People of the Keys!

“Behold, how good and how pleasant [it is] for brethren to dwell together in unity!”
(Psalm 133:1)

How Pleasant

LETTERS TO THE CHURCH

FRANCIS CHAN

LETTERS TO THE CHURCH

Published by David C Cook

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ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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the Bible. (Public Domain.); NIV are taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW

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LCCN 2018942853

ISBN 978-0-8307-7658-0

eISBN 978-0-8307-7583-5

© 2018 Crazy Love Ministries

The Team: Wendi Lord, Amy Konyndyk, Nick

Lee, Rachael Stevenson, Susan Murdock

Cover Design: Jim Elliston

Printed in the United States of America

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© 2018 Crazy Love Ministries. Published by David C Cook. All rights reserved. NOT FINAL-CHANGES MAY OCCUR

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments 15

1. The Departure 17

2. Sacred 39

3. The Order 55

4. The Gang 81

5. Servants 97

6. Good Shepherds 115

7. Crucified 139

8. Unleashed 163

9. Church Again 181

Notes 211

© 2018 Crazy Love Ministries. Published by David C Cook. All rights reserved. NOT FINAL-CHANGES MAY OCCUR

THE GANG

We live in a time when people go to a building on Sunday mornings, attend an hour-long service, and call themselves members of the Church.

Does that sound shocking to you? Of course not. This is perfectly normal. It’s what we grew up with. We all know good Christians go to church.

But have you ever read the New Testament? Do you find anything in Scripture that is even remotely close to the pattern we have created? Do you find anyone who “went” to church?

Try to imagine Paul and Peter speaking like we do today: “Hey Peter, where do you go to church now?”

“I go to The River. They have great music and I love the kids’ program.”

“Cool. Can I check out your church next Sunday? I’m not getting much out of mine.”

“Totally. I’m not going to be there next Sunday because little Matthew has soccer. But how about the week after?”

“Sounds good. Hey, do they have a singles group?”

It’s comical to think of Paul and Peter speaking like this. Yet that’s a normal conversation among Christians today. Why? There are so many things wrong with the above conver- sation I don’t even know where to start. The fact that we have reduced the sacred mystery of Church to a one-hour service we attend is staggering. Yet that’s the way I defined it for years! I didn’t know anything different. It’s what everyone did, so I didn’t think to question it.

LET’S GO TO GANG

Think about it this way. One of the elders of my church, Rob, spent most of his life in gangs. He encountered Jesus when he was imprisoned and placed in solitary confinement. Today, he is one of the most loving people I know. In fact, I’m not sure I know of anyone who loves Jesus and people as well as he does.

Rob tells me stories of gang life and the fear he felt when he left his gang to join the body of Christ. To do this in prison can be suicidal; he had to make a serious break with his gang, and gangs are anything but casual about breaking those ties. But the Lord intervened to spare his life. It wasn’t just the physical torture or death he feared; he dreaded the rejection by those he loved. The gang was his family. These were loyal and dear friends who looked out for him twenty-four hours a day. There was a love and camaraderie from being in a gang that he had enjoyed since childhood. Now he would lose those relationships and be hated by them all.

When Rob describes gang life, much of it sounds like what the Church was meant to be. Obviously, there are major differences (drugs, murder—you know, little details like that), but the idea of “being a family” is central to both gang life and God’s design for the Church. Yet while we use family termi- nology in our churches, Rob’s stories have convinced me that the gangs have a much stronger sense of what it means to be a family than we do in the Church.

From what you know about gangs, could you ever imag- ine gang life being reduced to a weekly one-hour gathering? No group would meet briefly once a week and call that a gang. Imagine one gang member walking up to another one and saying, “Yo, how was gang? I had to miss this week because life has been crazy!”

We all know enough about gangs to know that’s ridiculous. Yet every week, we hear Christians asking each other, “How was church?” Something that God has designed to function as a fam- ily has been reduced to an optional weekly meeting. And this has become normal. Expected. How in the world did we get here? Any gang member will tell you his homies have his back. They’re there for him. They’re loyal, committed, present. Meanwhile, in many churches, you have about as much of a connection to the people who are supposedly your spiritual family as you would to someone who visited the same movie theater as you.

SUPERNATURAL LOVE

Is it just a nice cliché to say the Church should be like a family? I mean, it’s a great thought, but our families are our families! Does God really expect us to be this close with people we’re not related to, people we wouldn’t even choose to be friends with? I agree that it’s natural to be close with your family, and unnatural to experi- ence this with people who are not like you. But that’s exactly the point! It’s not supposed to be natural—it’s supernatural!

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34–35 NIV

One thing the New Testament makes clear is that the Church is supposed to be known for its love. Jesus says our love for one another is the very thing that will attract the world. But can you name a single church in our country that is known for the way its members love one another? I’m sure you can think of churches known for excitement or powerful preaching or wor- ship or production value. But can you name a church known for supernatural love?

When the phrase “one another” is mentioned over a hun- dred times in the New Testament (love one another, care for ..., pray for ..., admonish ..., etc.), why is it that you can’t think of a single church known for the way they take care of each other? God clearly cares about this. Why don’t we? As elders at Cornerstone Church, we asked ourselves if anyone would notice supernatural love when they walked into our gatherings. It was not that we were void of love, it just didn’t stand out. Honestly, the love in our midst was a far cry from anything that we could attribute to the Holy Spirit.

At this point, some of you are probably thinking, Well, that’s Francis’s experience with his church. I’m actually part of a very loving congregation, probably more loving than what he experienced at Cornerstone. It’s possible, but you need to know that Cornerstone was a very loving church, as far as American churches go. We really enjoyed being with each other, had some good small groups, and served the poor in our area and around the world. We were a very nice and kind church, and

we definitely witnessed some Spirit-inspired acts of love. With some notable exceptions, we just weren’t experiencing what we saw in the Bible.

As elders, we weren’t content to just love people better than the church down the street. We were looking for biblical love. Our love felt too similar to the love we received from coworkers and neighbors. Sometimes we are too quick to label our church experience as “Christian love.” Jesus made it clear that even sinners know how to love each other (Luke 6:32–36). Haven’t you ever worked in a restaurant, joined a gym, or bonded with other parents at your kids’ sporting events? Is the love you experience in your church really that different? It’s supposed to be.

Jesus said, “As I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34 NIV). Our King who allowed Himself to be tortured and killed for us tells us to love each other in the same way. Have you ever even considered loving a fellow Christian as sacrificially and selflessly as Christ loved you? When was the last time you looked at a Christian brother or sister selflessly, wanting to bring them life no matter what the cost?

Think of a few of the people in your church. Picture their faces. Now think about the lengths to which Jesus went to bring those specific people to Himself. Think of the whippings He endured so that they could be forgiven. Imagine the way He thought of each of those people as He hung on the cross.

No sacrifice was too great; there was nothing He would hold back. He did everything necessary to redeem and heal and transform those specific people.

He did the same for you. So ask yourself: Who does God want you to pursue? Who could you desire to spend time with more? Jesus went to the ultimate extent for them; why would you hold anything back? Jesus pursued those people from heaven to earth to bring them into His family, what barriers could hold you back from pursuing a deep familial relation- ship with them?

We have experienced the greatest love in the universe. Shouldn’t that profound love flow out of us? And shouldn’t that be enough to shock the world?

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”

1 John 4:7–12

Did you catch that? Right there is a promise that if we love one another, God will abide in us, and His love will be perfected in us. Is there anything in the world you want more than that? We don’t live like this statement is true. And that breaks my heart, because there is also a serious warning in this passage that those who don’t love don’t know God. What does this say about our churches? The importance of loving one another is emphasized all throughout Scripture (Rom. 12:9–10; 1 Pet. 4:8; 1 Cor. 13; etc.), and I can’t help feeling like we’re missing out on something extraordinary because of our lack of love.

SUPERNATURAL UNITY

When Jesus was approaching the cross, He prayed a fascinat- ing prayer. This prayer was for His disciples, and some of His statements have really challenged my faith.

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” John 17:20–23

Jesus prayed that the unity of His followers would be equal to the oneness of the Father and Son! He wants you and me to be one just as the Father and Son are united. Have you ever considered pursuing this type of unity with your church?

Do you even believe this is possible?

Let me keep going with this. Jesus’ prayer was not that we would just get along and avoid church splits. His prayer was that we would become “perfectly one.” He prayed this because our oneness was designed to be the way to prove that Jesus was the Messiah. Jesus said the purpose of our unity was “so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them.”

For some of us, that prayer doesn’t make sense. How could our unity result in the world’s belief? How could see- ing us love each other make someone believe that Jesus truly came from heaven? It feels like saying two plus two equals a thousand. Just remember that Scripture is filled with impos- sible equations. Marching around a city seven times doesn’t seem like it would result in its walls collapsing, but then it happened (see Josh. 6). Church unity doesn’t seem like it would result in people getting saved, but it actually did hap- pen (Acts 2:44–47).

They were united and the result was people being saved. Acts describes the extent of their unity like this:

“Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.” Acts 4:32–35

I don’t know about you, but that passage always moves me. The Church looks so beautiful, so attractive. It is that kind of love that makes our message believable. Scripture is clear: there is a real connection between our unity and the believ- ability of our message. If we are serious about winning the lost, we must be serious about pursuing unity.

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. Philippians 1:27–28

If you skipped past the verses above, please go back and read them. Then read them again. Notice the promise at the end: our fearless unity is “a clear sign to [those who oppose Christians] of their destruction”! We are living in a time when very few people believe in the wrath of God. Even the evilest people we know have no fear of a literal judgement day. Have you ever tried to convince someone of their future destruction? It’s not a simple task. Yet Scripture tells us that our fearless unity will convince them.

