“And it shall be, if they will indeed learn the way of my people, to swear by my name, saying, The Lord lives; as they taught my people to swear by Baal; then shall that nation be built in the midst of my people.”
(Jeremiah 12:16)
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HARRETZ

Knesset Council Bans Bill to Define Israel as State for All Its Citizens

In unusual move, bill disqualified before being discussed on Knesset floor because it 'seeks to deny Israel’s existence as the state of the Jewish people'

Jonathan Lis

June 4, 2018

A bill submitted by three Joint List MKs calling for Israel to be defined as a state of all its citizens was disqualified by the Knesset presidium on Monday before it even reached the Knesset floor for deliberation.

Seven MKs supported the decision to ban debate on the Basic Law: A Country of All Its Citizens," submitted by MKs Jamal Zahalka, Haneen Zoabi and Joumah Azbarga; two MKs opposed it (Esawi Freige from Meretz and Ahmad Tibi from Joint List); and MK Bezalel Smotrich from Habayit Hayehudi abstained.

This is the first time proposed legislation has been disqualified before being discussed in the plenum during the past two Knesset terms.

Knesset legal adviser Eyal Yinon clarified in a statement that, “both in the theoretical plane and in the specific one, it is hard to not see such a proposal as one that seeks to deny Israel’s existence as the state of the Jewish people, and therefore, and in accordance with Article 75(e) of the regulations, the Knesset presidium is qualified to prevent its submission.”

The bill, Yinon noted, “includes several articles that are meant to alter the character of the State of Israel from the nation-state of the Jewish people to a state in which there is equal status from the point of view of nationality for Jews and Arabs."

The legal adviser also said that the legislation seemed to be aimed at altering basic principles – for example, by essentially cancelling the Law of Return (which declares the right of every Jew to immigrate to Israel), and determining instead that receipt of Israeli citizenship will be based on a person’s familial affiliation to another citizen of the state.

In addition, wrote Yinon, the bill negates the principle according to which the symbols of the state reflect the national revival of the Jewish people, in addition to rejecting Hebrew language as the principal language of the state.

In a discussion on the Joint List proposal, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein said: “This is a preposterous bill that any intelligent individual can see must be blocked immediately. A bill that aims to gnaw at the foundations of the state must not be allowed in the Knesset. This is the first time since my appointment as Knesset speaker 5 years ago that I am recommending that the presidium disqualify a bill. The three MKs from Balad [one of the parties making up Joint List] keep trying to garner votes through provocation, and we cannot lend a hand to this.”

By contrast, MK Freige said that, “the Jewish majority often challenges the Arab minority, and an example of that is the so-called nation-state law. Why are the drafters of that law allowed but Zahalka is not?”

"The minority," said MK Tibi, "has a right to protest and to oppose conventions such as rights being enjoyed only by the Jewish majority in Israel, a situation that reinforces the inferiority of the Arab minority.”

MK Smotrich, who had abstained said he agreed "completely with the Knesset speaker, that this is indeed an absurd bill. However, a directive that prevents a bill from being discussed at the Knesset needs to come by means a Basic Law, and not from Knesset regulations.”

Economic Collapse

EARTH’S CRUST IN TURMOIL – ALL-TIME RECORD 500 EARTHQUAKES HIT THE BIG ISLAND AS RIVERS OF LAVA POUR OUT OF VOLCANOES IN HAWAII AND GUATEMALA

What is causing our planet to shake so violently all of a sudden?

Michael Snyder

JUNE 4, 2018

Rivers of lava have been pouring out of the Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii for weeks, a massive eruption of Mount Merapi just a few days ago shot volcanic ash 38,000 feet into the air, and now rivers of lava are pouring out of Guatemala’s Fuego Volcano.

Overall, Volcano Discovery is reporting that a total of 34 volcanoes around the world are erupting right now. So what is causing so much seismic activity all of a sudden, and is this a new trend that is going to continue? If you have followed my work for an extended period of time, you already know that I tend to track these things very carefully. Major changes appear to be happening to our world, but most people have not been paying much attention up until now.

