“Be glad, thou thirsty desert: let the wilderness exult, and flower as the lily. And the desert places of Jordan shall blossom and rejoice; the glory of Libanus has been given to it, and the honour of Carmel; and my people shall see the glory of the Lord, and the majesty of God. Be strong, ye relaxed hands and palsied knees. Comfort one another, ye fainthearted; be strong, fear not; behold, our God renders judgment, and he will render it; he will come and save us.”
(Isaiah 35:1-4)
He Will Come And Save US

***

INDEPENDENT

This moment will go down in history: the US has given up on the overthrow of Assad in Syria

When Washington ‘understands the difficult conditions’ its militia allies are facing and says it ‘advises’ the Russians and Syrians not to violate a ceasefire – which was Moscow’s idea in the first place – you know that the Americans are pulling the carpet from beneath another set of allies

Robert Fisk

June 27, 2018

If the West is prepared to turn its back on erstwhile allies in southern Syria and in the north, Russia is the winner and all the eggshell militias which remain are doomed ( AP )

It will be called the great betrayal. And it was a long time coming. But the grim message from Washington to the anti-Assad fighters of southern Syria – that they could expect no help from the West in their further struggle against Assad’s regime or the Russians – will one day figure in the history books. It’s a turning point in the Syria war, a shameful betrayal if you happen to belong to the wreckage of the “Free Syrian Army” and its acolytes around the city of Deraa, and a further victory for the Assad regime in its ambition to retake all of rebel Syria.

Already Russian missiles and Syrian bombs are embracing the countryside south and east of Deraa and outside Quneitra and Sweida after the opposition fighters refused a negotiated peace last week. Refugees are again fleeing the towns. But the words of the American message to the fighters, seen by Reuters and so far not denied by the US, are both bleak and hopeless: “You should not base your decisions on the assumption or expectation of a military intervention by us … We in the United States government understand the difficult conditions you are facing and still advise the Russians and the Syrian regime not to undertake a military measure that violates the [de-escalation] zone.”

When Washington “understands the difficult conditions” its militia allies are facing and says it “advises” the Russians and Syrians not to violate a ceasefire – which was Moscow’s idea in the first place – you know that the Americans are pulling the carpet from beneath another set of allies.

But the US also realises that its millions of dollars worth of training and weapons have been passed on to al-Nusra – aka al-Qaeda of 9/11 infamy – and that the Nusra front holds villages and positions within the area outside Deraa nominally held by those well-known “moderates” of the FSA (whose mythical strength, you may remember, was once put at 70,000 by one David Cameron).

Neither the Hezbollah nor the comparatively fewer Iranian Revolutionary Guards appear to be involved in the battle for southern Syria; and be assured that the Americans and the Russians – and thus the Syrian government – have agreed that this should be a Russo-Syrian offensive. Both Vladimir Putin and whoever thinks they speak for Donald Trump will have assured the Israelis that this will be an internal battle and will not endanger the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights. The so-called Military Operations Centre in Amman – its acronym “MOC” almost sums up its ambitions – is supposed to arm and finance the group of militias still fighting in north of the Jordanian border. But no more, it seems.

The Israelis have hitherto attacked Syrian and Iranian targets in Syria – but never the cult-Islamist Isis executioners nor Nusra/al-Qaeda. US policy, despairing of ever “collapsing” Assad, now appears to have given up on the armed opposition to the Damascus government, presumably advising Israel that a return to the status quo on Golan which existed before the Syrian war – where Israeli and Syrian forces were separated by a UN buffer zone – is preferable to risking a shootout with Iran or, indeed, with the Syrian army.

The MOC, according to a former opposition fighter in Damascus, chose to control all rebel activities – in theory, the “FSA” – and specifically refused help four years ago when fighters in the capital sought mortars and artillery to assault the presidential palace. The MOC officers – a British major and a Saudi officer, according to the source – offered only a resupply of small arms. But this was only a warning of things to come. The Kurds have since learned what this means in the north of Syria.

They, of course, have twice supped from the vile chalice of betrayal. Kissinger served it up to them when he made peace between Saddam Hussein and the Shah of Iran in 1975, cutting off a $16m (£12m) CIA operation to help the Kurds assault the Iraqi dictator. Then the Americans watched Saddam destroy the Kurds in 1991 after telling them to rise up against the Baghdad regime following the liberation of Kuwait.

Syria fears that the Israelis will now create their own “buffer zone” below Golan, similar in style, weaponry and ruthlessness to Israel’s former occupation zone in southern Lebanon. This lasted for 22 years, but fell to pieces when Israel’s local Lebanese militia, the South Lebanon Army – as inefficient, untrustworthy and occasionally as fictitious as the “Free Syrian Army” – retreated along with the Israelis in 2000.

Across the map of Syria, however, it is the West’s power which now appears to be in retreat. If it is prepared to turn its back on its erstwhile allies in southern Syria and in the north, then Russia is the winner (as well as Assad) and all the eggshell militias which remain – in Idlib, along the Turkish border and certainly in the south, are doomed. The instruction from the US to its allies outside Deraa – “surrender” might sum it up best – may be presented as a small victory: Washington can claim to have kept Iran away from Israel. But it will also mean that America and Nato have given up on the overthrow of the Assad family.

***

INDEPENDENT

The 'ultimate deal' that Jared Kushner is proposing for Palestine would strip the people of all their dignity

After three Arab-Israeli wars, tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths and millions of refugees, does Kushner really believe that the Palestinians will settle for cash?

Robert Fisk

June 29, 2018

Kushner has accused the Palestinian leadership of having no ideas ( Reuters )

Is there no humiliation left for the Palestinians? After Oslo, after the “two state solution”, after the years of Israeli occupation – of “Area A” and “Area C” to define which kind of occupation the Palestinians must live under – after the vast Jewish colonisation of land thieved from its Arab owners, after the mass killings of Gaza, and Trump’s decision that Jerusalem, all of Jerusalem, must be the capital of Israel, are the Palestinians going to be asked to settle for cash and a miserable village? Is there no shame left?

For the Palestinians are soon to be awarded the “ultimate deal” – “ultimate”, as in the last, definitive, terminal, conclusive, no-more-cards-to-play, cash-in-your-chips, go-for-broke, take-it-or-leave-it, to-hell-with-you, cease-and-desist, endgame “deal”. A pitiful village as a capital, no end to colonisation, no security, no army, no independent borders, no unity – in return for a huge amount of money, billions of dollars and euros, millions of pounds, zillions of dinars and shekels and spondulix and filthy lucre, the real “moolah”.

“I believe,” quoth Crown Prince Kushner this week, “that Palestinian people are less invested in the politicians’ talking points than they are in seeing how a deal will give them and their future generations new opportunities, more and better paying jobs and prospects for a better life.” Is Trump’s son-in-law – “adviser” on the Middle East, real estate developer and US investor – delusional? After three Arab-Israeli wars, tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths and millions of refugees, does Jared Kushner really believe that the Palestinians will settle for cash?

Did he not notice – ever – that the Palestinians who have protested and suffered and died and lost their lands for 70 years, have not been demonstrating in their streets for better roads, duty free zones or another airport? Does he think that the people of Gaza have come onto their streets and marched towards the lethal border fence because they are demanding new prenatal clinics? How can he humiliate an entire Arab people by suggesting that their freedom, sovereignty, independence, dignity, justice and nationhood are merely “politicians’ talking points”? Is there no end to this insanity?

No, there is not. For the drip-feed of detail which is emerging about the Trump-Kushner “ultimate deal” in Israeli newspapers – the venerable Haaretz in the lead – is that Palestinians will have to abandon East Jerusalem as the capital of a future “Palestine”, that Israel will withdraw from a handful of villages east and north of Jerusalem – the measly Abu Dis among them – to create a Potemkin “capital”, but will remain forever in the Old City. That a Palestinian state will be completely demilitarised (so much for “security”), but that every Jewish colony constructed illegally on Arab land – for Jews and Jews only – will remain, and that Israel will control the entire Jordan Valley. Right of return? Forget it.

And all this for billions of dollars in infrastructure projects, a free trade zone at Al Arish in the Sinai, an outpouring of money into the West Bank, a new Palestinian leadership – out would go corrupt, arrogant, senile, dictatorial Mahmoud Abbas whose leadership has “no ideas” and has made no “efforts with prospects of success” (this latter from Kushner, of course) in favour of a new and pragmatic man who will (here more delusional thinking) be even more pliant, peace-loving and grovelling than Abbas himself.

All this nonsense depends on the largesse of Saudi Arabia – whose bungling crown prince appears to be arguing with his kingly father, who does not want to abandon the original Saudi initiative for a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital – and the feebleness of King Abdullah of Jordan, whose country’s IMF-imposed financial suffering has provoked unprecedented riots and the fall of his government, and the support of Egypt’s field marshal/president who will supposedly be happy to impose law and financial benefits on the Egyptian-Gaza border. Oh yes, and there will be no real contact between Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas has been forgotten, it seems.

Does one laugh or cry? When Trump moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem amid the massacre of Gaza, the world screamed – but then fell silent. The split screen of diplomatic adulation and mass killing scarcely a hundred miles apart has somehow normalised the combination of death and injustice in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Yes, they got away with it. If American diplomats can stand to attention in Jerusalem against the crackle of sniper fire along the Gaza frontier, what’s next?

There is something strange, almost comical, about the photographs of America’s diplomatic “peacemakers” sitting around Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In the West, we choose – with good moral reason – not to emphasise the religious or ethnic background of these men. But the Israelis do, philosopher Uri Avnery does, and Haaretz points it out: that all are Jewish – at least two of them enthusiastic supporters of the Israeli colonisation of Palestinian West Bank land, including the US ambassador to Israel who called the moderate J Street Jewish lobby group “worse than kapos”.

Was it not possible, within the entire US diplomatic corps and America’s “advisers”, to find even one Muslim American to join the team? Would the “peacemakers” not have benefited from just one voice from a man or woman who shared the same faith as the “other” half of the proposed Arab-Israeli peace?

But no. Nor would it have mattered. Abbas has broken off all diplomatic relations with the White House since Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, and withdrawn his ambassador to Washington. The “ultimate deal” – originally the Oslo agreement, although even that was a poisoned chalice, and then a whole series of miniature retreats and withdrawals and further occupations, and then ad hoc “anti-terror” conferences – now represents only the total humiliation of the Palestinian people: no East Jerusalem, no end to colonisation, no recognition of the right to return, no state, no future. Just cash.

***

MIDDLE EAST EYE

Saudi, UAE, Egypt, Jordan back Trump’s Israel-Palestine plan: Report

Four Arab countries happy to see US sideline Abbas as it seeks to implement 'deal of the century', according to Israel Hayom

June 26, 2018

Four Arab countries are backing Donald Trump’s plan for a settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, according to an Israeli newspaper, and are willing to sideline the PA’s President Mahmoud Abbas to see it done.

According to a report in Israel Hayom, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan told Jared Kushner, the US president's son-in-law and the man charged with solving the Israel-Palestine issue, and envoy Jason Greenblatt they were behind Washington’s so-called “deal of the century”.

Israel Hayom, a daily newspaper owned by billionaires Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, reported that it spoke to officials from the four Arab countries.

The officials are said to have told the paper that their countries have decided to back the US plan regardless of whether Abbas and the PA engage with it.

In the report, a “top Egyptian official” says the countries are unanimous in their position that were the US to go over Abbas’ head and attempt to implement the settlement plan, they would not be opposed to it.

Since taking the presidency, Trump has often framed himself as the man to finally negotiate an end to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

However, in recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, he has been accused by Abbas and the PA of clearly favouring the Israelis and therefore excluding the US from the role of honest dealmaker.

The Palestinians seek East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East war, as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Enraged by the Trump administration’s stance, Abbas has refused to engage with the US’ attempts to implement its Israel-Palestine strategy.

Deal or no deal

Though yet to be announced, many of the details of Trump’s “deal of the century” appear to be common knowledge.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who has been at the forefront of efforts to end the Israeli occupation and set up a Palestinian state for decades, told MEE last week the “deal of the century” was no deal at all.

He said Washington was already implementing its strategy on the ground, regardless of the Palestinians and their interests.

The Americans had become "nothing else than spokespeople for the Israeli occupation", Erekat said, adding that the US intention was to "normalise Israeli apartheid".

According to the Israel Hayom report, however, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Cairo and Amman are not sympathetic to the PA’s position and reject Abbas’ own rejection of Trump’s settlement.

They see Abbas’ refusal to engage with the Americans as a misstep. MEE reported in Marchthat Abbas had been handed a copy of the US plan by Saudi officials, yet refused to look at it.

According to the Israeli daily, a senior Jordanian official said Kushner and Greenblatt were told the ‎‎"Arab states will not be the ones to throw a wrench ‎in the wheels of the peace process, and that Abbas' ‎continued refusal to work with the Americans will ‎lead to a regional peace plan being launched without ‎him."‎

They did, however, underline that “they would not be party to any ‎deal that compromises Palestinian interests”, the report said.