When are we going to take these promises seriously and spend our energy seeking unity? Not just the kind of unity where we avoid arguments with each other, but the kind where we truly live together as a family. Where we meet each other’s needs and care for one another regardless of the time or effort required. Unity doesn’t come easily. Think of everything it takes for a family to stay together—all the acts of service it requires, all the forgiveness and grace that must be constantly extended, all the times when one person’s desires have to be lovingly laid aside for the desires of others. It’s easy to talk about unity, but it requires a kind of mutual commitment that is all but absent from our churches. If we’re going to see this become a reality, we need to count the cost and decide if we will commit. I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t come naturally to me. I’m an introvert who is happy with a few close friends. Obedience often grates against our natural desires; but if we only obey when it feels natural, then Jesus is not truly Lord of our lives. What often results from obedience, however, is unexpected blessing. Now that I am starting to experience true unity with my brothers and sisters, I don’t want to ever live without it.

Pushing the Church to live as a family is not some gim- mick, some flavor of “church” that would be fun to try; it’s commanded. And it’s offered. Crafting the Church into a truly united and supernaturally loving family is the very thing God is wanting to do. Do we believe God is capable? Do we trust that His design for His Church is what will be most effective?

We have come up with countless strategies to reach the lost when God promises that unity is the method that will work. Think about that: God gave us instructions on how to reach the world, yet we abandon the one set of instructions He gave us even as we scramble to create classes and programs and events that promote everything but the strategy God gave us!

HAVE WE GIVEN UP?

When you read about the unity of the early church, does it make you jealous? Something in you wishes you were born two thousand years ago so you could be a part of a group like this. You can get depressed by the dual realization that this is the very thing you’ve always wanted and you’re not going to find this in the typical American church today.

It’s sad that our churches look nothing like this. It’s devas- tating that we don’t believe it is possible.

What I see today is many people choosing to opt out of the Church. Claiming a continued love for Jesus, they have decided that the Church only gets in their way. It’s a sad time when those who want to be close to Jesus have given up on the Church.

There is this terrifying verse in 1 Timothy where Paul talked about two men who rejected the faith. Paul said that he had handed them over to Satan, by which he meant that he’d put them outside of the Church (1:20). Basically, these men were actively opposing the works of God, so rather than pretending everything was fine, Paul removed them from the safety and blessings of the fellowship of believers. He was hop- ing that the misery of being separated from the Church would lead them to repent. Are you catching the weight of this? Paul equated removal from the Church with being handed over to Satan! It is crazy to me that we live in a time when people are voluntarily doing this to themselves! No church has placed them outside of the fellowship; instead, they’ve handed them- selves over to Satan!

Real love, unity, and blessing were supposed to be found in the Church. Many are having a hard time finding that, so they’re setting off on their own. Jesus said that the world would see the supernatural unity and love we share in the Church and believe in Him through that. But we’re not experiencing it. We’ve given up on it. We no longer believe it is possible.

What if we took God’s description of the Church as a family seriously? What would happen if a group of people sought Jesus fervently, loved each other sacrificially, and then shared the gospel boldly?

Sadly, there are a lot of people in our churches who aren’t interested in living out loving family like this. I’m going to say something that might be hard to hear: What if we let them leave? I know that goes against all of the wisdom of modern church-growth strategies, but it’s exactly the kind of thing Jesus would do. While we design strategies to slowly ease people into Christian commitment and grow attendance at our ser- vices, Jesus called people to count the cost from the very start (Luke 14:25–35). He didn’t expect His followers to be perfect, but He did demand that they be committed (Luke 9:57–62). The people who leave your church because they’re turned off by the level of relational commitment will find another church that can provide what they’re looking for. You can’t shape the life of your church around who might leave if things start to feel too much like the New Testament.

Jesus doesn’t sugarcoat anything, but He does promise that His Spirit can bind us together in a way we’ve never experienced. Maybe we’ve just been too distracted by our efforts to make our church services exciting that we’ve hardly noticed the people the Spirit wants to unite us with.

What if we followed God’s design for the Church, and in doing so allowed the Church to be pruned down to only those who wanted to obey His command to “love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12)? We might actually find that a pruned tree would bear more fruit (John 15:2). We might discover that the branches that weren’t bearing fruit were actually sucking all of the life out of the tree.

Don’t forget that there are times when God doesn’t just want us to let them leave, He wants us to ask them to. There is a difficult reality to face, which is that there are going to be people who try to take advantage of churches that are committed to love. In order to love each other like fam- ily, we will need to have grace and forgiveness. However, sometimes the most loving thing to do for someone is not to enable them in their sin, but to follow the aforemen- tioned example of Paul in 1 Timothy who separated people from the Church. It was for the good of the Church as well as the individuals who were removed. Biblical unity is not achieved by overlooking sin, but through firm pruning which can lead to repentance. Unconditional love doesn’t always look the way we expect it to. It takes tremendous love to risk rejection for the hope of loving a sinner to repentance.

BE ENCOURAGED

For years I honestly didn’t have faith that it was even possible for a church to possess the love and unity I saw in Scripture. People kept telling me this couldn’t happen in America. I would see examples of this in places like China, but church leaders would tell me it only worked there because people already lived communally and because they were experiencing persecution that forced them to bond. There was always a part of me that doubted those voices, but it was only a few years ago that I mustered up the courage to try. It was harder than I expected, but it’s also been more rewarding than I could have dreamed. This can happen wherever you are too. Holy-Spirit love and unity are not confined to persecuted countries.

Radio Show

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MPM NEWS

After Trump’s Golan Heights Announcement, Israeli Politicians Now Pushing for US Recognition of West Bank as “Israeli”

In 2016, longtime Trump advisor, and current ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, said Trump would recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the entire West Bank if Israel “deemed it necessary.”

by Whitney Webb

March 25, 2019

President Donald Trump holds up a signed proclamation recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looks on in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House in Washington, March 25, 2019. Susan Walsh | AP

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL — After U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he planned to unilaterally recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights — which is internationally recognized as Syrian territory — some powerful Israeli politicians are now petitioning Trump to also recognize Israeli sovereignty over Palestine’s occupied West Bank.

Though Trump casually announced that it was “time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s Sovereignty [sic] over the Golan Heights” last Thursday, he made the U.S.’ recognition of Israel’s claim to the territory official on Monday, at a signing ceremony that was attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump’s willingness to use his executive power to grant Israeli land grabs “official recognition” — such as in Jerusalem and now the Golan — has emboldened far-right Israeli politicians who have long been eager to annex other territories.

Please, sir, may we have some more?

Following Trump’s announcement via Twitter regarding the Golan Heights, Israeli MK Bezalel Smotrich, a senior Israeli politician and deputy speaker of Israel’s parliament, stated, also on Twitter:

For 52 years, we’ve also been thriving in Judea/Samaria [Israeli name for the West Bank of Palestine]. Also of critical strategic, historic and security importance. It is time that we recognize our sovereignty. With God’s help we’ll move this forward soon, and hope for your [i.e., Trump’s] support then, as well.”

Smotrich’s tweet likely highlighted the West Bank’s alleged “critical strategic, historic and security importance” to Israel because Trump justified his upcoming recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli by stating that the Golan Heights have a “critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability [sic].”

Smotrich, who has lived almost all his life in illegal settlements in the Golan Heights and the West Bank, is one of the Knesset’s most vocal promoters of Israel’s annexation of the West Bank. MintPress reported last year on a bill authored by Smotrich that would allow for the government regulation of 70 illegal Jewish-only settlements and allow Israeli Jewish citizens to purchase land in Area C of the West Bank, which accounts for roughly 60 percent of the total West Bank territory.

Smotrich and his political allies in the Jewish Home Party — who form part of the current ruling coalition led by Likud — have recently been pushing for Israel’s annexation of the West Bank so overtly that it prompted the UN to warn last July:

After years of creeping Israeli de facto annexation of the large swathes of the West Bank through settlement expansion, the creation of closed military zones and other measures, Israel appears to be getting closer to enacting legislation that will formally annex parts of the West Bank.”

Whether Trump would entertain yet another Israeli request for unilateral recognition of illegally held territory — such as the West Bank — is a matter of debate. While it is known that Trump’s largest political donor — Zionist billionaire Sheldon Adelson — was responsible for the Jerusalem move, it is not known if Adelson had a hand in Trump’s recent decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

However, the Golan Heights decision seems to be a combination of an effort to boost Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chances of reelection in May as well as pressure from the U.S.-based oil company Genie Energy, which seeks to develop the large oil reserves in the Golan discovered in 2015. Genie Energy’s Israeli subsidiary, Afek, was granted exclusive drilling rights in the Golan by Netanyahu soon after the oil’s discovery and the company’s board is stocked with powerful people, including Jacob Rothschild, Dick Cheney and Rupert Murdoch, among others.

Past statements from long-time Trump advisor, and current U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, suggest that Trump is likely to honor Smotrich’s request if it is repeated by other Israeli politicians with pull in Washington or connections to Adelson. Soon after Trump won the 2016 election, Friedman claimed that Trump would support Israel’s annexation of much of the West Bank and even the entire West Bank, if Israel “deemed it necessary.”

The “Deal of the Century” meets Israel’s “Manifest Destiny”

Since then, the only likely impediment to Trump’s backing of such an effort would be the fate of the administration’s “Deal of the Century” aimed at brokering “peace” between Israel and Palestine. That deal, largely drafted by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, would be severely undermined and essentially dead on arrival were Trump to recognize the West Bank as Israeli.

While Trump’s willingness to continue granting U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over any more contested areas remains to be seen, what is clear is that his recognition of both Jerusalem and the Golan Heights as Israeli territory has emboldened powerful elements of Israel’s government that have long pushed for the country’s expansion in essentially every direction. Indeed, even if Trump decides to recognize the West Bank as “Israeli,” it is unlikely that far-right nationalist politicians in Israel would stop there, given their ambitions in the Sinai peninsula, Lebanon’s offshore gas fields, and elsewhere in the region.

Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.

(This can only intensify the problems in the Middle-East. The combatants on the side of Syria will most likely think they have nothing more to lose, if they have not already thought that, and why not do what ever they can in retaliation even if it means to die trying. Ed)

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Trump's Golan gift to Israel condemned by UN, Gulf & European allies

March 26, 2019

U.S. President Donald Trump and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pose with a presidential proclamation recognizing "Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights" , March 25, 2019 © Reuters / Leah Millis

Donald Trump's decision to recognize Israel's annexation of the Syrian Golan has been met with condemnation by the international community, with the UN and Washington's Gulf and European allies slamming the move.

