“And,
behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man
according as his work shall be. Hold that fast which thou hast, that
no man take thy crown.”
(Revelation 22:12, 3:11)
Hold
That Fast
***
BREAKINGISRAELNEWS
Report: Trump to Introduce Mideast Peace Plan at UNGA
August 22, 2018
“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.” Isaiah 26:3 (The Israel Bible™)
UN General Assembly (Credit: Wiki Commons)
U.S. President Donald Trump plans to introduce his Middle East peace plan, dubbed the “deal of the century,” during the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York next month, the Palestinian daily Al-Quds reported on Monday.
The 73rd General Assembly session will be held from Sept. 18 to Oct. 5, and will feature speeches from prominent world leaders, including Trump, who is set to address the assembly on Sept. 25.
The United States has, in the past, warned that if Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas remains adamant in his refusal to engage the United States as a mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Washington will introduce its regional peace plan regardless of his reservations.
Abbas has been shunning the U.S.’s peace efforts since Trump’s Dec. 6 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the subsequent move of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and has accused the Trump administration of being “grossly biased” in Israel’s favor.
According to the report, U.S. Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt, senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who have been working on the plan since early 2017, seek to introduce it under the “most optimal conditions” and the General Assembly is seen that the best venue to do so.
Last week, the four envoys released a joint statement on Twitter acknowledging that “no one will be fully pleased” with the much-anticipated Israeli-Palestinian peace plan.
“No one will be fully pleased with our proposal, but that’s the way it must be if real peace is to be achieved. Peace can only succeed if it is based on realities,” the statement said.
Al-Quds quoted an unnamed American official as saying that Trump has been keeping the details of the plan close to the vest as he prefers to outline it in full at the world leaders’ meeting.
The source said Trump believed that if his plan for Middle East peace were to fail, no other U.S. plan would be able to resolve the decades-long regional conflict.
The official stressed that it would be up to the Israelis and Palestinians to accept or reject the plan.
***
BREAKINGISRAELNEWS
Return of David’s Harp Heralding the Third Temple
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz
August 21, 2018
“Praise Hashem with the lyre; with the ten-stringed harp sing to Him.” Psalms 33:2 (The Israel Bible™)
Micah (left) and Shoshanna Harrari with two of their creations. (Credit: harrariharps.com)
The Temple of Solomon was filled with the music of 4,000 harps and a remarkable couple have been on a lifelong journey to return that music in time for the Third Temple. Praise Hashem with the lyre; with the ten-stringed harp sing to Him. (Psalms 33:2)
They recently released a video depicting the long-awaited fulfillment of the Psalm; a Jewish child returning to Israel removing a harp from a willow where her forefathers had hung it upon going out into exile.
The story of Micah and Shoshanna Harrari is a microcosm of the Jewish exile. As a young couple in the early ‘70’s, they wandered the U.S., living in shacks, teepees, tents and sometimes sleeping outside.
“We were looking for the perfect place,” Shoshanna told Breaking Israel News. “For us, that meant someplace beautiful. We lived in some beautiful places but we were always restless. If anyone said, ‘you should check this place out,’ we would pull up roots and go live there.”
At one point in their wanderings, they were living in a shack in a forest in Colorado. With no electricity or running water, their entertainment was limited to reading to each other by candlelight. In the winter, a massive snowstorm buried their cabin, trapping them inside. They had a plentiful supply of firewood and enough food and water, but they had read all their books. After three days of being trapped, cabin fever began to set in. In desperation, they began to read the bible they carried along their journey but had never read.
“There we were with Avraham and Sarah, our relatives, in the cabin,” Shoshanna said. “It was great. This became our main reading material and we were immediately captivated by Hashem’s words. When we got to the prophets, one message kept being repeated; that Hashem will call back the Jews so we can settle our land and never be uprooted.”
“This blew us away. Every time we read this, we knew it was an invitation to go to the land of our ancestors and help build up our homeland. We knew nothing about Israel but it sounded like our kind of place. We thought we could get a donkey and cart and wander around like Avraham and Sarah.”
The message was clear but it took several years for the Harraris to finish wandering. They meandered eastward, living in Vermont for a while. One night, they both woke up with the clear feeling that they needed to move on. The next day, they left, making their way across the Atlantic Ocean. A few months later, they were living in a teepee in Portugal when the midnight message came to them once again. They drove toward Israel, arriving in Greece in 1982. On a whim, they went to the ticket office for a shipping line and discovered the next boat to Israel was leaving in one hour. They didn’t hesitate, jumping aboard immediately. Not so many days later, they landed in Israel.
“The only contact we had was a friend of a friend of a friend in Jerusalem,” Shoshanna said. “We knocked on their door and introduced ourselves, not knowing that it was two hours before Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year).”
The holiday settled the matter: they were home. Eventually, the Harraris settled in Tiberias on the shores of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) where Micah set up a carpentry shop. Shoshanna had always wanted a harp for some reason she didn’t entirely understand.
“I am the daughter of a Kohen so I am sure there is some ancient connection,” Shoshanna explained.
Micah was a trained luthier and musical instrument craftsmen, but due to their nomadic lifestyle, had never had the opportunity to work in the field. Perhaps inspired by the Kinneret whose name means ‘harp,’ he announced to his wife that the time had come for him to fulfill her musical dream.
Such a project required preparation and research. The only harps they were familiar with were the type used to play classical music. They learned that archaeologists had discovered cave drawings of a harp in Megiddo. The drawings were believed to be 3,000 years old, meaning the Megiddo lyre would have been the instrument young David played to soothe a troubled King Saul.
“We had no idea that no one had made a harp like this in 2,000 years,” Shoshanna said. “When we first started making harps, we didn’t think anyone would even want harps. But we knew we were going to do it anyway.”
The first harp took a long time to come together, spending months looking more like scrap wood in their living room than a potential musical instrument worthy to grace the Temple. A random meeting in 1984 with a writer from The Jerusalem Post resulted in an article on the Harrari’s David harp project. The article generated unexpected interest and the Harp Project was begun.
As a result of the article, they were contacted by Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, founder of the Temple Institute.
“He told us that one day there would be a Temple and there would need to be harps ready for the Temple service,” Shoshanna said.
Rabbi Ariel immediately commissioned a harp for the Temple Institute with the intention that it would be used in the Third Temple. More research revealed that the Temple had both nevel (harp) and kinor (lyre). As donations came in, the Temple Institute commissioned more harps from the Harraris.
Just before Pesach, Shoshanna was overcome with another inspiration.
“I looked around and realized that everything to bring geula (redemption) was really moving. I felt that people should know this, in case they wanted to be part of it.”
The Harraris decided to create a video depicting the role of David’s harp in geula inspired by Psalms.
“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat, sat and wept, as we thought of Tzion. There on the poplars we hung up our lyres, for our captors asked us there for songs, our tormentors, for amusement, “Sing us one of the songs of Tzion.” How can we sing a song of Hashem on alien soil?” Psalms 137:1-4
“As we were going to exile in Babylon, the last thing we saw were the harps from the Temple hanging from the trees,” Shoshanna said. “The Jews prayed that one day, Jews would return and take the harps off the trees. The whole purpose of music used to be to connect to Hashem. We wanted to bring this back into the world.”
This became the theme of the video, depicting the fulfillment of those prayers. A harp is taken from an ancient willow and brought to Jerusalem with singing and joy.
Apparently, interest in the Temple harp is strong since more than 30,000 people have watched the video on the Harrari’s Facebook page.
The Temple Harp Project is an ongoing non-profit endeavor to create harps and lyres for the Third Temple.
***
BREAKINGISRAELNEWS
Jewish Activists, Politicians and Rabbis Reveal the Greatest Step Jews and Christians Can Take to Usher in Geula
By Eliana Rudee
August 19, 2018
“I will bring them to My sacred mount And let them rejoice in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices Shall be welcome on My mizbayach; For My House shall be called A house of prayer for all peoples.” Isaiah 56:7 (The Israel Bible™)
(Photo: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
In the Bible, the Temple Mount is considered a place of prayer for all nations and is commonly understood to be a holy place for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. In Isaiah 56, it is written that, “foreigners Who attach themselves to Hashem” will be brought to his sacred mount to rejoice in his house of prayer:
“I will bring them to My sacred mount And let them rejoice in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices Shall be welcome on My mizbayach; For My House shall be called A house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:7).
However, warn Jewish activists, politicians and rabbis, this Biblical aspiration is not being fulfilled today as prayer on the Temple Mount is restricted for those who are not Muslim.
“The status quo presently and officially is that Jews and Christians are not allowed to pray on the Temple Mount,” Member of Knesset Rabbi Yehuda Glick told Breaking Israel News.
Jews and Christians may visit the Mount at certain times, but are forbidden from praying, singing or making any religious displays or protests.
According to Glick, because Jerusalem is currently experiencing a time of relative calm, rarely do police interfere with quiet prayer “unless the Waqf claims it’s offending them,” whereas previously the Jordanian Waqf (an Islamic religious endowment) was very strict. The Waqf would follow each visitor’s every move and Jewish groups would be accompanied by policemen who watched the visitors’ lips to ensure they were not praying, Glick explained.
In 1967, despite thousands of years of yearning for Jewish sovereignty over Judaism’s holiest sites, Moshe Dayan, then Israeli defense minister, relinquished control of the Temple Mount to the Waqf.
According to Rabbi Pinchas Winston, specialist on the End of Days and geula (redemption), God controls history based on “where the Jewish people are holding,” and said that “1967 could have been a time of geula” if not for Dayan’s actions.
“When we got back Jerusalem and the Kotel, that was a geula event in a time when even secular Jews were talking about moshiach (messiah),” said Winston. “It was divine providence just like Israel’s independence in 1948: a step in the direction of redemption that would have likely triggered a series of events that triggered the geula and building of third Temple.”
However, Winston maintained, we didn’t take it seriously enough, and God put the Temple Mount “on hold.”
Glick called the 1967 Temple Mount relinquishment a naïve move, in which Israel incorrectly believed that relinquishing control of a site holy to Muslims as well as Jews and Christians would create a lasting peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors.
Joshua Wander, an independent public relations consultant in and around the Old City of Jerusalem, similarly called this event “one of the greatest tragedies in Jewish history,” equal to the sin of the golden calf.
Still, many Jews today do not recognize the centrality of the land of Israel to the Jewish people in the same way that people do not recognize centrality of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount as the holiest place on earth.
“Wherever the most holiness is, you also have the most impurity,” Wander explained – an impurity which has caused many errors and misconceptions also promulgated by some Israeli legal, religious and governmental authorities.
While the Temple Mount is managed by the Waqf, the Israeli government sets entry limits because of political constraints and security. When entering the Temple Mount, there is also a warning sign by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel that announces, “According to Torah Law, entering the Temple Mount area is strictly forbidden due to the holiness of the site.”