"Despite the strategic mistakes made by Abu Mazen ‎‎[Abbas] and his people," an Egyptian official told Israel Hayom, "Kushner and Greenblatt were ‎told, in no uncertain terms, that the Palestinians ‎deserve an independent Palestinian state with East ‎Jerusalem as its capital."‎

"Kushner agreed to the Arab nations' demand and made ‎in [sic] clear during his meetings with [Jordan's] King ‎Abdullah and President [Abdel-Fattah] el-‎Sisi that the interests of the Palestinian people ‎will not be harmed if the regional peace plan is ‎introduced without the Palestinian leadership's ‎cooperation," he said. ‎

***

THE CHRISTIAN JOURNAL

Christian TV Station Fined For Opposing Transgenderism, Making ‘Homophobic’ Comments

By Nate Brown

June 25, 2018

The British-based Christian TV Station Revelation was fined six thousand Euros for ‘homophobic’ remarks made on a breakfast show last year.

Revelation TV, which broadcasts in Spain via Satellite, was handed the fine by the Spanish National Commission of Markets and Competition. According to the CNMC, the comments made on the show ‘R-mornings’ could be considered as threatening to the dignity of homosexual and transgender groups, even though there was no manifest to incitation to hate against these groups.

After the fine was issued, Gordon Pettie, the director of Revelation TV, attempted to appeal the commission’s decision. However, the penalty was placed before the hearing of the appeal.

Pettie stated that the discussion was ‘absolutely not’ homophobic; instead, they were discussing a Biblical view. Gordon later said that his lawyers had informed him that if the discussion was deemed ‘homophobic’ then Spanish authorities would have to fine every Catholic Church in Spain.

‘We believe by the time the process is finished the fine won’t apply and we won’t be found to be homophobic,’ he said.

‘We would say as a television station that we seek to stand up for biblical views. All we did was say what the scripture had to say.’

In reference are remarks that were made while the Morning Talk Show was discussing a decision by a Christian Family to remove their child from school because one of his classmates identified as transgender.

The pastor said on the show: ‘We are going to create a political party or join a party to change this madness. We are going to have to do this, because if we don’t, we will have Sodom and Gomorrah at our doorsteps, where they are going to tell you: we want to get hold of those men in there and we want to sleep with them and there’s nothing you can do about it. I have girls for you… No, we want those guys. And because it has become aggressive, it has become heavy, and if we don’t confront this militancy it is going to get worse, it is going to get really bad.’

The Pastor added: ‘The problem is that these guys are carrying out what I call social engineering. They ́re coming with ideas of their own, in order to lead society in a particular direction. But we must not allow that to happen. Let the child grow up naturally and when they are old enough let them decide what they want to do. At 18, they will decide whatever they want to do, having the freedom to do so. But starting to teach an idea that is not natural at school… because all these ideas are not the natural way of things, it is not what the Bible says, it is not natural biologically. I don’t know who encourages it and how we can stop it, it shouldn’t happen.

‘But we need to understand that the people behind this agenda are not foolish, they know exactly what they are doing, they know that, at that age, the child doesn’t have a clue what is going on, so if they can manage to manipulate those kids to believe that this is what is natural, that will stick to the children. They like to get hold of a generation ahead of time, so that when they finally are 20 or 25, the whole world has changed to exactly where they want to be with that agenda.’

***

MEM

US church with 1.5m members votes unanimously to support BDS

June 27, 2018

The Presbyterian Church (USA), which represents 1.5 million Americans, has voted overwhelmingly in support of the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign (BDS).

Members took part in a vote last Friday on a slate of resolutions put forth by one of its member groups, the Israel Palestine Mission Network (IPMN).

The church opposed congressional and state anti-BDS legislation calling on Americans to “defend and advocate for the constitutional protection under the First Amendment for all United States citizens”. It opposed “specific US legislation and efforts by agents of foreign governments to suppress” those freedoms. It insisted that the “The Israel Anti-Boycott Act”, Senate Bill (S) 720 and House Resolution (H.R.) 1697, which seek to impose civil and criminal penalties for nonviolent BDS resistance against human rights violations in Israel and Palestine, was against the US constitution and a threat to free speech.

The resolutions won by a landslide following powerful testimonies from local and visiting Palestinians, Black Lives Matter leaders, Presbyterians and others. Most of the resolutions passed by 80 or 90 per cent or unanimously in committee and through the General Assembly, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) reported.

USCPR, another member group of the church said that the tide was turning. Four years ago the pro-Palestinian campaign group secured a narrow victory – 310-303 – for a resolution to divest holdings from three US companies profiting from Israel’s occupation.

In just a few years, they have gone from “near parity to a church standing boldly and unequivocally for Palestinian rights”, USCPR said.

Praising the work of USCPR members and affiliates the campaign group said that they had “gone from focusing on Israel’s 1967 occupation to a broad platform challenging all aspects of Israeli colonialism, and advocating the rights of all Palestinians throughout historic Palestine, including those fighting for their right to return home”.

“Massive, mainstream institutions like PC (USA) show how the political orientation and analysis at the grassroot level is shifting quickly, and that those claiming to be progressive without standing with Palestine are increasingly out of touch,” USCPR added.

***

RT

‘Stupid God’: Tough-talking Duterte takes on Bible creation story

June 24, 2018

Adam and Eve (original sin) chapel / Getty Images

No one can escape the wrath of Rodrigo Duterte, one of the toughest-talking world leaders today, be it a US president, UN chief, or even the Pope! The Philippines president has now gone a step further by calling God “stupid.”

This time the 72-year-old leader targeted the concept of original sin in the Bible. During a speech at the opening of the 2018 Information and Communications Technology Summit in Davao City on Friday, Duterte recalled the Bible creation story of Adam and Eve and how they ate the forbidden fruit.

“Adam ate it… then malice was born. Who is this stupid God? That son of a btch is stupid if that’s the case,” the outspoken leader said. “You created something perfect and then you think of an event that would tempt and destroy the quality of your work.”

Notorious for his controversial statements, the president continued, saying that babies shouldn’t be responsible for original sin. “That was your mother and father’s deed, you weren’t born yet, but now you have original sin. What kind of religion is that? I can’t accept it.”Duterte, however, said he still believes in the existence of “a universal mind.”

The latest rant is not the only one on the topic of religion. Earlier in June, Duterte went on a long tirade against Catholic priests for casting the government in a bad light, accusing them of hypocrisy. In 2015, while still mayor of Davao City, he even cursed Pope Francis over the traffic jams during his visit.

Apart from his attacks on religion, the Philippines leader has a rather large portfolio of insults aimed at world leaders and high-ranking officials. One of his greatest ‘hits’ remains calling former US President Barack Obama a “son of a btch/whore” and telling him to “go to hell.” He also threatened to “burn down the United Nations” and called former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon a “devil.”

***

RT

‘Your god is stupid, mine has common sense’: Duterte accused of blasphemy, branded a madman & freak

June 26, 2018

Catholic nuns participate in protest in Manila against president Rodrigo Duterte © Noel Celis / AFP

Rodrigo Duterte has defended his provocative remarks after facing stiff criticism from Catholics who branded him a “madman” for calling God “stupid.” The Philippines’ president reiterated that “his God” has plenty of common sense.

“I did not say my God was stupid,” Duterte said in Filipino, speaking in Cagayan de Oro on Monday. “Your god is not my god because your god is stupid. Mine has a lot of common sense.”

Raised as a Catholic, the 73-year-old leader lashed out against the Church, claiming that no one can “bind” him to any faith. “If I choose not to believe in any God, what’s the “f*****g thing about it? It’s about the freedom to choose one,” he said.

After facing an avalanche of condemnation from Church leaders following his remarks on Friday over his interpretation of the original sin story in the Bible, in which he called God’s decision “stupid,” on Monday he also questioned the canonization process. In particular, the Philippine leader brought up the issue of the Last Supper and the pictorial interpretation of the final meal Jesus shared with the Apostles before the crucifixion.

“Who are the idiots there?” Duterte wondered in a mix of Filipino and English. “The people in the painting were suddenly made saints just because they were there.”

The presidential spokesperson tried to defuse the controversy, explaining that Duterte’s interpretation of the Bible was influenced by his own “unpleasant” experience with Catholicism. Meanwhile, Bishop Arturo Bastes urged over 70 million Church followers in the country to pray for their “madman” president.

“Duterte’s tirade against God and the Bible reveals again that he is a psychological freak, a psychopath, an abnormal mind who should have not been elected as president of our civilized and Christian nation,” Bastes said, as Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo deemed the president's opinion as “blasphemous.”

Duterte’s tirade was also labeled as “blasphemy” by the opposition Senator Antonio Trillanes and pro-life Philippines chairman Raul Nidoy.

***

***

Guradian

Rise of the machines: has technology evolved beyond our control?

Technology is starting to behave in intelligent and unpredictable ways that even its creators don’t understand. As machines increasingly shape global events, how can we regain control?

By James Bridle

June 15, 2018

The voice-activated gadget in the corner of your bedroom suddenly laughs maniacally, and sends a recording of your pillow talk to a colleague. The clip of Peppa Pig your toddler is watching on YouTube unexpectedly descends into bloodletting and death. The social network you use to keep in touch with old school friends turns out to be influencing elections and fomenting coups.

Something strange has happened to our way of thinking – and as a result, even stranger things are happening to the world. We have come to believe that everything is computable and can be resolved by the application of new technologies. But these technologies are not neutral facilitators: they embody our politics and biases, they extend beyond the boundaries of nations and legal jurisdictions and increasingly exceed the understanding of even their creators. As a result, we understand less and less about the world as these powerful technologies assume more control over our everyday lives.Across the sciences and society, in politics and education, in warfare and commerce, new technologies are not merely augmenting our abilities, they are actively shaping and directing them, for better and for worse. If we do not understand how complex technologies function then their potential is more easily captured by selfish elites and corporations. The results of this can be seen all around us. There is a causal relationship between the complex opacity of the systems we encounter every day and global issues of inequality, violence, populism and fundamentalism.

Instead of a utopian future in which technological advancement casts a dazzling, emancipatory light on the world, we seem to be entering a new dark age characterised by ever more bizarre and unforeseen events. The Enlightenment ideal of distributing more information ever more widely has not led us to greater understanding and growing peace, but instead seems to be fostering social divisions, distrust, conspiracy theories and post-factual politics. To understand what is happening, it’s necessary to understand how our technologies have come to be, and how we have come to place so much faith in them.

In the 1950s, a new symbol began to creep into the diagrams drawn by electrical engineers to describe the systems they built: a fuzzy circle, or a puffball, or a thought bubble. Eventually, its form settled into the shape of a cloud. Whatever the engineer was working on, it could connect to this cloud, and that’s all you needed to know. The other cloud could be a power system, or a data exchange, or another network of computers. Whatever. It didn’t matter. The cloud was a way of reducing complexity, it allowed you to focus on the issues at hand. Over time, as networks grew larger and more interconnected, the cloud became more important. It became a business buzzword and a selling point. It became more than engineering shorthand; it became a metaphor.

Today the cloud is the central metaphor of the internet: a global system of great power and energy that nevertheless retains the aura of something numinous, almost impossible to grasp. We work in it; we store and retrieve stuff from it; it is something we experience all the time without really understanding what it is. But there’s a problem with this metaphor: the cloud is not some magical faraway place, made of water vapour and radio waves, where everything just works. It is a physical infrastructure consisting of phone lines, fibre optics, satellites, cables on the ocean floor, and vast warehouses filled with computers, which consume huge amounts of water and energy. Absorbed into the cloud are many of the previously weighty edifices of the civic sphere: the places where we shop, bank, socialise, borrow books and vote. Thus obscured, they are rendered less visible and less amenable to critique, investigation, preservation and regulation.

Over the last few decades, trading floors around the world have fallen silent, as people are replaced by banks of computers that trade automatically. Digitisation meant that trades within, as well as between, stock exchangescould happen faster and faster. As trading passed into the hands of machines, it became possible to react almost instantaneously. High-Frequency Trading (HFT) algorithms, designed by former physics PhD students to take advantage of millisecond advantages, entered the market, and traders gave them names such as The Knife. These algorithms were capable of eking out fractions of a cent on every trade, and they could do it millions of times a day.

Something deeply weird is occurring within these massively accelerated, opaque markets. On 6 May 2010, the Dow Jones opened lower than the previous day, falling slowly over the next few hours in response to the debt crisis in Greece. But at 2.42pm, the index started to fall rapidly. In less than five minutes, more than 600 points were wiped off the market. At its lowest point, the index was nearly 1,000 points below the previous day’s average, a difference of almost 10% of its total value, and the biggest single-day fall in the market’s history. By 3.07pm, in just 25 minutes, it recovered almost all of those 600 points, in the largest and fastest swing ever.

In the chaos of those 25 minutes, 2bn shares, worth $56bn, changed hands. Even more worryingly, many orders were executed at what the Securities Exchange Commission called “irrational prices”: as low as a penny, or as high as $100,000. The event became known as the “flash crash”, and it is still being investigated and argued over years later.

One report by regulators found that high-frequency traders exacerbated the price swings. Among the various HFT programs, many had hard-coded sell points: prices at which they were programmed to sell their stocks immediately. As prices started to fall, groups of programs were triggered to sell at the same time. As each waypoint was passed, the subsequent price fall triggered another set of algorithms to automatically sell their stocks, producing a feedback effect. As a result, prices fell faster than any human trader could react to. While experienced market players might have been able to stabilise the crash by playing a longer game, the machines, faced with uncertainty, got out as quickly as possible.
Other theories blame the algorithms for initiating the crisis. One technique that was identified in the data was HFT programmes sending large numbers of “non-executable” orders to the exchanges – that is, orders to buy or sell stocks so far outside of their usual prices that they would be ignored. The purpose of such orders is not to actually communicate or make money, but to deliberately cloud the system, so that other, more valuable trades can be executed in the confusion. Many orders that were never intended to be executed were actually fulfilled, causing wild volatility.

