“Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition.”
(Mark 7:13)
Making The Word Of God

Dear Friends,

Greetings!

It is generally unknown by most, and by Christians in particular, that the religion practiced by most modern religious Jews is not the same religion that was practiced by the Jews of the Old Testament.

Todays Judaism is not based on the Old Testament but is rather on a series of books called the Talmud. The Talmud, which is sudied in Yeshiva's (Jewish religious institutions), is commentary on the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament.

To quote from the article below: “Jewish literature is predicated on the belief that the Torah cannot be properly understood without recourse to the Oral Law. Indeed, it states that many commandments and stipulations contained in the Torah would be difficult, if not impossible, to keep without the Oral Law to define them.”

The example given in the article quotes the eighth commandment: “You shall not steal.” Adherants to the Talmud say that “without defining what is considered theft, or ownership and property laws” it is impossible to fully understand the commandment.

Seems pretty straight forward.

To give an example of just how powerful the Talmud's influence is: “The Talmud also states that Rabbanite authority is so powerful that even God must acquiesce to it. Additionally, the Talmud states that if any prophet were to arise (and the Talmud gives Elijah as an example) and contradict Rabbanite law, that prophet will die.”

We hope you will find the following compilation informative.

It is also interesting to know that Rabbinic Judaism considers Torah-only Jews to be their sworn enemies.

On a final note even many Christians do not know that the Talmud speaks very unfavourably about Jesus and Christians in particular. You can look this up for you own information.

“And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessings and cursings, according to all that is written in the book of the law. There was not a word of all that Moses commanded, which Joshua read not before all the congregation of Israel, with the women, and the little ones, and the strangers that were conversant among them.” Joshua 8-34-35

Next week we hope to post: “Magnified Thy Word”

***

Click to View PDF online
or Right-click to Download PDF.

Children Of Disobedience

WND

WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS ABOUT THE ARABIAN DESERT

Could the Sahara have been a forest just 700 years before Jesus' time

January 8, 2017

WASHINGTON – Science has lots of ideas about the ancient catastrophic climate change that almost all agree occurred to create the world’s biggest desert in Arabia.

There are as many theories about what happened as when it happened.

What’s not very well-known even by Bible scholars is what the Bible says – or at least suggests.

The Book of Isaiah chapter 21:13 references “the forest of Arabia shall ye tarry all night, even in the ways of Dedanites.” The Hebrew word behind the English “forest” is ya’ar, which generally means forest. Most every older Bible translation renders it “forest,” while some modern ones translate it to “desert” or “thicket” – probably because they can’t imagine there was once a forest in Arabia.

Yet, many scientists, including secular ones, are not only acknowledging that as a fact, some are suggesting it could have been so only a few thousand years ago.

That raises the question as to whether it was indeed a forest in the renowned Isaiah’s time. Even more interesting is the fact that another biblical prophet, Jeremiah, who lived about 100 years after Isaiah, has this to say in Jeremiah 3:2-3: “Lift up thine eyes unto the high places, and see where thou hast not been lien with. In the ways hast thou sat for them, as the Arabian in the wilderness; and thou hast polluted the land with thy whoredoms and with thy wickedness. Therefore the showers have been withholden, and there hath been no latter rain; and thou hadst a whore’s forehead, thou refusedst to be ashamed.”

In other words, Jeremiah, quoting what God spoke to him, wrote that the Arabian forest of Isaiah’s time became a desert because of a Divine judgment. And it’s not the only well-known, sprawling desert in the world that was previously forested.

Like the reporting you see here? Sign up for free news alerts from WND.com, America’s independent news network.

Jeremiah suggests rainfall in Arabia stopped in his time or before. Could the destruction of an Arabian forest have occurred only 2,700 years ago? Is this biblical evidence of just such a possibility?

One recent scientific paper suggests there could have been an Arabian forest instead of desert between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago.

It sparked popular news stories with 2015 headlines like this by the BBC: “Arabia was once a lush paradise of grass and woodlands.”

Other scientists are jumping in to support this conclusion, including the idea that there were lakes and rivers in Arabia thousands of years ago.

And others still say the climate change that brought about the Arabian desert occurred over millions and millions of years – not thousands.

Some Christian scientists and theologians, however, have long believed what the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah said about the Arabian desert in their times was true. Bodie Hodge, a speaker, writer and researcher for Answers in Genesis, explains why.

“After the Flood, the Earth was obviously well watered,” he told WND.” Regrowth should have been abundant over most of the globe. Furthermore, the heat from which the Lord used to burst the springs/fountains of the great deep (Genesis 7:11), had to be a tremendous heat source. Couple this with continental scale movements, this generates immense heat, warming the oceans. Warm oceans produced more precipitation in the early years after the Flood to continue vegetation growth in places we normally wouldn’t see.”

Hodge continues: “This warming would have been the trend until the ice peaked in the Ice Age, with exceptions of course. Calculations by weather experts like meteorologists Mike Oard and Dr. Larry Vardiman put the peak of the Ice Age at about 500 years after Noah’s Flood. This would have been about 400 years after Babel. At this time, Arabia, the Sahara, Negev, and many other places were likely still highly vegetated. Many science articles have reported on the previously lush regions of Arabia, the Sahara, Negev and even Antarctica.”