The US president signed a declaration on Monday recognizing Israel's sovereignty over the disputed Golan Heights. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was present at the signing ceremony, praised Trump's unilateral move, comparing the president to biblical and Zionist heroes. But reactions among the international community – including Washington's closest Gulf and European allies – were considerably less enthusiastic.

The United Nations, which has long maintained that Israel's occupation of the Golan is illegal under international law, signaled that its position had not changed. A UN spokesman said that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will continue to honor a December 1981 resolution which called Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights "null and void and without international legal effect."

The declaration was similarly unpopular among nations which normally follow Washington's foreign policy lead.
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait – Washington's accommodating Gulf allies which host US military bases – have criticized Trump's move.

"It will have significant negative effects on the peace process in the Middle East and the security and stability of the region," a statement on Saudi Arabia's state news agency SPA said. Saudi Parliament Speaker Mishaal bin Fahm al-Salami reaffirmed Riyadh's "principled position" that the Golan Heights is Syrian land.

NATO ally Turkey also lashed out at Washington. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that the US has "ignored international law" by recognizing Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

Washington's northern neighbor Canada echoed similar concerns.

In a statement, Ottawa said that it "does not recognize permanent Israeli control over the Golan Heights."

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne went so far as to take a subtle jab at US foreign policy.

"The Golan Heights is a matter for Israel and Syria to determine through negotiations in the context of a comprehensive peace settlement," she said.

"US policy positions are a matter for the US government."

Trump's declaration will also likely exacerbate already strained relations with Washington's European allies. Both Germany and France issued statements last week in an attempt to pre-empt the president's Golan decision.

"If national borders should be changed it must be done through peaceful means between all those involved," a German government spokesman said.

The French Foreign Ministry tweeted about its opposition to the move, describing it as "contrary to international law."

Not surprisingly, Trump's Golan resolution received an equally chilly reception from nations with less cordial relations with Washington.

Syria's government said the decision was a "slap" to the international community, claiming that Trump's Golan resolution makes Washington "the main enemy" of Arabs.

Following suit, Lebanon's Foreign Ministry insisted the Golan Heights are "Syrian Arab" territory and that "no country can falsify history" by seizing land from another nation.

Tehran expressed bafflement over Trump's "unprecedented" move.

"No one could imagine that a person in America comes and gives land of a nation to another occupying country, against international laws and conventions... Such action is unprecedented in the current century," Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA. He added:

At a time when colonialism dominated, some colonial powers were doing these things and giving part of a country to another, but this is unprecedented in the current century

For its part, Moscow said that Trump's decision marks yet another unilateral violation of international law.

"This decision will definitely have negative consequences both for the Middle East settlement process and the entire atmosphere in the Syrian political settlement. No one doubts this," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

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WND

James Dobson: Christians targeted by dark new bill

Posted By Bob Unruh

March 27, 2019

Dr. James Dobson

James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and the James Dobson Family Institute, the author of dozens of books on family and adviser to presidents, warns the Democrats’ proposed Equality Act is a really, really bad deal for the nation.

Dobson, on behalf of his James Dobson Family Institute, wrote, “Make no mistake – the so-called Equality Act is nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to finish off religious liberty in America once and for all, which ought to be plainly obvious based upon a cursory reading of the First Amendment.”

The proposal, H.R. 5 and S. 788, would provide special protections for the LGBT community throughout American society. It would state that religious beliefs are not a defense in a dispute between gay rights and constitutionally protected religious rights.

“I wish I could say I was shocked to see the speed with which Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats have brought to committee the sweet sounding but entirely treacherous Equality Act. This decision demonstrates a frightening willingness by those on the left to advance a radical social agenda at a time when our nation already faces so many other divisive challenges,” he said.

“Simply put, by creating a protected class of citizens out of the LGBT community, this bill places Christians who believe in traditional marriage at grave legal and civil jeopardy,” said Dobson.

“While no evangelical Christian would ever support hate or violence of any kind against an LGBT individual – or any other person for that matter – to modify the 1964 Civil Rights Act with this wrong-headed bill would not only be legally fraught, it would also put moral equivalence to the unprecedented, centuries-long struggle of countless millions of African Americans to gain freedom from slavery and the persistent, systematic oppression that followed.”

Dobson said that whereas “the Civil Rights movement of the 60s was born out of deep faith and in congruence with God’s Word, this bill tramples both underfoot.”

“In fact, I believe that if Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, we would be standing together in opposition to the Equality Act. We must refrain from the dangerous tendency to divide America into smaller and smaller sub-groups defined first and foremost by our grievances. We are one nation, under God, and we are already blessed with a Constitution and First Amendment that protects every American without criminalizing our most sincerely held religious beliefs.”

He urged constituents to contact their members of Congress.

WND reported Mat Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel, warned the Equality Act is not about equality.

“This bill eviscerate[s] religious freedom and targets churches with an LGBT wrecking ball,” he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Christian baker Jack Phillips when he refused to endorse same-sex marriage through his business. And religious rights specifically were protected in the Supreme Court ruling that created same-sex marriage.

But the House bill, Liberty Counsel said, “specifically forbids raising religious free exercise as a claim or defense to the LGBT agenda.”

“This bill amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by striking the word ‘sex,’ and inserting ‘sex, sexual orientation, gender identity’ as protected classes throughout the federal code. This amendment applies to employment, housing, rental, public accommodation and more.

“Therefore, church leadership and nonprofit faith-based organizations and schools would be forced to hire gender-confused individuals and allow men access to female (or vice versa) restrooms, showers, locker rooms, dressing rooms, shelters, dormitories and sports. This legislation would also create many more victims – like women in shelters who have been sexually assaulted by a man posing as a ‘transgender’ to gain access to the facility,” the group warned.

Churches that allow weddings would have to provide their facilities to homosexuals. It would impact churches’ tax exemption as well as college accreditation. Christian schools would be targets.

So would faith-oriented adoption agencies, foster parents and even parents’ custody of their own children if they oppose a child’s “right to transition to a person of the other sex.”

The religious rights of Christian photographers, artists, bakers, wedding planners and printers would be curbed in the public square.

“This bill literally sets the stage for setting up the Bible as prohibited material where it addresses homosexuality,” Liberty Counsel said.

The Heritage Foundation said employers, workers, medical professionals, parents, children, women and nonprofit organizations all would be harmed by the plan from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

“Where the original Civil Rights Act of 1964 furthered equality by ensuring that African-Americans had equal access to public accommodations and material goods, the Equality Act would further inequality by penalizing everyday Americans for their beliefs about marriage and biological sex. Similar sexual orientation and gender identity laws at the state and local level have already been used in this way,” the group warned.

Dobson’s radio program, “Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk,” reaches hundreds of thousands. He has written more than 30 books dedicated to helping families, including “The New Dare to Discipline;” “Love for a Lifetime;” “Life on the Edge;” “Love Must Be Tough;” “The New Strong-Willed Child;” “When God Doesn’t Make Sense;” “Bringing Up Boys;” “Marriage Under Fire;” and “Bringing Up Girls.”

He was an associate clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of Southern California School of Medicine for 14 years and on the attending staff of Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles for 17 years.

He has advised U.S. presidents on matters relating to American families. He’s been awarded 17 honorary doctoral degrees and was installed in the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2008.

***

The Economic Collapse

Government Warns Of Historic, Widespread Flooding “Through May” – Food Prices To Skyrocket As 1000s Of Farms Are Destroyed

Michael Snyder

March 24, 2019

We have never seen catastrophic flooding like this, and the NOAA is now telling us that there will be more major flooding for at least two more months. On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned that “historic, widespread flooding” would “continue through May”. More than 90 percent of the upper Midwest and Great Plains is currently covered by an average of 10.7 inches of snow, and all of that snow is starting to melt. That means that we are going to transition from one of the worst winters in modern history to a flood season that has already taken an apocalyptic turn for farmers all across America. At this moment, millions of acres of farmland are already underwater. Thousands of farmers are not going to be able to plant crops this year, and thousands of other farmers that have been financially ruined by the floods will never return to farming again. This is already the worst agricultural disaster in modern American history, and it is going to get a whole lot worse.

I posted an article about this crisis yesterday, and I am troubled by the fact that most Americans don’t seem to understand the gravity of what we are facing.

Millions of bushels of wheat, corn and soybeans have been destroyed by flood waters, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of livestock have been lost, and all of us will soon be feeling a lot more pain at the grocery store.

And this would be a complete and utter national nightmare even if the flooding was all over, but the NOAA just told us that we should expect more catastrophic flooding for the next two months…

Our #SpringOutlook 2019 is out today: Historic, widespread flooding to continue through May. Find map, highlights video & more at https://bit.ly/2JqDsIG @NWS#Spring #Flooding

In fact, the NOAA is using the words “unprecedented flood season” to describe what is coming, and they are warning that “more than 200 million people” are at risk…

Forecasters warned the floods would likely to continue through May, and could worsen in the coming weeks.

“This is shaping up to be a potentially unprecedented flood season, with more than 200 million people at risk,”Ed Clark, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, said on Thursday in the agency’s spring outlook.

Of all the natural disasters that we have seen in recent years, this is the biggest, and U.S. food production is going to be dramatically affected because many farmers will not be able to grow crops at all in 2019…

“The reality is this isn’t going to be over for a very long time,” Jorgenson said. “It took years after 2011 for people to come back. For me as a farmer, there are flooded acres here that to think that I’ll be able to plant a crop in 45 days is just virtually impossible.”

And many farmers will never recover from this disaster at all.

According to one farmer in Iowa, somewhere around half of the farmers in his entire county will not be able to come back from this…

“I would say 50% of the farmers in our area will not recover from this,” Dustin Sheldon, a farmer in southwestern Iowa’s flood-devastated Fremont County near the swollen Missouri River, said this week.

I said it yesterday, and I will say it again. This is the worst blow to U.S. agriculture that I have seen in my entire lifetime.