Flash crashes are now a recognised feature of augmented markets, but are still poorly understood. In October 2016, algorithms reacted to negative news headlines about Brexit negotiations by sending the pound down 6% against the dollar in under two minutes, before recovering almost immediately. Knowing which particular headline, or which particular algorithm, caused the crash is next to impossible. When one haywire algorithm started placing and cancelling orders that ate up 4% of all traffic in US stocks in October 2012, one commentator was moved to comment wryly that “the motive of the algorithm is still unclear”.

At 1.07pm on 23 April 2013 Associated Press sent a tweet to its 2 million followers: “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.” The message was the result of a hack later claimed by the Syrian Electronic Army, a group affiliated to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. AP and other journalists quickly flooded the site with alerts that the message was false. The algorithms following breaking news stories had no such discernment, however. At 1.08pm, the Dow Jones went into a nosedive. Before most human viewers had even seen the tweet, the index had fallen 150 points in under two minutes, and bounced back to its earlier value. In that time, it erased $136bn in equity market value.

¶

Computation is increasingly layered across, and hidden within, every object in our lives, and with its expansion comes an increase in opacity and unpredictability. One of the touted benefits of Samsung’s line of “smart fridges” in 2015 was their integration with Google’s calendar services, allowing owners to schedule grocery deliveries from the kitchen. It also meant that hackers who gained access to the then inadequately secured machines could read their owner’s Gmail passwords. Researchers in Germany discovered a way to insert malicious code into Philips’s wifi-enabled Hue lightbulbs, which could spread from fixture to fixture throughout a building or even a city, turning the lights rapidly on and off and – in one possible scenario – triggering photosensitive epilepsy. This is the approach favoured by Byron the Bulb in Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, an act of grand revolt by the little machines against the tyranny of their makers. Once-fictional possibilities for technological violence are being realised by the Internet of Things.

In Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel Aurora, an intelligent spacecraft carries a human crew from Earth to a distant star. The journey will take multiple lifetimes, so one of the ship’s jobs is to ensure that the humans look after themselves. When their fragile society breaks down, threatening the mission, the ship deploys safety systems as a means of control: it is able to see everywhere through sensors, open or seal doors at will, speak so loudly through its communications equipment that it causes physical pain, and use fire suppression systems to draw down the level of oxygen in a particular space.

This is roughly the same suite of operations available now from Google Home and its partners: a network of internet-connected cameras for home security, smart locks on doors, a thermostat capable of raising and lowering the temperature in individual rooms, and a fire and intruder detection system that emits a piercing emergency alarm. Any successful hacker would have the same powers as the Aurora does over its crew, or Byron over his hated masters.

Before dismissing such scenarios as the fever dreams of science fiction writers, consider again the rogue algorithms in the stock exchanges. These are not isolated events, but everyday occurrences within complex systems. The question then becomes, what would a rogue algorithm or a flash crash look like in the wider reality?

Would it look, for example, like Mirai, a piece of software that brought down large portions of the internet for several hours on 21 October 2016? When researchers dug into Mirai, they discovered it targets poorly secured internet connected devices – from security cameras to digital video recorders – and turns them into an army of bots. In just a few weeks, Mirai infected half a million devices, and it needed just 10% of that capacity to cripple major networks for hours.

Mirai, in fact, looks like nothing so much as Stuxnet, another virus discovered within the industrial control systems of hydroelectric plants and factory assembly lines in 2010. Stuxnet was a military-grade cyberweapon; when dissected, it was found to be aimed specifically at Siemens centrifuges, and designed to go off when it encountered a facility that possessed a particular number of such machines. That number corresponded with one particular facility: the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran. When activated, the program would quietly degrade crucial components of the centrifuges, causing them to break down and disrupt the Iranian enrichment programme.

The attack was apparently partially successful, but the effect on other infected facilities is unknown. To this day, despite obvious suspicions, nobody knows where Stuxnet came from, or who made it. Nobody knows for certain who developed Mirai, either, or where its next iteration might come from, but it might be there, right now, breeding in the CCTV camera in your office, or the wifi-enabled kettle in the corner of your kitchen.

Or perhaps the crash will look like a string of blockbuster movies pandering to rightwing conspiracies and survivalist fantasies, from quasi-fascist superheroes (Captain America and the Batman series) to justifications of torture and assassination (Zero Dark Thirty, American Sniper). In Hollywood, studios run their scripts through the neural networks of a company called Epagogix, a system trained on the unstated preferences of millions of moviegoers developed over decades in order to predict which lines will push the right – meaning the most lucrative – emotional buttons. Algorithmic engines enhanced with data from Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and others, with access to the minute-by-minute preferences of millions of video watchers acquire a level of cognitive insight undreamed of by previous regimes. Feeding directly on the frazzled, binge-watching desires of news-saturated consumers, the network turns on itself, reflecting, reinforcing and heightening the paranoia inherent in the system.

Game developers enter endless cycles of updates and in-app purchases directed by A/B testing interfaces and real-time monitoring of players’ behaviours. They have such a fine-grained grasp of dopamine-producing neural pathways that teenagers die of exhaustion in front of their computers, unable to tear themselves away.

Or perhaps the flash crash will look like literal nightmares broadcast across the network for all to see? In the summer of 2015, the sleep disorders clinic of an Athens hospital was busier than it had ever been: the country’s debt crisis was in its most turbulent period. Among the patients were top politicians and civil servants, but the machines they spent the nights hooked up to, monitoring their breathing, their movements, even the things they said out loud in their sleep, were sending that information, together with their personal medical details, back to the manufacturers’ diagnostic data farms in northern Europe. What whispers might escape from such facilities?

We are able to record every aspect of our daily lives by attaching technology to the surface of our bodies, persuading us that we too can be optimised and upgraded like our devices. Smart bracelets and smartphone apps with integrated step counters and galvanic skin response monitors track not only our location, but every breath and heartbeat, even the patterns of our brainwaves. Users are encouraged to lay their phones beside them on their beds at night, so that their sleep patterns can be recorded. Where does all this data go, who owns it, and when might it come out? Data on our dreams, our night terrors and early morning sweating jags, the very substance of our unconscious selves, turn into more fuel for systems both pitiless and inscrutable.

Or perhaps the flash crash in reality looks exactly like everything we are experiencing right now: rising economic inequality, the breakdown of the nation-state and the militarisation of borders, totalising global surveillance and the curtailment of individual freedoms, the triumph of transnational corporations and neurocognitive capitalism, the rise of far-right groups and nativist ideologies, and the degradation of the natural environment. None of these are the direct result of novel technologies, but all of them are the product of a general inability to perceive the wider, networked effects of individual and corporate actions accelerated by opaque, technologically augmented complexity.

¶

In New York in 1997, world chess champion Garry Kasparov faced off for the second time against Deep Blue, a computer specially designed by IBM to beat him. When he lost, he claimed some of Deep Blue’s moves were so intelligent and creative that they must have been the result of human intervention. But we understand why Deep Blue made those moves: its process for selecting them was ultimately one of brute force, a massively parallel architecture of 14,000 custom-designed chess chips, capable of analysing 200m board positions per second. Kasparov was not outthought, merely outgunned.

By the time the Google Brain–powered AlphaGo software took on the Korean professional Go player Lee Sedol in 2016, something had changed. In the second of five games, AlphaGo played a move that stunned Sedol, placing one of its stones on the far side of the board. “That’s a very strange move,” said one commentator. “I thought it was a mistake,” said another. Fan Hui, a seasoned Go player who had been the first professional to lose to the machine six months earlier, said: “It’s not a human move. I’ve never seen a human play this move.”

AlphaGo went on to win the game, and the series. AlphaGo’s engineers developed its software by feeding a neural network millions of moves by expert Go players, and then getting it to play itself millions of times more, developing strategies that outstripped those of human players. But its own representation of those strategies is illegible: we can see the moves it made, but not how it decided to make them.

The late Iain M Banks called the place where these moves occurred “Infinite Fun Space”. In Banks’s SF novels, his Culture civilisation is administered by benevolent, superintelligent AIs called simply Minds. While the Minds were originally created by humans, they have long since redesigned and rebuilt themselves and become all-powerful. Between controlling ships and planets, directing wars and caring for billions of humans, the Minds also take up their own pleasures. Capable of simulating entire universes within their imaginations, some Minds retreat for ever into Infinite Fun Space, a realm of meta-mathematical possibility, accessible only to superhuman artificial intelligences.

Many of us are familiar with Google Translate, which was launched in 2006, using a technique called statistical language inference. Rather than trying to understand how languages actually worked, the system imbibed vast corpora of existing translations: parallel texts with the same content in different languages. By simply mapping words on to one another, it removed human understanding from the equation and replaced it with data-driven correlation.

Translate was known for its humorous errors, but in 2016, the system started using a neural network developed by Google Brain, and its abilities improved exponentially. Rather than simply cross-referencing heaps of texts, the network builds its own model of the world, and the result is not a set of two-dimensional connections between words, but a map of the entire territory. In this new architecture, words are encoded by their distance from one another in a mesh of meaning – a mesh only a computer could comprehend.

While a human can draw a line between the words “tank” and “water” easily enough, it quickly becomes impossible to draw on a single map the lines between “tank” and “revolution”, between “water” and “liquidity”, and all of the emotions and inferences that cascade from those connections. The map is thus multidimensional, extending in more directions than the human mind can hold. As one Google engineer commented, when pursued by a journalist for an image of such a system: “I do not generally like trying to visualise thousand-dimensional vectors in three-dimensional space.” This is the unseeable space in which machine learning makes its meaning. Beyond that which we are incapable of visualising is that which we are incapable of even understanding.

In the same year, other researchers at Google Brain set up three networks called Alice, Bob and Eve. Their task was to learn how to encrypt information. Alice and Bob both knew a number – a key, in cryptographic terms – that was unknown to Eve. Alice would perform some operation on a string of text, and then send it to Bob and Eve. If Bob could decode the message, Alice’s score increased; but if Eve could, Alice’s score decreased.

Over thousands of iterations, Alice and Bob learned to communicate without Eve breaking their code: they developed a private form of encryption like that used in private emails today. But crucially, we don’t understand how this encryption works. Its operation is occluded by the deep layers of the network. What is hidden from Eve is also hidden from us. The machines are learning to keep their secrets.

How we understand and think of our place in the world, and our relation to one another and to machines, will ultimately decide where our technologies will take us. We cannot unthink the network; we can only think through and within it. The technologies that inform and shape our present perceptions of reality are not going to go away, and in many cases we should not wish them to. Our current life support systems on a planet of 7.5 billion people and rising depend on them. Our understanding of those systems, and of the conscious choices we make in their design, remain entirely within our capabilities. We are not powerless, not without agency. We only have to think, and think again, and keep thinking. The network – us and our machines and the things we think and discover together – demands it.

Computational systems, as tools, emphasise one of the most powerful aspects of humanity: our ability to act effectively in the world and shape it to our desires. But uncovering and articulating those desires, and ensuring that they do not degrade, overrule, efface, or erase the desires of others, remains our prerogative.

When Kasparov was defeated back in 1997, he didn’t give up the game. A year later, he returned to competitive play with a new format: advanced, or centaur, chess. In advanced chess, humans partner, rather than compete, with machines. And it rapidly became clear that something very interesting resulted from this approach. While even a mid-level chess computer can today wipe the floor with most grandmasters, an average player paired with an average computer is capable of beating the most sophisticated supercomputer – and the play that results from this combination of ways of thinking has revolutionised the game. It remains to be seen whether cooperation is possible – or will be permitted – with the kinds of complex machines and systems of governance now being developed, but understanding and thinking together offer a more hopeful path forward than obfuscation and dominance.

Our technologies are extensions of ourselves, codified in machines and infrastructures, in frameworks of knowledge and action. Computers are not here to give us all the answers, but to allow us to put new questions, in new ways, to the universe.

(“The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the works of men’s hands.” Psalm 115:4

“The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the works of men’s hands. “ Psalm 135:15

“And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by [the means of] those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast.” Revelation 13:14

Not much has changed over three thousand years.)

***

AURICMEDIA

NIMRODS TOMB FOUND: CLONING OF NIMROD AND OSIRIS UNDERWAY

February 26, 2018

This is like Donald Marshall has told. The elite is cloning persons from the past and makes them politicians and rock stars. Sick world we are living…

Apollyon Rising

As some of you may already know, archeologists claim to have found the tombs of both Osiris (Egyptian god, usually identified as the god of the afterlife, the underworld and the dead) and the tomb of Gilgamesh (A king who was claimed to be one third man and two thirds god [66.6%]). Very shortly after the tomb of Gilgamesh was discovered, America invaded Iraq, where it was discovered. This was back in 2003, so we were just beginning the war on terror.

So, these two gods are often linked to Nimrod, and many biblical researchers believe them to be one in the same. Is it possible these people actually existed and were mere men who were praised as gods? Is it possible that these men were influenced by the very same evil spirit that influenced Nimrod? If so, with the discoveries of these tombs, and with the very rapid expansion and understanding of DNA cloning technologies we are currently developing, is it possible that whoever may have governance over these tombs could be holding back information, which is scarce, and could possibly be planning something larger. What if they want control over this demonic DNA? What if they want to use it for clones, or for injecting it somehow into someone else? What if these so called gods did have some type of demonic power, like the occult seems to have, and their DNA contains something occult followers would wish to possess? If Nimrod is, in a sense, worshiped still today by mystery religions, what if these religions want to recreate him in some sense? If Babylon truly is still in existence to some degree, wouldn’t Nimrod be the guy they would most want to see again?