Speaking of the Negev, today a vast desert, is also referred to as a forest in the underlying Hebrew in Ezekiel 20:46-48. The prophet ministered in the early 600s B.C., around the same time as Jeremiah and about a century after Isaiah.

While the King James Version of the Bible doesn’t specifically refer to the Negev by name, southern Israel is almost entirely desert today, completely occupied by what we call the Negev or Judean Desert. Here’s what Ezekiel wrote in his time about this vast desert: “Son of man, set thy face toward the south, and drop thy word toward the south, and prophesy against the forest of the south field; And say to the forest of the south, Hear the word of the Lord; Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall devour every green tree in thee, and every dry tree: the flaming flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall be burned therein. And all flesh shall see that I the Lord have kindled it: it shall not be quenched.”

According to this account, the Negev went from being a vast forest to becoming a desert because God burned it in judgment.

“At the time of Abraham and Lot, the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea region, where Sodom and Gomorrah were located, were well-watered and lush with vegetation,” said Hodge. “I would suggest some deserts were already forming in Abraham’s day around 2,000 BC, and others much later, including into Isaiah and Jeremiah’s day. Today, the Dead Sea region is very desert-like. Sometimes deserts form relatively quickly. But that takes a significant catastrophe and long-term changes of climate. It makes more sense that deserts form in waves as different areas within the larger forest diminish and as other parts still have sufficient ground water (i.e., the oasis affect) and enough rain to sustain, until further weather changes occur. But the final desertification may take a little time. The Yatir desert in Israel is at the edge of the Negev desert. This shows how one area can be devastated into a desert while an area right next to it can remain lush.”

The specific area mentioned in Jeremiah and Isaiah may pinpoint the precise time for the formation of the desert of Arabia Petraea. Dr. John Gill, commentator and Hebraist in the 1700s, published notes on Isaiah 21:13 along these lines as have other well-known commentators. They all insisted the Arabian forest was no mere grove of trees, or a “thicket,” as some modern translations put it, but a thick wooded forest. Some modern translations have even “corrected” Isaiah by changing the word “forest” to “desert.”

“As Arabia no longer has such a place (a forest), this change had to occur since Isaiah’s day,” says Hodge. “It is reasonable and even scriptural to suggest that it happened within the 100 years to Jeremiah’s day.”

By the way, both Saudi Arabia and Israel are actively reforesting their respective deserts.

***

WND

CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED TO PRESERVE HARD-FOUGHT RELIGIOUS PROTECTIONS

'7 freedoms' won over 500 years now 'under threat' in U.K.

BOB UNRUH

January 7, 2018

Magna Carta

The United Kingdom is the home of the Magna Carta, one of the foundations for the world’s understanding of rights, including religious rights.

But those rights are under fire there, and the Barnabas Fund has launched a 2018 campaign to restore and protect them.

The organization that works in support of persecuted Christians around the globe said it is now lobbying for a new act of Parliament “to guarantee seven fundamental aspects of freedom of religion.”

“These seven freedoms have developed in the U.K. by various mechanisms over the last five centuries but are now under threat. A law to protect and guarantee them is urgently needed,” Barnabas announced.

See the WND Superstore’s collection of Bibles, including the stunning 1599 Geneva Bible.

The organization is seeking a law with written assurances about:

1. Freedom to read the Bible in public (achieved 1537)

2. Freedom to interpret the Bible without government interference (achieved 1559)

3. Freedom of worship (achieved 1689)

4. Freedom to choose, or change your faith or belief (achieved 1689)

5. Freedom to preach and try to convince others of the truth of your beliefs (achieved 1812)

6. Freedom to build churches and other places of worship (achieved 1812), and

7. Freedom from being required to affirm a particular worldview or set of beliefs in order to hold a public sector job or stand for election, work in professions such as teaching and law, or study at university (achieved by the repeal of various Test Acts between 1719 and 1888)

“Tracing the heritage of religious liberty takes us back more than 800 years to Magna Carta in 1215. At that time, England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland were separate nations; it was long before Great Britain was created, let alone the United Kingdom,” the ministry explained.

“So Magna Carta’s ringing call that ‘the English Church’ must be free should not be seen as limited to England. We must see it as an affirmation to be embraced by the whole of the U.K., and far beyond, but expressed in the language of its time and context. Indeed, in later centuries, Magna Carta became a rallying cry for the freedoms of all the English-speaking peoples. For example, those who signed the American Declaration of Independence described themselves as ‘patriots’ claiming their ancient rights as Englishmen which had been set out in Magna Carta and subsequent laws.”

Most of the threatened freedoms were obtained over the generations by removing “various restrictions” on religion rather than enacting laws protecting those rights.