For most Americans, what is going on around the rest of the globe is of little interest, but all of the shaking in Hawaii sure is starting to get a lot of attention from the mainstream media. On Sunday, the Big Island was hit by a huge 5.5-magnitude earthquake…

“A 5.5-magnitude quake rattled the Big Island Sunday afternoon, US Geological Survey officials said.

No tsunami is expected from the quake, which is among the strongest of recent quakes felt around the Big Island. The quake rumbled an area near Kilauea Volcano just before 4 p.m.”

That was definitely a very large earthquake, but of much greater concern were all of the smaller earthquakes that happened on Sunday. At least 500 quakes struck the Island in a 24 hour period, and that was a new all-time record…

“As of 11 a.m. Sunday, officials said 500 smaller earthquakes were recorded near the summit within the last day — it’s the most earthquakes recorded in a 24-hour period on Hawaii Island.”

A lot of people that live in Hawaii did not believe that something like this would happen. Rivers of lava are reaching areas that were not supposed to be reached, and Kilauea just keeps pouring out more.

According to one report, one of the rivers of lava is “as wide as three football fields”…

“National Guard troops, police and firefighters ushered the last group of evacuees from homes on the eastern tip of Hawaii’s Big Island early on Saturday, hours before lava from the Kilauea volcano cut off road access to the area, officials said.

A stream of lava as wide as three football fields flowed over a highway near a junction at Kapoho, a seaside community of rebuilt after a destructive eruption of Kilauea in 1960.”

And when one of the rivers of lava reached a freshwater lake, it boiled away all of the water inside of it…

“Also, lava destroyed a freshwater lake, boiling away all of the water in it, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory reported late Saturday, local time.

“Lava entered Green Lake within Kapoho Crater, producing a large steam plume … A Hawaiian County Fire Department overflight reported that the lava filled the lake and apparently evaporated all the water,” the report said.”

It would be difficult to overstate the massive destructive power of Kilauea. Even with all of our advanced technology there is nothing that we can do to control the rivers of lava. The best that we can do is to try to evacuate everyone and then get out of the way.

Fortunately, most of the lava flows are moving slowly enough that people can make a decision to evacuate. Down in Guatemala, this new eruption of the Fuego volcano poured out lava so violently that it caught at least a few people before they could escape…

“At least six people were killed and another 20 injured on Sunday when Guatemala’s Fuego volcano erupted violently, spewing a stream of red hot lava and belching a thick plume of black smoke and ash that rained onto the capital and other regions.

“It’s a river of lava that overflowed its banks and affected the Rodeo village. There are injured, burned and dead people,”Sergio Cabanas, the general secretary of Guatemala’s Conred disaster agency, said on radio.”

One village near the base of the volcano may end up being completely destroyed by the flow of lava. As the lava started flowing, rescue crews were going door to door trying to save residents…

“Steaming lava flowed down the streets of a village as emergency crews entered homes in search of trapped residents, a video on a different local media outlet showed.

The eruption forced the Guatemala City’s La Aurora international airport to shut down its only runway due to the presence of volcanic ash and to guarantee passenger and aircraft safety, Guatemala’s civil aviation authority said in a Tweet.”

I have been writing about the changes to our planet for the past eight years, and it appears that those changes are now accelerating. The number of earthquakes around the globe continues to rise, and volcanoes are beginning to behave in some unusual ways.

So many major cities in North America, South America and Asia sit right along the “Ring of Fire”, and if the shaking of the crust of our planet continues to intensify, it is only a matter of time before major natural disasters begin to hit some of those cities. If Mt. Fuji were to obliterate Tokyo, or if Mt. Rainier were to pulverize Seattle, or if the “big one” finally hit the west coast of the United States, the global financial system would melt down instantly.

We are far more vulnerable to natural disasters than most people realize, and it looks like the shaking of our planet is only going to intensify in the months and years ahead.

AMMC

INDEPENDENT

US, Britain and France inflicted worst destruction 'in decades' killing civilians in Isis-held city of Raqqa, report says

'More artillery shells were launched into Raqqa than anywhere since the end of the Vietnam war' says Amnesty International

Patrick Cockburn

June 5, 2018

Children riding a bicycle next to destroyed buildings in Raqqa (PA)

Air and artillery strikes by the US and its allies inflicted devastating loss of life on civilians in the Isis-held city of Raqqa, according to an Amnesty International report. It contradicts claims by the US, along with Britain and France, that they precisely targeted Isis fighters and positions during the four month siege that destroyed large swathes of the city.