A whole lot of what if’s, but Nimrod worship is very real in this world, and with the technology of today and the discoveries of yesterday, something bigger could be in the works. Possibly something that will lead to the rise of the Anti Christ.

Ongoing excavations and research at Nimrud Mountain in Bitlis have revealed the history behind the tomb and treasures of King Nimrod. The real venue of the tomb, which was constructed 2,000 years ago, has been determined.

Writer and researcher Mehmet Törehan Serdar said his team has determined the location of the tomb after an extensive period of research. Noting that the mountain in Adıyaman has no relation to the mountain in Bitlis, Serdar said, “This is only a resemblance in name. The reason being, there is another kin of Adıyaman’s Nimrod in Nemrut.”King Nimrod, according to the Book of Genesis and the Books of Chronicles, was the son of Cush and great-grandson of Noah, and the King of Shinar. He is depicted in the Tanakh as a man of power on earth and a mighty hunter.

Extra-biblical traditions associating him with the Tower of Babel led to his reputation as a king who rebelled against God.

Several Mesopotamian ruins were given Nimrod’s name by 8th-century Arabs.

His tomb remained on the mountain, and the team believes to have found the real location
of the tomb in Bitlis.

OPENING PANDORA’S BOX?

As troubling as these thoughts are, they could be just the tip of the iceberg as one-on-one interpersonal malevolence by human-animals might quickly be overshadowed by global acts of swarm violence. The possibility of groups of “transhuman terrorists” in the conceivable future is real enough that a House Foreign Affairs committee chaired by California Democrat Brad Sherman, best known for his expertise on the spread of nuclear weapons and terrorism, is among a number of government panels and think-tanks currently studying the implications of genetic modification and human-transforming technologies related to future terrorism. CQ Columnist Mark Stencel listened to the recent HFA committee hearings and wrote in his March 15, 2009 article, Futurist: Genes Without Borders, that the conference “sounded more like a Hollywood pitch for a sci-fi thriller than a sober discussion of scientific reality… with talk of biotech’s potential for creating supersoldiers, superintelligence and superanimals [that] agents of unprecedented lethal force.” [1]

George Annas, Lori Andrews, and Rosario Isasi were even more apocalyptic in their American Journal of Law and Medicine article, Protecting the Endangered Human: Toward an International Treaty Prohibiting Cloning and Inheritable Alterations when they wrote:

“The new species, or ‘posthuman,’ will likely view the old ‘normal’ humans as inferior, even savages, and fit for slavery or slaughter. The normals, on the other hand, may see the posthumans as a threat and if they can, may engage in a preemptive strike by killing the posthumans before they themselves are killed or enslaved by them. It is ultimately this predictable potential for genocide that makes species-altering experiments potential weapons of mass destruction, and makes the unaccountable genetic engineer a potential bioterrorist.” [2]

Observations like those of Annas, Andrews, and Isasi cause one to wonder if this is not how the servants of Antichrist move with such compassionless brutality in rounding up to destroy all who refuse to receive the Mark of the Beast.

Not to be outpaced in this regard by rogue fringe scientists or even bio-terrorists, DARPA and other agencies of the U.S. military have taken inspiration from the likes of Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings, and in scenes reminiscent of Saruman the wizard creating monstrous Uruk-Hai to wage unending, merciless war, billions of American tax dollars have flowed into the Pentagon’s Frankensteinian dream of “super-soldiers” and “Extended Performance War Fighter” programs. Not only does the EPWFP envision “injecting young men and women with hormonal, neurological and genetic concoctions; implanting microchips and electrodes in their bodies to control their internal organs and brain functions; and plying them with drugs that deaden some of their normal human tendencies: the need for sleep, the fear of death, [and] the reluctance to kill their fellow human beings,” but as Chris Floyd in an article for CounterPunch a while back continued, “some of the research now underway involves actually altering the genetic code of soldiers, modifying bits of DNA to fashion a new type of human specimen, one that functions like a machine, killing tirelessly for days and nights on end…. mutations [that] will ‘revolutionize the contemporary order of battle’ and guarantee ‘operational dominance across the whole range of potential U.S. military employments.’” [3]

In keeping with our study, imagine the staggering implications of such science if dead Nephilim tissue was discovered with intact DNA and a government somewhere was willing to clone or mingle the extracted organisms to make Homo-nephilim. If one accepts the biblical story of Nephilim as real, such discovery could actually be made someday or perhaps already has been and was covered up. As an example of this possibility, in 2009 blood was extracted from the bone of a dinosaur that scientists insist is 80 million years old. Nephilim would have existed in relatively recent times comparably, making clonable material from dead biblical giants feasible. The technology to resurrect the extinct species already exists, and cloning methods are being studied now for use with bringing back Tasmanian Tigers, Wooly Mammoths and other extinguished creatures. National Geographic also confirmed this possibility in their May 2009 special report Recipe for a Resurrection, quoting Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University, an authority on ancient DNA who served as a scientific consultant for the movie Jurassic Park, saying: “I laughed when Steven Spielberg said that cloning extinct animals was inevitable. But I’m not laughing anymore… This is going to happen. It’s just a matter of working out the details.” [4]

Will the same technology lead to the resurrection of the pagan deity Apollo/Osiris/Nimrod, who returns to rule the Novus Order Seclorum? Is material from the deity’s ‘body’ concealed in a tomb at Giza… or in Washington, DC… or in the ‘sacred casket’ that former U.S. Vice President Henry Wallace mentioned in his letter to Nicholas Roerich, considered in esoteric circles to be the same as the casket or ‘coffin’ of Osiris? If so, is it conceivable that plans to revive the Apollonian tissue using biotechnology have already been made, or worse, have already been accomplished and the pagan god waits the moment of its unveiling?

People not familiar with biblical eschatology may find this idea fantastic, that the being who becomes the Antichrist was once alive, then was dead, and returns from the grave to rule the Novus Ordo Seclorum. But this is exactly what Revelation 17:8 appears to say will happen: “The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition [Apoleia,]: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder… when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.” Further, the mythos of the Eye of Horus on the Great Seal, which so fascinated Wallace and company, represents this very concept of deity incarnation into the “King” that is to rule. As mentioned earlier in this blog series, in ancient Egypt where this Great Seal symbol originated, each Pharaoh “became” the incarnation of the falcon god Horus during his lifetime, and at death, the Osiris—the divine judge of the netherworld.

As biotechnology and synthetic biology advance to the degree that we can now realistically anticipate reviving long-dead species, I have been able to convince a few scholarly minds that the Man of Sin could in fact be the return of a deceased Apollo/Osiris/Nimrod who arrives via biotech resurrection. Even Chuck Missler, though not with the same details, raised the appropriate question not long ago in an online article about the Antichrist: “Could it be that this final world dictator will be, in some sense, a return of Nimrod?” In my opinion, this is more than a possibility, and I remember with curiosity how in 1998, Zahi Hawass, the current Secretary General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, claimed to have found the burial tomb of the god Osiris (Apollo/Nimrod) at the Giza Plateau. In the article Sandpit of Royalty from the newspaper Extra Bladet (Copenhagen), January 31, 1999, Hawass was quoted saying:

“I have found a shaft, going 29 meters vertically down into the ground, exactly halfway between the Chefren Pyramid and the Sphinx. At the bottom, which was filled with water, we have found a burial chamber with four pillars. In the middle is a large granite sarcophagus, which I expect to be the grave of Osiris, the god…I have been digging in Egypt’s sand for more than 30 years, and up to date this is the most exciting discovery I have made…. We found the shaft in November and began pumping up the water recently. So several years will pass before we have finished investigating the find.” [5]

Insofar as we know this discovery did not ultimately provide the physical remains of the deity. Of course, that is, in as far as we know. But what it did illustrate is that at least some very powerful Egyptologists believe Osiris was a historical figure, and that his body was stored somewhere at or near the Great Pyramid. Manly P. Hall, who knew the Masonic legend of Hiram Abiff was a thinly veiled prophecy of the resurrection of Osiris, seems to have understood what Zahi Hawass was looking for, and why. Consider that he wrote in The Secret Teachings of All Ages:

“The Dying God shall rise again! The secret room in the House of the Hidden Places shall be rediscovered. The Pyramid again shall stand as the ideal emblem of solidarity, inspiration, aspiration, resurrection, and regeneration. [6]

Over the years, biblical scholar Gary Stearman has written extensively about Nimrod (Apollo/Osiris/Gilgamesh) and the connection this historical figure has with Babylonian Mystery Religion, Watchers, Nephilim (including their resurrection), and the spirit of the end-times Antichrist and revival of paganism. He too appears to believe the coming of Antichrist represents a return of Nimrod. “But who is this Assyrian,” he asked in the July 2001 Prophecy in the News Magazine, “He is none other than the spiritual inheritor of the first great post-Flood religious apostasy. He is the keeper of the great heritage that began at the Assyrian capital, Nineveh. Its founder was Nimrod…. He is the Antichrist, the future despot who comes in the name of the ancient mystery religion.”

A year earlier, in June of 2000, Stearman had written in Prophecy in the News concerning Nimrod:

“He was a rebel who allowed himself to be worshipped as a god. After the Flood, his rebellion became the foundation of mankind’s greatest religious apostasy. Down through the generations, this system of false worship became known simply as the “Babylonian Mystery Religion.”

Its basis is quite clear. It attempts to channel the power of the ancient gods through the figure of one, powerful man. Nimrod became that god…” [emphasis].

Alexander Hislop in his classic text The Two Babylons substantiates Stearman’s thesis that the Babylonian Mystery Religion was based on the worship of Nimrod. “It was to glorify Nimrod that the whole Chaldean system of iniquity was formed,” he wrote (p.20). Yet Stearman sees that the Mystery Religion continued secretly through the ages, shrouded in hiding by adepts of the occult in anticipation of a final moment when the ancient spirit should be awakened.

“…corrupt priesthoods have flourished, carrying with them the shadow of Nimrod and his ancient mysteries. Their inner secrets have been known by various names, including alchemy, magic, sorcery, conjuring, soothsaying and so forth…. waiting for the prophesied day when it would rise once again. This movement will result in the reign of the Antichrist.”

In addition to the supernatural aspects that biotechnology could provide the Luciferian technology to resurrect Nimrod/Apollo/Osiris in the person of the last days Man of Sin, the ramifications of using the same science to revive extinct animals, Nephilim, or to create newly engineered versions of demigods and mythological animals may also play a role in the Kingdom of Antichrist. This is because as interbreeding begins between transgenic animals, genetically modified humans, and specie as God made them, the altered DNA will quickly migrate into the natural environment, and when that happens (as is already occurring among genetically modified plants and animals), ‘alien’ and/or animal characteristics will be introduced to the human gene pool and spread through intermarriage, altering the human genetic code and eventually eliminating humanity as we know it. This is what happened before the Great Flood according to many theologians, and perhaps that has been the whole idea for the end-times as well—to create a generation of genetically altered ‘Nimrods’ to serve as ‘fit extensions’ for the resurrection of underworld Nephilim-hordes in preparation of Armageddon.

Does a curious verse in the book of Daniel hint at this? Speaking of the last days of human government, Daniel said:

“…they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay” (Dan. 2:43).

While Daniel does not explain who they that “mingle themselves with the seed of men” are, the personal pronoun they caused Chuck Missler and Mark Eastman in their book Alien Encounters to ask: “Just what (or who) are ‘mingling with the seed of men?’ Who are these Non-seed? It staggers the mind to contemplate the potential significance of Daniel’s passage and its implications for the future global governance.” [7]

Daniel’s verse troubled Missler and Eastman because it seemed to indicate that the same phenomenon that occurred in Genesis chapter 6 where non-human species or ‘non-seed’ mingled with human seed and produced Nephilim, would happen again in the end times. When this verse from Daniel is coupled with Genesis 3:15, which says, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed [zera,] and her seed,” an incredible tenant emerges—that Satan has seed, and that it is at enmity with Christ.

To ‘mingle’ non-human seed with Homo sapiens through altering human DNA while simultaneously returning Nephilim to earth has been the inspiration of the spirit of antichrist ever since God during the Great Flood halted the practice. According to Louis Pauwells & Jacques Bergier in The Dawn of Magic (first published in France under the title “Le Matin des Magiciens” 1960 by Editions Gallimard, Paris), this was certainly the goal of the antichrist Adolf Hitler:

Hitler’s aim was neither the founding of a race of supermen, nor the conquest of the world; these were only means towards the realization of the great work he dreamed of. His real aim was to perform an act of creation, a divine operation, the goal of a biological mutation which would result in an unprecedented exaltation of the human race and the “apparition of a new race of heroes and demigods and god-men.” [8]

One cannot read the conclusion by Pauwells and Bergier regarding Hitler’s antichrist ambition without seeing how it corresponds perfectly with the Cumaean Sibyl’s prophecy pertaining to the coming of Apollo, who receives “the life of gods, and sees Heroes with gods commingling.” This calls to mind that from the Middle Ages forward, church leaders have believed the Antichrist would ultimately represent the return of the Nephilim—the reunion of demons with humans. St. Augustine himself wrote of such demoniality in the City of God [9], and in the De Daemonialitate, et Incubis, et Succubi, Fr. Ludovicus Maria Sinistrari de Ameno (1622-1701) also perceived the coming of Antichrist as representing the biological hybridization of demons with humans. “To theologians and philosophers,” he wrote, “it is a fact, that from the copulation of humans with the demon…Antichrist must be born.” [10]

The English theologian George Hawkins Pember agreed with this premise, and in his 1876 masterpiece Earth’s Earliest Ages he analyzed the prophecy of Christ that says the end-times would be a repeat of “the days of Noah.” Pember outlined the seven great causes of the antediluvian destruction and documented their developmental beginnings in his lifetime. The seventh and most fearful sign, Pember wrote, would be the return of the Nephilim, “The appearance upon earth of beings from the Principality of the Air, and their unlawful intercourse with the human race.”