“They are therefore vulnerable to being eroded by those who are either intent on imposing a particular ideological agenda, or by politicians who are simply ignorant of the enormous importance that previous generations played in developing freedom of religion and spreading it to other parts of the world,” Barnabas Aid explained.

The efforts to petition for such a law in the U.K. will be accompanied by similar moves in Australia and New Zealand, the ministry said.

“We shall be calling on Christians to engage in numerous ways to reclaim the freedoms which our forefathers endured hardship, persecution and even death to achieve.”

Why now?

“We believe that, as a nation, the U.K. has again left the pathways of God. We have forsaken His laws, and we are faced with the possibility of the lampstand being removed from our country (Revelation 2:5). With this will probably come the loss of our fundamental religious freedoms. Yet, we believe it is not too late. We believe that we are still, as a nation, in the hands of our sovereign Lord, that it is He who will determine our destiny.”

***

CHURCH MILITANT

POPE PREPARES COUNTERATTACK?

By Christine Niles, M.St. (Oxon.), J.D. • ChurchMilitant.com • January 3, 2018

Italian sources claim Francis is launching campaign against Kazakhstan bishops

VATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) - A new report claims Pope Francis is preparing a "campaign of denigration" against five bishops who have publicly rejected his stance on marriage and the sacraments.

On New Year's Eve, Bp. Athanasius Schneider, along with two fellow bishops from Kazakhstan, published a document rejecting liberal interpretations of Amoris Laetitia, which have "caused significant and ever greater confusion among both the faithful and the clergy, confusion that touches the heart of the life of the Church ... ."

The following day, two prelates added their signatures: Cdl. Carlo Maria Vigano, former papal nuncio to the United States, and Abp. Luigi Negri of Ferrara-Comacchio.

Wednesday, Vaticanista Marco Tosatti — a reliable expert on inside matters in Rome — noted that a popular Italian blog was reporting that Pope Francis is preparing a counterattack.

Anonimi Della Croce ("Anonymous of the Cross"), in a post titled "The Quiet Before the Storm," wrote Wednesday:

My source in the Vatican told me that last night [Pope Francis] stayed in Santa Marta with several Vatican "press officers" and various "advisers" for a meeting on how to deal with this new and "unexpected" Correction from the Bishops of Astana. The source told me that [the pope] was furious. He went on a rampage — because he cannot stand any opposition. They heard him scream: "They will regret it! They will regret it bitterly!"

The report went on to summarize it as a "campaign of denigration" against the bishops, conducted through various media friendly to the Holy Father. The pope "has given carte blanche to his official and unofficial 'press officers' to start a 'media campaign' that denigrates opponents," which will serve to "discredit" the bishops, causing them to "lose their credibility."

He noted that Vatican communications is "now in the hands of the Jesuits."

"A regime reigns in the Vatican," Anonymous wrote. "Mail, cell phones under control, surrounding bugs … in the Vatican are the order of the day."

The Vatican was rocked in December by the book Dictator Pope, which claimed Pope Francis is prone to vindictiveness, and the Vatican under his pontificate is bugged and wiretapped, including the apartments of curial officials.

"Clergy and laity working there find that their offices, cars and even private homes are bugged and their telephones tapped," the author told Church Militant. "Everyone you talk to in the Vatican, of all parties or none, will tell you that the atmosphere there is one of profound fear, a state of affairs completely unlike anything known in living memory."

Tosatti noted that "coincidentally" on Tuesday, liberal Catholic Massimo Faggiolo — who wrote a scathing piece against what he pejoratively calls "Catholic Cyber-Militias" — tweeted a negative comment about the bishops behind the recent document.

"This confirms the low level of the signatories," Faggioli commented. "I know one of them well."

He went on to mock the bishops in two more tweets. "Alternative headline," he wrote."'Emerging from their disgruntled retirement, a couple of bishops try to convey the false idea that the Church is split in two.'"

Later, he added, "I am from the archdiocese of Ferrara and I spend there part of my life as a Catholic. If you know the retired archbishop Negri, you cannot possibly think that he is the voice of the 'sanior pars' [sounder part] in the Church."

Responses were uniformly negative, scolding Faggioli.

"Overflowing with charity, dissident slimes orthodox prelates and lies as well. Undoubtedly peer-reviewed," tweeted Dr. Christopher Manion, writer at The Wanderer.

"It must be awful to spend your entire life desperately fighting against God and hoping everything will stick somewhere," said Frank Walker.

"You are sinking to new lows," tweeted zdogg8. "Lovely that you have Twitter, fitting for a twit. Now the world will all know."

"In my diocese even though it's still a bit on the liberal side, all the young newly ordained men in recent years are traditional(ist)," wrote Bearspear. "If this is a War, Faggioli's side is losing 'soldiers' fast."

***

BREAKINGISRAELNEWS

Burning Man Announces Newest Centerpiece: Temple to Greek Goddess

By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz

January 4, 2018

“They sacrificed to demons, no-gods, Hashems they had never known, New ones, who came but lately, Who stirred not your fathers’ fears.” Deuteronomy 32:17 (The Israel Bible™)

Temple of Galaxia, Burning Man (Photo via architect’s Facebook page)
The Burning Man Festival, held in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada in August, has chosen its centerpiece structure, a massive wood temple dedicated to the Greek goddess Gaia, that is just one of the many pagan symbols featured at the popular desert gathering.