The amount of food that has just been lost is absolutely staggering. Due to the trade war, farmers were storing more wheat, corn and soybeans than ever before, and now the floodwaters have destroyed much of what had been stored…

As prices plummeted last year amid the ongoing trade fight, growers, faced with selling crops at a loss, stuffed a historic volume of grain into winding plastic tubes and steel bins. Some cash-strapped families piled crops inside their barns or outside on the ground.

Farmers say they are now finding storage bags torn and bins burst open, grain washed away or contaminated. Jeff Jorgenson, a farmer and regional director for the Iowa Soybean Association, said he has seen at least a dozen bins that burst after grains swelled when they became wet.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, any wheat, corn or soybeans that are contaminated by flood waters must be destroyed.

I know that I shared the following quote yesterday, but in order to give you an idea of the scope of the losses we are looking at, I want to share it again…

As of Dec. 1, producers in states with flooding – including South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and Illinois – had 6.75 billion bushels of corn, soybeans and wheat stored on their farms – 38 percent of the total U.S. supplies available at that time, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

And remember, the flooding is just getting started.

In just one county in Iowa, 1.8 million bushels of corn and soybeans have already been destroyed.

Nationwide, the losses are off the charts.

Needless to say, prices will be going way up at the grocery store, and they will keep going up for the rest of the year.

Sadly, even after the flood waters are gone the damage that has been done to our agricultural infrastructure will take years to repair…

As the waters began to recede in parts of Nebraska, the damage to the rural roads, bridges and rail lines was just beginning to emerge. This infrastructure is critical for the U.S. agricultural sector to move products from farms to processing plants and shipping hubs.

The damage to roads means it will be harder for trucks to deliver seed to farmers for the coming planting season, but in some areas, the flooding on fields will render them all-but-impossible to use.

In Nebraska alone, hundreds of miles of rural roads have been completely washed out, and farmers such as Annette Bloom are having an extremely difficult time just getting to a main road…

“We are having to travel three miles through pasture and cropland just to get out because our roads are gone,” she says. “And the corn fields are going to be devastating to get in and plant and get that going, because usually we’re planting within the next two weeks and it’s not going to happen.”

Many of America’s farmers will bravely keep going after this disaster, but for many others a financial breaking point has arrived.

Farm bankruptcies had already surged to the highest level since the last recession prior to all of this flooding, and now this crisis will end up driving many of them away from the profession for good. The following comes from NBC News…

Some farmers in Fremont County will probably not return to till their soil, many farmers here said.

“Lot of folks won’t be able to continue after this,” said Julius Schaaf, 66, who said 1,500 of his 4,000 acres were currently under water.

In the end, it is going to be a while before we know the full extent of the damage to America’s farms and our food supply, but all of the experts agree that it will be unprecedented.

Food prices are already high, but the truth is that this is as low as they are going to get. Much less food will be produced in our heartland this year, and that will mean skyrocketing prices at our grocery stores.

And this is just one element of “the perfect storm” that is emerging. Our society is starting to be shaken in many different ways, and 2019 is certainly shaping up to be a very “interesting” year.

***

STRANGE SOUNDS

Violent flash floods change streets into raging RIVERS in Shiraz, Iran killing at least 18 – Hundreds of cars swept away

March 25, 2019

At least 17 people, including three children, were killed and as many as 68 were injured in heavy flooding in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz on Monday. Heavy rains resulted in flooding in the southern region around the city as well. Footage shows people being swept away by the tides as cars try to maneuver through the flooded streets. The flooding comes during the Iranian New Year, meaning thousands have been affected, including tourists.

Flood disaster in Iran has reached a new level on Monday as Flash floods inundated the historic city of Shiraz in south-central part of the country, killing at least 18 people.

Heavy rain began falling in the morning, changing one of the main road of Shiraz into a raging river, sweeping away hundreds of cars in its path.
The chief coroner of the city told ISNA that six men, seven women and three children are confirmed dead in the floods and dozens of people have been taken to hospitals with injuries.

Shiraz is the capital city of Fars Province. The Governor of Fars urged residents to stay in their homes until further notice. He told ISNA that flash floods started from hills around the city and in a matter of minutes swept parts of Shiraz.

Enayatollah Rahimi also told Mehr news agency that heavy rains were expected and the local government had made preparations days in advance, but many did not heed the warnings and the speed of the flood also caught officials by surprise.

The flood also inundated the historic Vakil Bazaar.

A spokesman of the fire department in Shiraz said that water levels might still increase and flood many residential and commercial buildings.

Iran has been experiencing heavy rainfall in the past few weeks, in what seems to be a break in the country’s drought, which had reduced water supplies to a minimum.

Floods in the north of the country led to multiple local crises since March 22.

The floods have hit Iran at a time when schools and many offices are closed due to the Nowruz New Year holidays. But at the same time, many people are traveling on roads that can be swept away by water.

***

enws.com.au

Flood-affected farmers witness entire cattle herds wiped out by catastrophic deluge

When rain started falling in Queensland’s west, drought-stricken farmers cried happy tears — but that emotion quickly turned to heartbreak.

Natalie Wolfe

February 11, 2019

Article

***

Zero Hedge

Russia Gives US Red Line On Venezuela

By Tyler Durden

March 23, 2019

Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

At a high-level meeting in Rome this week, it seems that Russia reiterated a grave warning to the US – Moscow will not tolerate American military intervention to topple the Venezuelan government with whom it is allied.

Meanwhile, back in Washington DC, President Donald Trump was again bragging that the military option was still on the table, in his press conference with Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro. Trump is bluffing or not yet up to speed with being apprised of Russia’s red line.

The meeting in the Italian capital between US “special envoy” on Venezuelan affairs Elliot Abrams and Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov had an air of urgency in its arrangement. The US State Department announced the tête-à-tête only three days beforehand. The two officials also reportedly held their two-hour discussions in a Rome hotel, a venue indicating ad hoc arrangement.

Abrams is no ordinary diplomat. He is a regime-change specialist with a criminal record for sponsoring terrorist operations, specifically the infamous Iran-Contra affair to destabilize Nicaragua during the 1980s. His appointment by President Trump to the “Venezuela file” only underscores the serious intent in Washington for regime change in Caracas. Whether it gets away with that intent is another matter.

Moscow’s interlocutor, Sergei Ryabkov, is known to not mince his words, having earlier castigated Washington for seeking global military domination. He calls a spade a spade, and presumably a criminal a criminal.

The encounter in Rome this week was described as “frank” and “serious” – which is diplomatic code for a blazing exchange. The timing comes at a high-stakes moment, after Venezuela having been thrown into chaos last week from civilian power blackouts that many observers, including the Kremlin, blame on American cyber sabotage. The power grid outage followed a failed attempt by Washington to stage a provocation with the Venezuelan military over humanitarian aid deliveries last month from neighboring Colombia.

The fact that Washington’s efforts to overthrow the elected President Nicolas Maduro have so far floundered, might suggest that the Americans are intensifying their campaign to destabilize the country, with the objective of installing US-backed opposition figure Juan Guaido. He declared himself “acting president” in January with Washington’s imprimatur.

Given that the nationwide power blackouts seem to have failed in fomenting a revolt by the civilian population or the military against Maduro, the next option tempting Washington could be the military one.

It seems significant that Washington has recently evacuated its last remaining diplomats from the South American country. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo commented on the evacuation by saying that having US personnel on the ground “was limiting” Washington’s scope for action. Also, American Airlines reportedly cancelled all its services to Venezuela in the past week. Again, suggesting that the US was considering a military intervention, either directly with its troops or covertly by weaponizing local proxies. The latter certainly falls under Abrams’ purview.

After the Rome meeting, Ryabkov said bluntly:

“We assume that Washington treats our priorities seriously, our approach and warnings.”

One of those warnings delivered by Ryabkov is understood to have been that no American military intervention in Venezuela will be tolerated by Moscow.

For his part, Abrams sounded as if he had emerged from the meeting after having been given a severe reprimand.

“No, we did not come to a meeting of minds, but I think the talks were positive in the sense that both sides emerged with a better understanding of the other’s views,” he told reporters.

“A better understanding of the other’s views,” means that the American side was given a red line to back off.

The arrogance of the Americans is staggering. Abrams seems, according to US reporting, to have flown to Rome with the expectation of working out with Ryabkov a “transition” or “compromise” on who gets the “title of president” of Venezuela.

That’s what he no doubt meant when he said after the meeting “there was not a meeting of minds”, but rather he got “a better understanding” of Russia’s position.

Washington’s gambit is a replay of Syria. During the eight-year war in that country, the US continually proffered the demand of a “political transition” which at the end would see President Bashar al Assad standing down. By contrast, Russia’s unflinching position on Syria has always been that it’s not up to any external power to decide Syria’s politics. It is a sovereign matter for the Syrian people to determine independently.

Nearly three years after Russia intervened militarily in Syria to salvage the Arab country from a US-backed covert war for regime change, the American side has manifestly given up on its erstwhile imperious demands for “political transition”. The principle of Syrian sovereignty has prevailed, in large part because of Russia’s trenchant defense of its Arab ally.

Likewise, Washington, in its incorrigible arrogance, is getting another lesson from Russia – this time in its own presumed “back yard” of Latin America.

It’s not a question of Russia being inveigled by Washington’s regime-change schemers about who should be president of Venezuela and “how we can manage a transition”. Moscow has reiterated countless times that the legitimate president of Venezuela is Nicolas Maduro whom the people voted for last year by an overwhelming majority in a free and fair election – albeit boycotted by the US-orchestrated opposition.

The framework Washington is attempting to set up of choosing between their desired “interim president” and incumbent Maduro is an entirely spurious one. It is not even worthy to be discussed because it is a gross violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty. Who is Washington to even dare try to impose its false choice?

On Venezuela, Russia is having to remind the criminal American rulers – again – about international law and respect for national sovereignty, as Moscow earlier did with regard to Syria.

And in case Washington gets into a huff and tries the military option, Moscow this week told regime-change henchman Abrams that that’s a red line. If Washington has any sense of rationale left, it will know from its Syria fiasco that Russia has Venezuela’s back covered.