Consequently, if the Antichrist is the reincarnation of the demon Apollo as prophesied by the Apostle Paul, not only will he be the exact opposite of Jesus (Son of God), but the forerunner of the return of the Nephilim. The prophet Isaiah (chapters 13 and 14) likewise spoke of the return of these beings, and tied the advent to the destruction of the city of Babylon in the final age. The following verse should give us pause in light of the ongoing presence of US armed forces in Iraq/Babylon and the powder keg surrounding it. From the Septuagint, we read:

The vision which Esaias son of Amos saw against Babylon. Lift up a standard on the mountain of the plain, exalt the voice to them, beckon with the hand, open the gates, ye ruler. I give command and I bring them: giants are coming to fulfill my wrath…. For behold! the day of the Lord is coming which cannot be escaped, a day of wrath and anger, to make the world desolate…. And Babylon…shall be as when God overthrew Sodoma and Gomorrah…. It shall never be inhabited…and monsters shall rest there, and devils shall dance there and satyrs shall dwell there . . . (Isaiah 13:1-3, 9, 19-22).

One can only speculate if something more than is casually perceived is meant by Isaiah when he says, “open the gates, ye ruler,” but whoever this ruler is, he opens ‘gates’ in Iraq/Babylon through which end-times giants (Gibborim) return to the surface of earth as agents of God’s wrath. Noting that Isaiah ties the destruction of Iraq/Babylon with the reappearance of Gibborim in this way, we recall how thousands of US troops on invading Iraq during the Bush administration admittedly filled U.S. containers with archaeological materials, including what some have speculated to be cuneiform tablets pointing to the location of pure-blooded Nephilim buried in underground caves. This is exactly where Enoch said the antediluvian Nephilim are, and raises fascinating questions: Would agencies like DARPA have interest in studying or cloning the extinct beings if they were, or have been, found? Could man in his arrogance revive ancient DNA, revitalizing or blending it with other living organisms in a way similar to what the Watchers did in making the first Nephilim? Is this how the Rephaim (dead Nephilim) who are viewed as squirming beneath the surface of the earth, rise to challenge the armies of God during Armageddon? Is the factual reappearance on earth of legendary beings verified by Isaiah, who foresaw creatures such as satyrs (transgenic half-man half-goats) accompanying the return of giants in the end-times, or why other Apocryphal Books like 2 Esdras 5:8 prophesy the birth of “monsters” for the same period of time? Some may be shocked to learn that in addition to the citations above, the Bible actually describes an end-times confrontation between the ‘mythological gods’ and Christ. “The Lord will be terrible unto them: for he will famish all the gods of the earth” says Zephaniah 2:11. “The Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, saith; Behold, I will punish the… gods” (Jer. 46:25). Human followers of the pagan deities will also join the conflict, calling upon their “idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood” (Rev. 9:20) to convene their powers against the Christian God, uniting with “unclean spirits like frogs… the spirits of devils working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth… to gather them to the battle of that great day… [to] a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon [Megiddo]” (Rev. 16:13-14;16).

Given that the prophets foretold a day when mythical characters and “gods” would return to earth to conduct war against the God of the Bible, it is more than a little disturbing that man has, for the first time since before the Great Flood, intentionally set course to repeat what ancient records say the Watchers did. The accelerated pace by scientific exploration against God’s Divine Order, and the subsequent revival of Watcher technology leading to transhuman or revived forms of Nephilim, has without doubt pushed the end-times clock closer to midnight than most comprehend.

ENOCH’S 70 GENERATIONS: IS THAT THE GROUND I FEEL RUMBLING?

Enoch was the son of Jared, father of Methuselah and great-grandfather of Noah whose writings provide the most detailed account of the fall of the “Watchers,” the angels who fathered the infamous Nephilim. While the book of Enoch is no longer included in most versions of the Bible, Enoch’s writings are quoted in the New Testament in at least two places, and he is mentioned by name in both the Old and New Testaments, including Jude 14-15 where one of his prophecies is cited. During the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, pre-Maccabean fragments of the Book of Enoch were found, helping scholars to verify the book’s antiquity while also illustrating that the ancients held these texts to be inspired. Many early Church Fathers likewise considered the Book of Enoch to be sacred, including Tertullian, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Origen and Clement of Alexandria. This is an important fact because if Enoch was truly a prophet, then the world may be in for an unfathomable surprise concerning the return of Nephilim, and soon.

In the tenth chapter of the book of Enoch, it says the Watchers who were judged during the flood would be bound beneath the hills of the earth for 70 generations, until the day of their final judgment when they will be released from those confines and thrown into an abyss of fire, “to the torment and the prison in which they shall be confined for ever.”

But in the fifteenth chapter, Enoch writes about the deceased offspring of the Watchers, the giants or Nephilim, and describes them as being released at the same time to bring slaughter and destruction upon man:

“The spirits of the giants…shall be concealed, and shall not rise up against the sons of men, and against women; until they come forth during the days of slaughter and destruction” (Enoch 15:9-10).

This particular prophecy mirrors those of Isaiah and other apocryphal works, which indicate a future date in which Watchers will rise for judgment while their giant offspring resurrect “from beneath the hills of the earth” to wreak havoc upon earth. According to Enoch, this unparalleled event is scheduled to occur after 70 generations have passed from the time of the Flood.

This could be troubling.

Although traditional scholarship places the time of the Great Flood between BC 2500 and 2300, modern dating by some researchers has roughly estimated the flood to have actually transpired between BC 2800 and 2900. For instance this is the dating given by a group of scientists from the USA, Russia, Australia, France, and Ireland known as the Holocene Impact Working Group who hypothesize the Great Flood resulted from a comet striking the Indian Ocean between 2800-2900 BC, resulting in a mega-tsunami. Because a prophetic generation is 70 years based on Psalm 90:10 (“The days of our years are threescore years and ten”), Enoch’s 70 generations times 70 years equals exactly 4900 years forward from the flood. If the flood took place between BC 2800 and 2900, this brings the return of the Nephilim to the immediate hour. In other words, if this BC 2800 to 2900 dating is correct, mankind is on the threshold of Watchers being raised from their underground prisons and thrown into an abyss of fire, while their giant offspring return to the surface of earth in violent fulfillment of multiple prophecies (and does this coincide with the Mayan 2012 return of Quatzlecoatl?)
We have no idea whether the modern time frame for the Great Flood is reasonable, but the Book of Jubilees—another apocryphal text—seems to verify this frightening scenario, prophesying Nephilim on earth in the last days. Again, the familiar word “corruption” turns up in association with these beings, insinuating an end-times repeat of what the Watchers did by corrupting human DNA and blending it with animals to retrofit human bodies for Nephilim incarnation. Note that this happens just before Satan is judged.

“The malignant evil ones [spirits] were bound in the place of condemnation, but a tenth part of them were left that they might be subject before Satan on the earth. These are for corruption [corruption] and leading astray men before Satan’s judgment” (10:7-12).

Finally, a prophecy in the second chapter of the Book of Joel could refer to the same end-times volcano of resurrected Nephilim. While some expositors say Joel was most likely describing an army of locusts, with phrases like “[They] a great people and a strong” and “they shall run like mighty men [Gibborim]” it is reasonable to question if in fact these verses are talking about grasshoppers.

“[They] a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it… and nothing shall escape them. The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses; and as horsemen, so shall they run…. They shall run like mighty men [Gibbowr,]; they shall climb the wall like men of war…. They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief. The earth shall quake before them…. And the LORD shall utter his voice before his army: for his camp is very great: for he is strong that executeth his word: for the day of the LORD is great and very terrible; and who can abide it?” (Joel 2:2-11)

When the numerous ancient texts from inerrant Scriptures to extra-biblical sources are added up, there is persuasive evidence that Joel’s army could indeed be more than simple grasshoppers, and that this massive Gibborim army that runs upon the wall from which nobody can escape could be the result of man’s willingness to play “god” in reviving forbidden science and opening “gates” to what lurks beyond.

Even then, we are just getting started…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMhk0MYuusg

Sources
1, Article
2, American Journal of Law and Medicine, Vol. 28, Number 2&3, 2002 p. 162
3, Floyd, Chris. Monsters, Inc.: The Pentagon Plan to Create Mutant “Super-Soldiers”, CounterPunch, January 13, 2003
4, Cloned Species
5, Sandpit of Royalty, from the newspaper Extra Bladet (Copenhagen), January 31, 1999
6, Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Forgotten Books, 1967, pg 104
7, Chuck Missler and Mark Eastman, Alien Encounters, Koinonia House, Coeur d. Alene, ID, 1997, pg 275
8, Louis Pauwells & Jacques Bergier. The Dawn of Magic, 1st published in France under the title “Le Matin des Magiciens,” pg 68, 1960 by Editions Gallimard, Paris
9, Augustine, City of God, 23:15
10, Fr. Ludovicus Maria Sinistrari de Ameno, De Daemonialitate, et Incubis, et Succubi (1622-1701), English transation of this portion provided by Jacques Vallee in Passport to Magonia, Contemporary Books, 1993 edition, pp. 127-129

The Secret Order of The Illuminati
(A Brief History of the “Moriah” and the Shadow Government)
http://www.consfearacynewz.com/the-secret-order-of-the-illuminati.html

Minthras Mystery Religion
http://www.consfearacynewz.com/forums.html#/20130719/bloomberg-lp-worships-minthras-mystery-religo-2758565/

THE MEROVINGIAN DYNASTY
http://www.consfearacynewz.com/forums.html#/20130824/the-merovingian-dynasty-3057921/

Remote Viewing, Lucifer & Time Travel etc
http://www.consfearacynewz.com/forums.html#/20130811/remote-viewing-lucifer-time-travel-etc-2999959/

THE TRIUNE OF EVIL AND THE GRAND CLIMAX
http://www.consfearacynewz.com/forums.html#/20130725/the-trine-of-evil-and-the-grand-climax-2778475/

AMMC

INDEPENDENT

Today's vote will change the face of the internet forever, from an open platform to a place where anything can be removed without warning

The idea of instituting a regime of petty everyday censorship, that randomly and unfairly damages campaigns, artists and the denizens of the Internet, ought to fill you with rage

Jim Killock

June 20, 2018

Members of European Parliament (MEPs) voted today in favour of the hugely problematic Article 13, which will require automatic “Robocop” deletions of videos, pictures, sound, and text across internet platforms.

The plan is to enforce the automatic removal of any material that appears to violate copyright, which means that memes, mixes, sampling, and even reuse of news and parliamentary footage, will get caught up and deleted without warning.

This could change the way that the internet works – from a hub of free and creative sharing, to a space where anything can be removed without warning, by computers. Companies will be expected to monitor uploads and check that they aren’t copies of something someone has copyright in.

Campaigners will fall foul of this law, known as Article 13 of the Copyright Directive. We know how bad these systems are because they’re already used by YouTube’s system known as ContentID. Greenpeace, for instance, had their Star Wars video removed on YouTube after allegations of copyright infringement. Other campaigners reuse promotional videos to pick apart their arguments – and found copyright allegations used to delete their videos. Educationalists too have had their content wrongly removed.

Ironically, even MEPs in favour of Article 13 (and against) have had their videos blocked on YouTube due to incorrect copyright claims made by computers.

Anyone remixing or sampling a song could find themselves deleted. Most popular memes exist by reusing copyright images: anything that has originated from a film or TV programme, for instance. Memes are often entirely legal, despite the copying, because they are parodies (or fair use in the USA). But a machine can’t tell that. That’s why hundreds of Downfall parodies got removed from Youtube.

The idea of instituting a regime of petty everyday censorship, that randomly and unfairly damages campaigns, artists and the denizens of the Internet, ought to fill you with rage. We face the inevitable choice of the digital age: do we want machines to serve us, or to control us?

The copyright lobby groups pushing for Article 13 firmly believe in technology as a means of control, but they’re hardly the only ones. Once this technology is in place for copyright violations, extending it to identify extremism, hate speech, anything that the government does not like, becomes natural and easy.

These calls already exist: the EU is consulting on making these kinds of changes, and of course our own government has repeatedly called for platforms to “use technology” to censor potentially illegal material, and even built their own algorithms for small companies to do this.

It may sound extreme, but the inevitable result will be the expansion of automated censorship, whereby any of the content you post anywhere on the internet, be it Twitter, Instagram, Reddit or on your personal blog could be taken down because it clashed with an algorithm.

The UN’s Special Rapporteur for Free Expression has advised that states and intergovernmental organisations should refrain from establishing laws or arrangements that would require the “proactive” monitoring or filtering of content, which is both inconsistent with the right to privacy and likely to amount to pre-publication censorship.