The festival has certainly evolved from its humble beginnings over 30- years ago when 20 artists gathered on a Beach in San Francisco. The annual event is now a high-profile gathering that attracts over 70,000 to its isolated desert location.

The Burning Man organizers announced two weeks ago that they chose the design for the centerpiece temple of the festival. This year they will build a massive structure composed of 20 wood trusses converging as a spiral. In the center will be a large mandala, a symbol used by Buddhists as an aid in meditation. Designed by Mamou-Mani, a London-based French architect, the structure will be titled Galaxia.

The Burning Man effigy. (Shutterstock)

Galaxia is a name taken from a science-fiction novel by Isaac Asimov. In new age mythology, Galaxia is the mother goddess corresponding to the Greek goddess Gaia, but on a higher, galactic, level. In mythology, Gaia is the personification of the Earth and the source of immortality. The worship of Gaia figures prominently in Neopaganism.

The architect was aware of the religious connotations of the structure but denied it was anything other than an aesthetic public gathering space.

“There is no religion, it’s a secular temple. It connects everyone from everywhere,” Mamou-Mani said in an interview with Reno Gazette Journal.

Rabbi Yosef Berger, the rabbi of King David’s Tomb on Mount Zion, disagreed, saying that the focus on religious symbols clearly revealed an intent.

“They are going out to the desert to hide what they are doing because they think God can’t see them there,” Rabbi Berger told Breaking Israel News. “They try to hide their intentions, claiming it is not religious, not idolatry, but their actions reveal their intentions at every turn.”

In fact, the organizers of Burning Man declare a central theme every year. These have included Dante’s Inferno and Fertility. Every festival culminates in the burning of a massive wood effigy based on the neo-pagan/Druid Wicker Man Ritual which replaced human sacrifice. At last year’s Radical Ritual themed festival, a man died after running into the huge Burning Man effigy.

The campground is one large symbol, its boundaries marked off by a huge plastic fence forming a pentagon, an occult symbol used by pagans to outline the five-pointed pentagram star.

The pentagonal Burning Man camp (Photo via Wikimedia)

Religious symbolism is also prevalent at Catharsis in the Mall, an annual event associated with Burning Man. In addition to a wood temple, the event held in November featured a large sculpture of the Indian goddess Shiva the Destroyer. The two festivals share a 70-foot long seven-headed red metal dragon on wheels. The dragon, named after the ancient Egyptian god Abraxas, was clearly intended to reference Satan as described in the Christian Book of Revelations.

The “Abraxas” dragon. (Screenshot)

Rabbi Berger accepted this idolatrous trend as a good sign, a necessary precursor to moshiach (Messiah). The rabbi quoted Ecclesiastes to illustrate his point.

“The one no less than the other was Hashem’s doing; consequently, man may find no fault with Him. Ecclesiastes” 7:14

“We are seeing wondrous progress: the return of the Jews to Israel and Jerusalem, Jews going up to the Temple Mount, the ingathering of the exiles, and the blossoming of the land,” Rabbi Berger said. “Coincidentally, the amount of evil in the world is also rising. We are seeing horrors today never encountered before, both manmade and natural. This is all a prelude and will surely produce something unprecedented.”

Avodah zara (idolatry) is one of the prohibitions included in the Noahide laws, a universal mitzvah (Torah commandment) incumbent upon Jews and non-Jews. Though idolatry seems to contradict modern values, David Nekrutman, the executive director for the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation (CJCUC), believes that idolatry, as described in the Bible, is currently making a comeback in a different incarnation.

“When you use God for your own ends, that is paganism as practiced by the Egyptians and Mesopotamians,” Nekrutman told Breaking Israel News. “The pagan gods viewed man as lowly, used for their own enjoyment, and man placated the gods in order to get something out of them. The revolution from Abraham was that relating to God had nothing to do with man and everything to do with serving God. Serving God does not mean that he promises you an earthly reward.”

“Post modernism and secularism have a strong aspect of avodah zara. Secularism and materialism are a returning of the focus to ‘me’,” Nekrutman concluded.

***

Steve Quayle.com

PIZARRO'S CHRONICLERS

This reproduction life size skull (above), along with another true to size, mind blowing 12 foot giant reproduction will be on display at the Gen 6 True Legends Conference in Branson Missouri-Sept 14-16th.

Peruvian Eyewitness Accounts

In the mid-16th century, 168 Spanish conquistadors

One of the most detailed accounts of giants in Peru was written by renowned conquistador and chronicler Pedro Cieza (pronounced see-es-a) de Leon who recorded a popular legend among the natives concerning giants that landed on the peninsula of Santa Elena

The natives say that the giants were so large that a man of common stature measured only up to their knees.