“On the ground in Raqqa we witnessed a level of destruction comparable to anything we have seen in decades of covering the impact of wars,” says Donatella Rovera, a senior crisis response adviser at Amnesty. She says that the coalition’s claim that it had conducted a precision bombing campaign that caused few civilian casualties does not stand up to scrutiny. She quotes a senior US military officer as saying that “more artillery shells were launched into Raqqa than anywhere since the end of the Vietnam war”.

The air and artillery strikes by the US and its allies killed many civilians – the number is unknown because so many bodies are buried under the ruins – during the four-month-long siege, beginning on 6 June and ending on 17 October last year according to the report. Citing the testimony of survivors, it contradicts assertions by the US-led coalition that it took care to avoid targeting buildings where civilians might be present. Witnesses say that again and again their houses were destroyed although there were no Isis fighters in them or nearby.

“Those who stayed died and those who tried to run away died. We couldn’t afford to pay the smugglers: we were trapped,” says Munira Hashish. Her family lost 18 members, of whom nine were killed in a coalition airstrike, seven as they tried to escape down a road mined by Isis, and two were hit by a mortar round, probably fired by an Syrian Democratic Forces unit. She says that she and her children only escaped “by walking over the blood of those who were blown up as they tried to flee ahead of us”.

Many families were hit more than once by airstrikes and artillery as they fled from place to place in Raqqa, vainly trying to avoid being close to the front lines but these were often changing. The Badran family lost 39 members, mostly women and children, as well as 10 neighbours, killed in four different coalition airstrikes. “We thought the forces who came to evict Daesh (Isis) would know their business and would target Daesh and the leave the civilians alone,” said Rasha Badran, one of the survivors. “We were naive.”

Many cities have been destroyed in the wars in Iraq and Syria since 2011, but the destruction is worse in Raqqa than anywhere else. Streets are simply lane-ways cut through heaps of rubble and broken masonry. The few people on the streets are dazed and broken, and this has not changed much in the months since the city was captured from Isis by local ground forces backed up by the devastating firepower of the US-led coalition.

The claim by the coalition that its airstrikes and artillery fire were precisely targeted against Isis fighters and their positions is shown up as a myth as soon as one drives into the city. I visited it earlier in the year and have never seen such destruction. There are districts of Mosul, Damascus and Aleppo that are as bad, but here the whole city has gone.

I went to look at the al-Naeem Roundabout where the spikes on top of metal railings are bent outwards because Isis used them to display the severed heads of people whom it deemed to be its opponents. On every side, as far as the eye can see, there are ruined buildings, some reduced to a mound of rubble while others have been turned into concrete skeletons that look as if they might collapse at any moment.

Given the level of violence in Iraq and Syria, it is difficult to prove that one place is worse than another, but this has now been established with a wealth of evidence in this Amnesty report entitled War of Annihilation: Devastating Toll on Civilians, Raqqa – Syria.

The report, based on 112 interviews and visits to 42 strike locations, was sharply criticised by a coalition spokesman even before it was published. US Army Colonel Sean Ryan was quoted by news agencies as inviting Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty International UK, to “personally witness the rigorous efforts and intelligence gathering the coalition uses before any strike to effectively destroy IS while minimising harm to civilian populations”. Although the report cites the detailed evidence of many surviving witnesses whose family members were killed in airstrikes, Col Ryan says that allegations of indiscriminate and disproportionate bombardment were “more or less hypothetical”.

The reality in Raqqa, despite claims of the precise accuracy of modern weapons and great concern for civilian life, is that the ruins look exactly like pictures of the aftermath of the carpet bombing of cities like Hamburg and Dresden in the Second World War.

US forces fired 100 per cent of the artillery rounds used against Raqqa and over 90 per cent of the airstrikes, but British and French aircraft were also involved. The Ministry of Defence says the UK carried out 275 airstrikes and killed no civilians at all. Despite pledges that civilian loss of life would be thoroughly investigated, Amnesty says there is no sign of this happening.