Internet creator Tim Berners-Lee, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and other internet

pioneers warned that “Article 13 takes an unprecedented step towards the transformation of the internet, from an open platform for sharing and innovation, into a tool for the automated surveillance and control of its users.”

They are of course correct. The internet exists in the way we understand it because it has always been an open platform which fosters creativity, self-expression and free speech. With companies and individuals alike being silenced, the very soul of the web as we know it will be lost.

We have until July 4 to persuade the EU Parliament that they shouldn’t embark on this dark and dangerous road. Please contact your MEP and act now.

(Let's see what happens July 5^th. This is important to all sites, such as this one.)

***

RT

EU leaders compromise to share refugees & establish migrant centers on ‘voluntary’ basis

June 29, 2018

Following nearly ten hours of tense deliberation in search of a face-saving compromise, the EU leaders have agreed to allow member states to “voluntarily” obey the most controversial clauses of the migrant agreement.

Pressed by Italy’s concerns, eventually the 28 leaders agreed to reform the asylum system by consensus and to include a clause on hosting migrants across EU countries on a voluntary basis. Part of the agreement gives Italy and Greece options to set up migrant centers on their soil if they so choose.

“On EU territory, those who are saved, according to international law, should be taken charge of, on the basis of a shared effort, through the transfer in controlled centres set up in Member States, only on a voluntary basis, where rapid and secure processing would allow, with full EU support, to distinguish between irregular migrants, who will be returned, and those in need of international protection, for whom the principle of solidarity would apply,” the conclusions of the European Council meeting read. “All the measures in the context of these controlled centres, including relocation and resettlement, will be on a voluntary basis, without prejudice to the Dublin reform.”

The leaders also called for "the need for Member States to ensure the effective control of the EU's external borders with EU financial and material support," while underlining the "necessity to significantly step up" the return of migrants.

French President Emmanuel Macron spent part of Thursday in talks with Italy’s prime minister Giuseppe Conte, trying to find a face-saving compromise for the EU. “It is European cooperation that has won the day,” he said, after tense negotiations. “Europe will have to live with migratory pressures for a long time. We must succeed in standing up to this challenge whilst being true to our values.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose 'Open Door' refugee policy has arguably contributed to the current migrant influx into Europe, welcomed the outcome of the negotiations, noting, however, that there is a lot more work to be done to overcome EU-wide differences.

“Overall, after an intensive discussion on the most challenging theme for the European Union, namely migration, it is a good signal that we agreed a common text,” Merkel said. “We still have a lot of work to do to bridge the different views.”

The talks, which concluded at about 4:30am Friday, also included an agreement to increase border security and speed up the process of handling the petitioner's right to asylum and of extraditing those who don't qualify. A key Italian demand, to overhaul the rules for distributing migrants when the port-of-entry country is overwhelmed, was reportedly also agreed on.

Earlier in the day, Giuseppe Conte had refused to approve an EU summit statement on the issue of migration. Italy, which has been at the frontline of the struggle to cope with the influx of refugees, demanded that EU states share the burden of handling migrants that come into that country via the Mediterranean.

Conte, who was appointed as Prime Minister on June 1, now leads a heavily eurosceptic government comprising two anti-establishment parties, Lega Nord and the Five-Star Movement. The stance, by this first-time attendee of a European Union summit, forced Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to cancel a news conference planned for Thursday evening.

(They have had to compromise, at least for the time being. Ed)

RT

What consent? Hungary, Poland & Czech Republic deny sealing migrant deal with Merkel

June 30, 2018

Hungary's border fence © Laszlo Balogh / Reuters

Three EU countries have denied reaching any final agreement with Germany on the return of migrants to the country of entry, despite Angela Merkel’s claim she’d received “political consent” from 14 EU nations to strike such a deal.

“No such deal has been reached,” spokesman for Hungary’s government Zoltan Kovacs said, adding that Budapest has repeatedly rejected German attempts to “return” migrants to their first country of entry into the EU. Similar statements have been produced by Poland and the Czech Republic, which also denied reaching any agreements on the matter.

“There are no any new agreements regarding the reception of asylum seekers from EU countries, we confirm (that), like the Czech Republic and Hungary,” Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Artur Lompart said.

Earlier on Saturday, media reported that, during the EU summit, 14 European countries, including some outspoken opponents of German Chancellor’s ‘open door’ policy, had allegedly “consented on a political level” to make a deal on taking migrants back. The document on the deal has been sent by Merkel to her coalition partners, according to Reuters.

“At the moment, Dublin repatriations from Germany succeed in only 15 percent of cases,” the document says, as quoted by Reuters. “We will sign administrative agreements with various member states... to speed the repatriation process and remove obstacles.”

According to the EU agreement on migrants, known as the Dublin Accord, the country of “first entry” is responsible for accommodating new arrivals. If the applicant moves to another EU state, that state may request the “country of the first entry” to take the applicant back. In practice, the “first entry” provision effectively means that the first country to actually register a migrant becomes ultimately responsible for them. Such practice has caused tensions between the EU members, with Greece and Italy repeatedly accused of pushing migrants deeper into Europe, without registering them. The Dublin Accord was largely suspended, following Merkel’s landmark decision to open borders and welcome all migrants to Germany, made in 2015.

“It is impossible for a migrant to enter Hungary without entering an EU member earlier,” Kovacs stated. “In 2015 the Germans tried to make us the first country of entry, but we rejected that already then.”

While Hungary has an external border with a non-EU country, Serbia, the vast majority of migrants preferred to take the Mediterranean Sea route to Europe, landing in Greece or Italy.

The looming EU deal on migrants is vastly perceived as “Merkel-saving,” since her key ally and new Interior Minister Horst Seehofer threatened to start rejecting undocumented migrants at Germany’s border. In the worst-case scenario, the disagreement between them might spell the end for 70-years-long union between Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Seehofer’s Christian Social Union (CSU), which would effectively lead to the downfall of Germany’s government and Chancellor.

Meanwhile, the “consent,” which Merkel supposedly received from the 14 EU countries has been already hailed by the Bavarian CSU Prime Minister Markus Soeder, who said it was a step in “absolutely the right direction.”

Economic Collapse

THINGS JUST WENT NUCLEAR IN OUR TRADE WAR WITH CHINA, AND A GIANT SHOCKWAVE IS ABOUT TO HIT THE U.S. ECONOMY

Unless something drastically changes in the very near future, there is no way that the U.S. is going to be able to get through this without experiencing severe pain.

Michael Snyder

JUNE 25, 2018

It is difficult to find the words to describe just how serious America’s trade war with China is becoming.

As you will see below, the two largest economies on the entire planet are on a self-destructive course that almost seems irreversible at this point. The only way that this trade war is going to come to a rapid conclusion is if one side is willing to totally submit and accept an extremely bitter and humiliating defeat on the global stage, and that is not likely to happen. So in the short-term, and probably beyond that, we are going to experience a tremendous amount of economic pain. In fact, if one wanted to create a recipe for economic disaster, it would be hard to beat having the Federal Reserve dramatically raise interest ratesat the exact same time that the U.S. government is starting trade wars with all of the other major economic powers simultaneously. Unless something drastically changes in the very near future, there is no way that the U.S. is going to be able to get through this without experiencing severe pain.

Many had hoped that President Trump would settle down after the initial salvos in this new trade war, but instead on Sunday evening we learned that he has decided to go nuclear. The following comes from CNBC…

“President Donald Trump plans to bar many Chinese companies from investing in U.S. tech and to block additional technology exports to China, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday evening, citing people familiar with the matter.”

The two measures are set to be announced by the end of the week, and are intended to counter Beijing’s Made in China 2025 — a Chinese initiative to be a global leader in technology.

A report from Reuters included some additional very important details. Apparently this new plan would ban any firm that has 25 percent Chinese ownership or greater from investing in any U.S. companies that have “industrially significant technology”…

“The U.S. Treasury Department is drafting curbs that would block firms with at least 25 percent Chinese ownership from buying U.S. companies with “industrially significant technology,” a government official briefed on the matter said on Sunday.”

So we are not just talking about “tech firms”. The Trump administration is greatly concerned about Chinese theft of our technology, and without a doubt this has been rampant, and so the goal is to keep the Chinese from investing in any more of our companies that have important technology.

And theoretically that could include nearly all of them.

For years, the Chinese have been pouring massive amounts of money into the United States and have been investing very heavily in our industries. Now that is going to come to an almost full stop, and the consequences are going to be enormous.

Yes, we certainly need to stand up to China, but it sure is going to be nearly impossible to try to replace all of that Chinese investment from other sources.

And of course this latest announcement comes less than two weeks before the U.S. and China are scheduled to begin imposing massive tariffs on one another. The following comes from Bloomberg…

“On July 6, the U.S. is set to impose tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese goods. Tariffs on an additional $16 billion in Chinese products will go into effect after a public review period is completed. When Beijing vowed to retaliate on the same amount of U.S. goods and under the same timeline, Trump directed his U.S. Trade Representative to identify an additional $200 billion worth of Chinese goods that could be subject to a 10-percent tariff.”

Donald Trump is playing hardball with China and is betting that they will fold.

I can already tell you that the Chinese will not fold.

So we are going to suffer some pretty severe consequences, and Finian Cunningham detailed some of these in a recent article. First of all, Chinese tariffs on our agricultural products will likely hit our farmers really hard…

“If China goes ahead with threats to impose counter-tariffs on US agricultural products, such as soybeans, corn and meat, the impact on farm states like Iowa, Idaho and Illinois across the mid-west will be severe. Voters from these states were crucial to Trump getting elected to the White House in 2016. By taking the US into a trade war with China, Trump will end up hitting his own political base hardest.”

Secondly, U.S. consumers will begin seeing significantly higher prices for consumer goods at our major retailers…

“Another repercussion is higher retail prices for consumer goods like televisions and footwear imported from China, if Trump slaps on punitive tariffs. That will inflate consumer prices and crimp household budgets, especially among the lower-income population, who again tended to vote for Trump. Net result is that the fragile American economy would likely tank from cash-strapped consumers, who are already living on the edge.”

Thirdly, if the Chinese decide to start dumping U.S. Treasury bonds that could create a new crisis on Wall Street very rapidly…

“Yet, in this accounting, the real pain hasn’t even begun. China’s ultimate trade weapon is its massive holdings of US Treasury bonds. With nearly $1.2 trillion-worth in holdings of US federal debt, China is by far the world’s largest creditor for Washington. US-based news outlet Bloomberg calls it Beijing’s “nuclear option”.

Let me throw in another factor that I mentioned in a previous article. China has a virtual monopoly on the production of rare earth elements, and if they totally cut us off they could almost instantly cripple a number of our high tech industries. We have plenty of rare earths here in the United States, but we have not developed our mining or production capabilities to anywhere near a sufficient level for our needs. This was a ghastly national security error, and in the short-term it could mean an absolutely immense amount of pain.

On top of everything else, China appears to be gearing up for a currency war. It is already being said that the Yuan is being “weaponized”, and if the value of the Yuan continues to fall precipitously it is going to cause a tremendous amount of chaos globally.

So keep an eye on China and on the Chinese financial markets, because big trouble is already brewing…

“A slew of negative factors — from a trade war with the U.S. to the risk of a credit crunch — has weighed on China’s financial markets in recent weeks. The benchmark Shanghai stock index is on the brink of a bear market after tumbling almost 20 percent from its recent high, while analysts have started cutting their forecasts for the nation’s currency. Investors have been piling into the relative safety of government debt instead.

“The yuan is faced with a double whammy –- escalating trade tensions are hurting sentiment and the easier monetary policy is also pressuring the currency,” said Gao Qi, a currency strategist at Scotiabank in Singapore. “Traders will step up shorting the yuan in the offshore market, but we won’t likely see massive fund outflows considering the capital curbs in place.”

As one surveys the current state of the global economic chessboard, it is easy to see that we are just two or three moves away from a major global economic crisis.

Just like in 2008, that could mean dramatically falling stock prices, surging corporate bankruptcies and millions of Americans losing their jobs.

And this time around, we could be facing much higher prices and a greatly reduced standard of living.

We are way overdue for the next great economic crisis, and now the powers that be seem absolutely determined to bring it on.

Anyone that is optimistic about the global economy in light of these most recent developments is simply not being rational, because we have never seen storm clouds this big on the horizon in all of modern American history.

***

Economic Collapse

HERE IT COMES – THE WARNINGS ABOUT A “CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA” ARE BECOMING MUCH LOUDER

When sitting members of Congress start talking about a coming civil war, it is time to start paying attention

Michael Snyder

JUNE 26, 2018

Civil conflict is coming to America, and it is going to tear our nation apart.

Earlier today I received an email from a good friend about the rising tide of anger and frustration that we are currently witnessing in America. After thinking about it for a few moments, I wrote back and told him that I don’t know if there is any way to stop what is coming at this point. In my entire lifetime, we have never been closer to a “civil war” in this country than we are right now. Let us work for peace, but it would be foolish to ignore the forces that are ripping the fabric of our society to shreds. In this day and age, the coming conflict will not be between two armies from specific geographical locations. Rather, it will be between groups of Americans with fundamentally different ideologies. However, just like in our first civil war, American cities will burn before it is all said and done. First there will be massive protests, then there will be widespread violence, and ultimately there will be mobs of lunatics running around smashing things, looting, stealing, killing and setting things on fire.