But according to Wander, this sign is out of date. After 1967 when Israel reunited Jerusalem and received access to the Temple Mount, Jews began flocking there, unaware of the conditions upon which one is allowed to go up according to Jewish law.
Today, because of vast archaeological and historical research, there is more understanding about where one may go or must avoid according Jewish purity laws.
Now, it is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s obligation to open the site for Jewish prayer, as per Israeli law, maintained Wander.
“Israeli basic law provides for freedom of worship and anybody has the right to pray freely in this country,” he said, calling Jewish restriction from prayer at their holiest site in their own country “absurd, clear discrimination and completely unacceptable.”
Similarly, said Glick, prayer should be allowed for all, as the Temple Mount is a house of prayer for all nations and prayer there should never be considered offensive.
He suggested a system of sharing holy sites, similar to the system of sharing at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.
“The dream is that it should be a center for peace and tolerance and not hate,” he said.
Wander said that aspirations should go even farther: The Jews should start building the Third Temple on the Temple Mount.
“It is the goal of the Jewish nation to come back to the land and resurrect what we once had as a nation, including rebuilding the temple,” he said.
Historically, the Temple has acted as a lightning rod to God and a physical home in this world for Jews and non-Jews to spread blessings throughout the world, such as during Sukkot, when it was common for non-Jews to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem and bring sacrifices from the four corners of the earth.
“Although there are different laws about service and sacrifice, the Temple is equally important for Jews and non-Jews,” Wander said.
Ahead of the Jewish high holidays this year, “we are on the way to building the Temple by praying for it three times a day for the last 2,000 years, reclaiming Jerusalem in 1967 and learning all the appropriate laws regarding the Temple Mount since then,” he added, also citing reenactments of Temple services and sacrifices to bring awareness to the centrality of the Temple.
While years in exile has decreased awareness of the centrality of the land of Israel, Jerusalem and the Temple for many Jews, “it is a divine movement and anyone who tries to stand in its way will not be successful,” said Wander.
According to Wander, the political environment is ripe for it as well, as “Trump has given us a window of opportunity” of which he hopes the government will take advantage.
Winston expressed similar sentiments and said that over Israel’s 70-year history, “the odds have been against us numbers wise” and “the fact that we can thrive while surrounded by enemies, even economically, is a miracle.”
Winston urged “righteous gentiles” to continue investing in the State of Israel both spiritually and financially. Without a Temple, he explained, non-Jews cannot send sacrifices as they did in the past, but by taking part in bringing geula, they have an opportunity to bring back Temple times.
Toward this end, Winston explained, “Jews need to show God that we want it by going up to the Temple Mount, maintaining an anticipatory attitude and developing the will for redemption, as we did in Egypt.”
“We are living miracles as prophecies unfolding before our eyes,” Wander said. “It won’t be much longer before we achieve our goals.”
***
PRESSTV
'Gaza to be uninhabitable in less than two years'
August 24, 2018
A picture taken on August 9, 2018 shows a boy looking at the rubble of a building following an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City. (Photo by AFP)
The Gaza Strip will be uninhabitable in less than two years if proper actions are not taken to end the years-long Israeli siege on the coastal enclave, warns a Palestinian advocacy group.
The Popular Committee to Lift the Siege on Gaza said that the international community needs to find practical solutions to the various humanitarian crises that Gaza is grappling with as a direct result of Israeli actions, the Palestinian Information Center reported Thursday.
Jamal al-Khudari, from the popular committee, said Gazans are enduring a “calamitous” humanitarian situation due to the 12-year-long Israeli blockade.
“International warnings as regards the situation in Gaza should be translated into projects on the ground”, he said.
“By 2020, Gaza will be an uninhabitable zone”, al-Khudari added.”The international community should force Israel to lift its illegal and immoral siege.”
The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli blockade since June 2007. Years of blockade, three major invasions and daily airstrikes against critical infrastructure have caused a decline in the standard of living as well as unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty.
The UN political chief, Rosemary DiCarlo, warned earlier in the day that the world body lacks sufficient funds to continue paying for fuel and medicine in critical facilities in the Gaza Strip.
She added that around $4.5 million was required to insure fuel for hospitals, water plants and other critical facilities in the Gaza Strip until the end of the year.
ARUTZ SHEVA
From 10000 to 900 Christians: The Arab Spring
The "Arab Spring" was an apocalypse for Christians in the Middle East.
They called it the "Arab Spring."
In Egypt everything was coming apart after the democratic travesty under the Muslim Brotherhood and only another coup organized by a general saved the country.
Syria now looks like a Bosch painting: 500 thousand dead and the near-death of Christianity in a "guerre pour rien", a war for nothing.
Libya no longer exists. Iraq is a tragic joke. In Iran, the galleys are full. In Turkey, the Sultan replaced secularism. Yemen has become the cemetery of 2,400 children (the last massacre of 40 children under Saudi bombs, but woe to he who talks about it).
And the Palestinian Arab territories are on the verge of another Jihad against Israel.
We must thank Barack Obama, the smart politologists who wanted to rely on political Islam and the journalists who only saw Twitter and not the Salafists. It seemed like a spring, but was only a winter that ended up devastating not only North Africa and the Middle East, but also helping to destabilize Europe.
And for Christians, it was more than a winter. It was the apocalypse.
The New York Times just reported from Tal Tamer, a Christian village in northern Syria, now controlled by the Kurds. "The church is a pile of rubble, its bell tower and its cross toppled over like a felled tree. The dirt paths are overgrown, walked by stray dogs. Most homes are empty, their owners in Germany, Australia, the United States and elsewhere".
The Islamic State attacked the area in 2015, seizing over 220 Assyrian Christians. About 10,000 Assyrian Christians had lived in more than 30 villages there before the civil war began in 2011, and there were more than two dozen churches. Now, 900 people remain and only one church holds regular services. Some of the villages are completely empty. Another village has only two residents: a mother and her son.
70,000 Armenian Christians have fled Syria. They were 100,000 before the war. Today there are 30,000. According to data recently announced by Arshak Poladian, the Armenian ambassador in Syria, "70 percent of the Armenian community has fled".
Only 7 Armenian churches out of 17 have been spared. 11 Armenian schools have been destroyed and only one will be rebuilt. There were 1,300 students at the Karen Jeppe school in Aleppo before the war. Today there are 300 remaining.
The Armenians in Syria are the descendants of the survivors of the genocide under the Turks of 1915. Today, history is repeated with Islamic fundamentalists. The European countries, intimidated by the Turks, are still censuring themselves about the genocide of a century ago. They would not dare to say something about these new, frightening numbers.
Christian girls kidnapped and turned into sex slaves, churches turned into rubble, murdered faithful and clergy, ghost villages, entire missing communities. The end of Eastern Christianity took place in the complicit silence of Western Europe, which saw it but kept silent and turned away.
THE CHRISTIAN JOURNAL
Military Religious Freedom Group Claims Christian Fundamentalists Are Provoking Violence By Praying
By Nate Brown
August 27, 2018
A group of Christians associated with Senate Chaplin Barry Black are under fire for praying against The Military Religious Freedom Foundation and Mikey Weinstein in regards to their recent lawsuit against Air Force Brig. Gen. John Teichert.
The MRFF is claiming that the prayer is threating in nature and that it will provoke violence by Christian fundamentalists. The complaint stem’s from the group’s usage of Psalm 37:22 in the prayer which reads; “For those who are blessed by Him shall inherit the earth, but those who are curses [sic] b [sic] Him shall be cut off.” That’s an approximate quotation from the King James Bible; in numerous other translations the word “destroyed” is used in place of “cut off.”
Weinstein previously described these prayers as “code words” used by Christian ‘far-right’ groups to “troll for assassins,” or at least to legitimize possible acts of violence.
Weinstein’s organization has received previous ‘threats,’ however this one, according to the organizer, stems from the Senate ‘which is intolerable.’ Furthermore, the lawyers for the MRFF, are drafting letters to the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others, demanding a redress.
One MRFF staff member has resigned this week, Weinstein said, “because of pressure from his or her family over the threats that these individuals face, even in their own homes, for being connected with MRFF.” And that was before the emergence of this potentially threatening prayer, he added.
The MRFF is seeking to disconnect the prayer organization from the Senate because of their prayers against the organization. Further, the MRFF is demanding that the Capitol Hill Prayer Partners take down the prayer in question.
The MRFF fails to recognize the reality of religious freedom and the right to free speech. Further, should the prayer group be disconnected from the Senate as a result of the lawsuit and letters in question, isn’t that in and of itself an assault on religious freedom?
***
WND
CLASSIC BIBLE TRACT INVESTIGATED AS 'HATE' SPEECH
'Very sad,' Christian Institute says of vitriol against members of faith
By Bob Unruh
August 25, 2018
The Christian Institute in the United Kingdom is lamenting that contemporary society has become so intolerant that a simple Bible tract stating pride leads to disgrace is being treated as “hate speech.”
That’s what’s happening in Basildon, where town counselor David Burton-Sampson lashed out at Christians after the tract was delivered to homes.
“These are extreme views,” he told the local Echo publication. “I think the fact these have been put in doors is appalling.”
The front of the tract has a seven-color rainbow with the question “What comes after Pride?”
Local reports said it was from an organization called XpandChristianity, which published online a tract similar to the one photographed in Basildon.
Inside is the familiar biblical warning that pride goes before a fall.
“The world defines ‘pride’ as: ‘a feeling or deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one’s own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired.’
“Yet the Word of God says a person’s pride is followed by disgrace (Prov. 11:2); pride is arrogance (Prov. 21:24); pride will bring a person low (Prov. 29:23.”
It explains God’s view of pride as sinful and warns: “What comes after pride? Destruction. … God’s judgment of sin, the punishment for which is eternity in hell. Your only hope is to turn from your sinful pride, turn toward God and, by faith alone, receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.”
It doesn’t mention gays, LGBTQ or same-sex issues.
Christian Institute Deputy Director Ciarán Kelly rejected Burton-Sampson’s assessment of the flyers.
“I think it’s very sad that this has been used to attack Christianity. I think it’s very sad that what is essentially a Bible tract is being called extremist literature,” Kelly said.
“This seems to be the norm these days – whenever there is a view that is expressed that people don’t like, rather than engaging with that in any kind of way, they call out ‘bigot,’ they call out ‘extremist.'”
The local reporting in the Echo paralleled Burton-Sampson’s intolerance.
“Religious preachers have posted ‘hate mail’ through the letterboxes of homes in Basildon,” the report said. “Furious residents criticized what appeared to be fundamentalist Christian literature which suggested links between the LGBT community, being evil and destruction.”
It claims the rainbow on the tract is “internationally recognized” as the LGBT flag.
But Kelly pointed out that the tract has a seven-color rainbow, not the six-color used by the LGBT community.
Also, he said, it revealed an ignorance of Christianity.