Pedro Cieza de Leon

When the giants landed at Santa Elena they built massive houses and dug extremely deep wells. The infamous houses of the giants were still standing, and their wells were still in use, during and after the conquest of Peru, and are referenced numerous times in the historical records from that era.

It was said that a single giant consumed more food than fifty of the natives combined.

The natives hated the giants, not only because they were consuming all of their food, but also because they were taking and killing their women by attempting to have intercourse with them. Basically the giants were raping the women to death.

One day, while they were engaged in the act, a bright angel appeared in the sky above them wielding a shining sword. He threw fire and lightning down on the giants until they were completely consumed in the flames, and only their charred bones remained as a testimony of their judgment.

Francisco Pizarro and his men saw the bones with their own eyes while passing through Santa Elena.

[Francisco Pizarro and his company] arrived at Puerto Viejo, and to Santa Elena, where they saw a large quantity of bones of giants, that according to their proportion, were 20 palms [15 ft. approx.] tall (the Indians had a tradition concerning these giants, that they were people from before the flood, because giants of such huge size were never known to exist while others say that they were sodomites, and that in one day fire fell from heaven and consumed them all

Antonio de la Calancha 1663

in the year 1543, Captain Juan Olmos, native of Trujillo, hearing of all these things, conducted an excavation in that valley, where he found such gigantic ribs and other bones, that if the heads had not been found with them, it would not have been believable that they were human beings;

Agustín de Zárate

in the province of Tucumán and Tarija; in the latter of these a whole body was discovered beneath the ravine, or bank of a river, that the water, having eroding the bank, had unearthed; it was so massive, that its grave occupied a very large space, and its skull was so abnormally gigantic, that some of the Spaniards, thrusting their swords through its eye socket, could barely reach the back side of its head with the points of their blades.
In the province of Santa Cruz in the Sierra [Bolivia] the governor

he found something during the conquest of Tucumán; this gentlemen used to say that, while marching in that conquest, they discovered an ossuary [repository of bones] that appeared to contain more than a hundred human bodies, and all of the bones belonged to enormous giants, and he himself thrust his sword through one of the skulls, and the whole blade passed into the cavity.

Bernabé Cobo

Pablo José Arriaga

They took us to the other side of the village, about a quarter of a league, where a very large cave was, and in it many dead gentiles, and among them were three bodies of giants with deformed heads [elongated skulls] dressed in cumbi [ceremonial cloth], but rotted with time. These [giants] are the progenitors of all this people, whom they worshipped and revered; there were many traces of [human] sacrifices; they [the Official Inspectors] burned the bodies in the village.

• Pablo José Arriaga
  Jesuit Priest & Missionary
  The Extirpation of Idolatry in Peru, 1620

Antonio de la Calancha

September, 1630, a mestizo boy eighteen years old was brought to Lima from Huamanga, named Juan Núñez, who was 8.5 feet tall, and with feet more than a foot and a half long. He has since died in Pisco.

• Antonio de la Calancha
  Augustinian Monk & Anthropologist
  The Moral Chronicle of the Order of Saint Augustine in Peru, 1663

These giants seem to have been everywhere, since so many have seen them and affirmed their existence, and they might even all be of the same race.
Pedro Cieza de Leon
Conquistador & Chronicler
Chronicle of Peru, 1553

***

Miami Herald

The moon is about to do something it hasn’t done in more than 150 years

January 2, 2018

By Alex Harris aharris@miamiherald.com

Call it whatever you like — a blue red moon, a purple moon, a blood moon — but the moon will be a special sight on Jan. 31.

Three separate celestial events will occur simultaneously that night, resulting in what some are calling a super blue blood moon eclipse. The astronomical rarity hasn’t happened for more than 150 years, according to Space.com.

A super moon, like the one visible on New Year’s Day, is the term for when a full moon is closest to the Earth in its orbit, appearing bigger and brighter than normal.

On Jan. 31, the moon will be full for the second time in a month, a rare occasion — it happens once every two and a half years — known as a blue moon.

To top it off, there will also be a total lunar eclipse. But unlike last year’s solar eclipse, this skywatching event isn’t going to be as visible in the continental United States. The best views of the middle-of-the-night eclipse will be in central and eastern Asia, Indonesia, New Zealand and Australia, according to Space.com, although Alaska and Hawaii will get a glimpse, too.

For the rest of the U.S., the eclipse will come too close to when the moon sets for the phenomenon to be visible.

In Florida, the view will be terrible, said Florida International University astronomy professor Caroline Simpson. However, lunar eclipses aren’t particularly rare.

“We’ll have a better shot in a few years,” she said.

Because of the way the light filters through the atmosphere during an eclipse, blue light is bounced away from the moon, while red light is reflected. The eclipsed moon’s reddish color earned it the nickname blood moon.

“We’re seeing all of the Earth’s sunrises and sunsets at that moment reflected from the surface of the Moon,” Sarah Noble, a Program Scientist at NASA headquarters, said in a release.

Scientifically, Simpson said, the event is pretty meaningless. The moon’s orbit is well-studied and well-understood by scientists. The real impact, she said, is how astronomical events like this get people interested in science.