I have been warning about where we are heading as a society on The Economic Collapse Blog for quite a long time, but now the warnings about a coming “civil war” are becoming very loud in the mainstream media.

For example, in a Bloomberg opinion piece entitled “What Democratic Rage Would Look Like”, political scientist Thomas Schaller made the following astounding statement: “I think we’re at the beginning of a soft civil war. … I don’t know if the country gets out of it whole.”

And Professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds, the author of “The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself“, made the following observations in his recent USA Today article entitled “Is America headed toward a civil war?”…

“Will it get worse? Probably. To have a civil war, soft or otherwise, takes two sides. But as pseudonymous tweeter Thomas H. Crownnotes, it’s childishly easy in these days to identify people in mobs, and then to dispatch similar mobs to their homes and workplaces. Eventually, he notes, it becomes “protesters all the way down, and if we haven’t yet figured out that can lead to political violence, we’re dumb.”

Apparently, some of us are dumb or else want violence. As Crown warns, “We carefully erected civil peace to avoid this sort of devolution-to-a-mob. It is a great civilizational achievement and it is intensely fragile.” Yes, it is indeed fragile, and many people will miss it when it’s entirely gone.

But most alarming of all was a tweet that was posted by U.S. Congressman Steve King on Sunday…

“America is heading in the direction of another Harpers Ferry. After that comes Ft. Sumter.”

When sitting members of Congress start talking about a coming civil war, it is time to start paying attention.

King was responding to an incident in Portland, Oregon in which radical leftists had physically taken control of an ICE office…

“Occupy” protesters have been camping outside an ICE office in Portland, Oregon, leading the facility to temporarily shut down. The occupiers say that they won’t leave until the Trump administration revokes its “zero tolerance” immigration policy.

Since Sunday the agitators, whose numbers are increasing, have been engaged in activities such as blocking the entrance to the building…”

One of the things about that “occupation” that particularly disturbed me was when one of the protesters removed the American flag from the flagpole and replaced it with a “Refugees Welcome” flag.

If the mainstream media and liberal leaders continue to stoke the flames of hatred and continue to incite violence on a daily basis, we are going to see much worse in the months ahead.

For example, over the weekend U.S. Representative Maxine Waters stunned the nation when she urged Americans to physically confront members of the Trump administration wherever they can be found. The following comes from the Los Angeles Times…

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), a frequent critic of the administration, gave a high-profile boost to the tactic by saying members of the Trump administration should be repeatedly confronted in their everyday lives.

“If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they are not welcome anymore, anywhere,” Waters said at a rally in Los Angeles on Saturday.”

I don’t know that we have ever seen anything like this in modern American history.

Could you imagine what would have happened if conservative leaders had called for members of the Obama administration to be physically confronted?

After being greatly criticized for her remarks, Waters decided to reaffirm them during an interview with MSNBC the very next day…

On MSNBC the next day, she doubled down, saying that Americans are fed up. “The people are going to turn on them, they are going to protest, they are going to absolutely harass them,” she said.

And since that time her remarks have been endorsed by other progressive leaders including Democratic Senator Cory Booker.

Of course members of the Trump administration have already been getting physically confronted in public. Just a few days ago, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was forced out of a restaurant by anti-Trump activists, and then an unruly mob of protesters decided to hold an event right in front of her home.

Then on Friday night, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders and her kids were kicked out of a Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia.

That incident made headlines all over the nation.

And then on Monday we learned that a “group of chanting protesters”had gathered right in front of Stephen Miller’s apartment in Washington…

A group of chanting protesters gathered outside White House adviser Stephen Miller’s Washington D.C. apartment on Monday.

But before the chanting really picked up, the crowd circulated “Wanted” flyers expressing the contention that Miller is guilty of “crimes against humanity,” among other things.

Reportedly, they are passing out flyers portraying him as a “wanted” criminal.

Civil wars don’t emerge out of a vacuum.

You can usually see them coming a long way away, and they are the result of tensions that build up over a long period of time.

America is a very deeply divided nation, and it is getting worse with each passing day.

The left has already shown that they are willing to become very violent when push comes to shove, and what we have seen so far is just the small tip of a very large iceberg.

***

RT

‘You are unbalanced & one-sided’: Hungary’s FM spars with BBC reporter in heated migration debate

June 27, 2018

Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto hit back at a BBC reporter who suggested his government is xenophobic and authoritarian during an intense interview, in which the politician defended his country’s immigration record.

As Hungary’s foreign affairs chief sat down for an interview with BBC Newsnight on Tuesday, the talk quickly turned heated. Reporter Emily Maitlis recalled how the Hungarian parliamentary election, which happened two months ago, was criticized by the nation’s opposition parties.

“There is a sense of erosion of the rule of law. This is no longer a democracy. It is creeping authoritarianism,” she told Szijjarto, whose conservative Fidesz party won over 70 percent of votes in April. The minister rebuffed the allegations.

“You echo lies on this television. And I don’t think it’s fair. You are unbalanced, you are one-sided,” he responded. “You look only at the opinion of those who are frustrated because they lost the election.”

BBC’s Maitlis also suggested that Hungary’s anti-immigration law “flouts human rights” and recalled the fierce rhetoric of country’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, known for branding certain migrants “Muslim invaders” and speaking about the need to protect “Christian Hungary.”

“So, this isn’t actually about immigration, is it? It’s about xenophobia,” the reporter told Szijjarto who said that he considered the accusation a “very serious insult.”

“What we don’t want is a massive illegal influx coming from the south to us. We want to keep Hungary a Hungarian country. And we don’t think multiculturalism is by definition good,” he explained. “I understand that the liberal mainstream doesn’t like our laws. But it is the Hungarian voters whose expectations we have to fulfill.”

Orban’s Hungarian government regularly faces criticism from the European Union and human rights groups for its ‘zero tolerance’ policy towards migration from the Middle East and Africa. Hungary is one of the few countries that refuses to accept mandatory migrant quotas proposed by the EU.

Last week, Hungary adopted a controversial bill punishing NGOs and aid workers suspected of “enabling illegal immigration.” The law, like many of Hungary’s anti-immigration measures, was denounced by various human rights watchdogs.

***

***

Zero Hedge

The Eagle, The Dragon, And The Bear

Trump’s new world order comes straight from The Godfather. There are three global powers: the US, Russia, and China. None of these powers can militarily defeat either of the other two, and even an alliance among two of them would have trouble defeating the third.

Like Don Corleone, Trump is dividing up the larger territory into smaller, great-power controlled sub-territories. He is tacitly recognizing Russia and China’s dominance in their own spheres of influence, and holding them to account in their territories. The implicit agreement among the three is apparently that each power will, in their, “sphere of influence…enforce peace.”

“Trump’s New World Order,” SLL 3/20/18

In one week President Trump confirmed that his first concern is the United States, that he has what may be a workable vision for its place in the world, and he loathes globalism and the globalists.

A good measure of his efficacy is the outrage he generates. By that measure, that week was his finest hour... so far.

Europe won’t have a seat at Trump’s great-power table. Its welfare states are addicted to their handouts, deeply in debt, rely on uneven trade arrangements with the US, and have below-replacement birth rates. They are cowed by Soros-sponsored propaganda—Immigration is the answer!—and haven’t shut off the immigrant invasion. Refusing to spend on their own militaries, they’ve used what they save on defense to subsidize welfare spending and state bureaucracies.

They’re ignoring a lesson from history: nations that rely on other nations for their defense generally come to regret it. Instead, they’re wedded to the globalist acronyms: NATO, EU and UN. They have frittered away their power and their glory—Europe’s heritage and civilization—opting for overrun masquerading as assimilation by dogmatic and implacable foes.

Trump is all about power and despises weakness. There isn’t always strength in numbers. A confederation of weaklings doesn’t equal strength, especially when the weaklings’ premises and principles are fundamentally wrong. Strongest of the weaklings is Germany, a trade powerhouse but a US military vassal. It’s hard to say if Trump’s dislike of Angela Merkel is business—she’s one of the world’s most visible and vociferous proponent of globalism, or personal—it’s always her way or the highway. Probably both, and it looks like Germany may finally be rejecting her way on immigration.

Trump clearly relished snubbing her and her G-6 buddies, particularly boy toys Trudeau and Macron, who may actually believe his bone-crushing handshakes intimidated Trump. When you’re paying for a continent’s defense and you’re giving them a better deal on trade than they’re giving you, that’s leverage, and Trump knows it. He’s not intimidated.

US Atlanticists have used that leverage to cement Europe into the US’s confederated empire. That Trump is willing to blow off Europe suggests that he may be blowing off empire.

America’s imperialists equate backing away from empire with “decline,” but such a sea change would be the exact opposite. Empires require more energy and resources to maintain than can be extracted from them. They are inevitably a road to ruin.

Nothing is as geopolitically telling as Trump leaving Europe’s most “important” heads of state early to meet with the leader of one of Asia’s most impoverished backwaters. Europe’s time has passed, the future belongs to Asia. Barack Obama’s “pivot” to Asia may look like the same recognition, but it was not. That pivot was designed to encircle China diplomatically, economically, and militarily. That thinking persists among much of the US military, but Trump may have something different in mind.

China has its problems. Much of its economy, especially its financial sector, is state-directed, despite the capitalistic gloss. There will be a reckoning from its debt binge. The repressive social credit system typifies the government’s immoral objective: keeping China’s people compliant but productive drones. However, enforced docility and innovation—the foundation of progress—mix as readily as oil and water, and theft of others’ innovations can’t fill the void.

Notwithstanding its issues, China is a major power and is not going to be encircled or regime changed by the US.The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) it cosponsors and finances with Russia is the centerpiece of a basket of initiatives designed to further those countries’ influence and leadership within Eurasia and among emerging market countries. BRI is an apt symbol of the movement towards multipolarity, with competition shifting from the military to the economic and commercial sphere.

Trump tacitly accepts Russian and Chinese dominance in Eurasia. However, Trump doesn’t give without receiving; he’s going to extract concessions. Number one on the list is North Korea and its nuclear weapons. We’ll probably never know what has gone on behind the scenes between Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, and perhaps Vladimir Putin, but Kim may have received an offer he couldn’t refuse. Both China and Russia would be well-served by a Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons and US troops. Whatever transpired, Kim came around. Trump ameliorated any potential humiliation, journeying to Kim’s neck of the woods, laying on an inspirational movie video, and flattering the North Korean leader and his country. Kim the farsighted leader may be able to reach a deal; Kim the browbeaten puppet couldn’t. If he tried, he’d probably be deposed, always a danger for dictators.

As global competition moves from military to economic, Trump is also going to make sure he tilts, as much as possible, the rules of that competition back towards the US. There are the existing trade arrangements with Europe, Canada, and Mexico that he’s willing to blow up, presumably to obtain better arrangements.

China is in a league of its own when it comes to gaming trade, and it’s getting the Trump treatment as well. Much of the Chinese “advantage” stems from Chinese overcapacity, fueled by below market interest rates in China and around the globe. Trump can’t do much about that “advantage.” The low-interest regime will eventually crash and burn, but it’s going to take a depression to clear overcapacity in China and elsewhere.

Innovation and intellectual property are America’s one indisputable comparative economic advantage. It will be a tough nut, but Trump is bent on curbing China’s acquisitions, by fair means and foul, of US know how. If he succeeds it will slow, but not stop, the Chinese economic juggernaut. It has millions of smart, well-educated, industrious people who will continue to fuel indigenous innovation (notwithstanding state-enforced docility).

Three realities confronted Trump when he assumed office. The US empire is unsustainable, so too is the trajectory of its spending and debt, and the government is fundamentally corrupt. It would be foolish to bet Trump doesn’t understand these issues and the linkages between them.

“Trump’s New World Order”

If Trump has recognized that first reality and is implementing Don Corleone’s spheres of influence concept, he may get some breathing room to address the intractable second and third realities: the trajectory of US spending and debt, and the fundamentally corrupt government. On the debt, all the breathing room in the world isn’t going to save him. The US keeps adding to principal, which is compounding at rising rates. Cutting imperial expenditures would help some, although transfer payments are the biggest enchilada. To make even the first step on the thousand mile journey to solvency, however, the US government will have to run a bona fide surplus for many years. That prospect is not on the horizon.

As for corruption, thousands of articles by bloggers and commentators, including SLL, may have less instructional value for the populace at large than one simple demonstration: most of America’s rulers and its captive media are speaking out against a peace initiative, not on the merits of the initiative itself, but because Donald Trump was one of its initiators.

That tells those Americans who are paying attention all they need to know about their rulers and their captive media. Whether they do anything about it is another question.

***

SPUTNIK

Macron Threatens Sanctions Against EU States That Turn Migrants Away

June 23, 2018

According to the French president, financial sanctions should be introduced against EU members that refuse migrants who have proven asylum status.

Speaking to reporters Saturday at a joint press conference with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, Macron stressed that Paris could not accept a situation where "countries that benefit massively from EU solidarity" give in to "national self-interest when it comes to the issue of migrants."

According to Macron, Paris and Madrid favor the setting up of "closed centers" on European soil for recently-landed migrants which would take on refugees in a 'coordinated way', allowing for a speedy investigation of whether or not they qualify for asylum status. These centers, created in cooperation with the UN Refugee Agency, would be based closest to where the migrants or refugees landed, the president said. For those applicants who are not eligible for asylum status, Macron emphasized the need for European-level cooperation to send these people back to their country of origin directly, rather than via transit countries.