“God had first dibs on the rainbow,” he said.
Essex police said they had received a complaint.
Thee Echo reported police that at the moment it is being treated as a “hate incident.”
“We received a report on Sunday, August 19, that leaflets with offensive messages had been delivered to addresses. It is believed they were delivered on August 17.”
The newspaper provided a telephone number for people with information to call.
But Burton-Sampson, the deputy Labour leader at Basildon Council, said he was disgusted.
“People are entitled to have opinions but this is targeting a group of people,” he said. “It has a clear intention which is unacceptable. It’s excluding people from society and marginalizing them. These are not the views of churches or church leaders.”
The Christian Institute explained the tracts speak of God’s love.
The tract states: “Jesus Christ – fully God and fully man, yet without sin, voluntarily shed his innocent blood and died on the cross, taking upon Himself the punishment you rightly deserve for your sins against God. Three days later, He forever defeated sin and death when He rose from the grace. … Repent and believe the Gospel today.”
Kelly explained the local politician’s assumption the leaflet was about LGBT issues was flawed, because it makes no reference to homosexuality, “LGBT” or gay people
***
THE CHRISTIAN POST
Cathedral Defends Plan to Show Graphic Sex, Human Sacrifice Films: 'It's Nothing God Hasn't Seen'
By Stoyan Zaimov
August 21, 2018
(PHOTO: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/NICK MOYES)Derby Cathedral in the city of Derby, U.K., in this September 2010 photo.
The head of an Anglican Cathedral in England is defending his church's decision to screen films that show graphic sex, full female nudity and human sacrifice, saying it's nothing "God hasn't seen before."
Derby Cathedral agreed to allow its premises to be used by a local cinema, with horror/thriller films such as "The Wicker Man" and "Don't Look Now" planned to be screened, which contain such scenes.
Steve Dunning, a church warden from within the diocese of Derby, was one of the voices to speak out against showing such material.
"I just think it isn't appropriate to show these films in a place of worship that is consecrated and hallowed, and therefore it compromises the spiritual integrity of the cathedral," Dunning said on Monday, according to BBC News.
"There is also a broader issue in terms of, why does the cathedral need to show films when there are multiplex cinemas in Derby?"
Kristin Simmons, a deputy warden from another church, added that Derby Cathedral "is a reflection of every parish church in Derbyshire."
"Of course the cathedral can and should be open and used for outside events, but they should not be adverse to the Christian perspective; the cathedral is primarily a place of worship," she argued.
"One film depicts a human sacrifice of a Christian man who recites Psalm 23 and 'curses' people upon his death, and in the other, the protagonist is employed to restore a church building; it involves séances and communication with the dead and a very explicit sex scene," Simmons continued.
"As someone else pointed out to me, Holy Communion will be celebrated nine hours later in the same seats."
The Very Rev. Stephen Hance, the Dean of Derby Cathedral, argued that the movies won't be "showing God anything that He hasn't seen before."
"They are actually really powerful stories about faith and doubt and some of the things people wrestle with," he added.
In another statement to Premier, Hance said: "Not all the films will be to everyone's taste and some of them will provoke comment and engagement with serious issues, which is to be encouraged. For example, as well-being a great film and example of superb story-telling, 'The Wicker Man' is the story of a Christian martyr. Every culture tells stories to help it think about what it believes, and one of the primary ways our culture does this is through film.
"I believe people will be helped to think in relation to some powerful and sometimes disturbing movies, and the screenings will help to release other much-needed resources for the mission and ministry of the Cathedral in the city."
Other religiously-themed films to be screened which have also sparked various praise and criticism from believers include the comedies "Monty Python's Life of Brian" and "Sister Act."
Alex Rock from the nearby Quad cinema said that he selected which films would be screened.
"I have a really good relationship with Derby Cathedral and care about it a lot, and I thought this was a really good opportunity to stimulate discussion around the space itself and to kind of experience the space in a completely different light," Rock said, who is a member of the congregation.
In another instance of churches being criticized over being used for controversial means, St. Andrew's Church in London apologized last year for allowing a satanic fashion show on its grounds.
The church claimed that it was not aware of the plans of Turkish fashion designer Dilara Findikoglu, whose models used the altar as a runway while donning outfits with demonic symbolism, including inverted crosses and devil horns, along with nudity.
***
MailOnline
Former Vatican representative to the US says Pope Francis knew about sexual abuse allegations against Archbishop Theodore McCarrick and calls on the pontiff to RESIGN
Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano wants Pope Francis to resign writing in an 11-page letter that the Pope knew of McCarrick's sex abuse allegations in 2013
Vigano, who served as apostolic nuncio in Washington DC from 2011 to 2016, said he personally told Pope Francis about the allegations
He said the Pope covered for McCarrick and made him his 'trusted counselor'
A priest said he warned church officials about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick's alleged sex abuse
Father Boniface Ramsey wrote a letter to Cardinal Sean O'Malley in June 2015
The letter was sent to O'Malley after Pope Francis appointed him to lead a child sex abuse protection commission
O'Malley said in response that he didn't see a letter sent to his office in 2015
He apologized to the pastor and anyone whose concerns were reflected in it
Pope Francis ordered McCarrick removed from public ministry amid allegations he abused an altar boy and engaged in sexual misconduct with seminarians
By DAILYMAIL.COM REPORTER
PUBLISHED: 06:48, 26 August 2018 | UPDATED: 09:23, 26 August 2018
A former Vatican representative to the United States is calling on Pope Francis to resign writing in an 11-page testament that he knew of the sex abuse allegations against Archbishop Theodore McCarrick but covered them up.
Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, 77, who served as apostolic nuncio in Washington DC from 2011 to 2016 said that Pope Francis knew of the allegations as early as 2013, according to the National Catholic Register.
Vigano said in his letter that he personally told Pope Francis that McCarrick was accused of inappropriate behavior and Pope Benedict XVI imposed sanctions on McCarrick ordering him to a life of penance.
According to Vigano, during a June 2013 meeting the Pope asked him what kind of man McCarrick was like. Vigano said he replied: 'He corrupted generations of seminarians and priests and Pope Benedict ordered him to withdraw to a life of prayer and penance.'
He alleged that the Pope was trying to find out if he was an ally of McCarrick or not.
Vigano told the outlet that Pope Francis 'continued to cover' for McCarrick and 'not take into account the sanctions that Pope Benedict had imposed on him'. Vigano said in 2009 or 2010, Pope Benedict implemented sanctions that stated McCarrick 'was to leave the seminary where he was living. He was also forbidden to celebrate (Mass) in public, to participate in public meetings, to give lecturers, to travel, with the obligation of dedicating himself to a life of prayer and penance'.He said instead of taking action, Pope Francis revoked the sanctions and made McCarrick his 'trusted counselor'.
Vigano said he sent several letters to Vatican representatives about McCarrick but they fell on deaf ears. He said in his letter that 'the corruption has reached the very top of the Church's hierarchy' and that's why he's speaking out publicly.
The letter ended with Vigano asking Pope Francis, and others who allegedly tried to cover up the allegations, to resign.
'He (Pope Francis) knew from at least June 23, 2013 that McCarrick was a serial predator,' Vigano stated, but although 'he knew that he was a corrupt man, he covered for him to the bitter end.'
'It was only when he was forced by the report of the abuse of a minor, again on the basis of media attention, that he took action (regarding McCarrick) to save his image in the media,' he wrote.
Vigano wrote that Pope Francis 'is abdicating the mandate which Christ gave to Peter to confirm the brethren,' and urged him to 'acknowledge his mistakes' and, to 'set a good example to cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick's abuses and resign along with all of them.'
The former DC nuncio also implicated Cardinals Angelo Sodano, Tarcisio Bertone and Pietro Parolin as well as Cardinal Donald Wuerl, McCarrick's successor as archbishop of DC.
Earlier on Saturday, Pope Francis traveled to Ireland and addressed the sex abuse claims plaguing the Catholic Church.
‘The failure of ecclesiastical authorities — bishops, religious superiors, priests and others — to adequately address these repugnant crimes has rightly given rise to outrage and remains a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community,’ Francis said, according to NBC News.
Church attendance in Ireland has plummeted in recent years as people call on the Vatican to take action and tackle the abuse allegations. The area has also been hit with its own share of scandal after a mass grave was discovered in 1993 at secretive Catholic institutions of confinement for unmarried mothers, prostitutes and other ‘fallen’ women.
At least 796 children were found buried in the grave.
A priest in New York City has also spoken out saying that he repeatedly warned church officials about now ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick - who was suspended last month over sex abuse allegations.
Father Boniface Ramsey told CBS News this week: 'I had the impression that virtually everyone knew about it.
'Archbishop McCarrick was inviting seminarians to his beach house. There were five beds… and there were six people. Archbishop McCarrick arranged it in such a way that somebody would join him in his bed.'
The priest, an archbishop of Newark at the time, said he was informed about the inappropriate behavior in 1986.
Ramsey wrote in a letter to Cardinal Sean O'Malley, of Boston, in June 2015: 'Some of these stories were not presented to me as mere rumors but were told to me by persons directly involved.'
The letter was sent to O'Malley after Pope Francis appointed him as president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.
O'Malley said Monday that he didn't see a letter sent to his office in 2015 concerning McCarrick's possible inappropriate behavior with seminarians.
'I should have seen that letter precisely because it made assertions about the behavior of an archbishop in the church,' he said.
O'Malley said his priest secretary told the pastor a recommendation to review cases fell outside the commission's mandate.
He apologized Monday to the pastor and to anyone whose concerns were reflected in the letter.
Pope Francis ordered McCarrick removed from public ministry amid allegations he sexually abused a teenage altar boy and engaged in sexual misconduct with adult seminarians decades ago.
McCarrick has said he has 'absolutely no recollection of this reported abuse' and believes in his innocence.
***
RT
Pope Francis ‘won’t say a word’ about sex abuse cover-up allegations
August 26, 2018
© Gregorio Borgia / Pool via Reutrs
The Pope has refused to comment on claims by a former Vatican Ambassador to the US who accused the pontiff of covering up sexual misconduct, and has urged everyone to study the allegations carefully and make up their own mind.
“I won't say a word about it,” the leader of the Catholic Church told journalists on a plane from Ireland to Rome, when asked if he had any comments about the 11-page document that claimed that Pope Francis was aware of sexual misconduct allegations against the former archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, but kept silent about it.
Neither confirming nor denying the validity of the claims against him, the pope noted it was a matter of trust and faith, and that the document “speaks for itself,” urging everyone to read it and to decide for themselves.
On Saturday, the Vatican announced that the Pope had accepted the resignation of the former archbishop of Washington from the College of Cardinals. The 88-year-old was consigned to a “life of prayer and penance” despite the allegation that he had sexually abused minors over the course of decades.