Political force is out. Military force is out. Respect international law and Venezuela’s sovereignty. That’s Russia’s eminently reasonable ultimatum to Washington.

Now, the desperate Americans could still try more sabotage, cyber or financial. But their options are limited, contrary to what Trump thinks.

How the days of American imperialist swagger are numbered. There was a time when it could rampage all over Latin America. Not any more, evidently. Thanks in part to Russia’s global standing and military power.

***

'Dark day for internet freedom': EU lawmakers approve controversial copyright reform

March 26, 2019

A protester in front of the European Parliament as MEPs debate on modifications to EU copyright reforms in Strasbourg. © Reuters

The European Parliament has voted to adopt the highly controversial Article 13 provision which would govern the production and distribution of content online under the auspices of increasing copyright protections.

Tuesday’s move will update the EU's 20-year-old copyright rules and will govern audiovisual content, much to the dismay of many social media users who have already begun outpouring their grief online.

However the parliament said in a statement that sharing memes and gifs has been protected “even more than it was before” and they will continue to be available and shareable on online platforms.

MEPs passed the legislation by 348 votes to 274 Tuesday. Opponents had hoped for last-minute amendments to be made but their efforts were in vain.

Julia Reda, a German MEP with the Pirate Party, described it as a “dark day for internet freedom."

Article 13 or ‘The Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market’ makes all platforms legally responsible for the content hosted and shared on their platforms.

The process of updating the bloc's copyright laws began in the European Commission two years ago, ostensibly to protect Europe's publishers, broadcasters and artists and guarantee fair compensation from big tech companies.

The onus will now be on tech companies to clamp down on content-sharing on their platforms, which will likely ensure yet more draconian policing of speech and content.

EU member states now have two years to pass their own laws putting Article 13 into effect.

Tens of thousands marched in protest across Germany ahead of the vote, decrying what they viewed as severe online censorship.

Tech giant Google said that while the directive is “improved” it will still lead to legal uncertainty and will damage Europe’s creative and digital economies.

Critics have argued that the only way for Article 13 to be effectively enforced would be through the use of upload filters which automatically check content to see if it's copyrighted or not, at least in theory. However, the exact mechanics of such a system have yet to be fully debated and the potential for abuse is immediately clear.

***

New Turkey-Iran-Qatar axis is rising in Middle East, and it has Saudi Arabia furious

Darius Shahtahmasebi is a New Zealand-based legal and political analyst, currently specializing in immigration, refugee and humanitarian law.

March 22, 2019

© Wikipedia / Ben Morlok; AFP / ATTA KENARE; Wikipedia / Francisco Anzola

A new alliance being formed by Qatar, Turkey, and Iran, with the potential to receive the backing of Russia and China, is a major concern to the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

The aftermath of over eight years of war in Syria has changed the regional dynamics in a way almost certainly never envisioned by the United States and its allies. Through leaked documents, we have known for some time now that Washington’s interim goal was to, at the very least, destabilise the Assad government in the hopes of scaling backIranian influence. (Its ultimate goal was quite clearly regime change, which was very close to fruition during at least one stage of the war).

This anti-Assad strategy has, of course, backfired to the point where Iranian-backed forces have essentially amassed along the Syria-Israel border, threatening Washington’s most beloved ally in the region. The other notable – and realistically, most important – development is that Russia, not the United States, emerged out of the rubble of Syria as the major power-broker and military tactician.

However, it seems as though the aftermath of Syria is just the beginning of a tectonic move in a massive direction away from the status quo. Eight years on since the war in Syria broke out, and we are now beginning to see some other major concrete shifts within the regional alliances which has Washington’s traditional allies, particularly Saudi Arabia, starting to tremble.

As of now, Qatar, Iran, and Turkey are forming a regional alliance, which is irking Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States – and they only have themselves to blame. After Saudi Arabia led a coalition of nations that attempted to bully Qatar into submission and accept a long list of inconceivable demands in June 2017, Qatar soon found it could rely on some key partners to weather the Saudi-led storm. These partners are now openly forming a new alliance, which will upend the entire balance of power in the Middle East.

The strengthening of ties between this axis of nations is quite remarkable, when one considers that they each held completely paradoxical positions regarding the Syrian conflict. The horror of this shift from a Western perspective can be seen brilliantly in an Asia Times article entitled ‘America’s Syrian humiliation is worse than it looks’.

When Saudi Arabia blocked Qatar’s only land border and the UAE in turn blocked shipments from its ports to Doha, Qatar quickly found friends in Oman, Turkey, and Iran to bypass this nonsensical blockade. Qatari flights were rerouted over Iranian airspace and Turkey upped the ante on its military presence in the country as a sign of strength and commitment. Eventually, daily life in Qatar could continue quite reasonably. This is not to say that Qatar didn’t experience difficulties, particularly regarding oil prices, real estate prices, tourism, and the slowdown in economic growth. Then again, Qatar was able to draw from its reserves to counter the effects, minimising the damage done by its neighbours.

By the end of 2017, Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan had all increased bilateral trade with Qatar, benefitting all four countries. In the less than six months since the ‘Qatar crisis’ had begun, trade between Iran and Qatar reportedly increased by 117 percent. At the time, experts studying the crisis predicted that commercial relations between the two countries would remain intact, even following the closure of the Saudi-led Qatar crisis.

Iran, Qatar, and Turkey also signed a land transportation pact in August of that year which would help reduce the cost and transit period for the exchange of goods. Seeing as Saudi Arabia effectively blockaded the flow of goods into Qatar, it should not be hard to see that even this agreement alone bore major significance.

Qatar for its part has invested heavily in Turkey, well over $20 billion in total. As explained previously by Al-Jazeera, this is the second-highest in terms of value by any country, demonstrating the importance these two nations have given to each other.

By most accounts, the Gulf States need Turkey on their side in order to contain Iran. A recent report published by Middle East Eye revealed how Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt hatched a plan with Israel to scale back the regional influence of Turkey and Iran, with Turkey deemed to be the biggest military threat to these Gulf states’ interests.

As it transpires, the Qatar-Turkey-Iran axis could potentially provide a major buffer to the so-called Arab NATO, which will be headed by Saudi Arabia. While Saudi Arabia appears to have managed to bring Pakistan on side, it still remains that Pakistan shares a border with Iran and relies heavily on China, another key ally of Iran. Islamabad’s anti-Iran stance can therefore only stretch so far.

The fact is that this alliance on the face of it will likely bear the support of Russia and its military will also be of a major concern to the anti-Iran alliance. As it stands, Russia, Iran, and Qatar provide over half of the world’s known gas reserves. Not to mention that Iran and Qatar share the world’s largest gas field, another major concern for the Saudi-led bloc.

Saudi-owned media has already voiced its opposition to this newfound alliance, which can be seen most openly in an article in Al Arabiya entitled ‘How Iran, Turkey use Qatar to undermine regional security and US interest’. According to Al Arabiya, there is a “risk” of Qatar “breaking away from the Arab orbit and posing a serious threat to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.” The Qatar-Iran entente, “previously concealed, is out in the open,” the article also notes.

“To put it simply: Qatar has irrevocably joined with Ankara and Tehran against its former Arab allies,” the article’s sources surmise. “It has conclusively positioned itself in a regional alliance that pursues geopolitical dominance by driving instability.”

Qatar is “playing with fire” the article states. At around the same time, Qatar had called for a new alliance to replace the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), further demonstrating this shift in perspective.

According to Russian think tank Katehon, the new Qatar-Iran-Turkey axis is already well underway and has the power to control Asia, west India and Pakistan and challenge the “demonic trio” of the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

“Do not underestimate the role of small Qatar in this triple alliance with latent empires,” the think tank is cited as saying. “The fact is that the huge financial resources, as well as the successful geographical location of the emirate, allow it to resist even the all-powerful Saudi Arabia, which also claims regional domination.”

“Thus, international pressure and economic restrictions prompted three completely different states, despite geopolitical differences, to begin rapprochement in the economic sphere. How this will turn out in the future depends primarily on the actions of the United States, which, undoubtedly, will try to break up the emerging triple alliance.”

***

EXPRESS

We were lied to! Secret document FCO 30/1048 kept truth about EU from British for 30 years

A SECRET document, which remained locked away for 30 years, advised the British Government to COVER-UP the realities of EU membership so that by the time the public realised what was happening it would be too late.

By LARA DEAUVILLE

May 12, 2018

Almost all of the shocking predictions – from the loss of British sovereignty, to monetary union and the over-arching powers of European courts – have come true.

But damningly for Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath, and all those who kept quiet about the findings in the early 70s, the document, known as FCO30/1048, was locked away under Official Secrets Act rules for almost five decades.

The classified paper, dated April 1971, suggested the Government should keep the British public in the dark about what EEC membership means predicting that it would take 30 years for voters to realise what was happening by which time it would be too late to leave.

That last detail was the only thing the disgraceful paper – prepared for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) – got wrong.

The unknown author – a senior civil servant – correctly predicted the then European Economic Community (the EEC effectively became the EU in 1993) was headed for economic, monetary and fiscal union, with a common foreign and defence policy, which would constitute the greatest surrender of Britain’s national sovereignty since 1066.

He went on to say “Community law” would take precedence over our own courts and that ever more power would pass away from Parliament to the bureaucratic system centred in Brussels.

The author even accurately asserts that the increased role of Brussels in the lives of the British people would lead to a “popular feeling of alienation from Government”.

But shockingly politicians were advised “not to exacerbate public concern by attributing unpopular measures… to the remote and unmanageable workings of the Community”.

They were told to preserve the impression that the British Government was still calling the shots rather than an unelected body of foreign politicians – and that the ruse would last “for this century at least” – by which time Britain would be so completely chained to Brussels it would be impossible to leave.

Document FCO30/1048, which has now been declassified under the 30-year rule, still shocks and angers Brexiteers.

Annabelle Sanderson, a Brexit expert and former advisor to Nigel Farage said: “Despite all the claims from politicians of many parties that the EU was not about becoming a central state this 1971 document shows that is exactly what the plan was.