“Anything that keeps people interested in science and makes them realize science is important is a good thing,” she said.

***

The Swedish Government Is Warning Citizens to Be Prepared for at Least a Week Without Help

The Swedish government is warning its citizens to be prepared to survive on their own for at least a week, which is unusual advice for Sweden to dispense. Is there trouble on the horizon?

Shortly before Christmas, the Swedish government quietly published a paper called “Resilience.” Initially, the requirement had been for people to be prepared for 3 days without help, but it seems like that was a baby step. The government itself wants to be prepared for a 3-month long civil emergency and they’re urging citizens. to take responsibility, too.

It really makes you wonder what is looming ahead, doesn’t it?

A publication called SVT reported today:

“Because we have the security policy situation we have today, we say that we will make our planning at government level to face a security crisis for three months,” says Eva-Lena Fjällström, Deputy Director of the County Administrative Board in Västerbotten.

Previously, it has been said that citizens will be able to cope for three days in the event of a crisis. Now it’s extended to one week.

“I think it’s important that you can manage yourself. Society has changed and is vulnerable and complex with many dependencies. It can easily be a disturbance so we have to manage ourselves, “says Eva-Lena Fjällström.

The same publication provided video instructions for putting together a “crisis box.”

The Swedish government is also urging young people to get better prepared.

It’s also interesting to note that back in November, an article introducing the idea of preparedness was published and geared toward 18-year-olds. (One must also wonder if this is a gentle nudge toward a potential draft?) It referenced a study done to measure the preparedness levels of the country’s young people.

“In order to strengthen Swedish emergency preparedness, it is important that as many people as possible be prepared to cope with themselves during a crisis. Therefore, it is gratifying that almost nine out of ten 18-year-olds believe that they should take responsibility for themselves and their relatives in a crisis, “says Nils Svartz, Deputy Director General at MSB.

Nevertheless, the survey shows that many young people are not prepared for a crisis. Only one in three has water for three days and even fewer have prepared to communicate and receive important information from the radio if the electricity is lost.

Some Swedes will see this as a different way of life.

The YouTube channel Swedish Homestead recently released a video that discussed the national government’s warning for Swedes to be prepared to handle life for at least a week without the help of the government. According to the vlogger, this is not the norm there and the government is “the Big Brother who handles everything.”

There were mentions of “war” and “crisis” but it appears that not many details were given as to the exact nature of the threat.

Zero Hedge

"Spare Us The Thought Police!" Germans Rage As New Hate Speech Law Backfires

By Tyler Durden

January 7, 2018

As we reported recently, in what was officially a noble attempt to eliminate online hate speech in social media, and unofficially a devious crackdown on free speech, on January 1, 2018, Germany passed a law that forces websites to censor content deemed illegal under the new law and have it deleted within 24-hours. Ironically, as we observed last week, just hours after the law's passage it immediately backfired when it claimed its first victim, a German satirical magazine’s Twitter account which "parodied anti-Muslim comment."

Incidentally, this perfectly predictable if "totally unexpected" outcome is exactly what we, and many others had warned would happen. And now, it is finally dawning on Germany that any time the government gets involved in defining what is allowed and what isn't - especially when it comes to that most fundamental of liberties, free speech - the result is always a disaster.

According to Germany's top-selling, and most popular newspaper, Bild, the new German law meant to curtail online hate speech is "stifling free speech and making martyrs out of anti-immigrant politicians whose posts are deleted."

The law which took effect on Jan. 1 can impose fines of up to 50 million euros ($60 million) on sites that fail to remove hate speech promptly and threatens the profitability of such social media giants as Twitter and Facebook.

"Please spare us the thought police!" read the headline in Wednesday's Bild above an article that called the law a "sin" against freedom of opinion enshrined in Germany's constitution, Reuters reported.

While the law requires social media sites to delete or block obviously criminal content within 24 hours, Bild Editor-in-Chief Julian Reichelt said it could be applied against anything and anyone since there was no definition of what was "manifestly unlawful" in most cases.

Intended to prevent radical groups from gaining influence, "it was having precisely the opposite effect," he warned.

"The law against online hate speech failed on its very first day. It should be abolished immediately," Reichelt wrote, adding that the law was turning AfD politicians into "opinion martyrs".

* * *

Two examples where the German law was already applied, included tweets deleted by AfD lawmaker Beatrix von Storch criticising police for tweeting in Arabic, saying they had sought "to appease the barbaric, Muslim, rapist hordes of men". Police have since asked prosecutors to investigate her for possible incitement to hatred.

There was also deleted tweet by another AfD member of parliament, Jens Maier, called Noah Becker - the son of former tennis champion Boris Becker - a "half-nigger".

In response to the criticism, Germany's Justice Minister Heiko Maas defended the law, telling Bild that freedom of opinion did not mean carte blanche to spread criminal content on the internet.

"Calls to murder, threats, insults and incitement of the masses or Auschwitz lies are not an expression of freedom of opinion but rather attacks on the freedom of opinion of others," he said.