Following the move, the former ambassador to the US, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, wrote a letter, claiming that he had told Francis about accusations of abuse against McCarrick back in June 2013 and that, despite being fully aware of the Cardinal’s misconduct, Pope Francis did not respond and allowed McCarrick to continue his role in the church.
Vigano stated that the head of the Catholic church should “acknowledge his mistakes and, in keeping with the proclaimed principle of zero tolerance, Pope Francis must be the first to set a good example to Cardinals and Bishops who covered up McCarrick's abuses and resign along with all of them.”
***
NEONNETTLE
Mexican Cardinal Issues Cartel-Style Threat to Pedophile Priest Accusers
Sergio Obeso Rivera warns victims of Catholic clergy child abuse against making accusation
By: Jay Greenberg
August 26, 2018
Sergio Obeso Rivera issued a Mexican cartel-style threat to would-be accusers
A high-ranking Mexican cardinal has issued a drug cartel-style threat to victims of clergy child abuse who make accusations against Catholic priests.Speaking to reporters, newly appointed Mexican Cardinal of Veracruz, Sergio Obeso Rivera said, those who “accuse men of the Church should (be careful) because they have long tails that are easily stepped on.”Rivera made the disturbing comments in Veracruz, Mexico, while giving a speech during a celebration for his former diocese, Crux Now reported.According to reporters who were present, Cardinal Rivera still “went after the victims,” despite acknowledging that the majority of the recent allegations of pedophilia were true.
Western Journal reports: Rivera prefaced his aggressive comments by saying, “I’m here happy to talk about nice things, not about problematic things, it’s an accusation that is made, and in some cases it’s true.These statements by Rivera were made in Spanish and translated and reported by Crux Now, which describes itself as “a news site dedicated to offering the very best in smart, wired and independent coverage of the Vatican and the Catholic Church.”
The cardinal’s statement about “long tails” was rephrased by one journalist as being similar to saying that people have “skeletons in their own closets.” Breitbart suggested that his words could be interpreted as “those who accuse us should have a little pain.
Rivera also said that the accusations “make us feel bad and we want to improve.”According to Crux Now, Rivera was made a cardinal by Pope Francis just under two months ago, shortly before his controversial comments from early last week. The case being referenced was from Aug. 15, in which a Pennsylvania grand jury found “internal documents from six Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania show that more than 300 ‘predator priests’ have been credibly accused of sexually abusing more than 1,000 child victims,” according to CNN.
“We believe that the real number of children whose records were lost or who were afraid ever to come forward is in the thousands,” the grand jury report said. “Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. "For decades. Monsignors, auxiliary bishops … archbishops, cardinals have mostly been protected; many, including some named in this report, have been promoted.” The church’s methods were described by the grand jury as “a playbook for concealing the truth” after their practices were identified by FBI agents in diocese files.
Their report, which was released Tuesday, outlined an investigation into abuse at the hands of clergy that dates back to 1947 and includes six dioceses: Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, and Scranton.In the past, Philadelphia, and Altoona-Johnstown, Pennsylvania’s other two dioceses, have both been subjects of grand jury reports that found similar damaging information about the clergy and bishops in their dioceses.In stark contrast to Rivera’s statements, CNN reported that Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Bishop Timothy L. Doherty, chair of the bishops’ Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People, released a compassionate statement about the recent accusations against the church:“The report of the Pennsylvania grand jury again illustrates the pain of those who have been victims of the crime of sexual abuse by individual members of our clergy, and by those who shielded abusers and so facilitated an evil that continued for years or even decades.“As a body of bishops, we are shamed by and sorry for the sins and omissions by Catholic priests and Catholic bishops.”
***
THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
An employee demonstrates a “Police Pad”, Tbilisi, Georgia, 2012
August 21, 2018
© David Mdzinarishvili/Reuters
God is in the machine
Carl Miller on the terrifying, hidden reality of Ridiculously Complicated Algorithms
‘I’ll lose my job if anyone knows about this.”
There was a long silence which I didn’t dare to break. I had begged to make this meeting happen. And now the person I had long been trying to meet leaned towards me. “Someone is going to go through your book line by line,” he said, “to try to work out who I am.”
He’d been a talented researcher, an academic, until his friend started a small technology company. He had joined the company and helped it to grow. It eventually became so big that the company had been acquired by one of the tech giants. And so, then, was he.
He was now paid a fortune to help design the algorithms that were central to what the tech giant did. And he had signed solemn legal documents prohibiting him from speaking to me, or to anyone, about his work. But as the years passed, his concern – indeed his guilt – grew. “It’s power without responsibility.” He paused. “There’s so much power, and so little responsibility. This is not notional abstract power. This is real power about day-to-day lives. It’s both material and cultural and financial. The world has to know that this is how it works . . . There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark,” he said, quoting Hamlet a little melodramatically.
So he had decided to take a risk. “If they find out I’m doing this,” he said, “I’ll be marched out of my office and I’ll never work in technology again. That’s the best-case scenario.” He wasn’t just going to talk to me about his work. He was going to show me it.
From his satchel, the researcher pulled out his laptop. He tapped for a few minutes and, with a sense of occasion, turned the screen to face me. “It’s all there.” And there it was: a white screen with instructions neatly arranged in a series of boxes.
“In [3]” the first step says
“In [8], in [9]” says the next.
There were words in different colours, some green, some purple, some in red, in bold, in italics. I looked at the researcher, a proud grin spread across his face. There it was. An algorithm that really influenced people’s lives. And it was . . . totally underwhelming.
Twenty-three centuries ago, the Greek mathematician Eratosthenes sat in the Great Library of Alexandria and tried to find a way to identify prime numbers. He wrote every number from one to 100 in ten rows, and crossed out the one. He circled the two, crossed out all the multiples of two, circled the three and continued. He had created an algorithm, in essence something very simple. His ‘sieve’, as it was called, did what all algorithms do. It took an input, followed a series of well-described steps and produced an output. Input, process, output: that’s all an algorithm is, and has ever been.
Throughout their history, algorithms have been built to solve problems. They have been used to make astronomical calculations, build clocks and turn secret information into code. “Up till the nineties,” the researcher said, “algorithms still tended to be RSAs – Really Simple Algorithms. Previously it was pretty clear how stuff happened. You take the original Google algorithm. It was basically a popularity study. You’d just surface (or rank more highly) things that people clicked on more. In general, the people who made it understood how the thing worked.” Some algorithms were more complicated than others, but the input > process > output was generally transparent and understandable, at least to the people who built and used them.
The algorithm he had brought up on his screen was built to solve a problem, too. It ordered and organized reality in an important way, trying to separate what was important from what was irrelevant. But it was different from the RSAs. “It’s way more complicated than it looks,” he said, hovering a pencil over some of the short words in square brackets. “But I need to show you why.” And with that, we started to journey through his creation.
First, it imported “libraries”, a specific language of definitions, instructions and actions. Next, he showed me how it brought in data. “There’s a bit of a macho thing about feeding your algorithms as much data as possible,” he said. “The more data you feed it, the better. We work with a lot more data than most teams, actually,” he said, drawing his cursor longingly over the script that brought the huge, churning quantities of data that fed the algorithm. Gigabytes, terabytes, petabytes of data were ordered, there on the page.
By instruction fifteen, “functions” were added. “A function is a little factory,” the researcher said, highlighting each one. “These are the building blocks of the algorithm: a subalgorithm, basically.” He showed how he built each of these building blocks, stringing together phrases like “get component”, “filter by station”, “sort_nodes_in_degree”. Then, the main stage. “This is the business end of the algorithm,” he said. “This is where I stack up the building blocks.” He was supposed to be showing me how the functions were connected. But I was lost. “I don’t get it,” I said. “How can you keep track of what’s doing what?”
Each of these sub-algorithmic functions, his building blocks, was really another complete house. Each was a complex tangle of instructions and processes, and some were themselves made from sub-algorithmic building blocks. The screen looked simple, but I was looking at a blueprint of building blocks within building blocks within building blocks: millions of instructions in just a few pages of code. Its builder was sitting next to me, but even he struggled to explain the stages, retracing steps and correcting himself as he tried to hold the layer upon layer of abstraction in his head. He seemed to finish, but then paused. “I don’t really remember where that last bit comes from,” he said.
The researcher knew, of course, what data he’d fed into the process. He knew why he’d designed it, the problem it was trying to solve and the outputs that it produced. However, after he’d been trying to explain it for over an hour, he sat back in his chair, exhausted. “Yes, as you can see, the gap between input and output is difficult to understand,” he said. He’d flooded the algorithm with a huge amount of information, “a trend”, he said, because in the tech giant he could, and everyone did. But the amount of data meant it was hard to tell what the salient inputs within it were. “From a human perspective you’re not sure which of the inputs is significant; it’s hard to know what is actually driving the outputs. It’s hard to trace back, as a human, to know why a decision was made.”
Within his tech giant, algorithms rarely stand alone. Instead, they exist within webs. “I rely”, he said, “on signals that are produced by other algorithms.” His algorithm was fed by outputs that were shaped by other algorithms. It was like a car assembly line. He, like his colleagues, worked on a small, specific part of a much larger process.
The algorithm was also constantly changing. The data inputs were flowing into the algorithm in real time, but the actual weights, measures and trade-offs that the algorithm made weren’t static either. Some of the functions that the researcher had woven in used machine learning – techniques where the machine constantly learned and adapted to what the most important patterns, correlations and relationships were. It meant that the algorithm was constantly changing and moving as the world moved around it, and its diet of data changed to reflect that.
We sat there, looking at the computer, his creation laid out in multi-coloured type. “This is all to do with complexity,” he said contemplatively. “Complexity of input. Complexity of analysis. Complexity of how outputs are combined, structured and used.” One of the reasons that he’d been employed to build a process like this was exactly because it could handle complexity by being complex itself. It grasped the blinding number of factors, signals and influences that bounced off each other at every moment in ways that we simply cannot.
Algorithms have changed, from Really Simple to Ridiculously Complicated. They are capable of accomplishing tasks and tackling problems that they’ve never been able to do before. They are able, really, to handle an unfathomably complex world better than a human can. But exactly because they can, the way they work has become unfathomable too. Inputs loop from one algorithm to the next; data presses through more instructions, more code. The complexity, dynamism, the sheer not-understandability of the algorithm means that there is a middle part – between input and output – where it is possible that no one knows exactly what they’re doing. The algorithm learns whatever it learns. “The reality is, professionally, I only look under the hood when it goes wrong. And it can be physically impossible to understand what has actually happened.”
With a triumphant flick of his wrist, the researcher tapped a key and the algorithm began. Twenty seconds later, the algorithm was finished. There in black and white, was an output. One, of course, that I cannot specifically describe, but an output that many of us use every day. The algorithm had produced a kind of reality, really – one that we make decisions from, that can even change our lives.
The researcher scrolled through the bundle of instructions, and changed a single one to a two. A single value. The algorithm reran, and reality popped out again, but this time, a quarter of the results had ceased to exist.