“Arch Remoaners from Labour, Lib Dems and the Tories need to check this out and ask themselves why they are MPs if they don’t actually want Westminster to be in charge of this country.

“We voted for Brexit what needs to happen is a proper clean break from Brussels so we can once again become a sovereign nation with money being spent in this country on services we need and have Parliament and courts making and ruling on the laws.”

The writer and journalist Christopher Booker, one of the founders of the satirical magazine Private Eye, said: “Here was a civil servant advising that our politicians should connive in concealing what Heath was letting us in for, not least in hiding the extent to which Britain would no longer be a democratic country but one essentially governed by unelected and unaccountable officials.

“One way to create an illusion that this system was still democratic, this anonymous mandarin suggested, would be to give people the chance to vote for new representatives at European, regional and local levels.

“A few years later, we saw the creation of an elected European Parliament – as we see today a craze for introducing elected mayors, as meaningless local figureheads.”

The pro-Europe Sir Edward Heath was leader of the Conservative Party from 1965 to 1975.

He died in 2005.

In 2015 he was named as part of Wiltshire Police’s Operation Conifer investigation into historical child sex abuse.

Detectives said if alive – he would have been 101 – he would have been interviewed under caution over seven claims, including the alleged rape of an 11-year-old, but that no inference of guilt should be drawn from this.

Operation Conifer was closed earlier this year after officers found "no corroborating evidence" of any sexual abuse by Sir Edward and no evidence of a conspiracy.

Heath, a soft-right politician from a lower middle-class family, was born in Broadstairs, Kent.

He served though the Second World War in the Royal Artillery, rising to rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

Although he said he had never killed anyone he was part of the Normandy Landings in 1944 and wrote extensively of the damage his gunners inflicted on the German occupying forces.

In September 1945 he also commanded a firing squad that executed a Polish soldier convicted of rape and murder.

He was made a Knight of the Garter on 23 April 1992 and became Sir Edward Heath.

(If even half of the allegations leveled against Edward Heath over the past few years are true, it could have caused him to be completely compromised and to betray the UK at the hands of the powers that be. Ed)

***

MailOnline

DAN HODGES: The greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the British people

By DAN HODGES FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY

PUBLISHED: 00:53, 24 March 2019 | UPDATED: 09:08, 24 March 2019

The plan first contrived in secret by Dominic Grieve (pictured yesterday at a rally organised by the People's Vote campaign) and Speaker John Bercow in his ornate apartments will finally come to fruition. MPs will take back control
Everything they were promised before, during and after the 2016 referendum was a lie. They were told they would cast a single vote and it would be honoured.

They were told if they voted to leave, untold riches would flow into the NHS and other public services.

They were told the EU would be resistant, but then capitulate at the thought of John Bull turning his back on imports of prosecco and BMWs.

And as MPs begged again for their votes in the 2017 Election, they were told once more that their decision to leave would be respected and enacted.

Tomorrow, each and every one of those promises will turn to dust on the floor of the Commons chamber.

The plan first contrived in secret by Dominic Grieve and Speaker John Bercow in his ornate apartments will finally come to fruition. MPs will take back control.

And the process of erasing Brexit from history, and replacing it with a customs union, or a single market, or a new common market will commence.

Not that the MPs themselves want it framed this way. When Theresa May accused them last week of pitting themselves against the public, they reacted with fury. The Prime Minister was undermining the very foundation of parliamentary democracy, they warned.

Others claimed their personal safety was being put at risk. ‘I’m going back to my constituency this weekend and I’m worried,’ one Tory backbencher admitted. ‘I think something is going to happen.’

Such fears are tragically not without foundation. But another fundamental principle of our democracy is that our elected representatives are held up to scrutiny and criticism. And while she might have expressed herself clumsily, Theresa May was right.

MPs were issued an instruction by the British people. Given the Byzantine complexity of the Brexit process, it would be foolish to pretend it was a simple one. But it was clear. They were told to withdraw the UK from the European Union.

They refused. Granted 1,000 days to reach consensus on an exit strategy, they had neither the competence nor the courage nor the foresight nor the sense of national duty to construct one.

A process driven by public resentment at a political class addicted to telling voters to shut up and sit down because their politicians know best, is ending with the squalid spectacle of the referendum result being torn up by politicians who absolutely know they know best.

Fine. MPs have made their choice. But now they must live with it. They must be free to conduct their affairs safe from physical threats and intimidation. But there will be no escape from the political backlash set to engulf them.

Remain MPs are confident they will be insulated from it. Secure in constituencies that represent the 48 per cent, they believe they have found sanctuary. They have not. The impending implosion of public trust – one that will make the expenses scandal look like a model of good governance – will consume everything and everyone.

It will be they, rather than the Brexiteers, who become custodians of the ravaged post-Brexit landscape. And, most significantly of all, they will have proven the Brexiteers right.

The great conspiracy narrative – ‘even if you vote to Leave, they will never let you’ – will have been embedded for all time.

But at least the Remainers can claim success. Their political strategy has worked. Which cannot be said for the diehards of the ERG.

If it was not for the little corporals of Brexit, we would be leaving the EU in five days’ time. All they needed to do was swallow a bit of pride, bide some time, and victory was theirs.

But they couldn’t help themselves. Hubris, vanity, self-importance and ideological intransigence have claimed them.

They could not have played a more destructive role in the Brexit denouement had they been personally trained by Peter Mandelson, Andrew Adonis and Gina Miller, and despatched to do their bidding. In the end, the self-styled champions of Brexit turned out to be the Manchurian Remainers.

Which brings us to the architect – or rather curator – of this whole catastrophe. Like others, I have written countless words about the Prime Minister’s strength and resilience. But Brexit has finally broken her.

Watching her railing against the self-indulgence of MPs, I was reminded of that moment Kevin Keegan began raging at how he ‘would luv it!’ if Newcastle United beat Manchester United to the Premier League title. The passion and commitment were there. But psychologically and emotionally she was spent.

Theresa May’s premiership is over. But there is one last service she can render her nation.

Tomorrow, when she addresses Parliament, she must name a date for her departure. She must then lay to rest the fantasy she intends to lead Britain out of the EU without a deal. And she must then present the Commons with the truth. It is now either her deal or the end of Brexit. It might not be enough. It probably won’t be enough. But there is a final, faint hope it could bring MPs to their senses.

And even if it does not, it will allow her to regain the self-respect her parliamentary colleagues are so intent on squandering.

Tomorrow, MPs will begin dismantling Brexit. When the vote is announced confirming they have taken control of the parliamentary process and timetable, they will cheer and wave their order papers and slap one another on the back.

Those cheers will then reverberate. They will reach the pubs and the housing estates and the shop-floors of the nation. And they will reach the ears of people who recall what their MPs promised them in 2016, and set that against what they actually delivered.

People who will never forget. And people who never forgive.

***

CRUX

Mexico president asks Spain, Pope to apologize for conquest

Maria Verze

March 26, 2019

In this Friday, March 8, 2019 file photo, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador answers questions from journalists at his daily 7 a.m. press conference at the National Palace in Mexico City. Lopez Obrador said he sent a letter to Spain and the Vatican on March 1, asking them to apologize for the conquest of the Americas five centuries ago. (Credit: Marco Ugarte/AP.)

MEXICO CITY - President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Monday he has asked Spain and the Vatican to apologize for the conquest of the Americas five centuries ago.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he sent a letter to King Felipe VI of Spain and Pope Francis over what he called an “invasion” and the “many misdeeds that were committed.”

“There were killings, impositions,” the president said in a video that was filmed at Mayan ruins in the southeastern state of Tabasco and posted on social media. “The so-called conquest was carried out with the sword and the cross.”

He asked for an apology to “the original peoples for the violations of what are now known to be human rights.”

The Spanish government issued a statement later Monday regretting that the March 1 letter had been made public and rejecting its content “with all firmness.”

“The arrival, 500 years ago, of Spaniards to what is today Mexican territory cannot be judged in the light of contemporary considerations,” it continued. “Our sibling peoples have always known how to read our shared past without anger and with a constructive perspective, as free peoples with a common inheritance and an extraordinary projection.”

The statement reiterated the Spanish government’s willingness to work closely with Mexico to strengthen friendly and cooperative relations and tackle future challenges.

The exact text of the letter has not been made public.

Lopez Obrador called for 2021 - the 500-year anniversary of the conquest of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire on what is today Mexico City - to be a year of “historic reconciliation.”

“It is time to say we will reconcile but first let us apologize,” he said. “I am going to as well because after the colonization there was much repression of the original peoples.”

In 2015, Pope Francis apologized in Bolivia for crimes of the Roman Catholic Church against indigenous people during the conquest of the Americas.

(Yes, the Spanish could have done a better job but would Obrador also like a return to this:

"The Mayans sacrificed humans for religious reasons, such as dedicating a temple, entreating gods for favors and preventing natural disasters. Human sacrifices also marked special occasions, such as the coronation of a new king. Sometimes losers in sporting games were sacrificed as the price of defeat.

Most often, the victims were held down by their four limbs while their hearts were quickly extracted. Sometimes they were shot with arrows, thrown from a height or decapitated. The heart and blood were integral to the ritualistic significance of the event. Human sacrifices marked political events, such as coronations, to make the ruler appear more god-like. Human sacrifices after sporting events may have been payment to the deities that assisted the winning team.")

***

Bloomberg

Cloud of Cancer-Causing Chemical Hangs Over the Houston Channel

Joe Carroll and Rachel Adams-Heard

March 24, 2019

(Bloomberg) -- Oil byproducts from a damaged storage facility contaminated the Houston Ship Channel and created a cloud of cancer-causing benzene over the waterway, the latest mutation of one of the worst Gulf Coast chemical disasters in more than a decade.

The U.S. Coast Guard is forbidding vessel traffic on a stretch of the key industrial shipping route after a wall collapse and fire at Intercontinental Terminals Co.’s already-damaged chemical storage complex on Friday. A mix of toxic gasoline ingredients, firefighting foam and dirty water flowed from the site into the channel, and a benzene plume above the water poses a threat to ship crews, said Coast Guard Capt. Kevin Oditt.

