kerr had visited the headquarters of the Defence Signals Directorate, Australia’s NSA, where he was briefed on the “security crisis”.

On 11 November – the day Whitlam was to inform parliament about the secret CIA presence in Australia – he was summoned by Kerr. Invoking archaic vice-regal “reserve powers”, Kerr sacked the democratically elected prime minister. The “Whitlam problem” was solved, and Australian politics never recovered, nor the nation its true independence.

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WAKING TIMES

The 500 Year Old Map that Shatters the Official History of the Human Race

Buck Rogers, Staff Writer

October 22, 2014

If conventional wisdom on the history of the human race is correct, then human civilization is not old enough, nor was it advanced enough, to account for many of the mysterious monolithic and archeological sites around the world. Places like Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, the Bosnian Pyramids, and Adam’s Calendar in South Africa, beg the same question: if human civilization is supposedly not old enough to have created all of these sites, then who, or what, had the capacity to create so many elaborate structures around the globe?

It is clear that our understanding of our own history is incomplete, and there is plenty of credible evidence pointing to the existence of intelligent and civilized cultures on Earth long before the first human cultures emerged from the Middle East around 4000BC. The Admiral Piri Reis world map of 1513 is part of the emerging more complete story of our history, one that challenges mainstream thinking in big ways.

Mapmaking is a complex and civilized task, thought to have emerged around 1000BC with the Babylonian clay tablets. Antarctica was officially first sighted by a Russian expedition in 1820 and is entirely covered in ice caps thought to have formed around 34-45 million years ago. Antarctica, therefore, should not be seen on any map prior to 1820, and all sighted maps of Antarctica should contain the polar ice caps, which are supposedly millions of years old.

A world map made by Ottoman cartographer and military admiral, Piri Reis, casts some doubt on what we think we know about ancient civilization.

The Piri Reis map, which focuses on Western Africa, the East Coast of South America, and the North Coast of Antarctica, features the details of a coastline that many historians and geologists believe represents Queen Maud Land, that is, Antarctica. Remarkably, as represented in this map, the frigid continent was not covered in ice caps, but, rather, with dense vegetation. How could a map drawn in 1513 feature a continent that wasn’t discovered until 1820? And if the continent had in fact been discovered by one of the civilizations known to have emerged after 4000BC, why were the ice caps not on the map?

The paradoxes presented by the map were of little significance to the world until Charles Hapgood, a history professor from New Hampshire, USA, claimed that the information in the Piri Reis map supported a different view of geology and ancient history. Hapgood believed that the map verified his global geological theory, which explains how portions of Antarctica could have remained ice-free until 4000BC.

Hapgood’s presentation is so convincing that even famed theoretical physicist and philosopher Albert Einstein wrote the following supportive forward to a book that Hapgood wrote in 1953:

“His idea is original, of great simplicity, and – if it continues to prove itself – of great importance to everything that is related to the history of the Earth’s surface.” -Albert Einstein

Unquestionably not a hoax, the map is certifiably authentic, but the information on the map is of mysterious origin. Piri Reis himself notes that the map was drawn from information sourced from other, older maps, charts and logs, many of which, Hapgood suggests, may have been copied and transcribed repeatedly since before the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in Egypt, which wiped out the literature of antiquity and vast cultural knowledge.

This hypothesis opens the door to the possibility that some forgotten ancient civilization had the capacity to voyage to the Antarctic, charting the earth, with the technology to make maps, sometime before the ice caps formed. A significant departure from our present understanding of our history.

The absence of the ice caps in the Piri Reis map is peculiar, and in 1960 Hapgood brought his theories on this to the attention of the United States Air Force. Hapgood asked, among other things, if the shape of the continent, as it appeared on the Piri Reis map, was at all similar to the shape of the continent under the ice, as revealed by recent Air Force testing of seismic data on the continent. Their answer was astonishing:

“…the geographical detail shown in the lower part of the map agrees very remarkably with the results of the seismic profile made across the top of the ice-cap by the Swedish-British Antarctic Expedition of 1949.

This indicates the coastline had been mapped before it was covered by the ice-cap.

The ice-cap in this region is now about a mile thick.

We have no idea how the data on this map can be reconciled with the supposed state of geographical knowledge in 1513.

Harold Z. Ohlmeyer

Lt. Colonel, USAF

Commander”

[Fingerprints of the Gods]

If Hapgood’s theory has merit, as even Einstein believed, then there was a period of time from around 13000BC to 6000BC when Antarctica was located more closely to the equator and was more tropical in climate, much like parts of South America. This was caused by a sudden shift of the earth’s entire lithosphere, he theorized, simultaneously moving all of the continents into their present position, a much different view than the widely accepted explanation offered the plate tectonics theory.

If Antarctica had indeed been further North then than it presently is, and was not covered in ice only as recently as 6000BC, then who was around back then that could have mapped it, long before any known civilizations? And who could have done so long before the advent of the marine chronometer in the 18th century, which finally solved the problem of accurately tracking longitude on the high seas?

Had the entire Earth already been mapped by 4000BC, by a civilization that has been forgotten, as analysis of the Piri Reis map and the theories of Charles Hapgood suggest?

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Japan's Mt. Ontake Volcano Eruption September 27, 2014

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

“That which has been is now; and whatever things are appointed to be have already been; and God will seek out that which is past.”
(Ecclesiastes 3:15)