“OK,” I said, “what happened there? Why did you change it? You know the two is wrong. But how do you know the one is right?”
“That”, he said, gesticulating at the sabotaged result, “is the point. It’s a heuristic. I tried it, and it seemed to work. Then I tested it, and the result looked right. I can’t say the one is true. I can only say that it passed minimum evaluation criteria. The whole algorithm is full of parameters that could have been something else. Truth is dead,” he sighed. “There is only output.”
“Who checks these?” I asked.
“Me.”
“What about your boss?”
“You’ve seen how difficult it is to really understand. Sometimes I struggle with it, and I created it. The reality is that if the algorithm looks like it’s doing the job that it’s supposed to do, and people aren’t complaining, then there isn’t much incentive to really comb through all those instructions and those layers of abstracted code to work out what is happening.” The preferences you see online – the news you read, the products you view, the adverts that appear – are all dependent on values that don’t necessarily have to be what they are. They are not true, they’ve just passed minimum evaluation criteria.
Jure Leskovec spoke with a strong Slovenian accent, softened slightly by the rolling Rs I had become used to in California. Jure had spent time at Facebook and as chief scientist at Pinterest before moving back to academia. We were sitting in his office in Stanford, which, like the other centres of tech in California, seemed to be expanding rapidly. As we spoke, clouds of hot, white dust drifted up past his window from drilling below.
He grabbed a pen and sprang towards an enormous whiteboard that took up a full wall of his office. His latest work was building an algorithm to help criminal court judges make better decisions over whether to grant bail. “You have a judge,” he said, drawing a large, black rectangle on the board with a J in it, “and a defendant. The judge is trying to make a single determination: if bailed, will the defendant commit crime or no crime? So I can train a machine learning algorithm to answer the question, ‘If I release you, will you commit another crime or not?’”
The scribbling on the board became more profuse, as Jure excitedly sketched out the study. He’d gathered criminal records data on people who, when bailed, committed another crime, and other data on people who hadn’t. He also found a way, by comparing lenient and stricter judges, of constructing data on people who were released but who normally would have been locked up, and whether they had committed another crime too.
“The point”, he said, “is that our algorithm outperforms human judges by 30 per cent. So far, these machine learning algorithms have mostly been used in, y’know, recommendations, the online world. And I would say that these types of domains are low stakes. You might get a bad ad. You have a bad Friday night because you’ve watched the wrong movie. That’s the worst that can happen to you. But if you think about applying these algorithms to highstakes domains –”
“Which is increasingly happening?” I cut in.
“Which I think is increasingly happening. Then you have to make sure that the methods that we develop, and the standards about the way we use these methods and the way we verify them, are incredibly rigorous.”
Already, according to the Wall Street Journal, at least fifteen states in the US use automated risk-assessment tools to aid judges in making parole decisions. Predpol is, amongst others, a company that uses algorithms to predict areas where crime in the future is likely to happen on the basis of crimes committed in the past. Pegged is a company that offers this kind of technology (powered by artificial intelligence and fuelled by huge amounts of data) to help find the best candidates for any particular job. Algorithms are being used as contract negotiators, making split-second decisions over which terms to offer and accept. Algorithms are not only becoming more complex, they are also taking on more and more important jobs.
“I think there is a huge revolution to come,” Jure said. “In how decisions are made in society.” He wasn’t saying that algorithms should take over, only that they should be used to support human decisions. “This bail example – I can say algorithms do better. I’m advocating, let’s use these algorithms to help the human judges. They have a really hard time; they have like a minute to make a decision. They often have no feedback on whether they made the right decision, and there is no knowledge-sharing between the judges. I think it’s clear that when human and machine have access to the same data, machine will beat the human. We see this over and over. Just give it enough data.” Humans have given agency, genuine decisional power, to processes that are so complex they are hidden.
“Weapons of math destruction” is how the writer Cathy O’Neil describes the nasty and pernicious kinds of algorithms that are not subject to the same challenges that human decision-makers are. Parole algorithms (not Jure’s) can bias decisions on the basis of income or (indirectly) ethnicity. Recruitment algorithms can reject candidates on the basis of mistaken identity. In some circumstances, such as policing, they might create feedback loops, sending police into areas with more crime, which causes more crime to be detected.
The problem is that in many cases, we simply don’t know. The researcher had taken a personal risk to show me what he had created, because his algorithm, like most that really affect us, is proprietary and hidden; they are expensive pieces of intellectual property that we cannot understand, and we cannot challenge. A “black box society”, as the academic Frank Pasquale describes it: a society harmed by a whole new kind of secrecy that obscures the automated judgements that affect our lives.
If, as Jure suspects, machine judgement will become measurably better than human judgement for important decisions, the argument for using it will only grow stronger. And somewhere in that gap between inputs and outputs – the actual decision making part of the process itself – is something that can shape our lives in meaningful ways yet has become less and less understandable.
“We need”, Jure said emphatically, “to step up and come up with the means to evaluate – vet – algorithms in unbiased ways. We need to be able to interpret and explain their decisions. We don’t want an optimal algorithm. We want one simple enough that an expert can look at it and say nothing crazy is happening here. I think we need to get serious about how do we get these things ready for societal deployment, for high-stakes decision environments? How do we debug these things to ensure some level of quality?”
There is something happening here that is deeper than any single algorithm. They are at the forefront of what, at times, appears to be almost a new philosophy. “God is the machine,” the researcher told me. “The black box is the truth. If it works, it works. We shouldn’t even try to work out what the machine is spitting out – they’ll pick up patterns we won’t even know about.”
DAILY BEAST
Iran Claims It’s Taken Full Control of Gulf and Strait of Hormuz
August 27, 2018
A top general claimed Monday that Iran’s navy has taken full control of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz—a major oil shipping route that Iranian officials have previously threatened to block in retaliation for any hostile U.S. action. The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards navy, Gen. Alireza Tangsiri, made the claim, according to the Tasnim news agency, and declared that the U.S. does not belong in the region’s waters. “We can ensure the security of the Persian Gulf and there is no need for the presence of aliens like the U.S. and the countries whose home is not in here,” Tangsiri is quoted as saying by the news service. Relations between Iran and the U.S. have degenerated since President Donald Trump pulled out of a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers and reimposed economic sanctions that aim to cut off Iran’s oil shipments. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the most senior authority in the Islamic Republic, said last month that he supports the idea that if Iran is not allowed to export oil then no country in the region will be allowed to export oil from the Gulf.
***
SPUTNIK
UNSC Might Authorize Military Action If Iran Closes Strait of Hormuz - Official
August 28, 2018
Earlier, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard's navy chief Alireza Tangsiri said that Iran has full control of the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.
Saudi Arabia's energy adviser said that if Iran closes the Straight of Hurmuz, the UN Security Council is likely to authorize military action.
He added that Iran is unable to completely, or partially, close the Straits of Hormuz or Bab al-Mandab.
According to him, the current sanctions are unlikely to stop Iranian exports completely.
Iran has earlier threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off the main oil shipping route, in response to any hostile actions from the US.
Earlier, the Iranian Supreme Leader's Top Adviser for International Affairs Ali Akbar Velayati said that if Iran was not allowed to export its oil via the strait, no other Middle Eastern state would be able to do so.
Trump announced Washington's pullout from the JCPOA in early May, pledging to reinstate anti-Iranian sanctions, including those preventing other countries from doing business with the Islamic Republic.
The US imposed sanctions on trade with Iran involving the Iranian currency, sovereign debt, cars, aircraft, gold and other metals.
In June, the US Department of State urged oil companies to stop importing oil from Iran by November to avoid US sanctions.
***
MPN NEWS
MBS Wants Yemenis to “Shiver” for Generations when They Hear Saudi Arabia, Vows to Continue Targeting Children
Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman recently vowed to continue targeting women and children throughout Yemen in order to “leave a big impact on the consciousness of Yemenis [for] generations.”
By Whitney Webb
August 27, 2018
President Donald Trump shows a chart highlighting arms sales to Saudi Arabia during a meeting with MBS. Evan Vucci | AP
NEW YORK — On Monday, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen, Lise Grande, called for an “independent and impartial investigation” into the Saudi Arabia-led coalition’s attacks on Yemeni civilians. Grande stated that “what is happening in Yemen is unimaginable” and added that “the time has come to wake up to the terrible reality of the war and its human cost and the need to work together to end hostilities.” Grande cited last week’s attacks on a family home and later on a civilian vehicle fleeing fighting near the city of Dreihimi. Those two airstrikes, separated by a matter of hours, killed over 30 civilians, at least 24 of whom were children, some as young as three years old.
Despite the international outcry from UN officials and other public figures, the concern over the coalition’s extensive targeting of civilians is unlikely to influence Saudi Arabia’s actions. Indeed, just as Grande called for an independent investigation, Middle East Monitor {MEMO) reported that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) had recently vowed to continue targeting women and children throughout Yemen in order to “leave a big impact on the consciousness of Yemenis [for] generations.”
MBS allegedly made the comments earlier this month during a meeting with coalition military commanders following the coalition’s bombing of a school bus full of children in early August. That attack, which resulted in international condemnation and the abrupt end of the corporate media’s blackout of Yemen coverage, killed 40 children and 11 adults. The Saudi-led coalition later defendedthe attack as a “legitimate military operation.”
According to the “informed source” cited in the MEMO report, who chose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, MBS also affirmed that he did “not care about international criticism” and further stated that the coalition would continue to carry out military operations on civilian targets because “we [Saudi Arabia] want their [Yemen’s] children, women and even their men to shiver whenever the name of Saudi Arabia is mentioned.”
Prior to becoming the Crown Prince of the Gulf Kingdom, MBS was the “mastermind” behind the Saudi coalition’s war in Yemen, a war which is supported by the United States and the United Kingdom, which aid the coalition by refueling jets, logistical assistance, and “intelligence sharing” used to determine strike targets. Since June, the U.S. has been intimately involved in “fine-tuning” the coalition’s strike list, which has included residential homes, school buses and other civilian targets. However, prior to the deepened U.S. role in choosing coalition targets, the Saudi-led coalition had repeatedly targeted civilian infrastructure throughout Yemen since 2015, having bombed funerals, weddings, schools, farms, hospitals and clinics.
In addition to its consistent targeting of civilian infrastructure, the Saudi-led coalition has imposed a blockade of independent Yemen, which continues despite having been “lifted” in name only. That blockade has pushed millions of Yemenis to the brink of starvation and has allowed history’s largest cholera epidemic to unfold. Currently, an estimated 66,000 children in Yemen die annually from preventable diseases like cholera owing to the impacts of the war and its associated blockade.