Germany is no stranger to limiting free speech: the country has some of the world's toughest laws on defamation, incitement to commit crimes and threats of violence, with prison sentences for Holocaust denial or inciting hatred against minorities.

Maas said social networks needed to stick to the law like everyone else, adding: "Those who care about protecting freedom of opinion can't just look on as criminal incitement and threats inhibit the open exchange of views."

And so, the government refuses to back down even as the rest of Germany realizes what a profound chilling effect the new law will have on online speech everywhere. Once the lawsuits start flying and the social networks are punished a few hundred million, it will only embolden the critics, who will then lash out again "anything and anyone" because, as the Bild editor correctly noted, "there is no definition of what was manifestly unlawful." Incidentally, this inexplicably broad definition, one which puts any content creator immediately on the defensive, is precisely what the government intended.

***

Gates of Vienna

Viktor Orbán in Bavaria: “2018 will be the year in which the will of the people is restored”

Posted by Baron Bodissey

January 6, 2018

This weekend Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is meeting with leaders of the CSU (Bavarian Christian Democrats, the sister party in the “Union” with Angela Merkel’s CDU) at the annual CSU party conclave held in the Seeon Monastery in Bavaria. The video below is an excerpt from the press conference given yesterday evening by Mr. Orbán and Horst Seehofer, the leader of the CSU and the Minister President of Bavaria, along with other leaders of the CSU.

If you’re not tuned in to the intricate political currents of the European Union, the earth-shaking nature of the event may not be apparent at first glance. However, the temblor at the Seeon Monastery registered 9.0 on the political Richter scale — you can bet that Angela Merkel and Martin Schulz felt the ground shudder beneath them in Berlin.

I’ll provide some additional context for this historic moment, but first let’s watch the video. Many thanks to Anton for translating the voice-over from the German, to Egri Nök for fine-tuning and timing it, to CrossWare for verifying that the German version accurately reflects the original Hungarian, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Background provided by Anton:

Hungary’s charismatic Prime Minister Viktor Orbán came to Germany this week to meet with Horst Seehofer (CSU), the leader of Angela Merkel’s sister party in Bavaria.

His speech is a condemnation of the illegal immigration policies practised by Merkel and the EU. Orbán has once again basically called Merkel’s actions illegal, and has dug his heels in. Hungary is currently subject to a judicial review by the European Union for refusing to allow illegal Muslim immigrants into his country.

He also demanded the forced removal of the million Muslims from the Schengen Area back to their home countries (the Schengen Area is a common region within Europe where people can move from country to country without passport controls). Terrorists have used this area to launch mass murder attacks across the continent.

Merkel is currently attempting to form a Government 100 days after she lost 25% of her voters in the national election. Nobody wants to work with her.

This short speech by Viktor Orbán is truly ground-breaking.

Additional context supplied by Egri Nök:

The situation is explosive in Germany, with ill-contained political anger and animosity. In the German press it is clear that people are at each others’ throats — we’re just totally torn apart inside this country.

People in Germany are even divided on the new censorship law. Even the Left hate it.

The CSU typically invite international politicians to the conclave in Seeon. This time it was criticized that they did not invite French President Emmanuel Macron, but instead chose Viktor Orbán.

In the press conference, Horst Seehofer says Bavaria will start a new initiative for better cooperation with the Central European states and Hungary; he calls it a new “Central European alliance”.

Alexander Dobrindt, the head of the Bundestag group of CSU parliamentarians, leads the joint CDU/CSU group with his co-chair from the CDU, Volker Kauder. At the press conference on Friday evening, Mr. Dobrindt said, “Hungary, together with the Visegrad states, is one of the closest economic trade partners with Germany. The trade balance with the Visegrad states is markedly higher than that of Germany with France.”

Mr. Orbán’s sentence about “We built a fence, while in other places chaos and illegality ruled” is quite a slap in the face for Angela Merkel.

Now it’s clear why the papers emphasize how angry Martin Schulz (SPD, Social Democrats) is: the SPD and CDU/CSU are even now negotiating another Grand Coalition. So the SPD consider Orbán’s visit a provocation.

My own take on these events, gleaned from our correspondents and from reading media reports: Horst Seehofer is trying desperately to save his political skin. A rebellion has been rumbling in his party for months. Bavarians in general are opposed to the CDU’s immigration policy, and blame the party leader of the CSU for going along with it. If Mr. Seehofer continues any further down the Multiculti Road, the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland, Alternative for Germany) will filch a substantial portion of the CSU’s votes, and he will find himself out of a job.

Hence the Central European Alliance. This is as close to secession as he can get without declaring independence from Berlin and establishing Munich as the capital of a new sovereign Bavarian state.

In addition, inviting Viktor Orbán instead of Emmanuel “Toy Boy” Macron is an act of open rebellion against the EU oligarchy. No wonder Martin Schulz is furious.

There’s no telling what will happen next. Stay tuned!

***

The Big Wobble

"Day Zero" April 29, 2018 is the day Cape Town population 3.75 million becomes the first major city in the world to run out of drinking water!