The channel, which is not a source of drinking water for Houston or its suburbs, is the newest victim of a calamity that began unfolding almost a week ago when tanks holding byproducts of the oil-refining process at ITC’s facility erupted in flames. A mile-high plume of inky black smoke towered over the fourth-largest American city for days until crews extinguished the blaze on March 20.

That was followed by benzene alerts that shut down Deer Park and other suburbs for half a day, the collapse of a containment wall and Friday’s new fires in three wrecked storage tanks and a drainage ditch.

‘Never-Ending’

Nausea, headaches and other symptoms drove about 1.000 people to seek treatment at a pop-up clinic, with 15 of the most-severe cases loaded onto ambulances and hauled to hospital emergency rooms.

“It’s been a never-ending, re-occurring case of things not working out as planned,” Deer Park Mayor Jerry Mouton said during a media briefing on Saturday.

Weary residents are on edge, wondering what’s next and when normal life will return. For many Houstonians, it’s the worst industrial disaster since the 2005 explosion at BP Plc’s Texas City refinery that killed 15.

“There’s more tanks in there. Is it going to reignite? It’s very uncertain,” said Mercy Reyna, 50, who’s been suffering from headaches, eye discomfort and chest tightness. “The trust is not there. We feel like we’re not being told the truth of what’s going on.”

Since the initial blaze was squelched earlier in the week, ITC made two unsuccessful attempts to drain a charred tank that’s holding pygas, a petroleum derivative composed largely of benzene. Early on Friday, ITC executives estimated they would have that tank emptied in about 12 hours; then the wall failed and flames erupted nearby.

Fortifications

Crews launched a third attempt to empty the tank around 3:30 p.m. local time on Saturday, the Mitsui & Co.-owned company said. Executives are watching weather forecasts and wind gauges because anything that disturbs the layer of protective foam atop the chemicals could allow fires to break out and benzene to waft across the city.

“The same number of tanks need to be drained as yesterday,” said Brent Weber, ITC’s incident commander.

Reyna and her 18-year-old daughter Rebecca had been waiting for 2 1/2 hours at the pop-up medical center when the new fire erupted. They left without being seen because they didn’t want to get marooned there if the city ordered everyone to stay indoors.

Burning Sensation

“I was filling out the paper work inside, and my eyes were running and running with tears,” Mercy Reyna said. “It was just that desperation of wanting to get your eyes out and just rub them and rinse them and put them back. It’s just that burning sensation.”

Although the company said Friday that there were about 60,000 barrels (2.52 million gallons) of hazardous chemicals still held in the damaged section of its complex, by Saturday morning it no longer knew how much remained. Meanwhile, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he’ll file a lawsuit accusing ITC of violating clean-air laws.

The ship channel is one of the busiest commercial shipping facilities in North America, connecting Houston’s manufacturing and oil-refining nexus to Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. It remained closed on Saturday.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board announced late Thursday it will be investigating the blaze. The Texas National Guard dispatched troops to assist local authorities with air monitoring after cancer-causing benzene wafted across the area, prompting take-shelter alerts and road closures.

(Adds third attempt to empty flammable liquid from damaged storage tank in 10th paragraph.)

--With assistance from Sheela Tobben.

(This is an ongoing story with the authorities now having to close the Houston Ship Channel because the water is so poisonous. Ed)

***

‘NATO bombing of Yugoslavia paved way for 1 million civilian casualties worldwide’

March 24, 2019

FILE PHOTO: A motorway bridge in the Belgrade suburb of Ostruznica, destroyed during NATO bombing raids over Yugoslavia on 1999. © Reuters

Carried out under a false pretext and in disregard of the UN, the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 paved the way for similar US-led operations in Iraq, Libya and elsewhere and over a million were killed, an analyst has told RT.

NATO’s attack 20 years ago, which was launched “without declaring war and without any permission from the UN Security Council, was a transformative act which has changed the world ever since,” Marko Gasic, commenter on international affairs, said.

"This formula… that you don’t need UN Security Council authorization was then implemented at the expense of Iraq and Libya and elsewhere. So far, the decision to bomb Yugoslavia has led to over a million casualties worldwide; and rising."

Back in 1999, the US and its allies launched airstrikes in what was then Yugoslavia, after blaming Belgrade for “excessive and disproportionate use of force” in a conflict with an ethnic Albanian insurgency in Kosovo.

NATO warplanes carried out 900 sorties during the brutal 78-day bombing campaign, which officially claimed at least 758 civilian lives. But Serbian sources insist the actual death toll was twice as high.

NATO had used depleted uranium in its air strikes on Yugoslavia. Despite the studies showing that children born there after the bombing are prone to cancer, “very little” has been or is being done to hold the bloc accountable, Gasic said.

The Yugoslav authorities tried suing NATO, but its “response was to create a ‘Color Revolution’ (in 2000) there and bring its own puppets to power… who abandoned the lawsuit.”

“The world community really needs to take NATO to task. And If Serbia is too weak to do it, we need other countries to take an interest. If they don’t defend Serbia – it’ll be their borders next that NATO will be coming for,” the analyst warned.

***

KHN

‘Medieval’ Diseases Flare As Unsanitary Living Conditions Proliferate

By Anna Gorman

March 12, 2019

Infectious diseases are resurging in California and around the country, hitting homeless populations especially hard. (Heidi de Marco/KHN)

Jennifer Millar keeps trash bags and hand sanitizer near her tent, and she regularly pours water mixed with hydrogen peroxide on the sidewalk nearby. Keeping herself and the patch of concrete she calls home clean is a top priority.

But this homeless encampment off a Hollywood freeway ramp is often littered with needles and trash, and soaked in urine. Rats occasionally scamper through, and Millar fears the consequences.

“I worry about all those diseases,” said Millar, 43, who said she has been homeless most of her life.

Infectious diseases — some that ravaged populations in the Middle Ages — are resurging in California and around the country, and are hitting homeless populations especially hard.

Los Angeles recently experienced an outbreak of typhus — a disease spread by infected fleas on rats and other animals — in downtown streets. Officials briefly closed part of City Hall after reporting that rodents had invaded the building.

People in Washington state have been infected with Shigella bacteria, which is spread through feces and causes the diarrheal disease shigellosis, as well as Bartonella quintana, which spreads through body lice and causes trench fever.

Hepatitis A, also spread primarily through feces, infected more than 1,000 people in Southern California in the past two years. The disease also has erupted in New Mexico, Ohio and Kentucky, primarily among people who are homeless or use drugs.

Public health officials and politicians are using terms like “disaster” and “public health crisis” to describe the outbreaks, and they warn that these diseases can easily jump beyond the homeless population.

“Our homeless crisis is increasingly becoming a public health crisis,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in his State of the State speech in February, citing outbreaks of hepatitis A in San Diego County, syphilis in Sonoma County and typhus in Los Angeles County.

“Typhus,” he said. “A medieval disease. In California. In 2019.”

The diseases have flared as the nation’s homeless population has grown in the past two years: About 553,000 people were homeless at the end of 2018, and nearly one-quarter of homeless people live in California.

The diseases spread quickly and widely among people living outside or in shelters, fueled by sidewalks contaminated with human feces, crowded living conditions, weakened immune systems and limited access to health care.

“The hygiene situation is just horrendous” for people living on the streets, said Dr. Glenn Lopez, a physician with St. John’s Well Child & Family Center, who treats homeless patients in Los Angeles County. “It becomes just like a Third World environment where their human feces contaminate the areas where they are eating and sleeping.”

Those infectious diseases are not limited to homeless populations, Lopez warned. “Even someone who believes they are protected from these infections are not.”

At least one Los Angeles city staffer said she contracted typhus in City Hall last fall. And San Diego County officials warned in 2017 that diners at a well-known restaurant were at risk of hepatitis A.

There were 167 cases of typhus from Jan. 1, 2018, through Feb. 1 of this year, up from 125 in 2013 and 13 in 2008, according to the California Public Health Department.

Typhus is a bacterial infection that can cause a high fever, stomach pain and chills but can be treated with antibiotics. Outbreaks are more common in overcrowded and trash-filled areas that attract rats.

The recent typhus outbreak began last fall, when health officials reported clusters of the flea-borne disease in downtown Los Angeles and Compton. They also have occurred in Pasadena, where the problems are likely due to people feeding stray cats carrying fleas.

Last month, the county announced another outbreak in downtown Los Angeles that infected nine people, six of whom were homeless. After city workers said they saw rodent droppings in City Hall, Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson briefly shut down his office to rip up the rugs, and he also called for an investigation and more cleaning.

Hepatitis A is caused by a virus usually transmitted when people come in contact with feces of infected people. Most people recover on their own, but the disease can be very serious for those with underlying liver conditions. There were 948 cases of hepatitis A in 2017 and 178 in 2018 and 2019, the state public health department said. Twenty-one people have died as a result of the 2017-18 outbreak.

The infections around the country are not a surprise, given the lack of attention to housing and health care for the homeless and the dearth of bathrooms and places to wash hands, said Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, the health officer for Seattle and King County, Wash.

“It’s a public health disaster,” he said.

In his area, Duchin said, he has seen shigellosis, trench fever and skin infections among homeless populations.

In New York City, where more of the homeless population lives in shelters rather than on the streets, there have not been the same outbreaks of hepatitis A and typhus, said Dr. Kelly Doran, an emergency medicine physician and assistant professor at NYU School of Medicine. But Doran said different infections occur in shelters, including tuberculosis, a disease that spreads through the air and typically infects the lungs.

The diseases sometimes get the “medieval” moniker because people in that era lived in squalid conditions without clean water or sewage treatment, said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine and public health at UCLA.

People living on the streets or in homeless shelters are vulnerable to such outbreaks because their weakened immune systems are worsened by stress, malnutrition and sleep deprivation. Many also have mental illness and substance abuse disorders, which can make it harder for them to stay healthy or get health care.

One recent February afternoon, Saban Community Clinic physician assistant Negeen Farmand walked through homeless encampments in Hollywood carrying a backpack with medical supplies. She stopped to talk to a man sweeping the sidewalks. He said he sees “everything and anything” in the gutters and hopes he doesn’t get sick.