While Grande has recently called for an independent investigation into the genocidal war being waged against the Yemeni people, she certainly isn’t the first to do so, as prior calls for such investigations have largely gone nowhere and have had little to no impact on the coalition’s actions. Given MBS’ recently voiced determination to continue to wage total war against the women, children and men of Yemen, and given the U.S. and U.K.’s support of that endeavor, Grande’s calls for accountability will likely be met with inaction by the UN Security Council and the powerful nations supporting the coalition’s war in Yemen. Indeed, the United States, which continues to furnish the coalition with support as well as weapons and munitions, blocked a Senate vote last Wednesday that would have defunded the U.S.’ financial contribution to the war in Yemen.
***
RT
US plans to use fake chemical weapons attack to strike Syria – Russian MoD
August 27, 2018
FILE PHOTO. © Paul Hanna / Reuters
The US may have plans to use a fake chemical attack in Syria to hit government forces with airstrikes, the Russian Defense Ministry has said. Washington is already building up strike capability in the Middle East, it said.
The warning comes a day after the Russian military said it had information about a looming provocation in Syria’s Idlib governorate, which would involve a staged chemical weapons attack. The US earlier warned it would respond to a chemical weapons attack by Syrian government forces with retaliatory strikes, which would be stronger than those conducted by the US, the UK and France in April.
In a statement published on Monday, the Russian MoD said it noted the deployment to the Mediterranean last weekend of the missile destroyer USS Ross carrying 28 Tomahawk cruise missiles on board. It came after a similar move of the USS The Sullivans to the Persian Gulf and the rebasing of a B-1B Lancer strategic bomber to an air base in Qatar. The Russian ministry said the “preparations are the latest evidence of the US intention to use the” expected provocation.
The statement reiterated that the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham militant group, previously known as Al-Nusra Front, was preparing a staged chlorine attack in a city in Idlib. It alleged that a group of jihadists, trained in the handling of chemical weapons by the British private military contractor Olive Group, has already arrived in Jisr al-Shughur. The group will “stage decontamination of victims of a staged chemical weapons attack posing as members of the notorious White Helmets group,” the ministry claimed.
“The implementation of this provocation, which is being conducted with the assistance of the British intelligence services, is meant to serve as the latest pretext for the US, Britain and France to deliver a missile strike against state and economic facilities in Syria,” said General Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry.
On August 22, US National Security Advisor John Bolton stated that “if the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons, we will respond very strongly and they really ought to think about this a long time.”
In April, a reported chlorine attack in Syria’s Eastern Ghouta neighborhood served as justification for the US, UK, and France to attack what they claimed to be sites involved in a clandestine Syrian chemical weapons program. The missile attacks came just as a team of international inspectors was set to arrive at the scene to collect evidence of the supposed attack.
Later, residents of the area told journalists that the footage of the treatment of the alleged victims of the attack was filmed by the White Helmets group after they orchestrated a panic at a local hospital. The patients there were not poisoned by chlorine, local medics said. The footage was presented by the mainstream media as proof that an attack took place.
***
BREITBART
Globalist Macron Vows to Kill Nationalism, While Italy’s Salvini Declares EU ‘Filth’
By Virginia Hale
August 29, 2018
Emmanuel Macron has vowed a globalist bloc determined to impose a progressive EU superstate on the continent will defeat “extremist” pro-national sovereignty conservatives at European Parliament elections next year.
Declaring that the world is at a “moment of great transformations”, the French President outlined his vision for a “European sovereignty” in which Brussels would have autonomy comparable to that of China or the United States of America.
Europe must become “the model for a humanist refoundation of globalisation”, he told the annual French ambassadors’ conference Monday, vowing to “redouble efforts” against patriotic conservative parties in the face of a world “where nationalisms have reawakened”.
The former banker singled out Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in his speech, pronouncing the latter a hypocrite for receiving EU funding while “making great speeches about Christianity” — which Macron said were “anti-European”.
In a dismissal of the two figures’ position that mass migration from the world’s poorest and most violent nations poses a threat to the continent’s safety, Macron claimed Europe’s existence rests on the bloc’s embrace of NGOs, the mainstream media, campaigners, and so-called human rights.
“Our security depends on the reaffirmation of our values, human rights which are at the very foundation, not only of the Council of Europe, but of the European Union, and the defence of all those who represent them every day — I think of non-governmental organisations, intellectuals, artists, activists, journalists,” he said.
Echoing his rhetoric from an earlier speech in which he hinted hundreds of millions of migrants will be flooding Europe “for many years to come” — with “bombshell” African population growth causing an “unprecedented” age of mass migration for EU nations, the liberal premier said Brussels’ role in the world is to “propose a new collective organisation” against the backdrop of a “great demographic transformation”, especially in Africa and the West.
“Every day I listen to people saying ‘do not accept [illegal immigrants], do not welcome them, it is weakness to show goodwill’”, Macron complained, asserting that the continuing arrival of hundreds of thousands of third world migrants to Europe’s shores in boats is no longer a crisis, because the numbers are not as large as they were in 2015.
Continuing on from the apparent swipe at leaders of the Visegrád nations, who argue the EU’s current approach of accepting all newcomers just encourages illegal migration, the French leader stressed that “the right to asylum is in our constitution … it is enshrined in all of our European texts”.
Stating a need to “build a migration policy with Africa … at a European level” Macron warned that “those who are entitled to asylum must be accepted unconditionally” by every country within the bloc.
The president’s speech at the Élysée Palace came a day after Salvini blasted the EU project as “unprecedented filth that doesn’t deserve our money” as other countries’ leaders insisted Italy keep its ports open for boats of migrants without taking a share themselves.
“The European Union has decided to turn its back on Italy once again,” Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio said, as the country was locked in a row with Brussels over the fate of 150 migrants who remained docked for five days in Sicily.
“They want the €20 billion paid by Italian citizens? Then let them demonstrate that they deserve it and that they are taking charge of a problem that we can no longer face alone. The borders of Italy are the borders of Europe,” he added.
***
The American Dream
Civil Unrest Is Brewing, Trump Warns Violence Is Coming If Republicans Lose In November
Authored by Michael Snyder
August 29, 2018
Are we going to see violence in the streets of our major cities following the mid-term elections in November?
President Trump seems to believe that this is a very real possibility, and he shared his thoughts on this with a group of top evangelical leaders on Monday night.
Previously, those that have warned that a “civil war” is coming to America have been heavily criticized, but perhaps people will start taking this more seriously now that President Trump is saying it.
Of course we have already seen dozens of attacks on Trump supporters all over the nation, but the mainstream media largely ignores those because it does not fit the narratives that they are pushing. The mainstream media wants to make Trump and his supporters look as bad as possible, and so they do not like to report anything that may cause the public to view them in a positive light. But everyone can see that anger and hatred are rising to unprecedented levels in this country, and the mainstream media and key politicians on the left are adding more fuel to the fire with each passing day.
On Monday, somewhere around 100 top evangelical leaders gathered for an intimate dinner with Trump, and this dinner made headlines all over the nation…
About 100 evangelical leaders were invited to dinner at the White House Monday night for what was a prayer-filled event that’s been compared to a church camp meeting and a campaign rally.
Dubbed a “state dinner” for evangelical leaders, the event was held specifically in the “honor of evangelical leadership.” The dinner was attended by dozens of evangelical pastors, evangelists and activists who’ve been involved in informally advising the administration including well-known figures like Franklin Graham, James Dobson, and Greg Laurie.
During his remarks at the dinner, Trump acknowledged that “the level of anger is unbelievable”, and he warned that there will be violence if Republicans lose in November…
“The level of hatred, the level of anger is unbelievable,” he said. “Part of it is because of some of the things I’ve done for you and for me and for my family, but I’ve done them. … This Nov. 6 election is very much a referendum on not only me, it’s a referendum on your religion, it’s a referendum on free speech and the First Amendment.”
If the GOP loses, he said, “they will overturn everything that we’ve done and they’ll do it quickly and violently, and violently. There’s violence. When you look at Antifa and you look at some of these groups — these are violent people.”
With only a little more than two months to go before the mid-term elections, I think that President Trump is starting to realize how dire the situation is. Pro-Trump Republicans have lost in primaries in Arizona, Idaho and elsewhere, Democratic candidates are raising far more money than Republican candidates are, and the left has far more energy and enthusiasm than the right does at the moment.
If the mid-term elections were held right now, the Democrats would almost certainly take control of the House, and they might even win a majority in the Senate.
And Trump is correct that there will probably be violence if Republicans lose, but there will also probably be violence if Republicans win. Either way, Antifa and other groups on the radical left will continue to escalate the rhetoric and the violence.
In addition to rioting in the streets like we have already witnessed in cities such as Portland, individual Trump supporters are already being attacked at an alarming rate as well.
You can find a fairly comprehensive list of attacks on Trump supporters right here.
This nation is becoming a cauldron of fury, and it isn’t going to take much to set off widespread chaos.
At the dinner on Monday night, Trump also warned evangelicals that our religious freedoms are in serious jeopardy…
“I just ask you to go out and make sure all of your people vote. Because if they don’t — it’s November 6 — if they don’t vote, we’re going to have a miserable two years and we’re going to have, frankly, a very hard period of time,” he said.
“You’re one election away from losing everything that you’ve gotten,” he added. “Little thing: Merry Christmas, right? You couldn’t say ‘Merry Christmas.’ “
And even though we probably aren’t going to lose the right to say “Merry Christmas” any time soon, the truth is that we are certainly seeing our religious freedoms being eroded at a staggering pace.
In fact, earlier today I came across an article about a plaque containing the Ten Commandments that was just removed from a park in Ohio. The left wants to remove every trace of the Christian faith from public life, and they are absolutely relentless in their effort to get this done.
If the Democrats take control of both the House and the Senate in November, they will probably make an effort to impeach President Trump.
But if President Trump gets impeached, Mike Pence will become president, and many on the left hate Pence even more than they hate Trump.
In his brand new book about Pence, radical leftist Michael D’Antonio attempts to portray Mike Pence as a “Christian supremacist” that is basically functioning as “a president-in-waiting”…
Biographer Michael D’Antonio is releasing a new book about Vice President Mike Pence, and though he’s clearly not in Pence’s corner, his appearance Tuesday on CNN summed up perfectly the Christian values that drive the vice president’s actions.
D’Antonio told CNN’s John Berman that he is confident Pence feels God is “calling him” to “function as a president-in-waiting.” The biographer, promoting the new book, “The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence,” argued “absolutely everything” the vice president does is about “becoming president.”
Ultimately, removing Trump from the picture won’t change a whole lot. The left would still be seething with hatred and anger, and we would continue to see more violence all around the country.
At this point, there really isn’t any conservative that the left would be willing to accept in the White House. And there are many on the right that would not be willing to acknowledge any liberal as a legitimate president.
America is rapidly getting to the point of becoming ungovernable, and no matter who wins in November, it is quite likely that we will soon see clear evidence of this as chaos reigns in our streets.