Sunday, 7 January 2018

Photo YouTube

At the current rate of consumption, officials warn April 29, 2018, will become Day Zero, the day the city’s taps will be turned off, becoming the first major city in the world to run out of water.
On January the 1st 2018 residents of South Africa's bustling city of Cape Town, home of nearly 4 million people celebrated the start of a new year with stringent new water regulations.
The Level 6 restrictions came into effect to combat an unprecedented drought which threatens to make Cape Town the first major city devoid of water.
Poor management and planning have brought on Cape water crisis according to some.
As much as climate change has most certainly brought in a huge negative effect, poor water management and lack of planning have played a large role too.
For the past seven years, a huge increase in the volumes of tourists visiting Cape Town has also affected the decrease in water, according to officials.
According to Reuters, 2018 will see agricultural water to be reduced by 60 percent and commercial use by 45 percent, compared to pre-drought allocations.
The drought and water stress across most of South Africa follows a strong El Niño in 2015 and 2016.
The weather pattern — characterized by warmer-than-normal ocean water in the equatorial Pacific — resulted in extreme heat and spells of dry weather.
At the current rate of consumption, officials warn April 29, 2018, will become Day Zero, the day the city’s taps will be turned off.
“The city of Cape Town could conceivably become the first major city in the world to run out of water, and that could happen in the next four months,” Dr. Anthony Turton, a professor at the Centre for Environmental Management at the University of the Free State, told the New York Times.
“It’s not an impending crisis — we’re deep, deep, deep in crisis,” he said.
Dam storage levels are at 31%, with usable water at 20%.
The City of Cape Town's rationing intervention is starting to have an effect on consumption but water usage must be reduced further.
Consumption is at 585-million litres of collective usage per day.
The City activated water rationing as part of the implementation of its Critical Water Shortages Management Disaster Plan.
This action intensifies the preceding months of pressure management which continues to be done in an attempt to force water consumption down to required levels.
Due to the critical nature of available water supply, all water users across the metro must expect water rationing, which could lead to water supply disruptions.
This is likely to result in water supply being disrupted during peak water usage times in the mornings (between 05:00 and 09:00) and in the evenings (between 17:00 and 21:00) if usage is above the required levels.
It must be noted that theoretically everyone should have water but that the duration of the outages would depend on the water usage for the area and whether it is within the water restriction levels.

RT

Male infertility among many side effects linked to ibuprofen - study

January 9, 2018

© Getty Images

Men who dream of starting a family may want to pass on the ibuprofen the next time they have a headache. A new study says the well-known painkiller could cause fertility issues in males.

The study, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), monitored 31 healthy white men aged 18 to 35. The volunteers were interviewed, completed a questionnaire assessing their physical activity, and gave a blood sample. The men were then divided into two groups, 14 in an ibuprofen group and 17 in a placebo group.

Those in the ibuprofen group were given two doses of ibuprofen a day. Each dose was 600mg, equivalent to three over-the-counter pills.

The researchers, from Denmark, France, and China, concluded that taking ibuprofen increases the risk of a condition known as compensated hypogonadism. The condition, generally associated with elderly men and linked to reproductive and physical disorders, including infertility, results in the body having higher levels of luteinizing hormone (LH) than testosterone.
This is a problem, as the function of LH is to stimulate the production of testosterone, and not to significantly surpass testosterone levels.

When the researchers measured the testosterone/luteinizing hormone (LH) ratio in the participants, they found that the ibuprofen group experienced an 18 percent ratio decrease after 14 days. That number rose to a 23 percent decrease after 44 days. "Taken together, these in vivo data suggest that ibuprofen induced a state of compensated hypogonadism during the trial..." the study states.

“We normally see this condition in elderly men, so it raises an alarm,” study author Bernard Jégou, of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, told the Guardian. “We are concerned about it, particularly for healthy people who don’t need to take these drugs. The risk is greater than the benefit.”

The findings are certainly significant, as the 1,200mg of ibuprofen given to the participants each day is far below the suggested daily maximum of 3,200mg per day.

“Our immediate concern is for the fertility of men who use these drugs for a long time,” study author David Møbjerg Kristensen, of the University of Copenhagen, told the newspaper. “These compounds are good painkillers, but a certain amount of people in society use them without thinking of them as proper medicines.”

The researchers also pointed out the risk of those with compensated hypogonadism progressing to overt primary hypogonadism, which is characterized by "low circulating testosterone and prevalent symptoms including reduced libido, reduced muscle mass and strength, and depressed mood and fatigue."

The study isn't the first to suggest that ibuprofen could be causing more harm than good. Research released in February 2017 also found that it could increase the risk of heart attacks. A similar study in 2016 also foundthat the common painkiller could exacerbate heart failure.

***

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

“Lo, children [are] an heritage of the LORD: [and] the fruit of the womb [is his] reward.

As arrows [are] in the hand of a mighty man; so [are] children of the youth.

Happy [is] the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.”
(Psalm 127:3-5)

Links:
This site is partially sponsored by Association of Missionary-Minded Christians.