She introduced herself to a few others and asked if they had any health issues that needed checking. When she saw Millar, Farmand checked her blood pressure, asked about her asthma and urged her to come see a doctor for treatment of her hepatitis C, a viral infection spread through contaminated blood that can lead to serious liver damage.

“To get these people to come into a clinic is a big thing,” she said. “A lot of them are distrustful of the health care system.”

On another day, 53-year-old Karen Mitchell waited to get treated for a persistent cough by St. John’s Well Child & Family Center’s mobile health clinic. She also needed a tuberculosis test, as required by the shelter where she was living in Bellflower, Calif.

Mitchell, who said she developed alcoholism after a career in pharmaceutical sales, said she has contracted pneumonia from germs from other shelter residents. “Everyone is always sick, no matter what precautions they take.”

During the hepatitis A outbreak, public health officials administered widespread vaccinations, cleaned the streets with bleach and water and installed hand-washing stations and portable toilets near high concentrations of homeless people.

But health officials and homeless advocates said more needs to be done, including helping people access medical and behavioral health care and affordable housing.

“It really is unconscionable,” said Bobby Watts, CEO of the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, a policy and advocacy organization. “These are all preventable diseases.”

Anchorage Daily News
Giant Winged Creature
Sighted Several Times In Alaska
By Peter Porco
10-15-2

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A giant winged creature, like something out of Jurassic Park, has reportedly been sighted several times in Southwest Alaska in recent weeks.

Villagers in Togiak and Manokotak say they have seen a huge bird that's much bigger than anything they have seen before.

A pilot says he spotted the creature while flying passengers to Manokotak last week. He calculated that its wingspan matched the length of a wing on his Cessna 207. That's about 14 feet.

Other people have put the wingspan in a similar range.

Scientists aren't sure what to make of the reports. No one doubts that people in the region west of Dillingham have seen a very large rapto-like bird. But biologists and other people familiar with big Alaska birds say they're skeptical it's that big.

A recent sighting of the mystery bird occurred Oct. 10 when Moses Coupchiak, a 43-year-old heavy equipment operator from Togiak, 40 miles west of Manokotak, saw the bird flying toward him from about two miles away as he worked his tractor.

"At first I thought it was one of those old-time Otter planes," Coupchiak said. "Instead of continuing toward me, it banked to the left, and that's when I noticed it wasn't a plane."

The bird was "something huge," he said. "The wing looks a little wider than the Otter's, maybe as long as the Otter plane."

The bird flew behind a hill and disappeared. Coupchiak got on the radio and warned people in Togiak to tell their children to stay away.

Pilot John Bouker said he was highly skeptical of reports of "this great big eagle" that is two or three times the size of a bald eagle. "I didn't put any thought into it."

But early this week while flying into Manokotak, Bouker, owner of Bristol Bay Air Service, looked out his left window and 1,000 feet away, "there's this big ... . bird," he said.

"The people in the plane all saw him," Bouker said. "He's huge, he's huge, he's really, really big. You wouldn't want to have your children out."

Nicolai Alakayak, a freight and passenger driver from Manokotak who was flying with Bouker, said the creature looked like an eagle and was as large as "a little Super Cub."

Comparison to an eagle, certainly. Super Cub? Probably not, scientists said.

"I'm certainly not aware of anything with a 14-foot wingspan that's been alive for the last 100,000 years," said federal raptor specialist Phil Schemf in Juneau.

Schemf, other biologists, a village police officer and teachers at the Manokotak School said the sightings could be of a Steller's sea eagle, a species native to northeast Asia and one of the world's largest eagles. It's about 50 percent bigger than a bald eagle.

Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service http://www.shns.com

The Guardian

Nile shipwreck discovery proves Herodotus right – after 2,469 years

Greek historian’s description of ‘baris’ vessel vindicated by archaeologists at sunken city of Thonis-Heraclion

Dalya Alberge

March 17, 2019

An artistic treatment of the discovered shipwreck. The upper half of the model illustrates the wreck as excavated. Below this, unexcavated areas are mirrored to produce a complete vessel outline. Photograph: Christoph Gerigk/Franck Goddio/Hilti Foundation

In the fifth century BC, the Greek historian Herodotus visited Egypt and wrote of unusual river boats on the Nile. Twenty-three lines of his Historia, the ancient world’s first great narrative history, are devoted to the intricate description of the construction of a “baris”.

For centuries, scholars have argued over his account because there was no archaeological evidence that such ships ever existed. Now there is. A “fabulously preserved” wreck in the waters around the sunken port city of Thonis-Heracleion has revealed just how accurate the historian was.

“It wasn’t until we discovered this wreck that we realised Herodotus was right,” said Dr Damian Robinson, director of Oxford University’s centre for maritime archaeology, which is publishing the excavation’s findings. “What Herodotus described was what we were looking at.”

In 450 BC Herodotus witnessed the construction of a baris. He noted how the builders “cut planks two cubits long [around 100cm] and arrange them like bricks”. He added: “On the strong and long tenons [pieces of wood] they insert two-cubit planks. When they have built their ship in this way, they stretch beams over them… They obturate the seams from within with papyrus. There is one rudder, passing through a hole in the keel. The mast is of acacia and the sails of papyrus...”

Robinson said that previous scholars had “made some mistakes” in struggling to interpret the text without archaeological evidence. “It’s one of those enigmatic pieces. Scholars have argued exactly what it means for as long as we’ve been thinking of boats in this scholarly way,” he said.

But the excavation of what has been called Ship 17 has revealed a vast crescent-shaped hull and a previously undocumented type of construction involving thick planks assembled with tenons – just as Herodotus observed, in describing a slightly smaller vessel.

Originally measuring up to 28 metres long, it is one of the first large-scale ancient Egyptian trading boats ever to have been discovered.

Robinson added: “Herodotus describes the boats as having long internal ribs. Nobody really knew what that meant… That structure’s never been seen archaeologically before. Then we discovered this form of construction on this particular boat and it absolutely is what Herodotus has been saying.”

About 70% of the hull has survived, well-preserved in the Nile silts. Acacia planks were held together with long tenon-ribs – some almost 2m long – and fastened with pegs, creating lines of ‘internal ribs’ within the hull. It was steered using an axial rudder with two circular openings for the steering oar and a step for a mast towards the centre of the vessel.

Robinson said: “Where planks are joined together to form the hull, they are usually joined by mortice and tenon joints which fasten one plank to the next. Here we have a completely unique form of construction, which is not seen anywhere else.”

Alexander Belov, whose book on the wreck, Ship 17: a Baris from Thonis-Heracleion, is published this month, suggests that the wreck’s nautical architecture is so close to Herodotus’s description, it could have been made in the very shipyard that he visited. Word-by-word analysis of his text demonstrates that almost every detail corresponds “exactly to the evidence”.

Ship 17 is the 17th of more than 70 vessels dating from the 8th to the 2nd century BC, discovered by Franck Goddio and a team – including Belov - from the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology during excavations in Aboukir bay, with which the Oxford Centre is involved.

***

FOX NEWS

Vermont woman, 84, heading to Poland to compete in pole-vaulting championship

By Anna Hopkins

In this Thursday, March 13, 2019 photo, Florence "Flo" Filion Meiler, an 84-year-old record-setting pole vaulter, poses while training at the University of Vermont indoor track in Burlington, Vt. Meiler is headed to the world championships in Poland. (AP Photo/Lisa Rathke)

Most would agree that it's important to stay active in the later years of life, but 84-year-old Florence "Flo" Fillion Meiler is taking that to a new level.

The Vermont native is heading to Poland next Thursday for the World Masters Athletics Championship Indoor where she will compete in events including the long jump, 60-meter hurdles, 800-meter run, pentathlon and her specialty, the pole vault.

Her favorite events are the hurdles and the pole vault - the sport which sees competitors launch themselves over a high bar with a fiberglass pole.

"You really have to work at that," she said. "You have to have the upper core and you have to have timing, and I just love it because it's challenging."

In that particualr category, she will literally have no competition - because she's the only woman in her age group of 80-84 year olds. Despite her easy win, she's not slowing down her exercise.

"You know, I do train five days a week," she said. "And when I found out I was going to compete at the Worlds, I've been training six days a week because I knew I would really get my body in shape."

Meiler grew up on a dairy farm, working hard manual jobs like feeding cattle and raking hay. She was always active in sports throughout school, playing basketball and taking tap and ballroom dancing classes. Professionally, she went on to work as a sales representative for Herbalife nutritional supplements for 30 years.

When she met her husband, Eugene, a military pilot turned financial analyst, the two competed together in water skiing. It wasn't until she was 65 that she picked up pole-vaulting at the encouragement of a friend with whom she played competitive doubles tennis.

Staying active has helped Meiler and her husband persevere through hard times, she said, as they adopted three children after losing two of their babies prematurely, and one at the age of three. Two years ago, her adopted son died at the age of 51.

Sadly, Meiler also says she misses her training partner - a good friend who began having health problems about five years ago and can no longer train. She's now hoping to find a new partner to hit the gym with, since it can be harder to train alone.

Her coach, however, testified to her strength and committment to her sport.

"She's incredibly serious about what she does," coach Emmaline Berg said. "She comes in early to make sure she's warmed up enough. She goes home and stretches a lot. So she pretty much structures her entire life around being a fantastic athlete, which is remarkable at any age, let alone hers."

"She was like a local celebrity," she continued.

Meiler already set a record at the age of 80 after clearing a 6-foot pole vault at the USA Track and Field Adirondack Championships in Albany, New York.

"I was screaming, I was so happy," she said.

As she embarks to Poland next week, she hopes to set more records and continue being a role model for other seniors.

The Associated Press contributed to the reporting of this article.

***

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

“And now the Lord has kept me [Caleb] alive as he said: this is the forty-fifth year since the Lord spoke that word to Moses; and Israel journeyed in the wilderness; and now, behold, I am this day eighty-five years old. I am still strong this day, as when the Lord sent me: just so strong am I now to go out and to come in for war.”
(Joshua 14:10-11)

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