Zero Hedge
Germany Calls for New Global Payment System Independent of the US
By Tyler Durden
August 24, 2018
In a stunning vote of “no confidence” in the US monopoly over global payment infrastructure, Germany’s foreign minister Heiko Maas called for the creation of a new payments system independent of the US that would allow Brussels to be independent in its financial operations from Washington and as a means of rescuing the nuclear deal between Iran and the west.
Writing in the German daily Handelsblatt, Maas said “Europe should not allow the US to act over our heads and at our expense. For that reason it’s essential that we strengthen European autonomy by establishing payment channels that are independent of the US, creating a European Monetary Fund and building up an independent Swift system,” he wrote, cited by the FT.
Maas said it was vital for Europe to stick with the Iran deal. “Every day the agreement continues to exist is better than the highly explosive crisis that otherwise threatens the Middle East,” he said, with the unspoken message was even clearer: Europe no longer wants to be a vassal state to US monopoly over global payments, and will now aggressively pursue its own “Swift” network that is not subservient to Washington’s every whim.
Swift, a Belgium-based global payment network, enables financial institutions worldwide to send and receive information about financial transactions. The system’s management claims Swift is politically neutral and independent, although it has previously been used to block transactions and enforce US sanctions against various countries, most notably Iran. In 2012, the Danish newspaper Berlingske wrote that US authorities managed to seize money being transferred from a Danish businessman to a German bank for a batch of US-sanctioned Cuban cigars. The transaction was made in US dollars, which allowed Washington to block it.
According to Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute, a Berlin-based think-tank, Maas’s intervention was the “strongest call yet for EU financial and monetary autonomy vis-à-vis US.”
The German foreign minister’s article highlights the depth of the dilemma facing European politicians as they struggle to keep the Iran deal alive while coping with the fallout of US sanctions imposed by Mr Trump against companies doing business with Tehran.
Maas also called for the creation of a “balanced partnership” with the US in which the Europeans filled the gaps left where the US withdrew from the world. Europe must, he said, “form a counterweight when the US crosses red lines”.
As the FT adds, the EU has vowed to protect European businesses from punitive measures adopted by Washington, but that has failed to convince EU companies, who are more concerned about maintaining their access to the lucrative US market than in the more modest opportunities presented by Iran.
Last month Washington rebuffed a high-level European plea to exempt crucial industries from sanctions. Mike Pompeo, US secretary of state, and Steven Mnuchin, Treasury secretary, formally rejected an appeal for carve-outs in finance, energy and healthcare made by ministers from Germany, France, the UK and the EU.
Swift is also affected: unless it wins an exemption from sanctions, it will be required by the US to cut off targeted Iranian banks from its network by early November or face possible countermeasures against both its board members and the financial institutions that employ them. These could include asset freezes and US travel bans for the individuals, and restrictions on banks’ ability to do business in the US.
Maas’s stark warning against US domination of global payments comes with relations between Germany and the US in their worst state for decades. Mr Trump has chastised Berlin over its large trade surplus, its relatively low military spending and its support for Nord Stream 2, a new gas pipeline that will bring Russian gas directly to Germany.
Meanwhile, Berlin has looked on in dismay as Mr Trump has withdrawn the US from the Iran deal and the Paris climate treaty, imposed import tariffs on EU steel and aluminium and appeared to question America’s commitment to Nato.
In short: Europe has finally had enough and it plans on hitting back at Trump where it truly hurts: the money.
Zero Hedge
"Thank God This Is Happening" Russia Says Time Has Come To Ditch The Dollar
By Tyler Durden
August 24, 2018
With the US unveiling a new set of sanctions against Russia on Friday, Moscow said it would definitely respond to Washington’s latest sanctions and, in particular, it is accelerating efforts to abandon the American currency in trade transactions, said Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.
"The time has come when we need to go from words to actions, and get rid of the dollar as a means of mutual settlements, and look for other alternatives," he said in an interview with International Affairs magazine, quoted by RT.
"Thank God, this is happening, and we will speed up this work,” Ryabkov said, explaining the move would come in addition to other “retaliatory measures” as a response to a growing list of US sanctions.
Previously, Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak said that a growing number of countries are interested in replacing the dollar as a medium in global oil trades and other transactions.
“There is a common understanding that we need to move towards the use of national currencies in our settlements. There is a need for this, as well as the wish of the parties,” Novak said.
According to the minister, it concerns both Turkey and Iran, with more countries likely to join the growing dedollarization wave.
“We are considering an option of payment in national currencies with them. This requires certain adjustments in the financial, economic, and banking sectors” to accomplish. Last week, we reported that the Kremlin was interested in trading with Ankara using the Russian ruble and the Turkish lira. India has also vowed to pay for Iranian oil in rupees.
Meanwhile, the world’s second-largest economy and Washington's trade war nemesis, China, has been taking steps to challenge the greenback's dominance with the launch of an oil futures contract backed by Chinese currency, the petro-yuan. China and Iran have already agreed to stop using the dollar in global trade as China has ramped up purchases of Iranian oil in defiance of US sanctions.
***
KWN
Greyerz – The Price Of Gold Is About To Skyrocket As We Enter The “Dark Years”
August 26, 2018
A World Living On Borrowed Time
August 26 (King World News) – Egon von Greyerz: “This is it! The autumn of 2018 will be momentous in the world economy, markets and politics. We are now seeing the ‘Last Hurrah’ for stocks, bonds, the dollar and most asset markets.
The world economy has been living on borrowed time since the 2006-9 crisis. The financial system should have collapsed at that time. But the massive life support that central banks orchestrated managed to keep the dying patient alive for another decade. Lowering interest rates to zero or negative and printing enough money to double global debt seems to have solved the problem. But rather than saving the world from an economic collapse, the growth of debt and asset bubbles have created a system with exponentially higher risk…
“So here we are on the “Eve of Destruction” when the fake measures that governments and central banks have taken have not saved the world, as the Keynesians believe, but instead created an even bigger bubble that is now about to burst. Curing a sick world by the same means that created the disease in the first place was always bound to fail.
Global problems of the magnitude that the world will experience in coming years normally start in the periphery. We are seeing multiple examples of local wildfires that will soon spread to the core of the world economy.
Take for example the VAT countries. Not Value Added Tax, but Venezuela, Argentina, and Turkey. Deficits, debts and currency collapse are the normal warning signals and these are certainly present at varying degrees in the VAT countries. As always, the best single indicator which reveals these problems is, of course. gold. As the chart below shows, gold in Venezuelan Bolivars is going up exponentially. Since May 2018, gold has gone up 23,000x or 2.3 million percent.
Argentina goes from one crisis to the next and gold is up 14,500% this century. Only since December of 2017, gold is up 74% in Pesos. Finally in Turkey gold is up 26% since May of this year and 3,500% since 2000. No wonder governments around the world hate gold. Because gold reveals their deceitful actions in destroying the economy and the currency.
The Real VAT Problem
There is blatant manipulation in so many areas including fake money, fake paper gold, fake news, fake politics and fake governments. The VAT countries are just one example but a very important one because they are giving us the signal that a global crisis has started. Most emerging market countries are in the same situation. In the next few months, emerging markets will drop one after the next.
The situation is the same in the West too. Europe is totally bankrupt. The EU is desperately trying to keep a collection of disparate nations together by coercion combined with forcing debt onto any nation that threatens to exit the EU or Euro. Greece and Italy should have left the EU long ago, introduced their own devalued currency and reneged on the debt to the EU. But they were stopped by Brussels. Now they will fall with the rest of the EU. The UK people voted to leave the EU but Brussels are using any means to stop that from happening.
An artificial collection of nations with very different people, cultures, history, ambitions, financial systems, growth rates, etc, was always doomed to fail. To have this hotchpotch of countries governed by an unelected and unaccountable elite in Brussels makes it even worse. The Swiss system with direct democracy and people power together with distribution of power to the Cantons (local States) is a much more efficient system.
The world could possibly cope with the major problems in Emerging Markets and Europe if the world’s biggest economy, the US, was sound. But, sadly, that is far from the case. The biggest economy is also the sickest. Federal debt has doubled every 8 years, which puts the US on target for a $40 trillion debt by 2025. I am well aware that this is substantially above the official forecasts but why pay any attention to these since they have always been wrong.
And the Federal debt seems to be $42 trillion rather than $21 trillion if the $21 trillion “lost” dollars are accurate based on Catherine Austin-Fitts’ findings. More likely is that problems in the economy combined with a financial crisis will lead to unlimited money printing and surging interest rates. So a US Federal debt in 2025 of $100 trillion or in the quadrillions is not impossible, especially when the derivatives bubble blows up.
$5 Trillion Will Have To Be Spent
Having personally crossed the collapsed Genoa bridge three days before the accident, one is reminded of the major underinvestment in infrastructure worldwide (and also how ephemeral life is). Italy will now spend EUR 80 billion, that they don’t have, to improve the country’s infrastructure. Driving around Italy you realize that this will be a drop in the ocean. Most countries have neglected infrastructure investments for a very long time. In USA for example, it is estimated by the American Association of Civil Engineers that $5 trillion needs to be invested by 2025 to fix roads, bridges, dams and other infrastructure. That is another $5 trillion that will be printed out of nowhere.
Since the global crisis has already started, we might see a collapse of markets, bubble assets and currencies at any time. Before that, it is possible that the final minor leg up or the ‘Last Hurrah’ will take place. That would involve a final move up in some stock markets and a temporarily stronger dollar.
The long term trend of the dollar is clear. It will go into oblivion faster than anyone can imagine. We must remember that measured in real terms, which is gold, the dollar is down over 98% since the Fed was created in 1913 and down 80% since 1999. So the dollar is already on its way to perdition but the next phase will happen faster than anyone can imagine.
“Time to get rid of the US dollar” said the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister recently. He added “Thank god this is happening …. We will speed up this work.”
Russia, China, Turkey, Iran and many more countries, are also determined to trade in their own currencies in gold. This will precipitate the fall of the dollar. But the major reason why the dollar will soon conclude its 100 year move to ZERO is the dire state of the US economy as mentioned above.
Entering The Dark Years
As we end a long and totally engineered bull market in the world economy, we will be entering the Dark Years that I wrote about a few years ago. Hard to imagine that the powers that be have managed to fool the world for a decade. But this next time, their panic actions, using the same medicine of massive money printing and lower interest rates, won’t work. The world will recognize that printed money is not even worth the paper it is written on, or that electronic entries called money can disappear as quickly as they are created.
As the West has overtly and covertly reduced its gold holdings, the East is continuing to add as much as they can at these bargain prices. Most central banks have either sold or leased a major part of their gold to the market. This gold is then bought by China, India or Russia, through the bullion banks. These Eastern countries obviously take physical delivery rather than leaving the gold in London or New York. When you own gold, you must have direct control.