A consequence of the assertion by the coalition that they seldom harmed civilians, there has been little humanitarian support for people returning to Raqqa. Aid agencies say that one problem is finding a safe place where there no unexploded munitions or mines where they can distribute provisions. The report says that many residents ask: “Why those, who spent so much on a costly military campaign which destroyed the city, are not providing the relief so desperately needed.”

An MoD spokesman said: “Keeping Britain safe from the threat of terrorism is the objective of this campaign and throughout we have been open and transparent, detailing each of our nearly 1,700 strikes, facilitating operational briefings and confirming when a civilian casualty had taken place.

“We do everything we can to minimise the risk to civilian life through our rigorous targeting processes and the professionalism of the RAF crews but, given the ruthless and inhuman behaviour of Daesh, and the congested, complex urban environment in which we operate, we must accept that the risk of inadvertent civilian casualties is ever present.”

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SOROS CRIES GLOBALIST TEARS OVER POPULIST VICTORY IN ITALY

Hysterically claims Salvini is Putin’s puppet

Paul Joseph Watson | Infowars.com - JUNE 4, 2018

IMAGE CREDITS: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES.

Billionaire elitist George Soros is devastated about the victory of an anti-globalist populist coalition in Italy.

Last week, Matteo Salvini’s right-wing Lega party and the populist 5-Star Movement struck a deal to form a government, defeating an audacious attempt to install a pro-EU technocrat as Italy’s Prime Minister.

This prompted a tumultuous reaction from globalists everywhere, most notably Soros, who flipped out in a piece for the Corriere della Sera newspaper, hysterically claiming (with no evidence) that Salvini was being controlled by Vladimir Putin.

“I do not know if Salvini was funded by Moscow, but the public has a right to know,” said Soros.

Lega’s economics policy chief, Claudio Borghi, hit back, asserting, “Soros worried by the Italian government? Then it means that we are going in the right direction… We understand that those who have speculated for years on the skin of immigrants, financing NGOs and smugglers to invade Italy.”

“The wind has changed for [Soros] and for all those who have profited from the deaths of hundreds of people,” he added.

Soros also admitted that arrogant EU elitists want to “teach Italy a lesson” for voting against their interests, but he cautioned that, “If the EU follows this line, it will dig its own grave by provoking a negative response from the Italian electorate.”

Given their policy platform, it’s abundantly clear why globalists like Soros are terrified of the populist coalition’s success.

The 5 star/Lega alliance wants to;

• Deport 500,000 illegal immigrants

• Disincentivize migrants from attempting to reach Italy in the first place

• Re-assert Italy’s Catholic identity while registering and monitoring mosques

• Address Italy’s plummeting birth rate by offering free child care for mothers

• End sanctions on Russian and work with Moscow to fight Islamic terrorism

• Move away from the neoliberal model of globalisation and monopoly capitalism

• Movie towards a possible exit from the euro and the European Union

The success of the populist coalition would blaze a trail for other European countries to follow suit, starting with Sweden, which has national elections coming up in September.

This is why globalists like Soros will do everything in their power to stoke chaos and instability in Italy in a desperate bid to save the crumbling edifice that is the European Union.

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RT

Putin signs law on countermeasures against US & its allies

June 4, 2018

© Mikhael Klimentyev / Sputnik

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law stipulating implementation of counter-sanctions against the US and its allies.

The legislation is to be applied to any state or person for “hostile actions” against Russia. It allows Russian authorities to cut international cooperation with foreign states, and to impose import and export restrictions among other countermeasures. Trade embargos will not extended to certain goods, however, that are imported by Russian citizens for personal use.

Contrary to public fears, the countersanctions do not apply to imported essential items, for which no replacements are produced in Russia or other countries.

The bill aimed at defending “economic interests and security” was drafted by State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin and the heads of all four parliamentary caucuses in mid-April. It was approved by Russian lawmakers by the end of May. The move came in retaliation to Washington’s economic penalties against Moscow.

In early April, the US Treasury included 24 Russians, including high-profile politicians, and 14 corporations on a sanctions list relating to alleged “malign activity around the globe.” The move has been repeatedly condemned by Russian authorities, with Moscow immediately promising to retaliate.

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“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
(John 14:27)