Macron stressed that he was in favor of "sanctions mechanisms" in cases of non-cooperation, including possible restrictions on structural EU-level aid.

The president's remarks come on the eve of an EU-level summit on immigration set to be held in Brussels on Sunday. The leaders of the Visegrad Group of countries, including the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia refused to participate in the working meeting, complaining that such meetings should be organized by the European Council, not by the European Commission. According to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the Visegrad Group favors the idea of screening centers outside the bloc where asylum-seekers could present their case for protection. Budapest has proposed such centers in Africa, with Rome voicing its support for the idea. The EU's migration commissioner ruled out the proposal, calling ita "Guantanamo Bay for migrants" that's "against our European values."

The European Union has faced major political divisions over member countries' response to the mass influx of immigrants and refugees which began in 2015, with the EU's Eastern European members refusing to accept migrants on a mass scale and balking at the idea of refugee quotas. The current crisis is the most serious migration-related issue Europe has faced since the Second World War, and stems from the armed conflicts and economic problems plaguing a number of countries of Africa and the Middle East.

RT

France to bring back compulsory ‘national service’

June 28, 2018

The French authorities plan to re-introduce mandatory service by 2019, thus fulfilling one of the President Emmanuel Macron’s election promises. The measure is expected to affect 750,000 males and females aged 16 each year, according to the French media. The service would involve mandatory one-month training focused on “civic culture.”Apart from traditional military training with the army, police or fire service, it could also involve volunteering activities or work with charities. The teenager can then voluntarily continue their service for another three months or a year. Military conscription was gradually phased out in France between 1996 and 2001.

SUNDAY EXPRESS

France is ‘NUMBER ONE ENEMY’: Italy blasts ‘arrogant’ Macron for causing EU EMERGENCY

ITALY has launched a furious attack on “arrogant” French President Emmanuel Macron warning that France risks becoming its "Number 1 enemy" on migration issues, a day before European leaders meet in Brussels for a hastily arranged meeting on the divisive issue.

June 24, 2018

EU news: Italy has blasted 'arrogant' Emmanuel Macron

Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio said Mr Macron’s claims migration flows towards Europe had reduced in comparison to a few years ago were out of touch with reality.

Writing on his Facebook page, he said: "Italy indeed faces a migration emergency and it's partly because France keeps pushing back people at the border.

“Macron risks making his country Italy's Number 1 enemy on this emergency.”

It comes after Emmanuel Macron said European cooperation had managed to cut migration flows by close to 80 percent and problems stemmed from "secondary" movements of migrants within Europe.

Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio said Mr Macron’s claims migration flows towards Europe had reduced in comparison to a few years ago were out of touch with reality.

Writing on his Facebook page, he said: "Italy indeed faces a migration emergency and it's partly because France keeps pushing back people at the border.

“Macron risks making his country Italy's Number 1 enemy on this emergency.”

It comes after Emmanuel Macron said European cooperation had managed to cut migration flows by close to 80 percent and problems stemmed from "secondary" movements of migrants within Europe.

The French president said: ”The reality is that Europe is not experiencing a migration crisis of the same magnitude as the one it experienced in 2015.

“A country like Italy has not at all the same migratory pressure as last year. The crisis we are experiencing today in Europe is a political crisis tied to secondary movements between European countries."

But Italy's Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said his country had faced 650,000 arrivals by sea over the past four years, 430,000 asylum requests and the hosting of 170,000 "alleged refugees" for an overall cost of more than £4.4million.

In a statement where he referred to the northeastern Italian town at the border with France, Mr Salvini said: "If for the arrogant President Macron this is not a problem, we invite him to stop insulting and to show instead some concrete generosity by opening up France's many ports and letting children, men and women through at Ventimiglia.”

The French leader is pushing to punish EU states who refuse to take migrants with fines.

Mr Macron said he would back financial sanctions for the bloc’s 28 nations if they fail to take in a flurry of refugees that have proven asylum status in a move that has fanned the flames of the Brussels immigration crisis.

He said: “I am for myself in favour of mechanisms that indeed take this into account.

“You can't have countries that massively benefit from the solidarity of the European Union and that massively voice their national selfishness when it comes to migrant issues.”

Sunday's emergency EU meeting is aimed at preparing for a full EU summit from June 28 to 29.

EU states will attempt to thrash out a Europe-wide migration policy with other leaders at the European Council meeting at the end of the month.

***

Zero Hedge

Italy Leaves Merkel Stunned, Demands Europe Rip Up Existing Migrant System

by Tyler Durden

June 24, 2018

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In our preview of Sunday's now-concluded emergency EU meeting on refugee policy which the FT dubbed "The summit to save Merkel", we said that the German chancellor fate could be decided as soon as today should a newly populist Italy present a set of insurmountable demands on how to deal with Europe's migrant problem. And judging by the opening salvo, the odds of Merkel's political career just slumped after Italy’s prime minister Giuseppe Conti demanded the EU rip up its system for dealing with migrants, laying bare seemingly insurmountable divisions in the bloc over migration policy.

The hastily-gathered meeting, a segue to the formal EU summit scheduled for June 28 in which migration will be the key topic, was requested by Berlin as a chance for Ms Merkel to press for stronger powers for countries to send back asylum seekers already registered in another EU country: a key condition in an ultimatum that was handed to Merkel last week and which threatens her tenure as chancellor.

In other words, Merkel was testing the water to see how much of a political case she can formally make at the international level on Thursday, one that supposedly saves her career domestically.

She was, however, stunned after the Italian prime instead called for "radical change" in the EU’s so-called Dublin principle that makes frontline countries such as Italy responsible for dealing with asylum claims and allows for registered asylum seekers that move on to another country to be sent back to the state they landed in.

As the FT first reported, in an eight-point plan presented to leaders on Sunday, Conte called for “severing” the link between the “safe port of disembarkation” and the “competency to examine asylum rights”.

The reason why is simple: Italy, along with most other peripheral European nations, tends to be on the short-end of that trade, as Rome ends up stuck with any migrants that cross the Mediterranean to arrive in Italy.

At the moment, when migrants arrive on Italian soil only Italian authorities can process their asylum application. Rome wants this to be broadened to other EU countries, a step that would in effect end a 25-year system for handling asylum claims.

“Whoever arrives in Italy, arrives in Europe,” the document reportedly said adding that “we must reaffirm responsibility and solidarity. Schengen is at stake,” referring to the possibility that border-free movement across some EU countries could be threatened if no deal is reached.

Needless to say, Italy's initial negotiating positions, assuming there is space for leeway, is a disaster for Merkel, who is facing precisely the opposite demand from her coalition partner, Horse Seehofer of the CSU, who has demanded that Germany push back more migrants to their original port of call, i.e. Italy.

The emergency meeting took place as Europe's existing migrant system was is in chaos, after Italy refused to accept any more refugees: on Sunday, more than 350 migrants were stranded in the Mediterranean Sea after being rescued by Mission Lifeline, a German charity. Lifeline’s own vessel carrying 239 people, was left drifting off Malta, after Italian authorities this weekend insisted it should dock there but authorities in Valletta refused. Meanwhile a Danish cargo ship, the Alexander Maersk, which had picked up 113 migrants with help from Lifeline personnel, was outside the Sicilian harbour of Pozzallo, having been left there overnight without a chance to dock.

There was more bad news for Merkel.

Conte also proposed that “protection centres” for processing asylum claims should be set up in other EU countries - such as Germany - as “hotspots” to avoid overcrowding in frontline states - such as Italy. France and Spain have backed a similar plan but the idea has been criticised by the Netherlands.

And just to make sure the complexity of the problem facing Merkel is truly off the charts, today's discussions did not involve the four Visegrad countries — Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic — who have all resisted calls from western member states to accept refugee quotas. This assures sheer chaos during Thursday's refugee summit, where a joint resolution is virtually impossible. To be sure, the four European nations may reach a compromise, but only if Germany promises more funding, which is likely a non-starter for Merkel's political allies.

That said, there was a glimmer of hope for a solution: diplomats pointed to some signs of emerging consensus on external border policy, with a number of member states backing plans to take migrants rescued at sea to “processing centres” in north Africa and other non-EU countries where they could have their asylum claims reviewed.

In other words, migrants picked up from Libya would be processed... in Libya.

The policy, which non-governmental organisations warn would face major legal and practical hurdles, is designed to discourage migrants from making perilous sea journeys.

Of course, such a policy would also result in the immediate collapse of Europe's progressive, liberal facade, and be seen as a momentous victory for populist forces across Europe, whether or not Merkel keeps her job.

And while hopes of an agreement on Thursday are sinking fast, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said he hoped EU leaders would use the meeting to thrash out their differences.

"I hope that at the end of today the steam is off, people discussed their controversies so we can reach a deal."

Unfortunately for Merkel and Brussels, that is one particular hope that will certainly need rescuing in the rising sea of Europe's populist backlash against globalism, the ironic result of Merkel's own actions.

RT

Spain refuses docking to migrant rescue ship

June 25, 2018

Spanish authorities said they will not admit the Lifeline rescue boat with some 230 migrants on board to its ports. Spain cannot become “the sea rescue organization for all of Europe,” Spanish Economic Development Minister Jose Luis Abalos said, commenting on the issue, as cited by Deutsche Welle. The decision came after the vessel had already been turned away by Italy and Malta. Earlier in June, Spain accepted another migrant rescue ship called Aquarius in a similar situation.

RT

‘Colossus waking up’: Volcano eruption triggers evacuations in Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands

June 27, 2018

FILE PHOTO: The caldera of Sierra Negra volcano, Isabela Island © David Stephenson / Global Look Press

At least 250 people have been evacuated from the vicinity of the largest volcano in the Galapagos Islands, Sierra Negra, after a series of earthquakes awakened the colossus, according to Ecuadorean authorities.

“The colossus is awakening,” Environment Minister Tarsicio Hail said, announcing that Ecuador’s authorities are closely watching the seismic and geological activity near one of the world’s largest calderas, craters left by previous eruptions.

At least 250 people have already been evacuated from communities in the immediate vicinity of the volcano, and all tourist activity has been temporarily halted in the area, reports El Universo.

The volcano, which has the largest caldera of all of the Galapagos volcanoes, measuring seven by nine kilometers, is located on Isabela Island, the largest of the archipelago, itself of volcanic origin. The last time it erupted was in 2005.
Earlier on Tuesday the area was rocked by a series of earthquakes measuring up to magnitude 4.6, which, according to Ecuador’s Geophysical Institute, is a precursor of eruptive seismic activity. The agency also detected the presence of lava flows and an ash column, warning the public against approaching the area.

***

INDEPENDENT

Modern MRI machines pose mercury poisoning risk for people with fillings

Mercury leakage after high powered MRI increasingly available on NHS four times greater than for previous less powerful scan

Alex Matthews-King

Powerful magnetic field can cause mercury to leak from tooth fillings ( iStock )

Modern MRI machines could end up poisoning people who have had a filling put in at the dentist, as new high-powered scanners can cause mercury to leak out of previously set fillings, a study has found.

Research, published in the journal Radiology on Tuesday, found levels of the poisonous metal were much higher after they were exposed to the strong magnetic fields the new machines can generate.

This could pose a risk to the patients with the filling and hospital staff, the authors said.

Dentists use a substance called amalgam to plug sensitive cavities caused by tooth decay. This is usually a mix of metals but will be about 50 per cent mercury, a liquid metal known to be toxic.

In dental fillings the mercury hardens when treated and bonds to the chemical structure of the teeth with a layer of oxidised metal forming over any exposed filling within 48 hours.

“Therefore, any mercury leakage is minimal,” said the study’s lead author, Dr Selmi Yilmaz, a dentist at Akedniz University in Turkey, but strong magnetic fields have been shown to cause leakage.

These powerful MRIs are increasingly available in hospitals to provide detailed imaging of complex structures like the brain or in diagnosing conditions like stroke and cancers.

In the past few years NHS hospitals in England and Scotland have acquired MRIs capable of producing a seven Tesla (T) – the unit of magnetic force – field. Most conventional MRIs produce a field of between 1.5 and 3-T.

To test these new machine’s effects Dr Yilmaz and colleagues created cavities in several teeth and filled them with amalgam.

After the filling had hardened the teeth were placed in an artificial saliva solution, then three sets of 20 randomly selected teeth were either exposed to 20 minutes of 1.5-T MRi, 7-T MRI, or given no MRI exposure.

The mercury content in the saliva containing the 7-T MRI teeth was nearly four times higher than the lower powered scan – 0.67 parts per million compared to 0.17ppm – far higher than is safe.

“Although it is not clear how much of this released mercury form is absorbed by the body, the study findings indicate that amalgam fillings may pose a risk not only to patients, but to staff too,” Dr Yilmaz said.

The British Dental Association said the mercury risk of amalgam fillings will become less significant from July, when an EU law aimed at protecting people from the metal in all forms comes into effect, but this won’t help those who already have fillings.

Scientific adviser to the BDA Professor Damien Walmsley told The Independent: “This will be a decreasing problem in time but the development of new ultra-high-strength scanners, which were only approved by the US Food and Drug Administration last year, needs to be reviewed closely.”

He also stressed the study showed no “no cause for concern” from conventional MRIs.

***

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

“Some of His (Jesus) special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He (Jesus) wants it to be.

He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.

When a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy's (God's) will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

The Screwtape Letters By C. S. Lewis chapter Vlll