***
RT
Argentina's currency collapses despite massive rate hike as possible debt default looms
August 31, 2018
People
walk past a currency exchange board in Buenos Aires' financial
district, Argentina © Marcos Brindicci / Reuters
Efforts by the Argentinian central bank to stabilize the national currency by raising a key interest rate to 60 percent have done little to soothe rapidly deteriorating sentiment in Latin America’s third-largest economy.
The peso, which has lost over half its value against the US dollar since the start of the year, plunged more than 15 percent following news of the rate hike. It was trading at 38.53 peso per dollar on Friday.
Argentina’s central bank, which on Thursday sharply raised interest rates from 45 to 60 percent, said the move was in “response to the foreign exchange rate situation and the risk of greater inflation.”
The regulator had already increased interest rates four times since April, most recently on August 13. The rate hikes were prompted by a sudden weakening in the peso after a drought hampered farm exports earlier in the year.
Investors are raising concerns that Buenos Aires could soon default as it struggles to repay heavy government loans. On Wednesday, Argentina’s government unexpectedly asked for the early release of a $50 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The fund said it would look to “revise the government’s economic plan with a focus on better insulating Argentina from recent shifts in global financial markets.” Last month, the IMF said it expects Argentina’s economy to stabilize by the end of the year and a gradual recovery to begin in 2019.
Still, many in Argentina blame the IMF for encouraging fiscal policies that escalated the country's worst economic crisis in 2001 when it suffered a record $100 billion debt default.
Argentine President Mauricio Macri attempted to calm the public in a televised address, saying: “I know that these tumultuous situations generate anxiety among many of you... I understand this, and I want you to know I am making all decisions necessary to protect you.”
***
OLD-THINKER NEWS
Bone-Chilling Footage From Inside China Shows Raw Reality of Enslavement Tacitly Supported by Big Tech
By Daniel Taylor
August 27, 2018
Chinese man describes the horror as best he can: “They’re eating our flesh and drinking our blood“.
This is the system that big tech companies are bowing to.
***
RT
They have to go back: Hungary’s Orban calls for deporting illegal migrants to Africa
August 29, 2018
© Massimo Pinca / Reuters
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said that illegal immigrants in Italy must be deported back to Africa instead of relocated to other places in Europe and that Hungary is willing to help with the process.
Orban was speaking during a press conference following a meeting with Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who has come under fire in recent days for refusing to allow more than 100 African migrants to disembark from a boat docked in Catania.
Asked whether migrants should be relocated from Italy to other EU countries, Orban said that they should be sent back home.
“We should send them back instead of relocating them,” he said, adding that anything else would mean “the human smugglers have won” and “immigrants would keep coming in further waves”.
Orban said that illegal migration was the most important issue facing the European Union and said that Hungary was “attacked” by Brussels because the country had shown that it was possible that migrants could be stopped on land, referring to the fence built at Hungary’s border with Serbia and Croatia.
It was possible, Orban said, for Salvini to prove that migrants could “also be stopped at sea.” He called on Salvini not to “retreat” and promised assistance from Hungary to help Italy protect its borders.“Europe’s security hinges on his [Salvini’s] success,” he said.
Orban said that Brussels’ policies on migration, particularly those driven from Germany, France and Spain, were aimed at “better management” of the influx of migrants, while the Visegrad group - which is made up of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic - wants to stop illegal migration fully.
Earlier in the day, other top officials from Italy's ruling coalition said that EU funds to Hungary should be stopped because it had not responded to Italy's "request for help" in relocating migrants.
Salvini described the meeting with Orban as one in a “long series of meetings to change the destiny of Europe” and said the two countries were “close to a historic breakthrough on a continental level”.
Both Orban and Salvini have angered Brussels with their anti-migrant rhetoric and refusal to cooperate with EU demands. Orban has referred to migrants in Europe as “Muslim invaders” who he said are not true refugees, while Salvini has said he is prepared to be arrested in his defence of Italy’s borders.
***
Zero Hedge
Murderous Mexico: July Most Violent Ever As Country Descends Into Chaos
By Tyler Durden
August 8, 2018
Mexico continues to descend into chaos, as a record number of homicide cases were opened last month, the Ministry of Public Security said Tuesday.
The ministry states 2,599 homicide cases were opened in July - an average of 84 per day, for a total of 3,017 registered victims.
This is the highest monthly toll ever record since Mexico began keeping stats on homicide cases in the late 1990s. The previous record of 2,894 was set in May.
In 2018, there have been 16,399 homicide cases opened in the first seven months, which represent a 14 percent increase over the same period last year, said the Los Angeles Times.
Last year was the country’s most violent period on record, with more than 25,000 homicide investigations into 31,174 death.
If the parabolic death trend continues, 2018 could go in the record books as the most violent year ever.
Scott Stewart, a Mexico analyst at the Texas-based intelligence firm Stratfor, spoke with the Los Angeles Times about the problematic situation in Mexico. He said Mexican authorities did not have much choice but to splinter the cartels. “You can’t let them get to the point where they can actually challenge the state,” he said.
There is no doubt that Mexico’s kingpin strategy of killing or arresting cartel heads has had a destabilizing effect in the region, he explained.
“Years ago you had large cartels that were fairly dominant in many areas and it was fairly tranquil,” he said.“Now there’s so much friction, and it leads to violence across the board.”
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, recently acknowledged that the government’s strategy to fracture drug cartels has, by some means, failed.
“I am the first to recognize that, although we made progress, it was not enough to achieve the great goal of security,” Peña Nieto said at a news conference earlier this week alongside the president-elect, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who takes office in December.
According to the LA Times, rising violence in the last five years played a significant role in an Obrador Presidential victory last month. Obrador recently laid out his plan to combat drug cartels, as it is likely, there is more violence to come.
“Lopez Obrador has said that he “will not rule out any option” to bring peace to Mexico. Among the radical approaches, he is considering are the legalization of marijuana and an amnesty for some drug war criminals.
Clemency for even low-level participants in the country’s multibillion-dollar drug industry would mark a dramatic shift from the militaristic approach that Mexico has long employed in its attempt to curb trafficking.
Lopez Obrador has not proposed returning Mexican soldiers to their barracks or letting cartel bosses walk free. But he has called for a more holistic approach to Mexico’s violence. That includes giving federal scholarships to students and creating employment programs to keep vulnerable young people off the streets.
Olga Sanchez Cordero, a former Supreme Court justice who is Lopez Obrador’s pick for interior secretary, has said an amnesty for low-level growers, users and transporters of narcotics would be a part of a larger effort to help reintegrate into society some of the estimated 600,000 Mexicans employed by drug cartels.
Lopez Obrador’s advisors are on a multi-city listening tour to get input from victims groups about an amnesty and other plans. Speaking at an event in Mexico City last month, Sanchez said she hopes to push for an amnesty. Her boss has given her “a blank check,” and has asked her to do “whatever is necessary to pacify this country,” she said.
For now, however, the current strategy remains in place. Last week, members of the Mexican government appeared alongside officials from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration at a news conference in Chicago to announce that they are focused on capturing Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, also known as El Mencho, who is the leader of the ascendant Jalisco New Generation cartel,” said LA Times.
To sum up, as long as America’s hunger for opioids and opioid analogs continues, Mexico will be the low-cost supplier, as drug cartels battle each other for control of the trade routes into the dying heartland of the US. Since Mexico’s attempt to fracture cartels did not work — lets try a new approach and it should start by curbing demand in America. How about that one?
***
AP
Mount Etna volcano roars into action with ash and lava
August 24, 2018
ROME (AP) — Mount Etna in Sicily has roared back into spectacular volcanic action, sending up plumes of ash and spewing lava.
Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology (INGV) says that the volcano, which initially “re-awoke” in late July, sprang into fuller action Thursday evening by shooting up chunks of flaming lava as high as 150 meters (500 feet) almost constantly.
On Friday, INGV said the action was continuing, feeding ash plumes several hundred meters (yards) into the air above the crater.
No evacuations of towns on Etna’s slopes were reported.
Sicilians farm on the fertile soils of the slopes of Etna. The volcano is also a popular destination for hikers on the Mediterranean island.
***
Which Guitar Would You Play?
Take a close look at the two guitars pictured below. If you were a guitarist, which would you pick up to play? Probably the one on the top with the straight frets (the thin metal pieces along the fret board that the strings are pressed down onto), right? Well, you might be surprised to hear that it’s the one at the bottom that some guitarists say makes the best sound. Odd, isn’t it?
Experienced guitar players know that it’s actually impossible to tune even the best-quality guitars to produce perfect pitch in every note and chord everywhere along the fret board. This is because of the nature of how guitars have been built for hundreds of years.
In typical guitars the traditional straight frets located intermittently along the fret board are not in the precise location required to produce perfect pitch everywhere along the fret board. This means that even if you tune a guitar precisely to sound perfectly in the chord E, it might sound out of tune while playing the chord G, or when playing the same E formation further up the fret board. This is true of other chords and notes as well. This is an annoyance that guitarists have to deal with and is one of the reasons that guitarists often retune their guitars between songs.
Some guitarists tune some strings slightly out of tune in such a way as to strike a happy medium so that no matter what note or chord is played anywhere on the fret board, it’s close enough to perfect pitch to sound good enough overall. Some guitarists adjust tuning for optimum pitch for certain chord patterns which sound out of tune for other songs with differing chord patterns.
One luthier (guitar maker) got so annoyed by constantly struggling with this inherent weakness in guitars that he decided to create a guitar that eliminated it altogether. The “true temperament guitar” with the crooked frets is what he came up with. He adjusted the frets by measuring precisely the position where each note has to be “fretted” in order to produce perfect pitch everywhere along the fret board no matter what note or chord is played. This resulted in the frets looking rather twisted or mangled. The result, however, is what users claim is a beautiful guitar that just “sings.”
Of what significance is this to us? At first glance it would seem that the luthier had lost his mind to produce a guitar with such obviously misshapen frets. And yet the guitar produces a strikingly more harmonious sound than the so-called proper-looking guitar. Isn’t this so with us? The Bible clearly tells us that what looks right and proper to the natural man might not be fit for God’s use; in fact, the opposite might be true. Consider the following verses:
But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”—1 Samuel 16:7
“Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,” says the LORD Almighty.—Zechariah 4:6
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence.—1 Corinthians 1:25–29
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.—2 Corinthians 4:7
With all our weaknesses and faults, we might feel imperfect and twisted like the frets of the true temperament guitar, but when in the hands of the master musician we can make beautiful melodies for Him. It’s when we believe ourselves to be so good and “straight” in our own righteousness, like normal guitars with their perfectly straight yet imperfect frets, that our sound can actually become slightly out of harmony and dissonant, resulting in a sound less attractive to the lost.
God allows us to be just as imperfect as we are for a purpose, so that we are more useful and He gets the glory.
***
Until
next week...keep on believing.
Almondtree Productions
“And
he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is
made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory
in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
(2
Corinthians 12:9)